Watch the full conversation here.

Everyone in football talks about the deal, from the negotiation and the signing to the photo that goes with the press release. Far fewer people talk about what happens the morning after, which is exactly where the real work begins.

When people ask what we do first after buying a club, our half-joking answer is that we buy a new striker, because that's what almost every club does the moment new money comes in. We understand the instinct, but in our view buying players to buy results is a tactic rather than a strategy, so here is what we actually do instead.

We start with a coffee

Every deal carries some tension, and a few of ours have carried a lot of it. So once the paperwork is done, we go to the club in person, shake hands, and sit down for a coffee, clearing the air and talking about the future rather than the negotiation. It may sound like a small gesture, but we've learned that it sets the tone for how well we work together in the months that follow.

From there we start with identity rather than players, asking who the club is, how it wants to play and how it connects with the people who live around its stadium. Everything else we do builds on those answers.

Trust takes longer than the deal

The people we meet at our clubs all have one thing in common, which is that they love the club and are there for passion rather than money. That passion is what makes football special, but it also makes change difficult, and someone who has given ten or twenty-five years to a club is right to be wary when a new group walks in with fresh ideas.

We move quickly on deals, aiming for six weeks where an acquisition can easily take 18 to 24 months, and we have sent proposals within 24 hours of a first call. The downside of that speed is that there's little time to get to know each other before signing. Some people trust us within a week, but most need around three months, so we build that relationship after the deal, one conversation at a time.

We bring more than money

Clubs expect our investment, but what tends to surprise them is everything that comes with it. Because Estrella is part of ve2ventures, our clubs plug straight into ClubOS to run the club, Content Stadium for content and Robey for custom kits. We also negotiate partnerships such as Fever for ticketing and Catapult for performance at group level, which gives a fifth-division club in Portugal access to deals it could never sign on its own. Shortly after signing, one of our data scientists is at the club setting up the database, because players need revenue and revenue needs data.

ClubOS itself grew out of a complaint we kept hearing while building Jogo: clubs loved the insights but told us they didn't want yet another platform. So we built one login that runs through the entire club. We've also learned that technology only helps a club that genuinely wants it, and since everyone is on their best behaviour during a deal, we now give demos before signing and treat a club's willingness to adopt as one of our criteria.

We're always at the table

Football clubs are more attainable than most people think, which is why so many wealthy fans and athletes are buying in. We often say, though, that a hands-off investment in a football club is like buying a boat, because it's a very reliable way to get rid of your money. We've watched investors buy clubs in Italy out of passion, only to discover a few years later that it becomes an expensive hobby when you don't understand the culture and aren't there to see it for yourself.

That's why we always build a local team, from management to the branding agency, and back it with our own specialists in marketing and data. It's also why we're never a silent partner, whether we hold a majority or a significant minority stake.

If there's one lesson from this stage of our journey, it's that buying the club is the beginning rather than the finish line. In the coming months we expect to add our first academy and two or three new clubs, and in each case it will be the work we do after signing that decides whether they succeed.

Hear the full conversation with David, Xander and Laura on the Estrella podcast on YouTube or Spotify.

Everything is now written as "we," including the striker joke, the boat line and the Jogo story, which were credited to Xander and David before. Their names only appear in the closing call to action.

Shall I update the Notion ticket with this version?

Hear the full conversation with David, Xander, and Laura on the Estrella podcast here.

Also available on Spotify.