Show HN: Sporty – An app for creating and joining sports activities nearby

http://sportyapp.com

by matmik • 12 years ago

64 48 12 years ago

sportyapp.com

matmik12• 12 years ago

This is launch day and I'm absolutely thrilled to get it out into the wild! Appreciate any and all feedback! :)

heyheyhey• 12 years ago

How are you solving the chicken and the egg problem that plagues most location-based apps?

For example, I'm in multiple FB groups for playing pick-up in my area and see apps like Jogabo mentioned every now and then yet it never seems to gain traction and people just resort to posting on FB.

djb_hackernews• 12 years ago

I once created something similar and ran in to similar problems. What I did was use various event apis (meetup, etc) and populate events from those in to my app while allowing users to create their own.

matmik12• 12 years ago

It's a tough problem – no doubt about it. In v1, as we expect your nearby network to be quite small, we've focused heavily on your existing friends network (from facebook) and are trying to make that experience as good as possible. Inviting them, organising the events, etc.

In the past, just like you, we used facebook groups and/or messages/chats back and fourth to friends.

Hopefully the app will be good enough for people to start out with their existing friends and then more and more people nearby will show up.

jmelul2• 12 years ago

Definitely agree here. This is the main problem to solve for these event organization/discovery apps. This is especially true when existing solutions like Meetup already have a lot of very useful features and when your solution doesn't bring a significant added value compared to makeshift solutions (10x improvement they say?? Maybe that's a little much).

It's also hard when you refuse to use black hat and spammy tactics ;) Hopefully you guys won't have to resort to that.

We have moved out of this space with Jogabo (the meetup for sports... Well for us it was for soccer only). We are now focusing on making a social app for players with a twist of discovery. We think it will solve the chicken and egg problem.

We're not giving up, because the situation is just plain lame as it stands now. Facebook, email, whatsapp just doesn't cut it. We're in Lisbon right now and everyone and their mom plays soccer here yet it's still as much of a pain. The only games we've actually played were through local Jogabo users actually! Happy to tell you more if interested. Just ping me on twitter

Walkman2• 12 years ago

What if you don't try to solve that but a different problem first? Make the app good enough for existing private teams to be usable!

E.g. we play weekly, organize the event through Facebook for years but still a pain sometimes. Somebody don't RSVP but still show up, so we are odd. Also Facebook events don't make it possible to limit the number of guests. If you make it really easy to use and useful enough such a level that existing private groups will use it (and they stick because it makes their life easier), new people will come.

scottkrager• 12 years ago

This is great. Signed up right away.

If anyone in Seattle wants to play some basketball near greenwood / phinney ridge area, I'm hosting at 7pm tonite at the Greenwood Elementary outdoor courts! Event is public on this app.

matmik12• 12 years ago

Wohoo, that's so cool to hear! There's something special about hearing from your first users around the world, and that they are actually using it for real stuff.

dwg• 12 years ago

I was searching for an app exactly like this a few weeks ago. Super glad someone else built it so I don't have to. I think the biggest values I hope to get out of this are: (a) coordination of getting the activity together so that I don't have to deal with flakey friends and (b) connecting me to strangers who also want to play so that I can get a game together even when friends are out of town or don't want to play (I always seems to have more energy than they do). Looking forward to trying this out!

matmik12• 12 years ago

You just listed the exact reasons for why we built this app, so I truly hope we're able to live up to what you want. Thanks for commenting!

sanderjd• 12 years ago

Great idea and congrats. I hope there's an android or web version soon!

beatboxrevival• 12 years ago

Some serious usability issues with anti-patterns.

- Why navigation bar on bottom of screen?

- Sometimes close is in left, sometimes on bottom. Pick one.

- Overusing the blurred background pattern. Use it sparingly to provide context, or layering.

- 3 dots icon is sharing?

- No search for finding activities

- When you tap a sport, it spawns multiple view controllers. Leads to crashing the app.

rymohr• 12 years ago

I personally like the navigation bar at the bottom. It's a natural resting place for your thumb and a good call if this is one of the main menus.

I like the consistent use of blurred backgrounds too. However on the sports scroll I'd wait until the scroll has settled to change the background image -- when you're scrolling quickly through the list it can cause the app to stutter.

Great work overall! Your app is beautiful.

matmik12• 12 years ago

Thanks a bunch! We really like the bottom placement for navigation as well as it's a small hassle to always reach the very top to go to a different section.

You're 100% right on the sports scroller. Will improve this greatly in the future and try to get it really silky smooth. Actually using Path's FastImageCache in today's version. https://github.com/path/FastImageCache

matmik12• 12 years ago

Good feedback, thank you! This is only our first version, and will absolutely take this back to the team.

easytiger3• 12 years ago

another major anti pattern being the use of an app excluding anyone on a computer

euphemize• 12 years ago

Downloaded the app, first screens look good. I would definitely use something like this, living near a huge park in a big city, and being very active. However:

- I don't have Facebook, how do I create an account?

- Do you really, really need accounts at all? And if you do, can't you at least just show me activities happening around me, and let me sign up later?

I'd love to give more feedback but I'm stuck outside your app.

matmik12• 12 years ago

Really sorry about that! We knew Facebook would put some people off, but it did two things for us; - We could outsource our login system - As we're going to have a chicken and egg problem, we wanted this to be really great with your existing facebook graph, so that people will be auto friends etc.

Will absolutely implement self login and twitter connect in future updates.

subpixel• 12 years ago

I'm curious what you say to people who ask "Why not Meetup?"

As someone who has organized sport groups from small (single weekly pickup games in the mid west) to large (300+ people vying for spots in three games a week in a major city), I've looked into various sport-specific apps. But in the end, I've always come back to Meetup. They used to have more rough edges, but they've gotten much better.

FYI, here are Meetup features I can't live without as a sports event organizer:

- auto-scheduling of games

- option to make RSVP required (drop-ins are just a hassle, b/c then you never know how many people to plan around)

- online payment collection ("Here's my $3" is a waay more reliable indicator of interest/attendance than "I'm in" - this changed everything for us, and covers our facility rental)

- group-wide + member-specific messaging

- an app and account most people already have and are willing to use

Don't mean to sound pessimistic, just sharing thoughts - best of luck!

matmik12• 12 years ago

Thanks for sharing your thoughts – much appreciated! We think there's something special about a place where the purpose is to actually play sports. There's something about cultivating that niche.

We are absolutely going to implement several of the features you mentioned, and hadn't though about some of them, so thanks again!

revelation• 12 years ago

I don't think Meetup ever quite made it outside the US.

keerthiko• 12 years ago

Not only is that not quite true, but even if so it would just be a marketing problem, and not because of cultural, legal or technical barriers? (such as iOS only, or heavily english-dependent, etc)

I have personally seen Meetup used fairly liberally in Korea, HK and Singapore.

streptomycin• 12 years ago

I just moved a few days ago and I would love an easier way of finding where to play basketball than calling every gym in town and asking tons of people for tips, which is what I started doing earlier today. I've also seen how the friction in this process makes lots of people simply stop playing basketball after they move away from their home town or lose easy access to a college gym, so the problem you're trying to solve is both real and important (and extremely difficult, of course).

But... I don't have an iPhone. Does it make sense to leave most people out, even for an initial launch? Especially since your biggest challenge will be getting critical mass in different locations.

matmik12• 12 years ago

Glad to hear we're not the only ones seeing the problems with this.

For us, as a small, bootstrapped startup it's tough to do everything at the same time. It's also very important for us to get the experience right on one platform first, before we move on to different ones.

This is only our version one and we need to look at the feedback to see if we've made the right choices or need to change fundamental things.

johnnyio• 12 years ago

For soccer, do you know Jogabo app? Why don't you partner on specific sport community apps intead of making all sports in the same time with Sporty? It will be harder to have a critical mass for all kind of sports and avoiding the chicken and egg problem.... PS : Do you really think everybody can/like play at amateur/occasional level more than 1 or 2 sports?

matmik12• 12 years ago

I haven't heard of Jogabo, but will be sure to check it out. Someone else here also mentioned it.

Yeah, I do think people could enjoy more than one or two sports, especially for the occasional level. E.g. soccer and basketball regularly, and then perhaps something like running and volleyball a few times a month or something.

We have no idea though, will be interesting to see the data after a month.

jmelul2• 12 years ago

Thanks for the plug Jonny (I'm one of the founders of Jogabo). We are definitely staying clear of multisport and your comment is one of the main reasons. That said we are not a meetup for sports like Sportsy. It might work for you guys but I definitely think you are going to really focus on the chicken and egg problem. We tried this with our previous startup but we quickly realized we didn't want to venture in that space. Pre-populating your app with existing events will turn you into a "classifieds" type of product and I doubt you want to go there.

avalaunch• 12 years ago

Congrats on shipping! That's an awesome achievement.

You'll probably run into the chicken/egg problem of launching an app that requires network effects. One way to solve that that I think would work good here is to provide ancillary benefits to installing and using your app over the competitors (meetup). For example, some stat tracking capabilities might be a great differentiator that would hopefully motivate those with pre-existing leagues to install and use your app.

matmik12• 12 years ago

Thank's a bunch! We're thrilled about finally getting this out there!

Stats are very interesting. Especially perhaps partnering with some other apps that already do that extremely well. Who knows. Good suggestion.

clairity• 12 years ago

yes, you have to have an answer for the chicken & egg problem if you want to be successful in this space. event discovery (of which this is a subset) is particularly littered with failed startups and small businesses. i have two friendly entrepreneurs in my area alone working on this exact same problem and i'm not sure either of them have really nailed it. understanding the true drivers of value are what gets you past the chicken & egg problem.

and yes, stats are interesting (...says the person creating a real-time stats app for amateur sports =)

axit• 12 years ago

Moving to a new city soon and I can see myself using this. Are you working on an Android or web version?

matmik12• 12 years ago

That's great! Unfortunately we aren't working on those two things just yet, but we are interested in looking at ways we might be able to add a small web version that would allow anyone outside of iOS to respond and join specific invites.

pztrick• 12 years ago

Maybe iOS users only want to play soccer with other iOS users? ;)

excellentpants• 12 years ago

Android users are notoriously bad at soccer.

easytiger3• 12 years ago

Why an app? This is an online service not a sodding "app".

avree• 12 years ago

Why does something have to be an online service, and not an app?

I'd presume that most people who are doing sports are fairly active and own a mobile phone.

anigbrowl• 12 years ago

The nature of the product means you need to connect with other people online anyway. The app is just a wrapper for that, rather than doing any real processing.

easytiger3• 12 years ago

Ridiculous. Take away the app and you have an online service for which one possible front end is the app.

vlucas• 12 years ago

Nice app concept, and good niche focus. I like it.

Me and a group of friends used to get together for Ultimate Frisby every now and then, and I had always envisioned an app like this. We used SMS for communication, but that is so limited and you have to exchange numbers, etc. Good job!

wellboy2• 12 years ago

As always, this is the greatest idea ever, spontaneously meeting like-minded people/social discovery. Hundreds of startups have tried it and this idea pops up on the HN front page every couple of months. However, it has never worked out.

Again, not trying to shoot your app down, it is the greatest idea ever, but if you want to spend a significant amount of time on this now, you should be aware of this:

Why did none of these work out? High CPA, incredibly high critical mass and churn. It will be very hard for you to acquire users as the only targeting you can do is "sports", very broad and very competitive. Secondly, your critical mass per city to cover all sports is around 10,000 users. Only then, will your users be able to find activities to join when they want. However, 10,000 users per city is very, very hard to get. This is the main problem why all the social discovery apps even with millions of funding didn't manage to gain traction, see Highlight, Solar.me, Spots, Spontacts etc.

Lastly, as your app doesn't address a certain customer, your users won't be able to identify with the app much and this will make it hard to keep them. Hope that gave some insight.

Walkman2• 12 years ago

Would you mind linking those threads from HN where this idea came up?

wellboy2• 12 years ago

I've searched for it, but can't find the links anymore unfortunately. However, every couple of months a new show hn makes it to the front page with finding like-minded people, making new friends etc.

If you search on Angel list for "meet like-minded people" and you will find some. Here some from the top of my head Spontacts, Sporty, Spots-app, Woofound, Highlight, Sonar.me, Vingle. This article is also very insightful http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/07/ambient-location-didnt-work...

curiousHacker• 12 years ago

As a pickup basketball fiend I am interested in this. I find that pu bball is the best way for me to meet and network with guys. I have to say though there are certain types of people I definitely want to avoid playing with.

Also, some advice on your webpage. I am not going to bother downloading your app. I'm on my computer. However if you geolocated me based on my IP and then said "There are currently 5 games for Today, and 3 for next Thursday, in City Name", then I would be a lot more compelled. I am just skeptical, since a lot of these Show HN posts are duds.

pacofvf• 12 years ago

I'm in a football(soccer) country and I play every Saturday, we do it just for fun but we always have trouble finding other players (teammates or adversaries), for which I see a great potential for your app. For those who want to play at a upper level they just gather a team and join a league, they would only use your app the first time while they are gathering a team, or when replacing a member. Most amateurs play seven-a-side football (futsal-like rules) or indoor soccer(a.k.a. arena-soccer, showbol , five-a-side soccer).

zfz• 12 years ago

Do you have plans for an Android app by now?

mcdollyp• 12 years ago

This is a nice app/idea but how will it make any money?

felipesabino• 12 years ago

Great app! Although I would love to be able to add other location panels instead of just the nearby one, right now is kind of frustrating if you work very far or travel lot.

Show HN: Sporty – An app for creating and joining sports activities nearby

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