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

sportyapp.com

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

#21

Post by matmik »

subpixel wrote: post #9

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…

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!

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

#22

Post by matmik »

dwg wrote: post #19
matmik wrote: post #2

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

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 (…

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!

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

#24

Post by matmik »

streptomycin wrote: post #14

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 s…

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.

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

#26

Post by matmik »

axit wrote: post #23

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

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.

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

#27

Post by easytiger »

beatboxrevival wrote: post #4

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.

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

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

#29

Post by matmik »

avalaunch wrote: post #16

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 w…

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.

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