
Show HN: Sporty – An app for creating and joining sports activities nearby - matmik
http://sportyapp.com
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subpixel
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!

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

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keerthiko
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.

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

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heyheyhey
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.

~~~
matmik
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.

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pawelrychlik
Chicken & egg. I once started with a similar idea - meeting sport buddies -
but on a country scale. I found it very hard to gain enough traction for
people to actually be able to meet each other.

Because.... what value does it bring for Joe who's living in SF, that Jane
from NY wants to go for a work-out? I think "importing" events from other
sites is one option to get things going (still - quite a lot of effort). Other
idea - is to start locally, run a big ad campaign, get in touch with sport
centers, etc, then "conquer" other cities, one by one.

Good luck! :)

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wellboy
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.

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

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wellboy
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...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/07/ambient-location-didnt-work-so-
business-networking-app-intro-pivots-to-mobile-group-management/)

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streptomycin
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.

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matmik
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.

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curiousHacker
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.

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pacofvf
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).

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avalaunch
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.

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matmik
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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euphemize
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.

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matmik
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.

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johnnyio
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?

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matmik
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.

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beatboxrevival
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.

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rymohr
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.

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matmik
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](https://github.com/path/FastImageCache)

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

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

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excellentpants
Android users are notoriously bad at soccer.

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vlucas
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!

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felipesabino
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.

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

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avree
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.

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anigbrowl
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.

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

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zfz
Do you have plans for an Android app by now?

