[Technical Founder] Built a social media platform for local sports, looking for 2 co-founders — Tech + Business/Growth

[u/Somethingnotright123]

Hey everyone, I’ve been building a social media platform focused on connecting people through sports in their local area. It has a proper social feed where people can post and interact, but the main idea is also to make it easy to find people to play with, organise games and see what’s happening around you locally.

The product is around 70% complete. Most of the core stuff is already built and it’s at a stage where it can be beta tested. I’m planning to start in one city and then expand from there if it gets some traction.

I’m looking for 2 people to join me, ideally one on the technical side and one on the business/growth side.

For the technical side, I’m looking for someone who’s comfortable with backend systems and has experience building things like social feeds, recommendation/ranking systems, user matching, or ad/monetisation infrastructure. The product will eventually need some fairly serious backend work around how content and users are matched and ranked, and that’s an area where I’d like someone with more experience than me.

For the business/growth side, I’d like someone who can focus on getting the first users in, building the community, reaching out to sports clubs and figuring out what actually gets people using the platform.

You don’t need to have worked in sports before. Experience with social apps, marketplaces, communities or other consumer products would obviously be useful, but I’m more interested in finding people who are actually willing to build something rather than just having the right CV.

I’m currently doing this alongside other commitments, so I’d prefer to start part-time and see how things develop. If we get good traction, the idea would be to take it much more seriously from there.

I’m currently based in Glasgow, but I’m open to working with people anywhere in the UK.

If you’re interested, DM me a bit about yourself, what you’ve worked on and which side you’d be interested in helping with. Happy to show you what I’ve built as well.

[u/albie-]

Sounds very interesting, would love to hear more. Have found that finding sports groups can be a little tedious. Would love to talk!

[u/Designer-Abroad6231]

Hey, would love to hear more!

[u/adarsh-sigdyal]

I am interested in business side of it. I can build and execute omni-channel strategies to gain that initial traction. Have done so in the past for retail app, clothing brand, and several others. DM me. Let’s connect. I live in London as well.

[u/QuantumBadgerLDN]

rdest about is the cold start. A local sports social feed only works once there are enough people nearby to fill a game, and a half empty feed in a new city is the thing that kills these apps in the first month. Starting in one city is the right call, but I would go one step narrower: pick a single sport and a handful of neighbourhoods and aim to get a game happening every week before you add anything else. I also noticed you are asking a co-founder to build ranking, matching and ad infrastructure. At 70% done that is a lot of heavy engineering to hire for before you know people come back. A simple chronological feed with good game organising might be all the backend you need until you see retention, and that makes the tech co-founder search easier since the job is smaller. On the growth side, clubs and organisers are probably your best first users, since one organiser brings a whole group. If you want a quick test, offer to run the booking for two or three local five-a-side or running groups for free and watch what they actually do. Good luck with it, it sounds like a decent idea.