Every city has people who would play basketball tonight if they knew where a game was, and organisers whose games fall through because two players did not turn up. The games live in scattered group chats that newcomers never see.
The founder's idea was simple: show the games happening nearby and let anyone join them. The question was whether players would use it, and the fastest way to find out was to put a real product in their hands.
### Tonight's game, one tap awayOpen the app and the games are already sorted the way a player thinks: starting soon, today, tomorrow, this weekend, then by sport. A player looking for basketball sees every upcoming pickup game with its time, its court and how many are already going, and decides in seconds whether to head out.
Most of the design effort went into that first answer, because a location app lives or dies on how fast it tells you what is near.
### Look around first, sign up when you want to playNobody installs an app to fill in forms. A newcomer can continue as a guest and browse real games before signing up, and verifies a phone only when they want to join one. My Events then keeps the games a player is going to and the ones they host in one place, with invitations to private games in their own tab.
### From download to game dayThe whole product is one short path: sign up, discover what is on nearby, RSVP to a public game or accept an invitation to a private one, and play. Every screen that did not move a player along that path was left out, which is how a full product fitted into six weeks.
### Organisers set the rules, players see who is comingAn organiser decides what kind of game it is: public or private, the skill levels welcome, who can join and how many players it needs. Players see the host, the date, the court and the headcount before they travel, and one tap joins and RSVPs.
For organisers that means fewer games falling through; for players, no wasted trips to an empty court.
### An idea tested with a real productFor the founder, six weeks bought an installable app in players' hands instead of a slide deck: React Native and Expo on iPhone and Android, a NestJS, GraphQL and MongoDB backend and Twilio phone verification, delivered exactly as the contract described. For founders weighing how fast a scoped idea can become real, SportPal is the reference pace: honest scope, six weeks, shipped.