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Again, I gotta nominate "Tinder, but for pickup basketball" as the most common bad startup (or at least app) idea. I get excited college students hitting me up
by jrm4 5y ago
Again, I gotta nominate "Tinder, but for pickup basketball" as the most common bad startup (or at least app) idea. I get excited college students hitting me up with this nearly every semester, like clockwork.
- sokoloff 5y agoOne made it to Shark Tank (no deal): https://sharktanktales.com/hoopmaps-shark-tank-update/ https://sharktanktales.com/hoopmaps-shark-tank-update/
- rnoorda 5y agoJust use normal Tinder, and ask every match to a date playing basketball! The problem solves itself.
- flyinglizard 5y agoAs wisely said, “the ‘Facebook for X’ is Facebook”.
- bloodyplonker22 5y agoTrue, except for LinkedIn because you can't post your drunken ragers and be professional all at once.
- travoc 5y agoYou’d be surprised what has become popular on LinkedIn.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoThe contrapositive of "every website is a dating website if you try hard enough"
- akor 5y agoI'm not sure I'd say it's most common but I'd nominate event ticketing as a common bad startup idea.
- 1123581321 5y agoA relative is a librarian. She was recently asked for help using a dating site to find the patron a date to bowling league night. Some team of founders might be up for it...
- jollybean 5y agoThat's not a bad idea, it's a good idea. Maybe a bad 'business idea', in that it probably won't make a ton of money, but as a solution, expanded into other casual sports, it might make sense. Pick Up BB has a lot of participants, who are not at the court at the same time. An app where you tap a button and say 'Who's Up For Hoops' and it connects you with others, is a great idea. You could work with cities to schedule the courts. If there is a legit need, there's opportunity. The challenge with such things is generating enough penetration that it becomes 'a thing' - so many great ideas I see would work really well if they did create a critical mass, and, of course, it'd be hard to make money. I can see, in the future, these things working out. A partnership with a famous baller, and perhaps with a sports drink or Nike or something, where they integrate it with Nike's 3 on 3 competition, you register for points, show your best moves etc.. It could theoretically work. I wish we had better mechanisms for escalating these more niche apps into common public consciousness.
- jrm4 5y agoYeah, I suppose I mean "bad" in terms of "getting the thing off the ground."
- dsr_ 5y agoAdd a self-rating system: - Actually, I'm here for the beer - Sometimes when I shoot, I score - I have some moves - I used to be good - I am good - Serious and offer to either match people by level or build two teams that are evenly matched. After the game, ask people if they thought it was fun and if they thought the self-ratings were fair. Later you get to add teams, quasi-teams, and leagues, if there's enough interest. But always start by asking if they want to do a pick-up game.
- foobiekr 5y agoI thought the inundation of "Tinder, but for X" was just something I was experiencing. Thank you for mentioning it.
- llampx 5y agowww.spontacts.com seems to have been around a while. I also wanted to develop something similar, for tennis (and badminton + squash)