Client

Brandon Huang
Email: <bsh67@cornell.edu>

Brandon is a Cornell Engineering alum (‘15) who has currently been working on goodRun as a side project. He believes there is potential to further develop this product with an invested team of engineers.

Student contact

Noel Picinich <nmp53@cornell.edu>

Background

There are many basketball players and courts in New York City; there's no reason anyone should struggle to find a good, competitive pickup game. Sometimes two groups are playing near each other, live near each other, or need extra players and don't know each other.

This project, goodRun, seeks to develop a platform for competitive pickup basketball players (lean startup, thus this is the first target user segment) to find others who want to play and organize games around the greater NYC area. goodRun will make introductions to people and games users wouldn’t otherwise know about.

Existing infrastructure: Twilio-based RSVP management system + Github repo, database of users including: skill level, location, phone number, weekly availability, basketball position, etc., internal organization tools: Slack group, Google Doc living PRD + notes, Trello board.

As the directory grows in size, coordination of pickup basketball games will become faster and easier. As product features are added, the quality of the user experience will increase (satisfaction of basketball games, user experience).

The project is profitable, has 86+ participants, and has organized a game with former NBA players. The model is scalable to other geographies and other in-real-life activities.

So far, the community has participants affiliated with the following groups: Bentley Men's Varsity, Brown Women's Varsity, Columbia Women's Varsity, Cornell Men's Varsity, Cornell Women's Varsity, Harvard Men's Varsity, Penn Men's Varsity, St. Joe's Men's Varsity, Vassar Women's Varsity, Yale Men's Varsity, Columbia Men's Club Basketball, Cornell Men's Club Basketball, Harvard Women's Club / JV, Harvard Men's Club Basketball, Penn Men's Club Basketball, Ohio State, UNC, UVA, Wesleyan, Emory, Syracuse, Georgetown, Binghamton, Kentucky, UC Irvine, NC State, Occidental, Baruch College, Penn State, Carnegie Mellon, Hunter College.

Project Summary

The client has created a no-code solution to this problem (Front end = Google Forms and manual emails; Back End = Google Sheets). Referred users can join via Google Form to receive notifications about relevant pickup basketball opportunities.

The platform will be a web application hosted on goodrun.app to replicate the current goodRun model. Using the google form, as well as provide additional features for users to independently find, share, and coordinate games. Sample features could include, but are not limited to:

1. Prospective users have a sign up feature (improve google forms functionality e.g. “what neighborhood you live in” with a type-in autofill dropdown rather than static dropdown)
2. System admin ability to automatically process referrals (Zapier + Mailchimp?)
3. Users can create “game” objects and set requirements for type of players and number of players needed
4. Users can edit and save their user preferences and view their profile
5. Users can see available events
6. Users can manage RSVP status to events +
7. Users can access forums or chat with others
8. Users can see all non-PII information about players e.g. skill level, availability during the week
9. Global admin tools - access all features available to organizers