"I met my wife playing in a rec league. When I moved to San Francisco in 2015, building that kind of community felt like the most worthwhile thing I could put my energy into."
It all started with a sports league: soccer, basketball, volleyball, bocce, kickball, plus the parties that made it a scene. More than 25,000 people played in the first three years.
What I learned: people come for the game and stay for each other.
"Of every sport I ran, sailing on the Bay was the one I loved most."
Crews of people who had never touched a tiller, learning to sail together on San Francisco Bay. It turned a league into something closer to a club: fewer people, harder to organize, impossible to forget.
What I learned: the best communities are a little difficult to schedule.
"I'd run leagues and social businesses, and the software behind them was built for youth sports. For adult players, it made no sense."
Teams, free agents and groups of friends never fit, so I built software where registration flexes to how adults actually play. SF Social was the first customer, then other leagues followed.
What I learned: the best software comes from running the thing yourself.
Volo Sports, the biggest adult rec sports company in the country, acquired SF Social and Rivall. Since then I've helped shape its membership, its app and the tech team behind them.
What I learned: scaling community is a design problem, not just a growth problem.
"It started as a book club. Now it's open to whatever we want to spend time with: books, TV, albums, movies."
I'm building software just for this small group, using AI to make our series of in-person gatherings feel more special and add a little whimsy. Not an app for everyone. Something for us.
What I learned: software doesn't need a big audience to make getting together better.