Why I built software for my own league

It all started with a sports league. I built SF Social because I knew what playing together could do for people's lives. I met my wife in a rec league. The game was real, but so was everything it made possible around it.

Running the league meant dealing with the software behind it. Much of what was available was built for youth sports. Adult social sports had different needs, and the differences weren't just administrative. They were about how people wanted to belong.

Some people arrived with a whole team. Some came on their own. Others had a few friends and wanted to stay together without having to recruit an entire roster. A registration system that only understands complete teams doesn't really understand that community.

So I built Rivall, with SF Social as its first customer. Registration could flex around how adults actually play, instead of forcing players to solve the software's problem before they could join a game. Other leagues followed, and eventually SF Social and Rivall became part of Volo Sports.

What I take from that isn't that every organizer should build an app. It's that running the thing gives you a kind of understanding you can't get by looking at it from a distance. You see where people hesitate, which exceptions keep returning, and where a supposedly small inconvenience gets in the way of someone showing up.

The software matters because the person on the other side matters. A better registration flow isn't the end of the story. A person finding their team is.