Why we’re building this

Cities aren’t short of people who want to play. They’re short of the person willing to organise it.

That person exists in every group. They pick the night. They chase the replies. They front the court fee and spend the next week asking for it back.

Then one week they get tired of it, and the group doesn’t meet again. Nobody fell out. Nobody stopped wanting to play. The admin just outlasted the enthusiasm, and everyone reading this has been in a group that ended exactly that way.

LOBBR takes that job. A host opens a session. Players hold a seat. It confirms when enough people are in, and the money moves once, on its own. What’s left is the part everybody wanted.

What we have already decided

Four things we’re not going to change our minds about.

Each of these is already built. We’ve put the mechanic beside the belief on purpose, because a principle with nothing implementing it is just a nice sentence.

  1. Showing up is the whole product

    Anyone can post a plan. Getting eight people to be there is the hard part, and it’s the only part worth building.

    Attendance is recorded, it follows you between sessions, and hosts can see it.

  2. Nobody should have to chase money

    The person who organises shouldn’t also have to be the person collecting twelve dollars from four friends.

    A seat is held, charged when the session confirms, and released when it doesn’t.

  3. Venues are partners, not inventory

    We’re not reselling somebody else’s hours at a markup we set. A venue is a business, not a row in our supply table.

    Every venue keeps its own schedule, its own prices and its own payout account.

  4. It’s not just courts

    Most of what people gather for on a schedule isn’t a sport. Card games, climbing, running clubs, tabletop role-playing. Same coordination problem, and nobody builds for it.

    The activity list on the home page is read from the API, not written by us.

How far along we are

We haven’t launched yet.

You’ll notice there are no numbers on this page. That’s not modesty. There’s nothing to count yet, and we’d rather say so than print something that sounds impressive and isn’t true.

The app is built

Sessions, holds, payouts, rosters, check-in and chat all work. It isn’t a mockup, and it isn’t a waitlist for an idea.

It’s not in the stores

No App Store or Play listing is live. When one is, the buttons on the home page start working and nothing else changes.

We are choosing our first venues

A marketplace with no places to play isn’t a marketplace. Venues come first, and we’re talking to them now.

Want to be there at the start?

Venues can talk to us about going first. Everyone else can just say hello.