Blog
What we are building, and why
Notes on building this, decisions we made, and the ones we got wrong. For practical how-to writing, the guides are the better place.
Where to start
If you want to know whether to trust anything on this site, read We got the research wrong on day one. It is the piece about the competitive analysis that was confidently wrong, how it was caught, and what it changed about the pricing.
If you are interested in how it is built, The night is an event log explains the one decision that unlimited undo, offline play and syncing all fall out of, and Why the whole app is two buttons covers the design constraint that produced it.
If you run a bar, What a pool night is actually worth has the arithmetic that should decide your buy-in, and it is not the arithmetic most people do.
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We got the research wrong on day one
We spent the first hour of this project convinced nobody had built software for this game. We were wrong, because we searched one name for a game that has two.
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Why the whole app is two buttons
The live screen has exactly two controls, and everything else about the product follows from that constraint.
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The night is an event log
One architectural decision — storing a tournament as an append-only list of events — gives you undo, offline play and syncing for free.
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What a pool night is actually worth to a bar
The arithmetic behind a weekly tournament: what the pot is worth, what the drinks are worth, and why taking a cut is usually the wrong move.
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No ads, on any plan, ever
Why the free tier of this product has no advertising, when advertising is the standard way to monetise a free tier in this category.
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How we priced this, against competitors who are free
Working out what to charge when the closest products in your category cost nothing, and why the answer was to sell to somebody else.
Run your next night on it
Free, and it runs a whole night — the strike engine, the TV display, the player QR card, who has paid and what the pot pays out. No ads on any plan.