I should’ve mentioned that we have a unit in Atlanta that people can come try if they reach out. Also, I was going off the hardware recommendation in that link saying that you can post a video.
I made a Show HN post earlier today about a startup I invested in and am now working for. I haven’t posted too much to HN, so I only know what’s popular based on what’s on the front page, which is usually very high quality and interesting to me (tech, business, startups, generally really interesting stuff).
Given the builder-focus of HN, I thought more people might be interested. Selfishly we were hoping to generate buzz and some investor leads but also to get genuine feedback. HN is my favorite forum as the quality is so high.
Here are a few thoughts on why it’s flat, and I’m curious to hear y’all’s thoughts.
* Too market-y.
* Too long a post.
* HN is too nerdy for a sports related startup.
* I should’ve done more to “promote it”; however, I read this is frowned upon, so I didn’t really do it.
* It’s not a good idea.
* Poor posting time.
* Just not that relevant for HN.
* It was downvoted for some reason…perhaps I violated some written or unwritten rule.
Am I doing this in hopes that it will boost the original post? Yes, but also to understand the mechanics better as I’m going to post on some relevant subreddits too.
I don't post a ton to HN, much more of a daily lurker, but I'm surprised this post isn't a bit more popular given the builder nature of HN and that there's not a ton of hardware posted...and it's kind of cool / different.
I'm a big nerd, but I'm wondering if HN is too nerdy for this? Maybe we'll get more traction on some relevant subreddits?
The entertainment dining space has been heating up with a variety of concepts over the years and more recently - pickleball, F1, soccer, axe throwing, baseball, etc. It's kind of wild to me that Basketball entertainment dining hasn't been done before. I guess software + hardware makes things more tricky, and Paul and Dan can personally attest to some hardware challenges along the way, but still...given the popularity of the sport in general and, heck, even the popularity of the "pop-a-shot" games at arcades and Chuck E. Cheese, it's surprising to me.
I'll also say, I think the video above is cool, but honestly, it doesn't do justice for the experience. It's WAY more fun in person. At our beta site at an Atlanta brewery, half-way through a game, people who aren't that into basketball are talking trash and having a blast.
I'm also curious to hear thoughts on the skill-based component of BigHoops. I consider this very important as it can level the playing field making it fun regardless of skill-level in general but particularly within a group.
A quick personal story...this hit home recently when I took my 8 year old niece along with my 10 year old nephew and 2 of his male friends to play basketball (games, HORSE, and Knockout) at a school playground. My niece is younger and smaller, and she felt left out, eventually leaving to go play on the playground by herself because the boys were older / taller / better. I feel that a skill-adjustment component to the physical game will make the game much more accessible and attractive to folks regardless of skill-level, gender, age, etc.
Another way I like to think about this is...has your 10 year old child ever beaten you (40ish yo, decent shape) at Topgolf or bowling?
Brantley from BigHoops here. Ironically, I've never been a huge sports fan and don't ever really watch sports, but that said, I love doing social, fun things with friends that don't exclusively involve alcohol like at a bar, which is one reason why I love BigHoops.
Topgolf does this well but golf is a difficult sport and just not that much fun for me. Honestly, I think they succeeded in spite of golf's popularity (on-course play has been declining since the mid-2000s) by creating a terrific and more upscale experience compared to the more old-school entertainment dining of bowling (which has been catching up in terms of nice-ness). And if you pair a terrific experience with a sport that's more fun to play (also with a much larger market), I think there's a lot of potential.
I'm at brantley.beaird@bighoops.com if you have any questions :-)
Agreed about the "attractor country" comment; however, at least we have some restrictions on borders. I agree with the parent comment that this issue needs to be addressed by the federal gov't. I wonder if some states could even be incentivized to support such systems by creating rehabilitation communities which would bring jobs (and yes homeless) but still more $ in general. FL and AZ sort of does this with old people and some states seem to do it for addiction treatment centers.
X% of the population will always need some gov't help and Y% will need gov't help at some point. I think we need to stop negatively viewing these groups as sponges on society. Ability is a spectrum, and we don't criticize someone w Down's Syndrome, and so I don't think we should be so harsh on people who are homeless / have trouble holding down a job / low-ish IQ / and even those who fried their brain w drugs / etc.
Yes, we want to avoid perverse incentives and incentivize people to be productive members of society, but we also need to recognize that some people will always need some help, and as a society, I think we should help them, striving for a future with little to no involuntary poverty.
It’d be funny if “conspiracy theorist” was on the list as critical of people with poor education, people less able to form rational thoughts about how the world works, people easily deceived, people unable to discern truth. I suspect conspiracy theorists find this term derogatory.
Thoughts on what replacement they’d prefer? I also suspect though that they wouldn't want to be identified as a group at all. What do you do when there's group that doesn't want to be referred to as a group?
I'm not sure how the number of employees factors into this. Is there some upper limit on the amount a company is allowed to spend on advertising per employee?
When I was a one-employee company was it wrong to spend $20,000 on billboards?
Here's what we really need - a tool that monitors the various user actions like specific application functionality used, website actions taken, and maybe keystrokes too (but that gets dicey), and then every month or so it recommends the most frequently done actions that you should automate with AHK or some other tool. What does the community think of this?
PS - I use Alfred and Keyboard Maestro to get functionality similar to AHK on a Mac.
I might be misremembering, but I think there was a package for Emacs that would track the most frequently used M-x commands, so that you could later look at the list and see which ones are worth binding to a key. I can't for the love of me find it now.
theres a function somebody wrote (acc.ahk) that can detect elements and text in a lot of windows programs. it can click things like the "add to library" button in spotify even when the window is minimised
there is the COM object that detect the same sort of things but in web browsers, but it only works in IE only. for firefox or chrome you would need to use selenium.
maybe these things can detect certain things being clicked as well? i dont know
