Hi Hacker News! We're Sweep: guess March Madness results and win Amazon gift cards - all through a bot. We've been working on building this product for the last few months out of WeWork's Area 51 accelerator in NYC.
We're working on building sports games for the non-Whale, starting with a FB Messenger chatbot, which you can check out here: https://www.playsweep.com
I worked at FanDuel and quickly discovered that the business is really optimized for the whales (which isn’t a surprise), as are most gaming businesses. This creates a system that’s incentivized to drive satisfaction for a very small % of the user base.
Ryan taught himself how to code - and custom built Sweep, no use of any out-of-the-box solutions. It’s been a labor of love.
Our first product is completely free and our primary goal is to build a truly fun and engaging experience before sports gaming is legalized in the US.
This is the first step in a plan to change the way that people interact and engage with sports.
We’re really here because we want feedback and ideas from HN on how to improve. We know there are bot and AI experts here (we’re not currently an AI-based product) and we’d also be really interested in hearing about your experiences and how we could apply some of those concepts to improve Sweep.
We're not making $ right now. Our goal is to learn what users want from a game standpoint before monetizing.
Eventually, we'll look to monetize through in-app virtual goods or tangential products focused on sports betting in the US market, should it be legalized (lots of movement right now in New Jersey)
We're working on building sports games for the non-Whale, starting with a FB Messenger chatbot, which you can check out here: https://www.playsweep.com
I worked at FanDuel and quickly discovered that the business is really optimized for the whales (which isn’t a surprise), as are most gaming businesses. This creates a system that’s incentivized to drive satisfaction for a very small % of the user base.
Ryan taught himself how to code - and custom built Sweep, no use of any out-of-the-box solutions. It’s been a labor of love.
Our first product is completely free and our primary goal is to build a truly fun and engaging experience before sports gaming is legalized in the US.
This is the first step in a plan to change the way that people interact and engage with sports.
We’re really here because we want feedback and ideas from HN on how to improve. We know there are bot and AI experts here (we’re not currently an AI-based product) and we’d also be really interested in hearing about your experiences and how we could apply some of those concepts to improve Sweep.