“Building the player base is the hardest part”. The founder of an app for finding tennis partners spoke about the main challenge

The app, called Hitch Player Finder, helps tennis and pickleball players find courts nearby and match them with opponents to play with.

The app’s founder, Will Parton, who lives in the US and Canada, came up with the idea for the app after experiencing a lack of good and affordable ways to find partners.

“After playing tennis most of my life (and pickleball over the last year), I made a big move to Canada and was reminded of how hard it is to find players at your level that you enjoy playing with. This sparked an idea for a new way of connecting with players nearby called Hitch Player Finder”, he says. 

With a background in UX, Parton aimed to make the app simple and fun, focusing on creating a more delightful experience with an interactive player card UI and building “Hitches” (basically, player connections). However, turning the idea into reality proved more challenging than anticipated. Developing for different devices and platforms was tricky, but growing the community on a limited budget has been the toughest part.

“Building the player base is the hardest part. The app is new, so patience is needed as the community grows but tennis is more popular in Europe than North America, although pickleball is exploding here”, notes the creator of the Hitch Player Finder app.

Although the player base in Europe is still in its early stages, the app already offers a convenient selection of tennis courts, sorted by distance from the user.

If you want to support the author’s initiative, you can install the application, and also invite your friends to expand the circle of participants.

Cover photo: Will Parton with his tennis friends on the court. Photo credit: facebook.com/wparton