Business Update 008: Down a Tooth
Hey everyone, here with another quick update on the state of Crowd Card.
Last week was rough - I had an impacted wisdom tooth removed on Thursday. Fortunately, we had a violence-packed weekend, with BKFC Friday night, UFC London Saturday afternoon, Dirty Boxing Saturday night, and ONE Sunday morning. There truly couldn’t have been a better weekend to be stuck on the couch with an ice pack on my face.
Although I did not test Mission Control during UFC London, I made several non-critical updates last week and have spot tested them enough to be sufficiently sure they’re functional. So, with that, I’m pleased to say that the MVP for Mission Control is production-ready. I now have to:
Find somewhere to host Mission Control
Either create an API that allows the Crowd Card app to call Mission Control’s database / connect the Crowd Card app directly to Mission Control’s database
I am leaning slightly toward connecting Mission Control to Firebase, which is what I’m currently using to host the Crowd Card app, and just allowing both applications to share a database. However, from what I can gather, connecting a laravel app (Mission Control) to Firebase is not very straightforward. The primary issue is that Firebase uses Firestore as a database, which uses a noSQL collections/documents structure, while Mission Control was built using mySQL. I’m not sure it’s worth converting all of the backend CRUD operations just to use a single hosting service. I’ll need to think a bit more about this in the coming weeks.
Development on the iOS app is now well underway and progressing nicely. This past weekend, while flipping between fights and March Madness, I was able to get a Firebase project up and running, connect the Crowd Card app to the project, and hammer out an authentication layer that handles: user registration, user sign-in, user sign-out, and account deletion. I am currently working on user profiles, social media connections to allow users to quickly share scores from the app, and general app navigation.
I should be able to provide a few demos in the coming weeks as I build out the app - follow along on X and Instagram to see these. And don’t forget to sign up for the waitlist if you’d like to be one of the first to use the app when it launches!
Other Updates
Here are a few additional updates on development:
Crowd Card web app: although this is a few months away on the roadmap, I am already beginning to think about the Crowd Card web app. This is being driven largely by the Firebase/Firestore issue discussed above. I had initially thought about building the web app using laravel (similar to Mission Control), however if I stick with Firebase this may not be wise. I may need to select a web framework more suitable for Firebase.
Media updates: March has been a great month for social media. For the first time in company history, I broke 100,000 impressions on X and have an engagement rate >3%. Admittedly, I’ve never been great at social media / marketing, but I’m trying to get better! Thanks to everyone who follows and engages, I truly appreciate you!
Coming Up
More great cards coming up - I’m really excited for UFC Mexico this weekend! I will likely not be conducting any further testing on Mission Control this weekend (unless I manage to get it connected to Firebase and reconfigure mySQL to noSQL/Firestore this week, which is unlikely). And we’re two weeks away from UFC 314. That card is shaping up to be an absolute BANGER!
Okay back to work - thanks for reading.
Written by Daniel Kuhman, Founder
