The last two weeks at work have been hectic. We're approaching the launch of a new feature and I'm the lead frontend dev on it. So I barely touched my ImIn project. When I had a free moment, I put it into this personal website I recently built — it has less pressure and is easier to pick up in small chunks.
But a good idea doesn't wait for your schedule to clear up.
My son can't find kids to play football with
My son plays for a local team here in Aarhus. He wants to practice outside of training: shooting, dribbling, and just playing. But finding other kids his age who are interested in training and having fun is harder than it sounds. So I did the obvious thing: I asked in a couple of expat WhatsApp groups if anyone wanted to get their kids together for a casual game.
A few hours after I sent the message, it got buried under everything else. The only reply I got was from a mom who said her 11-year-old plays in a different neighborhood.
I built ImIn specifically to solve this problem, but with adults mainly in mind. Waiting for those replies, I realized I had missed an entire dimension of the problem.
The feature: age groups
The fix is straightforward. Let event creators specify an age group: kids, teenagers, adults, all ages. If someone creates a public football event for kids, parents can find it, request to join, and show up. Or I create it and wait for others to find it. No WhatsApp required.
It's the same mechanic ImIn already has, applied to a context I hadn't designed for.
The wrinkle: what kind of event?
While thinking about this I noticed a second problem. My son doesn't just want to kick a ball around, he wants to work on specific things, train, improve for his team. A parent seeing a "kids football event" might assume it's a relaxed hangout and bring their kid expecting to chill. That's fine, but in our case it's more about playing as much as possible and getting better.
So I added a second axis: event type.
- Casual — showing up is enough, no pressure
- Training — there's a plan, drills, something to improve
- Competitive — a real game, playing to win
Plus a free-text description where the organizer can say exactly what they have in mind. Those two things together, age group and event type, should set the right expectations before anyone shows up.
Child safety
This one I thought about carefully. Bringing kids to an event organized by a stranger online is a different situation than an adult joining a pickup game. The app won't solve this on its own, but it can be explicit about it.
The plan is to include a visible warning when parents or kids are browsing or joining events in the kids/teenagers age group: go with someone you trust, make sure a responsible adult is present, and don't attend alone. It won't prevent every bad outcome, but making the reminder part of the flow feels like the right baseline.
Why this goes into the MVP
When I first started thinking about this, my original plan was to leave age groups for V1, something to add once the MVP was solid. But I changed my mind this week, for one reason: it's almost summer.
Summer is the best possible time to test an app about getting people together for outdoor sports. Kids are out of school, people have more free time, and the pain of "nobody to play with" is at its peak. If I ship this after summer, I've missed the window.
So I'm pulling it forward. It fits naturally with what's already built, doesn't bloat the scope significantly, and solves a real problem I ran into myself. That last part matters, I have at least one confirmed user: me, trying to get my kid a game.