PocketPicks was my crash course in building alone.
In 2015 - less than a year after Apple launched Swift - I decided to teach myself the language by building something I actually wanted to use: an iOS app for sports fans to socially bet on NBA, NCAAB, and NHL games.
No gambling, no money, just pride.
Every week, users picked game winners, compared choices with friends, tracked win percentages, and climbed the rankings to prove who really knew sports. It was simple, competitive, and wildly addictive. At one point, hundreds of friends were using it every week.
I designed it, coded it, and shipped every feature myself. I was debugging APIs after work hours, pushing builds late into the nights, and pitching the app to angel investors in the Seattle startup scene. Some meetings were encouraging. Most were humbling.
But each iteration made the product better — cleaner onboarding, tighter rankings logic, and better UX. I continued to refine it through dozens of versions up until Feb 2017, right before I joined Amazon and reluctantly put it on pause.
PocketPicks never scaled beyond my circle, but it taught me something priceless: I was still capable of building and channeling my entrepreneurial energy.
