NBA predictors

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  Resources used to investigate project problem

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  Brief overview of the app

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  Homescreen of app

What inspired us

As sports fans, we wanted to feel smart about basketball, but realized there was no low-stakes arena to prove it. Fantasy basketball requires 30+ minutes of tedious lineup decisions, and traditional sports betting is illegal in many states, financially risky, and often off-putting. The result is that millions of fans watch games passively.

We were inspired by the current cultural relevance of the NBA and the growing backlash against the financial anxiety of sports betting. We realized Gen Z wants competition and clout, not cash. Looking outside of sports, we saw how platforms like Duolingo used streaks and social pressure to drive massive daily retention, and we wanted to apply that winning formula to the NBA.

How we built our project

We built a daily NBA picks platform focused on being completely frictionless by design. The core loop is simple: open the app, make 3 quick predictions before tip-off, and you're done in under 60 seconds for zero dollars.

We focused heavily on the social graph as our moat. There are no rosters and no money involved—just your read on tonight's games ranked on a live leaderboard against your actual friends. As users build up a history of predictions, we also begin constructing a "data flywheel," aggregating prediction patterns across the user base into a valuable, defensible asset.

The challenges we faced

Building a zero-stakes social sports app comes with distinct behavioral challenges, which we tackled directly:Solving Low Retention: Without financial consequence, picks can feel meaningless. To fix this, we implemented weekly ranking resets and "prediction personality" badges (e.g., Contrarian, Sharp, Lucky) so a user's identity is at stake, rather than their wallet.Overcoming the Cold Start Problem: Getting friends onboard is brutal for social apps. Instead of relying on spammy "join my app" texts, we focused on shareable results. Users can automatically post their sleek pick cards to Instagram Stories after games, letting natural curiosity pull friends in.Keeping Users Engaged: Unlike fantasy sports, there is no built-in "Sunday ritual." We engineered smart push notifications tied specifically to the tip-off time of the user's favorite team.To model how streaks would impact our retention, we analyzed the probability of consecutive wins. Assuming a user makes $k$ predictions per day, and the probability of an individual correct prediction is $p$, the probability of a perfect day is $p^k$. For a streak lasting $n$ consecutive days, the probability $P(S_n)$ is modeled as:$$P(S_n) = (p^k)^n = p^{kn}$$Because $P(S_n)$ decays exponentially, we had to carefully balance the difficulty of the picks with the social rewards to ensure users didn't churn when their streaks inevitably broke.

What we learned

We learned that engagement doesn't require financial risk. By removing the regulatory nightmare of gambling licenses, we created a clean, scalable product. We also learned that retention in social apps is driven by identity and friction—or the lack thereof. By reducing the barrier to entry to a single tap and leaning into social clout over cash payouts, you can monetize through premium streaks and profile customization without ever compromising the core user loop.

Built With

• react-native
• supabase