RinkLog
Hockey stats tracking for players Beyond the scoresheet
Hi IH! Solo founder from Quebec City here. By day I was a paramedic for years; these days I build software under my own little studio it helped me a lot to change mind... My son has played hockey since he was 4 (AAA now at 14), and I play beer league myself, so I basically live in arenas year-round.
The itch: the official scoresheet only records goals, assists and penalties. My kid could play his best game of the month and the sheet would say he did nothing. From the stands you SEE the real progression: shots, scoring chances, penalty kill shifts, faceoffs won. So I built RinkLog: you tap while you watch, and it turns into 25+ charts over the season, plus an AI-generated analysis of the player every month. Bilingual FR/EN, covers ice hockey, ball/dek hockey and ringette.
The stack, for the curious: React/TypeScript/Vite frontend, Cloudflare Workers + D1 + R2 backend, RevenueCat for iOS subscriptions, Stripe for web. I do most of my building with Claude Code these days, which as a solo dev is basically having a second engineer on the payroll.
Some things I learned shipping this:
Apple rejected my first submission twice (missing Sign In with Apple, IAP issues). The fix took longer than building half the features. Budget for App Review like it's a feature.
A 20-day summer beta with 60+ families reshaped half the product. The feature I was proudest of wasn't what parents cared about; the "car ride home" conversation was.
My referral program design died on contact with App Store rules (you can't discount a new subscriber's first purchase natively). We pivoted to free trial days as the referee reward. Simpler and honestly better.
Niche beats broad: my SEO impressions are slowly going up..
It launched this week: free tier on iOS and web at rinklog.com. Founders' pricing until Sept 1st.
Happy to answer anything about the stack, building for a niche sports market, App Store subscription wars, or juggling a launch with tournament weekends. And if you've launched a consumer app in a niche community, I'd love to hear what worked for your first 100 paying users.
6 Comments
The 60-family beta is probably the most valuable part of this story.
Especially because what parents responded to wasn’t the feature you expected them to care about. That gap between founder expectation and actual user response is meaningful.
Yeah, exactly. I built the AI reports first thinking coaches and stat nerds would be the hook. Turns out what actually landed with parents was the progression tracking beyond goals and assists, seeing where their kid is doing well and where there's room to grow, always framed constructively. That's core to the philosophy behind RinkLog: there's already a lot of pressure in this sport, and I didn't want to add another layer of judgment. I wanted every kid to see their own game, whether that's generating more scoring chances than the other team even without a goal or an assist to show for it. Nobody asked me to build that framing, parents just responded to it once it was there. Cheapest product research I've ever gotten, and it's reshaping what I prioritize post launch.
That’s helpful context. The gap between what you expected users to value and what they actually responded to is exactly the kind of thing that’s interesting to unpack further.
What’s the best email to reach you on?
The "car ride home" line says more about the product than the AI analysis or the charts. That's the moment parents actually care about and it gives the app a really clear purpose.
It also feels like the kind of product that could naturally be reaching a lot more people than it probably is already. Right after launch that's the sort of thing that can really change the pace.
Have you noticed any signs of that yet?
Thanks!!
Not yet in a big way, still early days post launch. Right now we're actually in a lull season-wise, most of the testing so far came from summer league and camps winding down. The real test starts end of August into September when the regular season kicks in and ice time actually matters again. A few beta parents have already asked for dek hockey and ringette specific stats though, which tells me the appetite is there once volume picks up.
That makes sense. The start of the season is usually when products like this reveal where the biggest growth opportunities are.
Reading your post and your reply, I noticed a few organic search opportunities that could help RinkLog attract more of the right audience as the season gets underway. If you're curious, feel free to reach out at mumar [at] growwithmumar [dot] online. Happy to share a few ideas.