Sports Are Just an Excuse
I built TheAssist mainly because I love sports. They’ve always been an outlet for me. Funny thing is, I was never athletic and never played organized sports. I don’t really believe in regrets — life’s a journey, and as long as you’re learning, you’re fine. But middle school me still remembers thinking he could’ve made the basketball team that year… and being too chicken to try out.
That didn’t stop me from falling in love with the game.
I became a die-hard Houston Rockets fan. The number one question I always get: “Why the Rockets?” After years of answering, I’ve boiled it down to a line that usually gets a laugh: “You can’t choose who you fall in love with.” If they press, I tell them the truth — I fell in love with Tracy McGrady. Any real hoop head respects that.
Growing Up Online With the Game
My teenage years were spent on message boards like RealGM. I wrote thousands of posts (17k+!) debating trades, moderating forums, and playing “Be a GM” games that mimicked the NBA salary cap and trade rules. I loved the nerdy stuff — building rosters, negotiating on AIM, diving into player comparisons and all-time drafts.
It wasn’t just basketball — it was community. These were people I talked to daily. We argued, joked, and bonded through the game. Some of them became real-life friends I still see regularly. In fact, I’m grabbing dinner this week with one of my closest “forum friends,” a guy I met online as a teenager and only met in person last year.
That’s the beauty of being a fan: the game gives you an excuse to connect.
From Online to IRL
The internet made it easy to find community. But eventually I realized it wasn’t enough. After college, when I moved across the country for work, I wasn’t on the forums as much. Analytics and advanced stats had taken over, which I respected, but it wasn’t the same as writing long posts with people you “knew.”
So I tried something that terrified me: going to real-life meetups. The first one was nerve-wracking. But it changed everything. By 2018, I was going to hangouts constantly, making new friends, feeling like I was in the middle of something exciting. It was addicting in the best way.
Then COVID hit. Like everyone else, my world shrank. I was lucky — I stayed healthy, built routines, read a ton, got in shape. But COVID stripped everything down to one truth: community is what matters.
From Fan to Builder
That love of sports — and the communities they create — eventually pushed me to stop just writing about it and start building around it.
When I left my PM job, I didn’t dive straight into this. I spent the first year traveling, recharging, and trying to figure out what I actually wanted to do next. But that time away made one thing really clear: the projects I felt pulled toward always circled back to sports and community.
So when I moved to NYC, I started experimenting. I built an MVP of TheAssist, began hosting watch parties, and tested what actually makes fans show up. The answer turned out to be pretty simple: fans want the basics done right — deals, guaranteed audio, and an environment full of people who are actually there to watch the game.
I began baking that into the product and experience. Now TheAssist works almost like a ClassPass for watch parties. In the last 9 months alone, we’ve:
- Hosted 40+ events across NYC.
- Shipped key features like Squad Pricing to make events more social.
- Launched internal referral and affiliate programs to accelerate growth.
- Landed sponsorships with partners like Sports Reference, FoodFight, and TechWeek.
- Sold real tickets, to real fans, validating the entire concept.
I built the app, the events, the content, the partnerships — all of it — to see if I could find my own NYC sports community. And I did. I even play trivia with them on Tuesdays when there aren’t games. Now I want to help create that experience for way more fans.
Because in the end, sports are just an excuse. An excuse to meet, to connect, to belong.
I hope you’ll join us.
-Vikram