2025 year in review
As 2025 comes to a close, I wanted to take a few minutes to recap the progress I’ve made with Crowd Card over the last 12 months and provide a few thoughts on my plans for 2026.
Before I do that, let me first say thank you. Starting a business is hard. Launching an app is hard. Creating and implementing new features is hard. Iterating on those features to make them just right is hard. Getting new users is hard. Maintaining existing users is hard. You get the point. So, thank you for following along and providing support as I stumble my way through all of this. Thank you for signing up, using the app, and offering feedback. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.
Ok, let’s get on with the 2025 recap…
Development timeline, 2025
It’s been a hell of a year.
In January I began development on the backend system for Crowd Card as well as an “admin portal” that allows me to manage the content you see on the user-facing app (e.g., which events are available for scoring, which fights belong to each event, etc.). I called the admin portal “Mission Control.” Although there were several hiccups during development, by late March the backend was stood up and Mission Control’s core functions were ready for testing (e.g., creating events, adding, editing, and removing fights associated with an event, opening and closing scoring windows during a live event, etc.).
Throughout April, as I was testing Mission Control, I began designing and developing the actual Crowd Card app. Figuring most users would prefer a mobile app, I started with iOS. By early June, the initial app was ready for TestFlight (Apple’s way of letting developers launch early versions of their app to limited sets of test users). After several weeks of successful use in TestFlight, I officially launched Crowd Card for public distribution in the App Store on July 3rd. The first event available for public scoring on the app was UFC Fight Night: Lewis vs Teixeira.
Immediately following the launch of the iOS app, I got to work on the web app. My goal was to provide the same experience iOS users got, but on the web via a browser. I initially thought the web app would take 2-3 months to develop, but I was able to get it up and running within a month and pushed it to production on August 4th. By the time UFC 319 rolled around, users could officially cast scores on both web and mobile (iOS only).
Although Crowd Card was available on both web and mobile in August, the app had launched with a minimal set of features. Users could bookmark events they were interested in, score fights on their own scorecards, and vote on fight of the night. But the app was missing a crucial feature - in fact, it was missing the core feature - the feature that the app was named after: the crowd’s scorecard (i.e., scoring data aggregated across all users on the app). What good is Crowd Card if you can’t see how the entire crowd scored the fight??
In September, I shipped the app’s namesake feature, calling it the “Score Feed.” It was designed to look exactly like the pages used for scoring individual fights, however, instead of their own personal score card on a fight page, users would see scoring data aggregated across all users for that fight. When I launched it, I was relieved. It was THE defining feature of the app and I thought I had nailed it. I was wrong. Score Feed was a disaster - it was too confusing. Multiple users reached out asking why they were no longer able to submit scores (they were in The Score Feed flow rather than the flow that took them to their personal scorecards). You had to click 6 times to get from your own scorecard to the crowd’s scorecard - yuck! So I went back to the drawing board, redesigned the entire feature, and rolled out an updated version in mid-October. Now, the user’s individual scorecard (My Scorecard) and the crowd’s scorecard (Crowd Card) exist on a single, tabular page, accessible through one flow. Much cleaner.
In the most recent version of the app, I added a third tab to sit beside My Scorecard and Crowd Card: Official Results. The Official Results tab contains exactly what you’d expect: the official results of the fight. Now, for every fight, a user can quickly tab between their own scores, the aggregated scores, and the official results, all from a single page.
Some data
I find the “build in public” movement to be a bit cringe, but I like the concept of being transparent. So in that vein, I thought I’d share a few data points from 2025:
Crowd Card users: 32
Events available for scoring on Crowd Card: 35 (including 34 MMA events and 1 BJJ event)
Scores submitted: 860
App store: 1.36k impressions and 48 downloads
Website: 526 visits from 398 unique visitors
On X: gained 365 followers, had 1.6M impressions, and 45.5k engagements
A few words on 2026
Over the next few weeks, I will be developing a 2026 roadmap for Crowd Card and will publish it as a standalone blog sometime in January. However, while you’re here, I can share several items that I’m certain will be tackled in the new year. In no particular order, here are a few things I will work on in 2026:
First: Crowd Card needs to extend its reach on mobile. The app is already available on iOS. In 2026, it needs to be available on Android, too.
Second: User scores should be more easily shareable to social media. My goal with Crowd Card was never to take fight fans away from social media during events - I love MMA Twitter (or X) and I think it’s where the majority of fans want to be focused during fights. After a user submits their scores, they should be able to quickly share their scores to their social accounts. You shouldn’t need to score the fight on Crowd Card and then go to X and post your score separately. A “click-to-share” feature will be a major roadmap item in 2026.
Third: There are several other “crowdsourceable” outcomes that I’d like to add to the app. For example, users can already vote on FOTN, but not individual performance bonuses. Additionally, there is not currently a view of aggregated data for non-scoring features like FOTN. This is definitely a feature set that will be improved in 2026.
Fourth: In late 2025, I added an “Official Results” tab to each fight page. In its current state, the feature is pretty bare bones. I have several ideas that I think will improve the Official Results tab in 2026, including all official judge’s scores available for each fight.
As with everything else, next year’s roadmap will be flexible and dependent on user feedback, so if you have a feature you’d like to see, please reach out. With that, I will wrap up by saying thank you again for all your support and feedback over the last 12 months. I hope you all were able to make the most of 2025 and have big plans for 2026 - I know I do.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Daniel Kuhman, Founder
