Developing Called It! has helped me better understand both my strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur. One of the biggest strengths of the venture is that it comes from a genuine personal connection. My experience working in customer service for Bodog gave me firsthand exposure to sports wagering and, more importantly, to some of the potential harms that can exist behind the transactions. Combined with my background in education and my passion for sports, this gave me a strong personal reason for developing Called It! rather than simply creating an idea for an assignment.
I believe another strength of the pitch is that the problem and solution are clear. Called It! is not trying to eliminate the excitement of sports prediction; it is trying to remove the financial risk. The Sports IQ system, Elo-style scoring, odds-based point system, communities, and Global Leaderboard provide specific features that differentiate the platform from traditional wagering sites and other prediction platforms. I also believe the pitch benefits from connecting Called It! to several growing markets, including sports betting, fantasy sports, gamification, and healthier alternatives. This helped demonstrate that the opportunity is larger than simply creating another sports app.
The social impact of Called It! is another strength. The venture has a preventative and educational purpose, which connects directly to my background in education. I see Called It! as an opportunity to teach users about odds, risk, prediction, decision-making, and their own performance while providing a competitive experience without financial consequences.
At the same time, I recognize several weaknesses in both the venture and my pitch. The biggest is that Called It! is still an early-stage concept. Although I have developed a working prototype and researched the market, I do not yet have enough user data to prove that people will consistently use the platform or that it will actually change gambling behaviour. The revenue model also requires further validation. There are several potential revenue opportunities, but I still need to determine which would be the most effective and sustainable.
Another challenge is competition. Prediction markets are gaining attention from major technology companies, and larger organizations could potentially enter the sports prediction space quickly. Called It! will need to establish its brand and community early and continue innovating. I also recognize that the platform could still be perceived as similar to gambling because it uses odds, predictions, and competitive scoring. Even though users do not risk money, I would need to carefully monitor the design to ensure that the platform encourages healthy competition rather than recreating the same behaviours we are trying to move users away from.
My approach to entrepreneurship is strongly connected to identifying problems that I have personally experienced or witnessed and then looking for a way to solve them. Called It! started with my experience with sports and gambling, but my background in education has influenced how I think about the venture. I don't just want to create an entertaining product; I want to create something that can teach, influence behaviour, and have a positive social impact.
I have also learned through this experience that entrepreneurship is not simply about having a good idea. It requires testing assumptions, researching the market, understanding competitors, listening to users, and being willing to change the idea when evidence suggests something is not working. I have enjoyed taking Called It! from an initial idea years ago to a more developed concept and thinking about how it could become a real venture.
I worked with Lovable AI for approximately four weeks while developing Called It! This was my first experience with “vibe coding,” and overall, it was a great learning experience. I was able to take an idea and turn it into a working prototype without having a traditional programming background. If I decide to continue developing Called It! as a real venture, however, I would likely work with a professional developer. The four weeks of testing and refining showed me how much time is required to think through every aspect of an application.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from vibe coding is that AI does not always consider the things that users would consider common sense. For example, when I initially created the group invitation feature, I assumed that when one user sent another user a group request, the receiving user would automatically have the ability to accept or deny it. That functionality was not automatically included, and I did not discover the issue until several weeks after the invitation system had been implemented. This was one of many examples where I had to continually test the platform from the user's perspective and identify things that I had assumed would be obvious.
There were several iterations with Lovable AI throughout the development process. Each iteration helped me better understand both the capabilities and limitations of AI-assisted development. Overall, I am satisfied with where Called It! is at this point, but the experience taught me that vibe coding still requires significant human involvement, testing, decision-making, and attention to detail.
I also used OpenAI's ChatGPT throughout the project for editing, and in developing the Sports IQ formula. Since I do not have a background in mathematics or statistics, I relied on AI to help explore different ways of calculating a meaningful prediction score. The original formula was relatively basic. After several conversations about the goals of Called It! and what I wanted Sports IQ to represent, ChatGPT introduced me to an Elo-style rating system. This became one of the most innovative aspects of the platform because it allowed Sports IQ to change dynamically based on a user's prediction performance where favourites do not improve a user's Sports IQ as much as an underdog prediction does.
The idea of Sports IQ was entirely mine, but the development of the more sophisticated Elo-style formula was heavily supported by ChatGPT. This was an important lesson for me about using AI as a development partner. I brought the problem, the concept, and the desired outcome, while AI helped me explore technical possibilities that were outside my own area of expertise.
Overall, this project showed me that AI can dramatically increase what one person can create, but it does not eliminate the need for human thinking. I still had to make the decisions, test the platform, identify problems, explain what I wanted, and determine whether the AI's suggestions actually made sense for Called It!
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