Anneliese Niebauer

I've been working on this project for 6 months (nights and weekends at first, then full-time for the last 3).

Today I officially launched it.

What's weird about shipping:

Getting roasted on Jimmy Kimmel wasn't on my 2025 bingo card, but that's what happened when a side project I started as a joke went viral.
I started PickleMatch because dating apps are broken. The average dating app funnel looks like 100 swipes > 10 chats > 1 actual date. Instead, we get people off their phones and onto pickleball courts.
And it's working.
In the last 5 months, we've been covered on every major news channel, grew to 1000s of subscribers, & threw 8 pickleball ragers. No babies or weddings yet, but that's on the 2026 OKRs.
Then I hit a wall. Growing organically on social is genuinely dark arts. You either get sucked into influencer collabs, buying followers, 'engagement pods' or earnestly trying to make good content that gets ~100 views. It's soul sucking.
So we built a new feature in ShowStop to helps detect trends and turn them into ready-to-use briefs for your brand.
It's already helped PickleMatch go viral 3x in the last 2 weeks. Posts are getting 5x the engagement and reaching 80% more new people.
ShowStop surfaces trends as they're emerging, turns them into templates you can repurpose, and generates content briefs that live in one collaborative calendar. It's basically a creative strategist for your social team.
Check it out at our website, it's free to try :)

First of all, I want to thank you for voting for us in yesterday's launch - you still can, the week is not over. HERE

Second thing, I summarised some things that I realised, reflected on, and maybe should have known sooner: