I'm Abdulrahman (DeeSeven), a solo developer from Saudi Arabia. I built mlk.gg, "ملك الجداول" ("King of the Schedules"), an Arabic web app for friend groups in Riyadh who go out together regularly. It's live and it works. It also didn't take off, and I honestly don't know why. This is me trying to work out what went wrong, in public, with your help.
Group home: your friend group's space for its recurring outings.
The idea
Every week the WhatsApp group has the same "where are we going Thursday?" debate, and nobody ever settles it. In mlk.gg:
- A group sets up a recurring outing (say, coffee every Thursday).
- Everyone nominates a place anonymously, so nobody votes for a place just because of who suggested it.
- The group votes, goes out, then rates the place.
- Each person has a personal "stock" (أسهم). It goes up when your nomination gets picked and rated well. Nominating a lot does nothing for it.
- Every 3 months, the highest stock in the group is crowned "King of the Schedules".
WhatsApp stays for chatting; mlk.gg only handles the deciding.
Setting up a recurring outing, with the summary step.
Nominating a place. Nominations are anonymous.
The diagnosis so far: the funnel
Here's every step a new user has to go through before they see any reward:
- Sign up (email, plus a verification code on a new device)
- Create a group
- Invite friends, who then have to sign up too
- Nominate a place
- Vote
- Actually go out
- Rate the place
Only after all that does anyone's stock move. That's about seven steps, and one of them is going out in real life with a whole group. I don't have solid usage data, but my sense is that people drop off before the first reward. There's also a cold-start problem: one person on their own can't experience anything.
How it's built (briefly)
Group home on mobile (right-to-left layout).
- A web app, not native.
- Arabic-only, right-to-left UI in Saudi dialect. If you don't read Arabic, the screenshots have English captions.
- Email sign-in with new-device verification.
- A built-in WhatsApp share for inviting the group.
I know about some rough edges, like a few untranslated error messages and some slow screens without loaders, and I'm fixing them. Please focus on the idea and the flow rather than those.
What I'd love feedback on
- Would your group use this, or is it homework on top of WhatsApp?
- Which step would you cut or merge? Looking at the list above, what would you change to reach the first "aha" faster? For example, could value come before sign-up, or the reward before the outing?
- WhatsApp bot vs. web app: which would you actually open? And architecturally, is email + device verification too much friction for a casual group app? Would you go WhatsApp-bot-first, PWA, or something else?
I'll reply to every comment. Blunt is fine.
