SpinPoint

The Vision for a New Table Tennis Hub

It all started while I was at another table tennis competition for my son. He’s almost 9 years old, but he’s a total champ - I’m really proud of him. Anyway, while we were there, I was using the official league website to check his score and see when his next round was, and I noticed the site looked incredibly old and ugly. I mean, it looked like an 80s-era PHP website.

I started thinking that it could be a great project to build a new website for table tennis players in Israel. Pro and hobby players alike would be able to see upcoming competitions and get notifications for relevant events. Coaches could manage their players, sign them up for tournaments, and even promote themselves for private lessons.

There would also be a small e-commerce store and a “Find a Nearby Player” feature, where hobbyists could find people in their area to play with for fun. I also started thinking about adding an option for coaches to create and manage their own competitions - for example, a school tournament for non-pro players. Currently, there’s no platform to manage something like that.

I really think this is a growing niche, and it could be a great investment for the future.

The Birth of SpinPoint

My son won second place in the Maccabi tournament for the under-9 category! It was such an exciting day. Honestly, I’m not a sports fan at all - I haven't even been out for a jog lately. I know it’s not the healthiest habit, but I just can't seem to get into it. But seeing him play and fight for first place was something else entirely. I’m so glad I was there to see it.

On the way home, we stopped for ice cream. It’s a habit of ours after every competition, we stop on the way back and grab whatever ice cream he likes. Usually, he gets the Belgian waffle with a scoop of vanilla and some cream with a lot of chocolate on top. Just looking at it makes me sick! I’m not a sweets guy, and I don’t like seeing my kids eat so much sugar, but sometimes I just let it go to enjoy the moment. After all, what is life for if not for moments like these?

All the way home, I was thinking about this table tennis website and how I could make it better; a new project was already cooking in my head. Later that week, I started looking for catchy names that I could use as my domain name if I moved forward with it. I don’t know why I’m like that, but it’s hard for me to start a project without giving it a code name. I need a name to make the vision come alive in my mind. I don’t think everyone is like this, but for me, I needed a name first.

I searched for many catchy names, but all of them were already taken. At one point, I found that spinpoint.co.il was available, so I bought it immediately. That was it. My new project had officially started. Now, I can finally start building.

Codex Pro

I started coding my new website - or more like "vibe coding" - and it seemed like my $20 OpenAI credits were gone faster than the speed of light. I knew it wasn't going to be enough for a project like this, and I definitely wasn't planning to code the whole thing myself. In fact, I wasn't even planning to write much of it at all.

It’s becoming really hard to justify writing code by hand these days with these "monster" coding agents. In the time it takes you to write and debug 100 lines of code, models like Claude or Cursor can write 5,000 lines - and usually much, much better. I don’t think we should try to compete with that. We have the ability to see the big picture and build things fast. Why not let other programs do the heavy lifting?

This is exactly how it’s been since the Industrial Revolution, and it’s the same way now. Coding is just a tool to solve a bigger problem. 

So, I switched to the $100 Codex Pro plan and really started flying. Two days later, I already had a prototype running on my laptop. It’s full of bugs and it’s far from perfect, but it’s something.

One of the main issues was that I didn’t have any real data to populate the site. I had the idea to scrape all the data from the league’s competition tables. After all, how hard could it be? A couple of hours later, I had scripts pulling everything from their site. The data is public and accessible, so I don’t feel like I’m doing anything wrong - I just want to improve the way things work.

Doubts

Doubts are my biggest enemy. When I start doubting, I stop thinking - it’s the ultimate inspiration killer. When I was younger, I used to let it control me, but I’ve learned to manage it now. I know the feeling will pass, so I just keep moving. I’m continuing with my idea but taking it slowly. I took a break and returned to my PS5 to play Dead Space for the weekend. My mind just needed the rest.

Tomorrow, my Codex weekly plan resets, and I’ll have a lot of new, sweet tokens to continue working on my project. It’s not finished yet, but I’m taking my time now. I want it to be perfect - or maybe not perfect, but good enough that I can truly be proud of it.

The other day while I was working on it, my son came over to sit with me. He asked, “Dad, is it hard to build this website?” I told him, “Yes, it is, but it's not as hard as winning second place in a table tennis competition!”