Business · founded 2025
In build
Gunner Up
A place for Arsenal supporters who feel everything during the match and have nowhere to put it afterwards.
Why it exists.
I did not start this because I wanted to build another football platform. I started it because of a feeling I could not shake.
After an Arsenal match I would sit there for a moment. The game was over, but something felt unfinished. I had watched the full ninety minutes. I had reactions, thoughts, emotions. And once it ended, there was nowhere for any of that to go.
Not because there were no spaces, but because none of them felt right for someone like me.
Most places online were loud. Fast. Reactive. Competitive. You had to say something quickly, say it well, and be ready for however people might respond. And if you said nothing at all, it was as though you had never been there in the first place.
That gap — between watching a match and being part of it — is where Gunner Up begins.
What it actually does
Four decisions, in the order they get made.
01
Gets you to kick-off
Supporters outside England watch at hours that are genuinely difficult. Getting up at three in the morning is not an alarm problem, it is a ritual problem.
02
Lets you be present without performing
If the only way to be present is to post, the shy supporter is excluded by the interface itself. Saying nothing has to count as being there.
03
Keeps the room afterwards
The gap I started from was the one between the final whistle and the rest of the evening. So the room stays open, and it stays slow on purpose.
04
Says no a lot
Every feature has to survive one question: does this make it easier or harder for a quiet person to be here?
What I have thrown away
The part of the work nobody sees.
Cut twice
A live chat, and then a leaderboard
Both times it rebuilt exactly the room I was trying to get away from — fastest typist wins, and everybody else reads. Some things do not become gentler by making them smaller.
I am sixteen, I am building this on a bedroom desk, and the hardest decisions so far have all been subtractions.
The longer version is written up as a project.
How the idea arrived, what I read while building it, and the parts I have thrown away twice.