As we embrace the summer months, we’re excited to highlight the innovations emerging from startups globally. Today, we shine the spotlight on ActivePlay, a dynamic startup based in Las Vegas!
The Story
I first discovered ActivePlay while researching community-driven initiatives in Las Vegas. The city launched an app competition, aimed at encouraging developers to create applications that enhance local life using publicly available data. ActivePlay eagerly entered the contest, leveraging their existing platform that offers a comprehensive database of public sports facilities, primarily sourced from community recreational data.
Their platform simplifies the process for individuals to engage in sports and group fitness activities. With the ActivePlay mobile app and website, users can effortlessly browse all sports games and fitness events happening in their neighborhoods. They can select games that align with their schedule, location, and skill level. Alternatively, a user can spontaneously suggest a game (for instance, a casual soccer match in a local park two hours from now), allowing other ActivePlay users in the area to join until the maximum number of players is reached.
From more than 50 submissions to the Las Vegas app competition, ActivePlay secured two prestigious awards: the Popular Vote Grand Prize, determined by over 9,500 votes, and the Second Overall Grand Prize adjudicated by a panel of esteemed judges, including tech leaders like Sarah Thompson (Co-founder, Tech Innovations), Michael Lee (Co-founder, CityConnect), and prominent investors in the Las Vegas tech community.
From the CEO
I had the opportunity to speak with Lisa Martin, CEO and Co-Founder of ActivePlay, about their journey and their experience utilizing AWS. She shared insights into their initial steps and how their plans for growth incorporate AWS:
“We began by bootstrapping our operations with a single EC2 instance. Utilizing a standard AMI with a backing EBS volume allowed us to fine-tune our configurations as traffic increased. We sought a cost-effective and reliable hosting solution that could scale efficiently when necessary. EC2 enabled us to launch within hours without compromising our design integrity.”
As user traffic has surged and preparations for a public launch are underway, they are transitioning their MySQL databases to RDS, in addition to implementing advanced features from ELB, including SSL termination. “RDS was an obvious choice for us. We recognized that any data loss would significantly impact our momentum, yet we lacked the resources for a dedicated DBA. RDS’s cross-AZ replication alleviates much of that pressure.”
Behind the Scenes
When I asked Lisa about the technology that powers ActivePlay, she explained:
“Our web application is crafted in Scala, utilizing the impressive Lift Framework. Our mobile app is developed in Swift. Both the web and mobile platforms operate as thin clients atop a backend constructed in Java, employing the Hibernate persistence framework. Our EC2 instances, which host our web app and backend, run Jetty behind nginx.”
She concluded on a positive note:
“With EC2 and standard AMIs, we transitioned from zero to a scalable, high-performance web application in under two hours.”
The AWS Startup Challenge
We are gearing up for this year’s edition of our annual AWS Startup Challenge. To stay updated on its launch, you can sign up for notifications or follow @AWSStartups on Twitter. For further insights on this topic, check out another blog post here. They provide valuable information about startup ecosystems. Additionally, for resources on job opportunities within the tech field, visit this excellent resource: Amazon Jobs.
— Alex
Leave a Reply