Thursday. 10:37 pm.
I'm just chilling. Not really in work mode. And this thought hits me — random, kind of obvious in hindsight:
The World Cup is coming. The whole world is going to be locked in. And I have a product that's literally about people sharing moments.
So I tweeted it, just to get it out of my head:
"A very fun idea just came into my head just now. So sad I didn't think of it sooner. But the idea is finding a way to harness all this #FIFAWorldCup energy season and making @usewishit a part of it. Still thinking….. But I need to cook something at least 🥲"
That was Thursday night.
The context
WishIT has crossed 100 users across multiple countries. That's a milestone I'm genuinely proud of — because this product is real, people are using it, and it's growing without any paid ads.
But I've been watching one number that bothers me: the WishDrop conversion rate. A lot of people land on WishIT. Not enough of them create a page.
Creating a WishDrop takes some effort. You're building something — picking a template, adding content, customising it. That's the product's strength, but it's also the barrier.
So I needed a different entry point. Something that lets people just show up and feel the product before they build anything.
The World Cup handed me the answer.
What I actually built
I called it WishArena.
The idea is simple: a public community space inside WishIT, built around a live event. You land on the FIFA World Cup 2026 arena page; you can drop your prediction or reaction right there — no sign-up, no form, nothing. Just type and drop. If you want to upload a meme or GIF, you log in. But for text, you're in immediately.
There's a fan wall where everyone's drops show up. There's a sidebar tracking tournament stages — Group Stage, Round of 16, Quarterfinals, all the way to The Final. You can pick your country's flag from all 48 nations in the tournament. And when a stage wraps, the page throws confetti. Because why not?
The deeper hook is still there too — a prominent CTA to create your own WishDrop and support your team. That's the conversion play. But now there's a reason to be on the platform first, before you build anything.
Saturday, 3:21 pm
Less than 40 hours after that tweet, I posted this:
"I guess I hacked it. @usewishit, I think we have a new feature 🥲"
With the banner. WishArena was live.
That was the MVP. The core WishArena — the fan wall, the stage tracker, the flag picker, the no-signup drops — all live by Saturday afternoon.
The remaining work came after. Today, June 9th, I wrapped the final pieces: fixed the mobile editor, sorted the user analytics dashboard, resolved a broken database migration chain that could have caused real problems in production, and squashed a bug where some WishDrop pages were showing blank.
I'm not saying this to flex. I'm saying it because I want to be honest about what solo founder life actually looks like. The MVP ships when it's ready. Then you keep going until it's right.
But it ships.
Why the World Cup specifically
It's the biggest shared event on the planet. 48 countries. Billions of people are watching the same matches at the same time.
WishIT already works internationally — we have users across multiple countries. The World Cup is just the biggest possible proof of concept for what WishArena can be.
After the World Cup, any major event can have an Arena. The Grammys. An election. A product launch. Whatever the moment is — WishArena is the infrastructure.
The honest part
I had doubts on Friday morning. I wasn't sure the idea was worth the sprint. I wasn't sure the timing made sense — the first game is Thursday, June 11th, which meant I had a very short window to build, test, and announce.
But I've learned something over the years of building: the idea that you can't stop thinking about at 10 pm is usually worth the work.
WishArena is live. The World Cup starts in two days.
Come drop your prediction: wish-it.app
— Shifu Building WishIT under NFORSHIFU LOGICFORGE LTD, somewhere in Lagos, Nigeria, at 2 am.