Posts Tagged ‘StatSheet’
Thursday, June 6th, 2013
By Allan Maurer
 If you’ve ever spent hours digging through Google Analytics trying to find the stats that are meaningful to you, you’ll appreciate the new offering from Durham, NC-based Automated Insights called SiteAi.
The first-of-its-kind service helps website owners find the hidden insights buried in web analytics by providing daily and plain English actionable reports in email.
It’s the latest use of the Automated Insights sophisticated AI engine, which sifts through large data sets looking for patterns and trends. Previously the company sold Yahoo a product that automatically produces recaps of Fantasy Football games, cranking out 500-1,000 word articles for millions of players at the rate of more than 1,000 per second.
Automated Insights started life as the StatSheet network in 2007, a very popular college basketball stats site, and soon expanded coverage to MLB, NFL, NBA, and college football. It was founded by CEO Robbie Allen.
Expanding off its first base
Using no human writers whatsoever, it published tens of thousands of articles for over 400 team-based web sites, over 450 team-based mobile apps, and thousands of Facebook and twitter feeds. The websites and apps are data and visual rich, with articles, charts, lists, and feeds.
AI’s Joe Procopio tells us, “When we became Automated Insights, our goal was to expand off our sports base.” The company’s mantra is to automate everything. “We’re still working on automating our ping pong games,” Procopio quipped in an earlier interview.
The goal of the new product, he says, “Is to help website owners maximize whatever their goals may be, not just report the statistics. But it does save you from needing to click through all those charts on Google Analytics.”
Viral pricing
 Joe Procopio at a TechMedia event. If you’re in the Research Triangle and involved in startups, you’ve probably run into him. He gets around. The company is “Eating its own dogfood,” says Procopio. “We have hundreds of websites and its a huge time-saver for us, helping us maximize impact from how and where we run our ads.”
The company is also using something Procopio calls “viral pricing.” He explains, “The product is free for 60 days, then we start charging a fee based on the number of people we’ve signed up.” The fee will range from $4 to $10 a month, he says.
Just a start
“The more people who sign up, the less the price will be, so it encourages users to tell others about it.”
Analytics is a sweet spot for the company, Procopio adds. “There is so much data and much of it is difficult to access. We automate reports and do it quickly.”
The new product, though is just “a first shot,” at product development outside the sports arena. “We’ve only scratched the surface of what we can do with AI,” Procopio says.
Tags: Automated Insights, Durham, Fantasy football, Joe Procopio, NC, plain English, Robbie Allen, RTP, StatSheet, viral pricing, web analytics
Posted in Analytics, IT | No Comments »
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011
 Joe Procopio By Joe Procopio
It’s always good to get a second chance.
Ask anyone involved in the startup game and they’ll tell you: Part of the makeup of a great entrepreneur is the ability to deal with failure. This ability usually comes, oddly enough, with actually having failed, at least once, on the way to success. It’s a conundrum of the game.
The North Carolina Research Triangle had an accelerator, very recently, and it was successful, and it closed up shop, which caused a lot of disappointment and heartbreak within the startup community. But it’s important to note that while Groundwork Labs will fill the void left by Launchbox in the American Underground in Durham, it’s not a replacement.
It’s something new, with new players, a new mission, and a new vision.
And the fact that the RTP gets another shot with the acceleration concept, that’s, well, lucky, to say the least.
How It Works
Groundwork Labs, much like your traditional accelerator, will select promising startups for a three month session and load them up with the standard foundational elements: space, advice, connections, mentoring, and the all-important $20,000 in walking around money.
They’re starting quickly out of the gate, Spring 2012, which means you should get your application in yesterday. They expect to work with between five and seven startups per session and run at least one and hopefully two sessions per year.
I actually got wind of the Groundwork Labs news about a week ago, but I had been sworn to secrecy. I’m not sure why they were so worried. I’m not that kind of journalist. I’m the other kind. The lazy kind.
Official word broke yesterday afternoon, which happened to be just hours before the monthly ExitEvent social I host for area entrepreneurs, which happened to coincide with the TechJournal Deck Party, in Raleigh, which happened to fall on the eve of Internet Summit 2011 at the Raleigh Convention Center, resulting in a Catalina Wine Mixer of startup tech marketing investor type people in one place. So I had access to a lot of opinion. Others I got to via emails. Disclaimer: There was no free beer involved in the solicitation of opinion.
And overall the opinion is very, very hopeful.
What Do You Think?
“Love it,” says iContact’s Aaron Houghton, “Durham deserves it and many passionate entrepreneurs will benefit from it.”
“Launchbox proved that having a local incubator is important to the entrepreneurial ecosystem,” says Robbie Allen, CEO of Automated Insights. “It really helps raise the profile of all startups in the area.”
James Avery, founder of Adzerk and a very passionate voice when Launchbox closed up shop is, well, excited again. “I am thrilled to see that Durham will once again host an accelerator. I love that John Austin is involved as I think he has done a great job with Joystick so far.”
John Who?
John Austin, Director of Joystick Labs, will also head the Groundwork effort. Before any of the gamers freak out, nothing is going to happen to Joystick. It will continue to operate independently, though it does get a boost in efficiency of shared resources. Joystick will get its next semester underway this summer, and the two efforts will continue to operate in leapfrog fashion.
I got a chance to sit down with John again yesterday. We hadn’t really caught up since he took the helm of Joystick right before this year’s East Coast Game Conference.
The two players in Groundwork Labs, Capitol Broadcasting and NC IDEA are very excited about it, according to Austin. There will be synergy between the entities with resources obviously coming from the Underground, as well as the possibility that some of the startups chosen for Groundwork will come from NC IDEA – even though there will be separation in the process, with two separate application programs, etc.
NC IDEA, the grant program that has a symbiotic relationship with VC firm Idea Fund Partners, and another organization I got to dig down into recently, is another positive. Beyond being the region’s best kept secret for early stage entrepreneurs, they’re entire mission is to aid the area in terms of building up a successful, thriving, early-stage ecosystem.
“I think this is an important piece of the puzzle for building a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem in North Carolina,” says Lister Delgado, Founder and General Partner at Idea Fund Partners.
“It is another way to help attract entrepreneurial talent to the state, and to keep the resident talent here. Besides the money and the assistance that an accelerator can provide to the entrepreneurs participating, an accelerator is a great marketing tool for the community. That is why we are excited to be involved.”
Two Types of Investment
Austin backs this up, and notes that NC IDEA and Capitol Broadcasting, who owns and operates the American Tobacco Campus, have split the infrastructure costs from the investment in the companies. This model is much like how Joystick operates. The investors see the investment in the infrastructure of Joystick as an investment in the entrepreneurial community. Not a donation, per se, but with an expectation for a different kind of return.
This is the critical factor in the potential success of Groundwork. Capitol Broadcasting has a business interest in seeing it succeed, through the American Underground and several other initiatives they have operating in the startup ecosystem. As for NC IDEA, early-stage success here is what their mission is built upon. Groundwork is almost like an expansion of their program, a runway off of the grant money, or even just the runway when the money isn’t a critical factor.
This vested interest, skin in the game, if you will, from the funding parties, is designed to give Groundwork enough time to decide whether or not the accelerator will work. That, of course, is up to the companies selected, and in some sense the rest of here in the area already hard at work at making the region stick as an entrepreneurial hub.
So in that sense, Groundwork Labs is another good sign. Second chances are hard to come by, so you’ve got to jump on the opportunity when they do.
Zack Mansfield, VP at Square 1 Bank and manager of their startup assistance program Square Roots, sums it up nicely. “It’s exciting to see a new accelerator for a lot of reasons but the most significant is that if this region is serious about becoming a top hub for startups, we need more of just about everything – more capital, more entrepreneurs, and more people in the ecosystem supporting new ventures to help them grow.”
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for tech media startup Automated Insights (formerly StatSheet). He also owns consulting firm Intrepid Company and creative network Intrepid Media and runs the startup social ExitEvent. Joe can be reached via Twitter @jprocoand read at joeprocopio.com.
Tags: Aaron Houghton, Adzerk, American Underground, Automated Insights, Capitol Broadcasting, Deck Party, Durham, East Coast Game Conference, Exit Event, Groundwork Labs, icontact, Internet Summit, Joe Procopio, John Austin, Joystick Labs, LaunchBox, NC, NC IDEA, Raleigh, Research Triangle, StatSheet
Posted in Columns, entrepreneurship, games, Internet/New Media, IT, Viewpoint | No Comments »
Friday, October 28th, 2011
 Statsheet coverage of the NFL includes a quarterback focus on stars such as "the surprising Cam Newton" of the Carolina Panthers Durham, NC-based Statsheet has launched its fully-automated, real-time coverage of the National Football League (NFL). Statsheet is the company that developed robo-journalism for sports coverage.
Now hard-core and casual-fans alike can enjoy comprehensive coverage of their favorite NFL teams, whenever and however they want it. StatSheet’s NFL offering includes individual team sites, web and mobile applications, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and e-mail newsletters for all 32 NFL teams, as well as a league-wide web site at statsheet.com/nfl.
Building on the success of StatSheet’s mobile applications and Twitter accounts for college basketball and Major League Baseball, StatSheet’s NFL presence includes Android applications and Twitter accounts for every NFL team, with a league-wide iPhone application coming soon.
Fans are now able to receive scores, live play-by-play and StatSheet’s data-driven analysis in real time via Twitter, as well as on their mobile devices. StatSheet’s network of NFL team sites already boasts more than 60,000 Twitter followers.
Like all of StatSheet’s initiatives, StatSheet’s NFL coverage is powered by a database of over 2 billion statistics and its unique artificial intelligence technology.
Insight and analysis
Each site includes proprietary metrics like StatSheet’s Fan Satisfaction Index that provides a measure of how fans feel about their team at any point in the season. Each site also includes Game Previews and Game Recaps with individual player grades for every game and every skill position.
These metrics put the performance of both players and teams into historical context. For example, due to the explosion in the passing game this season, there are currently four NFL quarterbacks whose season to-date performances merit an A+ (Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Drew Brees and the surprising Cam Newton).
However, there is only one team that has earned an A+ at this point — the undefeated, reigning Super Bowl Champion, Green Bay Packers with a 97.9 (see cheeseheadhaven.com). On the other side of the spectrum, the St. Louis Rams and the Indianapolis Colts have been the two weakest performing teams this year, with grades of 60.5 and 60.8 respectively.
In addition to insights and analysis, StatSheet’s NFL coverage provides opportunities for fans to interact with the data. StatSheet’s Compare functionality allows fans to compare the strengths and weaknesses of any team or player (see herewegostillers.com/pittsburgh-steelers/compare_stats).
StatSheet’s Embed functionality allows fans to integrate historical or real-time stats, charts and other graphical elements into their own websites or blogs (see embed.statsheet.com/nfl). And because StatSheet recognizes that rivalries are what make sports so much fun to follow, StatSheet even uses its technology to automate the art of trash-talking with its popular StatSmack application (see statsheet.com/nfl/index/stat_smack).
Statsheet was a presenting company at the Southeast Venture Conference, a Tech Media event. Chances are pretty good that you might run into someone from Statsheet at Tech Media’s upcoming Internet Summit in Raleigh, a two-day event Nov. 15-16 at the Raleigh Convention Center.
Previously on the TechJournal:
Statsheet nabs $4M
Tags: Aaron Rodgers, Cam Newton, Carolina Panthers, Drew Brees, Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, mobile sports coverage, NFL insight & analysis, Pittsburgh Steelers, robo-journalism, SEVC, St. Louis Rams, StatSheet, Tom Brady
Posted in Facebook, Internet/New Media, IT, Mobile, smartphones, social media, Telecommunications, Twitter | No Comments »
Monday, September 12th, 2011
DURHAM, NC -The company that may put at least some journalists out of work, StatSheet, which sells real-time content automation, has raised a $4 million round of funding led by Court Square Ventures and OCA Ventures, with participation from IDEA Fund Partners and other existing investors.
In conjunction, the company changed its name to Automated Insights to reflect the broad applicability of its innovative technology to data-intensive verticals beyond sports where high content generation costs can make comprehensive coverage prohibitively expensive. The company’s sports offerings will continue to grow under the StatSheet brand.
“We believe this new corporate branding better reflects the long-term potential of our company, and underscores the value of our technology to any vertical with large amounts of structured data,” said Robbie Allen, the company’s CEO and founder.
Automated Insights’ technology transforms vast amounts of raw data into compelling narrative content and powerful visualizations. The content is written entirely by software and can be formatted as headlines, summaries, and long-form articles. In addition, the content can be published cost-effectively at just about any scale via the web, mobile applications, and all types of social media.
“Our technology has worked extremely well with sports, but it is also well suited to verticals such as finance, real estate and weather, or even sales productivity and business intelligence applications. In essence, our technology humanizes big data by automating knowledge and insight so the new name is a perfect fit” added Allen.
Automated Insights’ technology can be seen in action in its StatSheet sports content network. StatSheet currently powers fully-automated, real-time coverage of all 375 Major League Baseball (MLB) and NCAA Division I College Basketball teams via dynamically updated team-centric websites, iPhone and Android applications, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and e-mail newsletters. In September, the company will also launch team-centric sites and mobile apps for all 32 NFL and 244 NCAA Division I College Football teams.
“Automated Insights is revolutionizing the creation of compelling high-quality content and they have proven they can do it at scale through their StatSheet sports content network,” commented Randy Castleman, General Partner with Court Square Ventures. “We are excited to help them continue to grow their sports coverage and apply the technology to new verticals.
“We are thrilled to team up with such a strong management team and experienced investors,” noted Jim Dugan, CEO and Managing Partner of OCA Ventures. “We believe the timing is ideal for Automated Insights’ highly scalable content development solutions.”
Tags: Automated Insights, company name change, content automation, Court Square Ventures, Durham, financing, Idea Fund Partners, NC, OCA VEntures, StatSheet
Posted in Carolinas, Internet/New Media, Money, North Carolina | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011
Joe Procopio A few months ago, I was sitting in John Austin’s office at gaming incubator Joystick Labs with Austin and John O’Neill, president of Spark Plug Games). I was mostly there trying to score free games, or at least cheat codes, and I also wound up accidentally writing about the North Carolina Gaming Roundtable they were about to take part in.
As we were killing time playing Dr. Mario, I nonchalantly asked if either of them had an exact figure on the number of gaming startups in the RTP.
While Austin reached into his desk and pulled out a stack of spreadsheets, lists, and what looked like a Simon, O’Neill whipped our his smartphone and started going through his contacts.
I give them huge credit for taking that random question so seriously, but the truth is no one really knows how many there are.
But we’re going to find out. Or at least Ben Moore is going to give us our best guess.
Gamers Unite!
Moore does marketing and PR for Mighty Rabbit Studios , an independent game development shop in Raleigh, currently working on the Saturday Morning RPG series, which is exactly what it sounds like and better have a Harlem Globetrotters mystery level. I sat down with Moore and Matte Wagner, founder of Pangolin as well as an audio engineer at Red Storm.
Moore is one of the drivers, along with Mighty Rabbit co-founder Alan Youngblood, of Raleigh Game On, a first-ever get together of local independent developers to show off their wares, celebrate independent gaming, and hopefully cement a community that has a lot of members, a lot of camaraderie, a lot of promise, but very little cohesion.
 Game On is Monday, August 29th at 7:00 p.m. at the Hive in downtown Raleigh. It’s free to attend, and I suggest you do. I’m telling you this because I know a little something about this kind of event.
They Stole My Idea!
About six months ago, I was at a reception that followed some kind of investor or tech startup conference, and I was half-joking that the reception, that’s the part at the end with beer and no Powerpoint, was what I most looked forward to.
Hey, I know a brewery owner, I thought. I should start an event and have it just be that part at the end where everyone is having fun. I made that joke in a column, someone read it and relayed it at a dinner a week later, whereupon someone else immediately said I should do it for real.
Fast forward to September 12th, which will be the fifth iteration of this event, now called ExitEvent, a free beer, loud music, no-nametags monthly social exclusive to RTP entrepreneurs and their employees. Within six months, it’s grown from a bad joke to 200 people from 85 startups.
Shameless Plug Over
Did you know there were 85 startups in the RTP?
Yeah, me neither, and I definitely should have. My point is the reason why ExitEvent blew up so quickly had nothing to do with me or the free beer. I just lit the match. It exploded because the entrepreneurs were out there and they wanted something like this.
So back to the question: How many gaming startups are there in the RTP?
Trick Question
The question is probably unanswerable, at least for now. A good guess is: Tons.
Thanks to mobile and social, there are lots of opportunities for smaller games, smaller budgets and smaller companies to be successful right out of the gate. Wagner says that these companies didn’t have the option of the mass mobile market until very recently, not 5 years ago, not really even two years ago.
Yes. In the world of mobile gaming, 2009 was like the dark ages.
Developers have also been taking notice of success stories like Rovio and the amount of reward achieved for the pittance of resources spent. Today, hobbyists are getting serious. Cogs at big companies are jumping ship to helm their own. It’s almost stupid that it’s not more of a gold rush than it already is.
But a lot of these little companies are working in a vacuum. When they get to a certain point, they all tend to run into the same obstacle: They can’t find the right person to join the team. They need a network, at least a central cortex, to bring about what Moore calls the “I know a guy” syndrome.
So, You Know, Game On
This is the purpose of Game On. Moore says that for the smaller developers, there really isn’t a central get together beyond the once-a-year East Coast Game Conference. I’ve been to that conference since its inaugural, and I’m always surprised by two things.
One. There is literally almost no connection between the RTP tech startup ecosystem and the RTP gaming ecosystem. It’s there, but it’s thin. I can count on one hand the number of people I run into at both the startup events and the gaming events. This should not be and I’ve sort of made it my goal to try to build that bridge.
Out of Legos, of course.
Two. The RTP startup ecosystem, as open and helpful as it is, could probably learn a few things from the RTP gaming ecosystem. These folks are tight, always helpful to each other and to outsiders like me. In this sense, the gaming ecosystem is a lot like the music ecosystem, where they’re willing to introduce, cross-promote, and even sit in on a project just because they love doing what they do.
They Want to Reach Your Grandmother
And it isn’t like the community has no structure at all. Alex Macris’ awesome Escapist magazine and Triangle Gaming Initiative (which also has a monthly social), is a very good start.
But the ECGC and the TGI are by developers for developers. In order to get the local gaming community to grow, they not only need to connect and reconnect with the developers, but also reach out to the developer wanna-bes and, ultimately, the gamers themselves.
This is more difficult than it was two years ago. Wagner points out that with that same mass mobile market as the distribution method, all sorts of people are now exposed to games and have an idea of how a game should play, casual vs. hardcore is dying down, if not almost irrelevant.
Plus smart phone penetration is still relatively small, compared to other delivery media – televisions, for example, or even PCs/Laptops. In other words, gamers are everywhere, they’re everyone. They’re pretty much you’re grandmother.
Well, they don’t want to reach your grandmother, but the point is the universe is expanding.
Here’s Your SETI
Moore hopes to at least diagram that expansion with Game On as a first attempt. He wants to grow Game On to be a central hub for the independent community of local developers to collaborate and trade ideas. If it works, they bring more people in, and the result is more ideas and more collaboration.
But there’s an added competition element to Game On. Companies will give a two minute intro on who they are and what they’re working on, and there will be stations set up for attendees to give the game a try. At the end of the evening, a Best in Show will be chosen and a trophy awarded, which the winner keeps until the next Game On (TBD).
Battle of the Bands!
The trophy is named the Ben G. Russell Cup, after a friend within the gaming community who passed away before he had the chance to take off. Again, this shows that the community is there, it just needs cohesion.
And this initial Game On is only the first step. Moore and Wagner don’t yet know what they don’t know, in terms of what’s out there that they’re not taking advantage of.
But while they’re counting new companies at the first Game On, they’ll figure this out too
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for tech media startup StatSheet. He also owns consulting firm Intrepid Company and creative network Intrepid Media and runs the startup social ExitEvent. Joe can be reached via Twitter @jproco (http://www.twitter.com/jproco) and read at joeprocopio.com.
Tags: Events, game developers, Joe Procopio, Joystick Labs, Mighty Rabbit Studios, Raleigh Game On, Sparkplug Games, StatSheet
Posted in Carolinas, Columns, Events, games, Internet/New Media, mobile games, North Carolina | 6 Comments »
Thursday, May 26th, 2011
By Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio Last night, a guy apologized to me for being between jobs.
It wasn’t the first time, far from it, but having spent the last too many years of my career either working at, working with, or starting a startup, I’ve been “between jobs.” I’ve had all the wrong factors conspire to bring about the worst news at the worst time and been left to ponder what the frivolity I was supposed to do next. Yeah, I’ve been there.
But dude, don’t ever apologize for being unemployed, especially in this economy and especially when you’re taking a chance on doing something potentially extraordinary.
Between a Job and a Hard Place
The reason I bring up the apology is to highlight the way Chris Heivly turned the notion of a job fair on its head on Tuesday night at the aptly-named Tech Jobs Under the Big Top event in Bay 7.
The atmosphere was exactly what you’d imagine at an event with such a preposterous name, down to the straw and peanut shells on the floor. There were hot dogs to eat, beer and soda to drink, popcorn and cotton candy, jugglers, stilt-walkers, and red-and-white fabric draped in such a way as to recall a giant tent.
 Big Top IT crowd It was well done and charmingly cool — an atmosphere dutifully and subtly created to derail any sort of awkwardness on the part of the job-seeker.
But then you have to remember the context.
Life In and Out of the Cube
I’ve also worked on the corporate side. And I didn’t hate it. I’ve never been one of those punks with a chip on my shoulder trying to stick it to the man by starting my own company. Clarification: I am that kind of punk, but not about work or money. I have three kids and common sense. I’ll stick it to the man by listening to loud hard rock like every other suburb kid my age.
But again, I understand how that environment can elicit an apologetic response when one is forcibly removed from it.
Turns out, the guy had spent 20+ years at what had been a solid corporation, made it through more than a few waves of cutbacks and reductions-in-force, until finally his turn came and with little more than a thanks-for-everything, he was set out to begin his new, unsolicited journey.
In the startup world. This happens all the time. Basically you get up and bust your butt every day to make sure it doesn’t happen by the time you go back to bed.
You get used to that.
So Where Do You See Us In Five Years?
Heivly also turned the tables on the process. The companies involved were all startups at various stages, and they had to pay to be a part of it and they had to bring real, full-time jobs to the table. In all, 15 startups with 85+ open positions participated.
The startups also had to pitch to the job-seekers, rather than the other way around.
Full disclosure: I was there for StatSheet, a Durham-based sports media startup. And we kicked off a series of three-minute on-stage pitches to the job-seekers, telling them who we were, what we did, what the day-to-day was like, and what we were looking for. Ours included a video, as about half of the rest did. Others brought slides. All were compelling.
James Avery from pre-funded ad-delivery product company Adzerk used the Startup Guys viral video and a swear to get a huge and poignant laugh. On the other end of the spectrum, handset-maker HTC (I know, right?) had a top-quality video presentation that underlined their… bigness.
Doug Kaufman from deeper-than-analytics company SpringMetrics used subliminal messages to get the point across. Tobi Walter from financial-organizer Shoeboxed went for the brass ring with a live video feed. And energy device-maker PlotWatt took advantage of the three minutes to make a serious and very provocative pitch.
All Your Networking In One Place
If anything could have been different, we wished for more time for general networking with the job seekers to introduce ourselves in such a relaxed atmosphere, which is probably the best way to make some of those initial fit determinations. As a rule though, we were told (and they were told) to hold off on the serious networking until the end of the pitches, as a matter of respect and to make it fair.
But there was another, maybe unexpected reason to hold off. As everyone filed in at the beginning of the evening, I noticed a general stiffness among the crowd – lots of arms crossed, lots of blank stares. And again, I get it. There were 250 people registered for the event, and another 250 on a wait list. There was a line outside the door.
This was serious business, even if it was presented as exactly the opposite.
Vertical Circus Tents
 When the presentations were finished and everyone had eaten and (hopefully) had a beer to get the rest of that edge off, the startup folks were sent off to three tents – one for general business roles, one for sales and marketing roles, and one for technology roles.
We then talked one-on-one with whomever walked up and we answered any and every question they had about the company, the position, the day-to-day, anything we didn’t make crystal in a goofy 90-second video.
This was also very helpful, in terms of linking up with the people with the right skills who now had an inkling of whether there was a fit on their side. I stopped counting at 20 people, most of whom I wanted to talk to again.
But Did It Work?
I think I just answered that.
My colleagues also got a stack of resumes, business cards, and follow-up emails. Having since spoken to a few of the other startups involved, that success seems to have happened across the board.
So in the end it was an interesting experiment but one definitely built on more than a wild hypothesis. It speaks to the very nature of the startup world itself. Do things differently, disrupt, stand out, and at the end of the day you should have something very valuable.
Chris wrapped up by asking people to complete a survey, and that the results might determine whether or not there should be another one. I don’t think he needed the survey. It’s anecdotal, of course, but as things were winding down, I spotted the apology guy leaving Bay 7, smiling, and telling his buddy, “This was the most fun job fair I’ve ever been to.”
When have you ever heard that?
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for sports media startup StatSheet. He also owns consulting firm Intrepid Company and creative network Intrepid Media and runs the startup social ExitEvent. Joe can be reached via Twitter @jproco or via joeprocopio.com.
Tags: Adzerk, American Tobacco Campus, Big Top, Chris Heivly, Doug Kaufman, IT jobs, James Avery, Shoeboxed, SpringMetrics, Starup Guys, StatSheet, Tobi Walter
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Friday, April 29th, 2011
By Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio Congratulations Research Triangle Park area of North Carolina! You’ve done it. You’re now an entrepreneurial hub rivaling that of any city in the nation, attracting talent and investment from all over the country while cranking out exit after ridiculously-valuated exit. You’ve got your heart in Downtown Durham, your brains in the Universities, your backbone in the infrastructure, a calcium-fortified support system, and a very big mouth of a media touting every kid who walks out of UNC or IBM and purports to start the next next next Twitter.
None of what you just read is true.
But it could be. It’s truish.
What If It Were True?
That’s a damn good question. And it’s what I had on my mind while walking the wide-aisled halls of the Raleigh Convention Center for this Year’s CED Venture. This year, the conference returned to Raleigh (good move) from Pinehurst (too far to commute and everything closes at 9:00 p.m.), and took on a new look to match CED’s recent re-imagining in September.
Like Tron.
This is also a good thing. The move into the American Underground along with fellow anchors Launchbox and Joystick meant there was a lot of new energy. There were hordes of entrepreneurs walking the halls when they weren’t manning demo booths.
Companies as young as Argyle, Adzerk, DejaMi, CityPockets, Jaargon, Appuware (which had been live for 12 hours) were all showing off. And when they weren’t, they were mingling, and when they weren’t, they were drinking.
I’m for that.
Four out of Four
Over the last 58 days, I’ve been to four major events involving startups from or related to the RTP, each completely different and each totally valuable.
In early March, there was the Southeast Venture Conference in Atlanta. Yes, this wasn’t in RTP, but that only goes to show you the regional strength we’ve created. In late March, Startup Madness provided a look at some of the earlier stage companies making their mark in the Triangle.
A few weeks back, the newly-expanded East Coast Game Conference highlighted the sheer awesomeness (is there a better word for a video game conference? I think not) of the local gaming ecosystem. And my tour was capped with CED Venture, which did a fine job of proving that after 28 years, it could still run with the youngsters (so to speak). I know this because it’s what I do every day.
Ouch. My back.
So I’m calling it. RTP, and Durham especially, has made its mark, established itself, slapped on a new coat of paint and done some amazing things to get that spark going that’s been eluding this area for years.
Now What?
Let’s imagine that we’ve taken that next step, and the RTP has moved beyond New York and Boston and is rivaling the Valley for the best talent, the most activity, prominent deal flow, and copious successful exits.
What would that next conference look like?
I walked around CED Venture and asked this question, and the answers from the attendees not only proved out my theory that we’re on the right track, but also confirmed some of the advancements we’ve made in the conferences themselves from slight innovations, tweaks in each.
In all of this pestering, there was one question asked of me, and that question kind of brought it all together. A particularly insightful out-of-town investor, while going over the pros and cons of the companies gathered in the demo room, asked me if there was another wave or two of upcoming entrepreneurs beyond these. Without hesitation, my answer was “Hell yeah.”
Then I thought about these four events, and figured out how to bring it all together.
The Lite Ticket
At these conferences, every once in a while I have a booth or I’m doing a pitch or I’m helping a company demo, but mostly I’m a stalkerpreneur, walking around the conference, sitting in on sessions, trying to learn and network. Stealing stressballs.
And the thing about the RTP entrepreneurs is they’re getting younger, they’re starting sooner, they’re more agile, lean and, well, hungry.
This year’s East Coast Game Conference had three levels of admission, including a $99 rate that got you in the Convention Center and some of the sessions. No frills, no free lunch, no fancy bag. I know these things need to make money, but your everyday unfunded entrepreneur has moxie, has get-up-and-go, has drive, and has passion.
You know what they don’t have?
Straight cash homey.
What the lite ticket does though is it fuels that next group, gets them involved, on the radar, and sets them up for bigger things. Almost every company from Startup Madness, including this year’s winner Rippple, had a presence at CED Venture. Beautiful. With a lite ticket, that math gets exponential.
The Pitch Thing
I’m starting to turn against the elevator-pitch-as-entertainment concept. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe everyone needs to get their story out, but it has to be handled with care. Having done it, I can tell you it’s hard enough condensing your life’s work and all your hopes and dreams down into two minutes. It’s harder still to do that on a stage trying to figure out which folks in the audience are taking notes and which ones are tweeting about where the happy hour might be.
For the record, I do both.
One of the highlights from CED Venture was the use of panels to showcase some of the startup talent, sometimes side-by-side with the investors. Sure, we need to hear about the state of the industry and trends and opportunities from the expert side, but putting the founders on a panel is a great way to get their story outside of the canned two-minute spiel.
Crossover Hit
But my answer to the out-of-town investor came from this concept: There was a just-as-large contingent of talent exuding a just-as-fever-pitched intensity at the very same location a few weeks back during the East Coast Game Conference.
In my blog, lamented the fact that there weren’t enough of us startup hacks at that conference, and the reverse is also true, but not to such a degree. I also noted that the camaraderie that exists in the gaming industry is top-notch, and that we could learn even more from them about helping each other and boosting the local image.
Talk about a best-kept secret. RTP is probably number two in the country in gaming. Who knew?
OK yeah, you probably knew.
Again, having Joystick as a co-anchor in the Underground with Launchbox and CED is a very good idea, and there were some gaming companies stalkerpreneuring and even demoing at Venture. Plus the first keynote at CED Venture was the incredible (I’m an unabashed fan) Dr. Michael Capps from Epic.
The first thing he said was there would be no talk of debt-to-equity ratios or anything of that nature because that wasn’t his area of expertise. He then proceeded to hold everyone’s attention for the next 60 minutes talking about video games, mistakes, and alternative ways of creating a multi-million dollar company.
In my mind, this is where that next wave is coming from, something I alluded to the first time I wrote about the inaugural Game Conference two years ago. That one also had Michael Capps as the keynote. I know. I just blew your mind.
So if CED Venture taught me anything, it was that the area has done the up-and-comer thing. We’ve started playing like we’re number two, even though we aren’t. Yet. And that’s the exact right move.
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for sports media startup StatSheet . He also owns startup consulting firm Intrepid Company (and creative network Intrepid Media (IntrepidMedia.com). Did you see where he hinted that he was the big mouth of media? Kind of pathetic, no? Joe can be reached via Twitter @jproco.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Adzerk, Appuware, Argyle, CED Venture 2011, CityPockets, DejaMi, East Coast Game Conference, Jaargon, Joe Procopio, Michael Capps, Rippple, Southeast Venture Conference, Starup Madness, StatSheet
Posted in Carolinas, Columns, Events, North Carolina | No Comments »
Monday, March 21st, 2011
By Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio This year’s Final Four was as heated and satisfying as all the hype built it up to be. And when it was over, cheers erupted not only for the champion, but for the three other finalists as well. In the true spirit of competition, backs were patted, hands were shook, and only a small fraction grumbled about the seeding and the venue selection.
I know what you’re thinking. And while my StatSheet robot-enabled picks are currently crushing brackets throughout the country in my own “Bringing Down the House” moment (I’m thinking Ben Mezrich, David Fincher, and Bradley Cooper), what I’m talking about today, a full two weeks before the end of the NCAA Tournament, is Pongageddon.
Pong I
Late last year, the crew at StatSheet hosted a day of pizza, soda, T-shirts, and ping-pong to celebrate… something. And that’s the point. It wasn’t an award or a demo, there were no high-profile speakers (we tried to get Bob Young, but apparently in Canada they play ping-pong outdoors on ice with regulation mittens and it’s called Ice Mittens). There were no slide decks, no sponsors or booths.
It was just a way for friends and friends of friends to get together, blow off a little steam, and possibly win a trophy with a Buick on top that said “2nd Place” by beating everyone in the room, bracket style, at ping-pong.
That feat was accomplished by iContact and Preation’s Aaron Houghton who, while seeming very nonchalant in a dress shirt and khakis, trumped everyone with his own equipment bag, gold-plated paddle, and grizzled old coach who stood in the corner and glared at everyone, occasionally shooting Aaron a nod when it was time to take out someone’s knee.
Kidding, the paddle wasn’t gold plated.
But as Aaron’s name was duct-taped to the bottom of the Buick trophy, it was obvious that this would not be the only instance of this event.
Pong II
So this past Friday, just because, StatSheet opened the doors again. No Eventbrite, not a lot of promotion, just email to everyone anyone knew plus some light Twittering and Facebooking.
This time, building-mates and fellow startuppers NetSertive played co-hosts, offering up a second table, a refrigerator full of beer, and a break room full of food, essentially doubling down on the entire experience.
Around 50 hardworking entrepreneurs showed up, as well as a few investors and advisors. Pleasantries were exchanged and then the mayhem got underway.
The brackets included representatives from StatSheet and NetSertive and also, let’s go alphabetical:
Adzerk, Appia, Argyle Social, DejaMi, DigitalSmiths, HireNetworks, Intersouth, Loyalese, Idea Fund Partners, Plotwatt, Preation, Robinson Bradshaw & Hinton, Southern Capitol, Square One Bank, and WeGeo – and I’m sure I’m leaving more than one out, this is just all I could remember off of the top of my head.
Play By (Mobile/Web/Social) Play
Needless to say, the competition on the table matched the nature of the players. Whether the talent level was lacking (names withheld), passable (I lost a nail biter to Square 1’s Zack Mansfield after being up 9-7 in the final game), or Gumpesque, everyone brought their A game.
The Final Four matchups were ridiculous to watch, and before long almost everyone had turned away from the basketball games being projected onto one wall and took a spot around the table.
The first best-of-three, 21-point match featured StatSheet’s own Ganesh Karthik Bonala against Argyle’s Danny Olinsky. While Ganesh handily took the first game, Danny fought hard and picked up the last two for the win.
The second semifinal was brutal. Appia CTO Slawek Pruchnik and defending champion Aaron Houghton put on was can only be described as a violent forehand smash clinic that injured more than one bystander. I’ve never seen two people sweat harder playing a sport that you usually play in street clothes (you know, bowling, darts, poker).
But that’s the nature of this crowd.
In the end, Argyle’s Olinsky finessed a visually spent Pruchnik for the Buick trophy.
Names Dropped, Column Almost Over
While this was an awesome event to host and even more fun to write about (let’s face it, entrepreneurism is really mostly a lot of boring hard work), my point is that this is more of what we need as we boldly move forward. Non-sponsored, topic-free, open-invite events like this foster a huge amount of community, which is exactly why StatSheet CEO Robbie Allen set it up in the first place.
It’s something I tried to create with ExitEvent while we were still trying to figure out what ExitEvent was. A lot of the people who were at Pongageddon were at the first ExitEvent meetup, and we didn’t do much more than drink a few beers and chat about what was going on in our world.
Now I know that that’s what it could and should have been. It’s not that we’re any less open and sharing than any other regional startup ecosystem, this is just the result of the fragmentation that we all know exists. I know I want to undo that, I know I’m inspired by what I saw, and I know I’m not alone.
There are other events that fit this mold. Deck Party (full disclosure, the brainchild of this very online property) is already another great example of a party just for the party’s sake, even though it looks more like a networking event until you actually attend.
The point is there’s something valuable here and these folks have tapped into it nicely. If we can keep the fun factor at the level where people will attend, the value will take care of itself.
So as Danny Olinsky’s name was duct-taped to the Buick trophy, it was obvious that this would not only not be the last instance of this event, but it would likely no longer be the only event of its kind.
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for sports media startup StatSheet . He also owns startup consulting firm Intrepid Company and creative network Intrepid Media . Next outing won’t be so personal, he’s got a Xoom coming. Joe can be reached via Twitter: twitter.com/jproco.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Aaron Houghton, Adzerk, Appia, Argyle Social, Columns, Danny Olinsky, DejaMi, Digitalsmiths, ExitEvent, Ganesh Karthik Bonala, HireNetworks, icontact, Idea Fund Partners, Intersouth, Joe Procopio, Loyalese, Netsertive, Plotwatt, Pongageddon, Preation, Robbie Allen, Robinson Bradshaw & Hinton, Slawek Pruchnik, Southern Capitol, Square One Bank, StatSheet, Viewpoint
Posted in Carolinas, Columns, North Carolina, Viewpoint | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
 DURHAM, NC – Just in time for the biggest event of the college basketball season, StatSheet has launched what is says is the next generation of trash talking. The company says its new “StatSmack” application serves up the empirical proof you need to convince your friends you know who has the edge and why.
StatSheet says its programmers have been busy loading both on-court and off-court data into their proprietary database of over a billion statistics. And now with StatSmack, the everyday fan can easily access all that data. StatSmack automatically highlights your team’s strengths versus those of others. Users simply select their favorite team from a drop-down box and select another team to “smack,” then it’s game on.
StatSmack analyzes StatSheet’s database to find the key areas where your school excels. Whether it’s head-to-head record over 30 years, NCAA tournament wins, winning percentage in close games or even who has a better graduation rate or taller players — the comparisons don’t stop. However, in the spirit of fair play, it is easy for your friend to turn the tables on you, as the StatSmack database plays no favorites. The StatSmack application also makes it simple to share your “smacks” via Facebook®, Twitter® or e-mail.
“As diehard sports fans, we wanted to elevate the art of trash talking among friends by giving everyone easy access to the data they need to make their case. And if they don’t know how to make their case, our software will do it for them,” states StatSheet founder and CEO Robbie Allen. “Here at StatSheet we have members of our management team from both Duke and UNC, so we know a thing or two about trash talking.”
“StatSmack turns the March ritual of searching for the right stats to make a case for your team into a science—with only a couple clicks of a mouse, we do all the work for you,” says StatSheet COO Scott Frederick. “We aim to arm trash talkers everywhere with the statistical data they need to empirically show that their respective teams are better than any other on the planet—at least at something.”
Fans can reach StatSmack directly at bit.ly/statsmack, from the StatSheet homepage at www.statsheet.com or from any of the team sites in the StatSheet network.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: basketball statistics, Duke Univeristy basketball, Final Four, NCAA, Robbie Allen, Scott Frederick, StatSheet, StatSmack, trash talking, UNC basketball
Posted in Carolinas, Internet/New Media, IT, North Carolina | No Comments »
Friday, March 11th, 2011
By Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio
I’m sorry this took so long to write. Atlanta is kind of far away.
But I left behind the palatial confines of the Ritz Carlton Atlanta, an ironically trashed hotel room, and the remnants of Southeast Venture Conference 2011 with two key pieces of information.
The good news is, the long tail effects of the Great Recession are finally starting to wane, meaning venture investment is undergoing its first spring-like thaw. The bad news is there’s a bubble forming.
The clouds have parted, and now the sky is falling.
Coincidentally enough, it appears that the two days over which SEVC11 was held (March 2nd and 3rd) were the total sum of the post-recession-pre-bubble era. I hope that you enjoyed them as much as I did, although I’ll probably forever regret the fact that I spent close to 50% of the new-new-new-Internet-boom kind of drunk and/or asleep.
At least I was in the right place at the right time.
Bubbludicrous
Before anyone panics and sells all their tech stocks, again, let me tell you a little something about the physics of bubbles. Wait. Stay with me. I’m not going to get into actual physics, and I can already see your eyes glazing over and I’m only thinking about typing the words “dot com.”
(Which, by the way, is the only context in which you hear that term used anymore. Have you noticed? Nobody ever says, “I’m going to work for a dot com,” and phrases like “dot com opportunity” and “dot com play” have pretty much vanished, even though the industry is still growing and you can’t say the name of most web addresses without saying the words “dot com.” It literally went Hasselhoff.)
It’s a common misconception that bubbles occur when too many people start doing too many things in whatever industry the bubble is in. For example, the conventional wisdom is that the dot com bubble formed when too many websites went up and the real estate bubble formed when too many people bought houses.
This is not true.
Radical Bubblism
The truth is, bubbles form when too many people start doing stupid things in whatever industry the bubble is in.
The dot com bubble formed when too many websites with no discernable way to make money started raising astronomical amounts of capital at batshit crazy valuations.
The real estate bubble formed when too many people bought houses using loans with interest rates that were set to explode like a pipe bomb.
They’re called “balloon payments” and nobody put two and two together?
The Salad Days of Bubble
I was too young to attend any sort of venture conference between 1996 and 1999, but I can imagine what those presentations were like. A bunch of former Fortune 500 executives mid-life-crisising by pimping the magic attributes of cyberspace and its uncanny and totally provable ability to turn web pages into dollar bills.
“And in conclusion, we’re asking for $1,000,000 to $300,000,000 in order to discombobulate our paradigms and timeshift our synergies. If you take another look at our hockey stick, I’m sure you’ll agree that our estimate of $600 per eyeball is actually quite conservative. And now, enjoy the comedy stylings of Andrew Dice Clay.”
Did I nail it?
That Was So Then
At SEVC this year, the early-stage companies looked nothing like those early stage companies. In fact, they didn’t even resemble the companies we were talking about two years ago. Back in 2009, it was all guts. And by “guts,” I mean tons of bio and medical on one end and energy and telecom on the other.
Tell me that doesn’t feel unsexy like 1995.
And that might be part of the problem. The period from 1996 to 1999, thanks to mass acceptance of the Interwebs, was marked by unprecedented acceleration from solid consumer ideas built on a new technology (search engines) to entire industries built to look like they were built on new technology but really could have been mail-order companies.
So since 2009 looked so much like 1995, it’s sort of natural to expect that 2011 might play out like 2000, and that we’re on the verge of sprouting our next jillion-dollar dot com play from these promising early stage seeds.
Two Things Wrong With That
First of all, most of the people involved with the original bubble, the ones who in 1999 were jumping up and down screaming about how stupid all this was, we’re still here. And we aren’t jumping up and down yet.
The most egregious offense so far is Groupon, but it doesn’t take a degree in astro-physics or a the ability to suspend a massive amount of disbelief to understand how they make money.
So There’s Time
And second, these early stage companies not only don’t look anything like those bubble companies, they don’t act like them either.
At SEVC11, I overheard more than one investor make the assessment that these early-stage companies were solid, impressive, and ahead of the curve. The vast majority were already generating revenue, in some cases in the tens of millions per year.
The asks were also low, usually in the $3 to $4 million dollar range, and the reasoning was sound. Buy equipment. Hire sales staff. Expand into X vertical.
Nobody was up on stage presenting a deck full of dreams and rainbows. Nobody was wearing an expensive suit and waving around a business plan. Nobody had that look in their eyes, you know that one, the Easy Money look.
Maybe I’m Half-Browser
We know what mobile and social are, there’s no funky magic this time around. And we’re treating them for what they are: technical tools, not destinations. That’s the main difference
But be diligent. If I report back from SEVC12 yammering on about one-stop mobile apps for all your pool-cleaning-supply needs or building the world’s premiere social snorkeling network, then it might be time to back up and get out of the way.
Joe Procopio heads up product engineering for sports media startup StatSheet. He also owns startup consulting firm Intrepid Company and creative network Intrepid Media (Intrepid Media.com). Yeah, he just referenced Rodney Dangerfield’s worst movie from the 80s. What? Joe can be reached via Twitter: twitter.com/jproco.
TechMedia, which presents the SEVC, is holding its next event, the Digital Summit, in Atlanta May 16-17 at the Cobb Galleria.
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: Atlanta, bubble, column, dot com opportunity, dot com play, Groupon, Intrepid Co., Intrepid Media, Joe Procopio, SEVC, Southeast Venture Conference, StatSheet
Posted in Carolinas, Columns, Georgia, Internet/New Media, IT, North Carolina, Viewpoint | 1 Comment »
Friday, November 12th, 2010
By Allan Maurer
CARY, NC – North Carolina-based Statsheet could put journalists out of business–at least those dealing with statistics oriented sports stories.
The company, which raised $1.3 million in financing led by Valhalla Partners in August, has launched a network of 345 sites, one for each NCAA Division I college basketball team, with all the content produced by Statsheet’s robots.
The company developed a content algorithm, partly designed and engineered by TechJournal South columnist Joe Procopio, that writes completely auto-generated posts.
Founder Robbie Allen says, “With UNC, Duke, and NC State located right here, we’re used to tons of coverage for our teams. But for smaller schools especially, StatSheet might be their only option. This gives us the ability to blog for every team in Division I without an army of journalists available to attend every game.”
Atlanta-based Greg Foster, a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and former Turner Broadcasting executive says, and long-time advisor to the company said, “StatSheet’s application of technology and automation in this arena redefines the way that sports content is delivered. This is a real game changer.”
The company stores and updates more than 500 million different sports stats and analyzes up to 10,000 data points and 4,000 potential phrases to generate a story.
We first reported the coming creation of “artificial journalists” in our report on the company’s raise in August.
Allen explains that “70 percent of sports content is based on stats. Our technology goes through the stats, does a ton of analysis, and bakes it into stories that we can spit out quickly.” He says the company has identified about 20 types of sports stories it can automate.
The automated story technology may have applications in other areas, Allen adds, but right now the company is focused on sports.
TechCrunch reviewed some of the robot-produced stories and concluded that “It’s not exactly riveting sports journalism, but if all you want is the facts, it does the job.”
Both Allen and Procopio will be at Tech Media’s Internet Summit in Raleigh, NC, Nov. 17-18, which expects a capacity crowd of more than 1500 people.
Tags: college basketball sites, content algoritm, Greg Foster, Joe Procopio, Robbie Allen, robot journalists, StatSheet
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
 RALEIGH, NC – North Carolina State University, in partnership with Southern Capitol Ventures, a North Carolina-based early-stage venture capital firm, is expanding a program launched three years ago to showcase some of Research Triangle Park’s biggest technology success stories to students in NC State’s Entrepreneurship Initiative .
The expanded program will now include students from other regional universities including Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The goal is to have students benefit from the exposure to all the companies they meet and begin to collaborate on their own ventures.
The next event will be held on October 22, 2010, with approximately 20 students from three universities participating.
Triangle Start-up Tour
The Triangle Start-Up Tour has experienced outstanding participation over the last three years with the participation of following companies:
Argyle Social, Bandwidth.com, Bluestripe Software, Bronto Software, Burt’s Bees, Canvas On Demand, Capitol Broadcasting, ChannelAdvisor, Cisco, Cree, Digitalsmiths, eTix, Global Value Commerce, Hosted Solutions, iContact, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Pocketgear, Preation, Red Hat, ReverbNation, SAS, SciQuest, SchoolDude, SchoolHouse, ShareFile, Spoonflower, Square 1 Bank, StatSheet, StrikeIron, The Venue Network, Therasim and Zift Solutions.
This program is similar in many ways to the NC State Entrepreneurship Initiative’s annual Spring Break field trip to Silicon Valley, where students have toured companies like Facebook, Apple, Google and Kleiner Perkins.
Usually, a founder or senior-level executive talks about the history of the company, what they are doing today and answers questions from students. Dr. Tom Miller, the EI’s executive director and vice provost for Distance Education and Learning Technology, has led that Silicon Valley trip for the last eight years.
Better known in Silicon Valley than our own backyard
“Several years ago, Bill Campbell, the chairman of Intuit, heard we were coming to town and changed his schedule so that he could meet with our students. I realized then that we were better known in Silicon Valley than in our own backyard, and that we should be giving our students the opportunity to interact with the entrepreneurial companies and thought leaders in our state,” said Dr. Tom Miller.
“Three years ago, we launched this program to build greater awareness so that students are exposed to some of the great technology development happening here in North Carolina,” said Jason Caplain, general partner at Southern Capitol Ventures.
“We continue to be impressed with the caliber of the students that are graduating from universities in North Carolina, and we hope this added network helps retain more students here in the region.”
Tags: Argyle Social, Bandwidth.com, Bluestripe Software, Bronto Software, Burt’s Bees, Canvas On Demand, Capitol Broadcasting, ChannelAdvisor, Cisco, Cree, Digitalsmiths, Duke University, eTix, Global Value Commerce, hosted solutions, icontact, Inspire Pharmaceuticals, NCSU, PocketGear, Preation, Red Hat, ReverbNation, SAS, SchoolDude, SchoolHouse, SciQuest, ShareFile, Southern Capitol Ventures, Spoonflower, Square 1 Bank, StatSheet, StrikeIron, The Venue Network, Therasim, Triangle Startup Tour expanding, UNC Chapel Hill, Zift Solutions
Posted in Carolinas, Events, North Carolina | No Comments »
Thursday, August 5th, 2010
By Allan Maurer
 CARY, NC – StatSheet, a first-in-class sports media company delivering online sports data visualization and analysis, has secured its first round of venture capital funding, led by Valhalla Partners.
The company has already hired a developer team to expand its offerings and automate creation of new content. Thus far, StatSheet has been a one-man operation. “We’re up to nine people counting me,” says Robbie Allen, founder and CEO of StatSheet, and former Distinguished Engineer, IT at Cisco, who has done everything at the company up to now.
IDEA Fund Partners, and several other prominent investors also participated in the round. Valhalla General Partner Scott Frederick and Atlanta entrepreneur and former Turner Broadcasting executive Greg Foster have been named to the company’s board of directors.
“Financial backing from industry leaders like these will help us more quickly deliver the next generation online sports experience,” Allen says.
Team specific sites being developed
The company’s current platform at StatSheet.com, allows sports fans unique access to in-depth analysis and data on hundreds of teams and thousands of players across decades of sports events. Users can run queries on data, instantly build charts and graphs, and customize their view of relevant information.
In addition, the company’s Embed StatSheet service provides media companies and bloggers the ability to insert professional sports stats, content, visualizations, charts and interactive features that display countless derivatives of sports data.
This Fall, the company plans to roll out an extensive network of team-specific sites powered by a central automated publishing system. Sites will be automatically updated with relevant content such as game previews, injury updates and recaps.
Foster, a long-time advisor to the company said, “StatSheet’s application of technology and automation in this arena redefines the way that sports content is delivered. This is a real game changer.”
Coming: an “artificial journalist”
In the fall, the company plans to create an “artificial journalist” that takes college basketball data and “writes” a story that 90 percent of readers would be unable to tell from one written by a human journalist. After launching the project based on NCAA basketball, he plans to expand it to NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB games.
Allen explains that “70 percent of sports content is based on stats. We’re developing a technology that will go through the stats, do a ton of analysis and bake it into our technology so we can spit out stories quickly.” The automated story technology may have applications in other areas, Allen adds, but right now the company is focused on sports. “We’re in the middle of developing it,” says Allen.
He says StatSheet has identified 20 different types of sports stories it can automate. Many sports stories written by human journalists are actually rather formulistic in nature, he notes.
That’s just what journalists need, automated competition. We’re curious to see how the “artificial journalist” project works out, but we confess its one area of technology we don’t necessarily want to see expand into other areas – tech reporting, for instance. The project is slated to start this summer.
Allen tells us that StatSheet may look for a larger round down the road if nothing else, such as an acquisition, happens in the meantime. The company could be attractive to any number of buyers. ESPN, for instance, maintains one of the most complete, active and successful interactive sports networks online.
Right now, though, Allen says, “It’s hard to forecast what the next three months will look like with all the opportunities we’re going after.”
For TechJournal South’s profile of the company see: StatSheet helps sports buffs track all the numbers.
To contact TechJournal South Editor & Writer Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournalSouth dot com.
Tags: artificial journalist, Cary, financing, Greg Foster, IDEA Fund, NC, Robbie Allen, Scott Frederick, sports stats and analysis, StatSheet, Valhalla
Posted in Carolinas, Internet/New Media, IT, Money, North Carolina | No Comments »
|
