Website:  www.crowdpicks.com

Interview with: Jeff Murnane

How many founders does Crowdpicks have and what are there names?

Two founders, myself, Jeff Murnane, & my business partner Cassius Almeida

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

We both worked at TD Ameritrade for over 10 years.  I was director of Competitive Intelligence inside the business strategy area and Cassius was a director in Product Development.  Many of the current trading tools at TD Ameritrade, Cassius invented.  Many also were eventually patented by TD Ameritrade.

What does your website do? 

It’s a sports social network where members build their sports credibility through picking games.  Our picking engine goes a little further than most sites however as you make an exact score prediction, not just a winner.  We then aggregate the score predictions to come up with a consensus score.  We also allow members access to this pick data where they can filter out different levels of member accuracy to get a smarter aggregate prediction.

When did you launch? 

August 2007

Has it been easy or hard building your community?

Both.  We knew going in that we could build the technology.  We also knew that the hardest part would be building the community.  However, we are seeing faster growth than we initially predicted.

What types of marketing do you do? 

Not much.  We have some banner ads floating around out there and we’ve had a few press releases, but nothing major as of yet.  We plan on changing this and marketing more extensively in 2008

Do you have any revenue streams besides advertisement? Who is your ad provider?

Just ad revenue at this point and only using Google adsense currently

Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?

100% self funded

Are you looking for more funding? 

Yes, currently we are pitching several firms in an attempt to acquire outside capital.

What is your favorite feature on your site? 

The trophies! They were put in almost as an afterthought, but they quickly became very addictive for our members.  Members can earn unique trophies for reaching certain achievements.  the size of ones trophy case quickly became a bragging point.  After that I will say that our revenue sharing program which hasn’t been implemented yet, will probably become the most unique and exciting feature on the site.  this should be out early 2008.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

I see the convergence of different medias as a greatly unexplored opportunity.  As TV and the web continue to grow together, along with mobile devices, I think that you will start to see the fan’s role become even more interactive with their favorite teams and players.

STN’s Take:

We have actually already featured 2 pick/social network sites called The Fan Yard and Picktastic and we feel that Crowd Picks has similar options but does a better job of providing more action on their site.  They have a solid profile page and places to submit news, submit videos, and write a blog.  We also like the Crowd Filter option which allows you to find the consensus predictions and there are also ways to filter out certain things as well. Unfortunately Crowd Picks user interface and design is not nearly as good as the other two sites.  Although the trophies look good, the rest of the site has an old school feel to it.  Check it out and let us know what you think.