Website: YouCastr

Interview With: Ariel Diaz

Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?

Yes, there are 4 co-founders, and currently a total of 5 people on the team. Ariel Diaz, Co-Founder and CEO. Jeff Hebert, Co-Founder and COO. Matt Hodgson, Co-Founder and CTO. Brad Johnson, Co-Founder and CSO. Colin Ulen, Chief Architect.

What are your founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

We have a very strong team with a diverse skill set and a strong work ethic. Matt leads the development, and has done a brilliant job building our website from scratch over the past 9 months. Jeff manages the product roadmap and user experience, combining his programming skills to help on development and a good eye for usability. Colin has experience in everything from production level web services to low-level electronic device programming and embedded systems design, and is creating the underlying framework to ensure YouCastr’s scalability. Brad has over 15 years of experience in entrepreneurial settings within large companies, including starting a few divisions internationally. Prior to YouCastr, he founded Intrepid Learning Solutions, the foremost provider of consulting, outsourcing and research training services. I have worked as a Program Manager in the Automotive Industry, including internationally, and most recently as a Management consultant for a boutique strategic consulting firm in Boston. Brad has an MBA from Darden, and the rest of us have Masters in Engineering Management from the Thayer School of Engineering and the Tuck Business School (graduate schools at Dartmouth). Colin and Matt studied electrical engineering, and Jeff and I studied mechanical engineering during our undergraduate years.

You can find out more about the team at www.youcastr.com/info/team

What does your website do?

YouCastr is creating a “virtual sports bar”, where fans interact with each other before, during and after a game, making the experience of following their favorite sports more fun and social. YouCastr makes this possible by enabling fans to broadcast their own live audio commentary, chat with other fans in real time, and create archived sports shows about their favorite teams, whether it’s a European Soccer team, or their high school basketball team. Everybody loves being at the game or watching it with friends at home or at a bar, but a lot of times, those aren’t viable options. YouCastr wants to bridge the gap between being there and watching alone on TV. It’s a little like BuddyTV for sports.

Are you worried about any legal ramifications from live broadcasts?

YouCastr allows users to create shows about their favorite team or topic, broadcast live events for high-schools and club sports, and provided additional commentary for televised events. We often get the question if there are legal issues with professional leagues. We do not believe so. We view providing additional commentary for televised sporting events that may include professional teams that is like watching and listening to a televised game with your friends at a sports bar and chatting about it –however, YouCastr has created a “virtual sports bar” where friends can talk and interact about the game they are all watching and listening on television. Rather than talking with a friend over the phone while watching a game, you communicate through the internet.

What is your favorite part about YouCastr?

It makes it much more fun to watch a game when you can share it with other fans and friends.

Does YouCastr have an option to embed the broadcast on another websites?

Yes, YouCastr members can share their content in a widget. The widget can be placed on their blog, or on a series of social networks. We are constantly looking at ways to make it easier for users to promote and distribute their content, and will be looking to expand our options in this area.

How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?

We are generating revenue through a mix of display ads, audio / video ads, premium subscriptions, and professional distribution packages. For our display ads, we are using a series of ad networks, so we can get the best rates. We are using Right Media to manage the different ad networks, ad well as the ads we broker ourselves. Right Media makes it really easy to manage this.

How have your marketed your site?

So far we have done very little marketing. We rely on a lot of word of mouth growth, and are now beginning to support this with some press activities such as blogs and traditional media. As we move forward, we will be using a mix of online and offline marketing. The online marketing is very common in this space, and includes advertising on Google and Facebook, SEO, and other partnerships. The offline marketing efforts are often overlooked by internet startups, but since we see sports fans and athletes with very active offline lives, we want to make sure we reach out to them there as well.

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

We have been self-funded so far, and just closed an initial angel round which will enable us to more aggressively market the site and build additional features.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

We have built a custom website on top of a lot of proven technologies that are used extensively in the marketplace today. The site is built on Ruby on Rails, and uses Flash to stream our live and archived content. We are using a series of back end providers to provide a flexible and scalable architecture.

Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?

New technologies such as live video from mobile devices, increasing convergence of Internet and Television, improved real time interactivity and an ability to broadcast an infinite number of channels will change the way we follow traditional sports, as well as open up a whole new world of sports that was not attainable with the limited distribution capability of yesterday’s technology.

STN’s Take:

YouCastr is a great idea. We actually had thoughts about starting a website but our technological know how limits us to this blog. Whether you want to do a podcast about your favorite team or do a whole broadcast, YouCastr is a great option. The site looks great and the user interface is amazing. They do a very good job of organizing all the content under scheduled games and it will be interesting to see how the community grows.

If you are a person who already does a podcast, there is no reason not to upload it to this website. There are tons of passionate people already on the site. These are the people you want to get your Podcast in front of. For the people who are interested in the sportscasting business you can use this site to see what people think about you.