Website:  Rotowhine

Interview With:  Jeff Andriesse

How many founders does Rotowhine have and what are their names?

Rotowhine was founded by me (Jeff Andriesse) and Greg Fox.

What are the founders’ backgrounds and qualifications?

Greg and I both have backgrounds as sports information directors for universities, where we did a lot of things that have helped us make the transition to Rotowhine smooth. We were both writers and editors who managed web sites. In terms of fantasy sports, it is just something he and I have done for a while now. We are pretty insane about it. That’s probably helped us as well. If we were rational, this would never have gotten off the ground.

What does your website do?

We are a glorified blog, in essence. We each write long columns and short blog posts. We also have podcasts and a message board.

When did you launch?

We launched in July of 2007.

How have you built your community?

Word of mouth through friends and family to start out. We have slowly gotten hits through Google Ad placement and some link sharing. We are still in the infant stages of this thing. Our budget is very small for advertising, so we are biding our time and hoping that we get noticed. You have to really believe in your content for that to happen.  There has been a lot of positive feedback, so that’s a good sign. Our goal is to be one of those Bookmarks everyone goes to during downtime at work.

What types of marketing do you utilize?

Google Ads, primarily.

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

We have no revenue streams. We are not selling fantasy game playing or gambling, merely providing content. Thinking about Rotowhine actually producing consistent revenue seems very far away. That said, it has never been why we started this. Rotowhine actually began several years ago with a blog at Blogspot and we have only recently launched the site as it looks now. In short, it is a labor of love. We’re both keeping our day jobs for the moment.

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

We are completely self funded.

Are you looking for more funding?

Ideally, we will find investors who can enable us to do some aggressive marketing. Right now we are just looking to get noticed by the right people who may like what we’re doing enough to either use our content on their sites or hire us to write. We just entered into a deal with FantasyFanatics.com to produce a weekly fantasy basketball column for them in exchange for placing their RSS feed on our web site.

What is your favorite feature on your site?

We have advertised for guest writers, and while we have only used one person’s submissions thus far, I think our Guest Column program has a lot of potential. We aren’t paying, but we want to become a web site that is more than just two people writing everything. Our guest columns allow us to start building a real community. With our backgrounds, we are pretty picky as to who we give a column to. Nate Sullivan is a guy we met through this web site, and he’s submitted some stuff. He’s a very good young writer. We’d love to build a stable of columnists and bloggers. Right now, in fact, we are starting a world-wide search for a blogger who can take over the Daily Whine section of our site and allow Greg and I to focus on columns and special features.

What type(s) of technology do you use?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the fine work of my colleague Chris Bernardi, our webmaster. He’s made the site what it is: much more than a blog. We use WordPress for our content management but thanks to Chris we’ve incorporated it into a unique-looking site. We have podcast and message board capabilities, so we’ve incorporated a lot of things into the site.

Any bold predictions for sports and technology in the future?

As long as there are servers humming, sports will thrive on the web. Fantasy sports is a booming hobby with web sites galore. Our task is daunting in the face of so much quantity and quality. I don’t think any prediction regarding fantasy sports would be bold at this point. Anything is possible. It is an exciting time.