Website: LocalReplay
Interview With: Galeal (Gil) Zino
Is their more then one founder? If so, who are they?
Jordan Hunter – founder responsible for hardware and database architecture.
Mike Jaffe – founder responsible for software development.
What is your background and qualifications?
50% sports fanatic, 50% technology geek, 100% entrepreneur. I’ve led software and technology teams for most of the last ten years, building solutions that range from patented VoIP software to LocalReplay.com. I was a year-round athlete at the high school and college levels, coach, athletic director and now parent to young athletes.
What does your website do?
LocalReplay enables everyone involved in local sports – from nationwide sports organizations to individual videographers – to build interactive, multimedia sports websites to meet their web needs. Teams use the LocalReplay platform to host their team site with schedules, statistics, rosters, etc. Organizations and events build sites to promote and market their organization or event, usually including videos, photos and social networking for their members. Individuals start sites that range from sharing highlights with grandma to online resumes for recruiters. The LocalReplay platform is the first to serve entire local sports communities, not just for example high profile athletes or pro sports fans.
How do you generate revenue? If through ads, what ad network do you use?
We are starting to roll out premium services such as custom media production and virtual training in which LocalReplay shares revenue with our partners. We also generate revenue through ads, using a mix of direct sales/sponsorships, local sales (via LocalReplay teams) and three ad networks, AdSense, Burst and soon SportsGenic.
How have your marketed your site?
We have a tremendous volunteer team that has been doing event-based marketing in a few cities. We’ve done limited online advertising (90% of our traffic is organic). Our best marketing has been the leagues and teams that love their LocalReplay sites – they spread the word for us.
Funding: Self funded, Angel Investment, or Venture Capital?
We’ve raised $600,000 in Angel and founder capital.
Are You currently looking for funding?
Yes, we are currently looking at potential additional Angel funding and potential VC funding.
What type(s) of technology do you use?
LocalReplay is built on LAMP, using EC2 for computing and S3 for storage.
What is your favorite feature on your website?
The team websites have changed the game from the web 1.0 world. They are self-serve, interactive, support unlimited video and photo, include personal sites for everyone involved with the team, support social networking, and feature integrated communication solutions.
The communications aspect is often cited as a favorite from team admins – for example, a coach sends a text from the field to a LR short-code saying that the field is too wet to play and practice is canceled. LR then multicasts that out via text, email and web to everyone involved with the team. An entire phone tree replaced with one text message.
Any Bold Predictions for Sports and Technology in the future?
We are near inflection points in a few critical areas including mobile broadband and photo/video technology. So services will emerge that we aren’t even thinking about today. From the LocalReplay perspective, we want to be “in the field of play” during their development, so we can provide the relevant ones to our users (directly or via partners). Virtual training is one service in the very near future that we are currently working on with a couple of partners. As an example of one further into the future:
1. You are at a game with 1000s of other fans. We know this via the GPS in your mobile device and/or your LocalReplay settings.
2. You take a photo/video with your digital camera/camcorder that has a WiFi or 3G-data chip. The photo or video is sent to LocalReplay via that data connection.
3. LocalReplay multicasts the photo or video to all the other fans at the game that have subscribed to the service, or help package it up for peer-to-peer delivery via a connection like WiFi or Bluetooth. Maybe with a link to an online poll – vote if it really was a touchdown. Instant replay for everyone at a local sports event without a multi-million dollar jumbotron. Personalized, social instant replay – watch it as often as you want, share it with people there or not there, comment on it, create a poll from it, save it anywhere, mash it up with another application, etc.
