Who says North Carolina isn't a good place to start a tech company? Definitely not me. I'm happy to announce that StatSheet has been awarded a $47,000 grant from NC-IDEA, an organization chartered with "supporting North Carolina’s economic development by ensuring young, innovative companies grow, create jobs and become contributing business leaders". StatSheet is one of five companies to receive an award out of 117 applicants. Read more.

What kind of strings are attached to the "$47,000 grant"? None. It is a grant, not a loan or investment. No equity was exchanged. No promises for future involvement with the venture capital arm of NC-IDEA (although they would like to be considered). Essentially it is free money. It also comes with support from the NC-IDEA network as well as access to a MBA-student intern for the summer (more on this later).

I don't know if other states have similar organizations, but this should be viewed as a big benefit to lean-startups in North Carolina. You could go the tech incubator route (like YCombinator) and get $6K in exchange for equity and access to resources, or if you live in NC you have the chance to score up to $50K with no strings and still get access to a great entrepreneurial community plus an intern for the summer!

I funded StatSheet for the first two years and the NC-IDEA grant will fund the third year. It is my hope I can reach break even by next June and not need any additional funding (unless I decide to grow more aggressively and take on angel/VC funding).

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

(Comment over at Hacker News)

The purpose of the StatSheet Network is pretty simple. I want to do interesting things with sports stats on the web. My goal is also straightforward: to create the most popular sports-related websites and web applications. Placing advertising on StatSheet does not support my purpose or my goal. It actually runs counter to both. Based on this simple logic, I'm in the process of removing every bit of advertising from the StatSheet Network properties (including statsheet.com).

Let's face it, no one likes to see ads on websites. They take away from form, functionality, or both! And that was the case on StatSheet. While I didn't plaster ads across the network, I did put a large banner ad at the top of every page.

There is a sad truth to web advertising. Unless you are 1) willing to put a half dozen ad units on every page and 2) serving tens of millions of page views per month, advertising will not help that much when it comes to paying a startup's bills (even a lean startup like StatSheet).

You can't really dip your toe into the advertising pool to see how it goes. If you want to make decent money, you have to go all in. And I'm not prepared to do that. A driving force behind StatSheet is to create the best user experience for consuming sports content on the web. Fortunately, that's pretty easy to do in the sports space because most sports sites either suck from a usability perspective or are littered with advertising. I can easily differentiate StatSheet by not showing any ads. None of the big sports media websites (ESPN, Yahoo!, etc) could get away with that. This is another aspect that makes it hard to compete with StatSheet.

But how will I pay the bills? The "no ads" lightbulb went off for me when I discovered a new business model that could potentially be pretty significant, which I'll write about in a future post. Instead of placing ads for some other company's services on StatSheet, I'll put highly targeted blurbs about the StatSheet subscription service. The goal won't be to hope a bunch of people click on a Google ad (and therefore leave StatSheet), but they'll click on the link that describes more about the StatSheet subscription offering.

Does this mean I'll never put outside ads on StatSheet again? Never say never. If I get enough page views consistently where the economics of advertising makes sense and I need additional revenue to supplement my other business models, I'd consider it. But I'd likely employ "sponsored" spots instead of Google Adsense type advertising.

Since I pulled down the ads, the StatSheet sites are already looking better to me. It's amazing how much cleaner a no-ads site looks compared to its ad-filled counterpart.

Here are a few recent articles and videos about how advertising is losing favor in the startup world:

• Does Twitter Hate Advertising?
• A Case for Non-Ad Revenue on the Web
• Ad Revenue on the Web? No Sure Bet
• Marketing Talks@Google: Fred Wilson
  

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

Today is the two year anniversary of StatSheet's incorporation, and I'm more excited about the future than ever! StatSheet is maturing at the rate of a two year old toddler (I should know, my daughter just turned 2 as well).  I've made a lot of progress, but there is still a long way to go.  Many in the web startup world expect a million users and millions in revenue by year two, but not me.  As a one-man operation I have some inherent limitations that impede fast growth, but my current pace allows me to evolve organically instead of synthetically.  I'm following the opportunities as I see them develop instead of trying to plan out all my options from day 1 to please a VC or board of directors.

I didn't have all the answers when I started StatSheet. I had an idea that I thought would resonate with sports fans (ie, make sports stats more interesting on the web), but I didn't really have a clue how I would make money from it. I had some vague notions about a subscription service and advertising revenue, but that wasn't my initial focus. While there are certain things I'm not able to accomplish because I haven't taken outside funding, staying solo has given me complete flexibility.  Fortunately I'm in a position where I can continue to fund StatSheet for the near future.  That means I can take risks with things that no one in this space really can.  My larger competitors can't possibly think of expending resources in a down economy on something that has no obvious monetary return (e.g. StatPlot). But I can! I can dabble. I can try new stuff. I can push the envelope. And that's exactly what I'll continue to do. I want to make it difficult to compete with StatSheet. There is a method to my madness, I assure you.

The past 6 months have been a bit of a whirlwind. It started with the Crunchies nomination which brought a lot of attention to what I'm doing (I was the only single-person company nominated). I've received a significant amount of acquisition interest from a variety of companies, both large and small. Four venture capital firms have contacted me out of the blue about wanting to invest in StatSheet. I have options.  And if I have options now when the economy sucks, I should have even better options when the economy turns around. It's for that reason that I've decided to stay solo. I'm having too much fun and the opportunity in front of me is too big to sell-out now.

Expect to see regular blog posts from now on. I want to write more about what's going on at StatSheet and some of my future plans.

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

The launch of StatPlot yesterday was successful. Several news outlets picked up the story. ReadWriteWeb wrote a glowing review, which also made it to the NYTimes. StatPlot also made it to the front page of Hacker News for several hours. And StatPlot has been tweeted over 200 times on Twitter.

Here is a sampling of some of the feedback I've received:

- StatPlot is the newest project of sports statistic aggregator StatSheet and you're likely to enjoy it whether you're a sports fan or not.

- Thanks for leading the way in truly democratizing data visualization, StatSheet.

- Your site is very cool! I teach a course in quantitative analysis and the info you have will provide me with tons of lesson plan material ... THANKS! 

- Cool new find - StatPlot lets you easily and quickly make charts of stats for your fav sports.

- StatPlot is internet sports analysis hotness

- Stat Plot may work with this lesson plan I found a couple weeks back.

- First impressions: this is awesome

Posted by Robbie | Permalink | Comments

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