The Cupertino Courier
Business
Website gets the sports fans off bench, playing
By Crystal Lu
A local start-up company has seized on the timing of the Super Bowl to publicize the sports fans' networking website it established last September.
"We're actively seeking publicity this month because February is the month of Super Bowl," said Jay Srinivasan, CEO of FantasySportsMatrix.com. "It's the peak of sports interest around the world."
FantasySportsMatrix.com provides an online community for sports fans to share their passion by submitting articles, blogs and videos or participating in polls and forums.
The site currently has more than 500 registered users and receives about 5,000 visitors every month, according to Michael Vu, CTO of FantasySportsMatrix.com.
Srinivasan, Vu and Vu's brother-in-law, Jim Nguyen, founded the website in Sunnyvale in October 2005. They started in Srinivasan's garage with small investments from their families and friends.
Initially they created a blog site posting their own sports analyses. They decided to make it two-way communication in 2006.
"We realized every sports fan needs an outlet," said Vu.
It took about a year of experimenting and testing to launch the interactive FantasySportsMatrix.com. The site began to generate revenue through advertising from its debut, according to Vu.
"We used Google ads and other online sources to find advertisers, and they agreed to advertise on our site," said Vu.
The advertising revenue allows FantasySportsMatrix to rent an office space at the Plug N' Play Tech Center at 440 N. Wolfe Road. The building is known as a start-up incubator.
"We really appreciate the tech center's low rent," said Nguyen. "This is a low-budget venture."
FantasySportsMatrix.com has spent only about $20,000 since its founding, according to Vu. Now the company is looking for investors with a target of $500,000 to $1 million.
"If you look at what we've done on low budget, imagine what we can do with bigger investments," said Srinivasan.
The company needs more funding to refine its technology and to establish relations with professional athletes, teams, sports channels and radio stations.
"We'd like to be a bridge between old sports media and new sports media," said Srinivasan.
"We love sports," added Vu. "We don't count how many hours we work because we enjoy it."
Nguyen, Srinivasan and Vu are the only full-time staff. The company also has 10 interns who work off-site. The interns are students going to local or out-of-state universities. They produce content for the website and make suggestions on improving it.
Nguyen, who manages all the interns, has a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of California-Berkeley and a law degree from Santa Clara University.
Srinivasan graduated from UC Davis with a degree in computer engineering in 2001.
Vu earned a bachelor's degree in cognitive science with a concentration on computer science from UC Berkeley in 2003.