I had to check the date to see if this wasn't published April 1st. Someone should protect these people against themselves.
Why did no one at the bank said "this might not be the best idea" when the family told they wanted to sell their house to finance the new social media revolution?
I think this is the trouble with being an entrepreneur. You are crazy right up until the moment you are proved right. At which point, the idea is ‘obvious to everyone’.
Of course, most ideas fail. Most entrepreneurs are just proved crazy.
It is a lonely existence where even other entrepreneurs are unsupportive.
These guys have a nice PR piece on the BBC. That will give them a big temporary boost in traffic. Maybe not so crazy?
There are some business which are known to fail miserably.
Like, when you want to lend money to open a restaurant in some places, a reputable bank should be able to tell you that xx% of restaurants go bankrupt within the next 2 years.
...or, if it isn't already being done by Facebook, can't be developed and rolled out incredibly quickly to a billion users if they decide that they like what you're doing and want to do it too.
I agree that it's not a good idea to bet the farm. However, I don't think any government entity stepping in to "protect these people against themselves" is going to solve the problem. Sometimes friendly advice is all one can offer and the rest is up to the man in the arena.
Not sure why it is the banks responsibility. If they sold their home, paid off any outstanding mortgage they are free to do what they want with the remaining money. However it still doesn't mean it was a good idea. What they have failed to see is that other social media companies usually burn other peoples money, and those other people generally are not going to become homeless if their gamble doesn't pay off.
I am hoping that the "we sold our house and cars and everything else" is just some BS to get themselves some publicity because I dont see how their costs are so high that they need to spend so much money on it. With their low numbers they are hardly going to be paying massive sums for hosting their site.
Still doesn't make any sense, most peoples biggest expense is rent/mortgage. And in most cases (all things being equal) mortgage payments are cheaper than rent.
Also mortgage payments can be made smaller (refinance) while rent continues to grow. I'm personally not going to attempt starting a company until I get my mortgage under a certain level.
I pity them; gone are the days when someone could pitch "a social network for X" and an investor would raise and yell "shutup and take my money".
These days, whenever I go to a pitch contest and some poor guy starts with the social blah blah, the jury starts yawning and the participant is quickly dismissed: no one really could explain the business model behind his social network, besides mentioning ads.
So, does anyone know how this sports social network is going to earn money?
The bookies will likely still have better data than you, so I doubt gambling using the data would be a good idea.
But e.g. using the data on the teams people have put together and marketing real bets on their real matches to those players and playing on it accordingly ("your player is playing a real match - show your support here", coupled with e.g. "in game" trophies if you win) might b an option.
The annoying bonus kicker is that the "social"
craze wasn't really social. It was people sitting on their computers. That's why ads were the main way to monetize.
Real social apps can make a lot of money:
* Group Dating
* Group Reservations
* Group Gifts
* Group Rides
* Group Dining
* Group Trips
* Paying for Events
* Group Lessons
* Group Sports
People spend real money on real things. Through your app, which helps them organize. Why not?
But now every time I say it's a "social network for the real world" investors yawn and say no one needs apps to be social. That they just have facebook. LOL.
When was the last time you used Facebook to go out to dinner with friends?
If they are all active in the family project as implied, then I think their children have a high chance of being notable and employable whether or not they make a dent in the market as a startup.
It seems like they are giving their children a chance in life that is a little less morbid than waiting to inherit half a house.
Or perhaps the parents are setting their children up to have to support them in their dotage as they no longer have a home of their own, putting further strain on their children when they may already be facing a difficult economic future. There are ways to do this and selling the farm is one of, if not the, worst ways.
Many parents of that generation leave important jobs to be unemployable, maintain their unrealistic costs of living until or beyond retirement age and leave their children with nothing but complications.
That there might be better ways doesn't mean they are as bad as the average. I'd take 4X at these odds at 10X the average UK salary (even if 2 of them might be short careers) and a possible business over a less than certain chance of 2 mediocre UK employee lives with not as many family obligations. But each to their own.
"many" is unquantifiable but it suggests lots, I don't see that being the case. In the UK house prices tend to result in the parents downsizing to afford retirement and/or end of life care. I'm not saying they should let the kids inherit the house, I'm just saying that they could have ensured that their children did not need to support them when they may be trying to buy their own home or start their own families.
Not to denounce their work but the website and app looks pretty terrible. I would imagine they would have enough funds to hire good developers after selling their house and cars. The article also talks about a funding from a Russian investor.
I was really interested in knowing how and where did they actually spend money. I dug further:
- They have 100-500 installs on app store.
- A good amount of their twitter followers are spam with most of their tweets with keywords such as giveaways and contest.[2]
- Their play by play commentary is coming from performgroup.com. I would think this would be their highest cost.
I imagine the major costs are their living expenses. They've sold their house and cars, but still need somewhere to live, they'll still need to travel and of course eat.
Additional costs could be through marketing, not sure if they're doing paid ads? Or simply the costs of travelling to events and investors to pitch it?
Despite being based in Manchester they seem to have registered their company ('GameDay Xtra Ltd') in Gibraltar. I assume as some sort of Tax Dodge? Or do they incur some other benefit by having an Ltd in Gibraltar vs in the UK?
Registering your company in Gibraltar is a common practice when it comes to gambling site companies in the UK. They could eventually try to dip into that market.
Members get live news feeds of sporting events, form their own groups and networks, follow games play-by-play, and in future will also be able to play bespoke interactive games themselves within the site.
This seems to me like they might have their eyes on fantasy leagues.
I can imagine an app for managing small amateur sports teams, Little Leagues etc. Club secretaries take a lot of time on this work and its pretty thankless, plus they have a modest budget, so something that charges a $50 a year to host your team data with easy to use tools for booking matches, managing email lists etc could be a viable business. But I wouldn't call it a "social network".
there already are companies in this space though. In the UK we have Pitchero (FD: previous employer of mine) who provide a pretty great service for small-to-medium-sized sports teams. I'm sure there are similar offerings in other countries.
There have been countless attempts in this space. IMO, one issue is that the pain points are generally experienced by people who aren't making the decision over what software/app to use for a broader league/competition.
Well, that seems drastic. After reading the article i am not convinced. They don't have the one big argument why one should use their app. Just being a bit better in something is not enough when building something like this (though i don't think they are actually better, just look at their app [0]). I use onefootball and it works fine, i don't even use most of it's features (especially the social-media ones)!
I had a marketing client/photographer have me build a web site for local sport clubs. They updated the site with scores plus thousands of photos of the athletes. The idea was to sell the photos to fans and parents. It was a decent idea, but I think they priced the (digital) photos too high, and the amount of work for the return just never surfaced.
This doesn't sound like an organic growth social network, and I feel they are misjudging the ROI on all the investment of time, effort and money.
Sit at the smaller bar in a very high class London hotel (usually there are two - one intimate and one grand). Wear a good quality suit - no tie. Make sure you're impeccably clean (manicure), but not too tidy. Strike up casual conversation with absolutely anybody who seems up for it: so anyone who is alone and any couples whose conversation is flagging. Always be ready to suggest a glass of champagne. There's no need to lie but always imply you're a guest of the hotel.
Over time you'll get good at measuring people's potential. Rich people in these contexts are always bored. They're always looking for something to play with. Either shopping or investing - or a mix of both. It's intimately connected to their social relationship with the supplier.
It's a lot like being on the game.
Disclosure: I have never done this - however I grew up knowing someone who made their very good living in this way.
My first startup was funded almost that way. One of my co-founders was a navy officer that had a thing for putting on a suit and sitting in fancy bars ordering black russians, and on one of those occasions while we were consiering where to get funding, he got talking to a recently returned long time expat who was wealthy, bored and looking for somewhere to invest. Two weeks later we had the cash in hand.
This was someone who knew nothing about our area. We were starting an ISP and he had never had a computer on his desk (this was '95...) - he'd always had secretaries to do "that stuff"; to him it was pretty much a game and a gamble based on getting on well with my co-founder that evening in a bar.
Come on, this is just a blatant PR piece. Lot's of people do lots of things to fund their struggling startups, but very few get a full article plus advertising photos on the BBC. Well done guys, kudos, but come on there is no story here.
Unless my google-fu has let me down, the father is Perry Hughes a music agent who used to represent Salford born pop-operatic tenor Russell Watson (British mums love 'im). Sounds as if the pair had an acrimonious split and according to this article (http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/local-news/watso...) Russell had to pay out big.
So I'm guessing Perry has a few connections and can get some PR when he wants. Perhaps 'selling one of the family homes' doesn't provide the same punchy headline.
so maybe they sold ONE OF their homes as a funding vehicle and this article made it seem like it was their ONLY home?
if that's the case then that sounds much more reasonable (though still kind of weird; why put your assets on the line when cheaper capital is available? especially if you're well connected and can obtain it?)
I work for a mobile design and development agency. We get many inquiries from clients with zero budget and a "million dollar idea" that is doomed from the start. When they hear the cost, that's usually the last we hear from them.
Looking at the app, I really can't believe they spent this much creating it. My immediate reaction is it's a bad outsourcing job with clipart purchased from Fiverr. Also, the screenshots and App/Play Store presence is just awful.
It would be interesting to see how many of the startups that got really huge had an initially negative reaction on HN. We know that most startups fail, that means GDX (the subject of the article) will probably fail, so all the negativity is really just a statement of the bleeding obvious.
There is a big chicken-and-egg issue here, in that they need to get a large number of users on the site in order to make it somewhat self-sustaining. That pretty much seems to be what is happening now - yes, this is a PR puff piece, that means they're serious about growing the site.
If there's an interesting enough niche, people will come to this. I remember seeing boxrec.com in the very early days; it was still a server under someone's desk and had a handful of users - but the guy who set it up knows boxing inside out. We don't know the background of this family, but I don't think this is just a "let's set up a social network!" hail mary.
The play-by-play looks genuinely interesting, and we know people want to talk sports in real time. They use Twitter for this (poorly), and Facebook, but it's not a venue for hard-core sports fans. If they can bring together detailed play-by-play across a variety of sports, and enable people to talk about it together, and maybe bring in streaming / commentary (maybe this is phase 2), this is a very interesting proposition. Building that kind of audience would be massively difficult of course, but also clearly very valuable. Bet-in-play is huge, and that's just one aspect.
I wish them luck. I hope they're not as all chips-in as described, but it feels to me like an interesting idea that should create a valuable product.
1. An "idea" is nothing. An "idea" is not a competitive advantage. If it does take off in even the slightest, Facebook will just copy it, throw resources behind it and crush them.
2. What is their "unfair advantage"? From what I can tell none of them are developers, designers, or have a network of people that they can leverage in the industry.
I, like most other people here, have what I think is a great idea for business. I'm not going to quit my relatively well paying job for it or risk my family's well being for it.
I'm going to talk to people I know in the industry I'm targeting, I'm going to personally use my skill set to develop the web site and the backend on nights and weekends and host it on AWS.
After I do the first rough design using Bootstrap. I'm sure I can scrounge up enough money to find a real designer to do high fidelity mock ups that I can use to make a presentable site.
The most realistic case is that it will turn into a little extra income. Worse case, I'm out of a few hundred bucks in AWS hosting cost, spent some time getting better at a few technologies, and I have a portfolio of well designed code I can show when I'm interviewing.
doesn't sound all that crazy...already I like their homepage summary better than what I get from the bbc sports section or espn...also this could prove valuable experience for the kids even if this doesn't work, their subsequent attempts might.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 94.4 ms ] threadWhy did no one at the bank said "this might not be the best idea" when the family told they wanted to sell their house to finance the new social media revolution?
Of course, most ideas fail. Most entrepreneurs are just proved crazy.
It is a lonely existence where even other entrepreneurs are unsupportive.
These guys have a nice PR piece on the BBC. That will give them a big temporary boost in traffic. Maybe not so crazy?
Like, when you want to lend money to open a restaurant in some places, a reputable bank should be able to tell you that xx% of restaurants go bankrupt within the next 2 years.
I am hoping that the "we sold our house and cars and everything else" is just some BS to get themselves some publicity because I dont see how their costs are so high that they need to spend so much money on it. With their low numbers they are hardly going to be paying massive sums for hosting their site.
These days, whenever I go to a pitch contest and some poor guy starts with the social blah blah, the jury starts yawning and the participant is quickly dismissed: no one really could explain the business model behind his social network, besides mentioning ads.
So, does anyone know how this sports social network is going to earn money?
If you offer a free fantasy football game and a million players use it, you could probably gamble on sports using the data.
But e.g. using the data on the teams people have put together and marketing real bets on their real matches to those players and playing on it accordingly ("your player is playing a real match - show your support here", coupled with e.g. "in game" trophies if you win) might b an option.
Real social apps can make a lot of money:
* Group Dating * Group Reservations * Group Gifts * Group Rides * Group Dining * Group Trips * Paying for Events * Group Lessons * Group Sports
People spend real money on real things. Through your app, which helps them organize. Why not?
But now every time I say it's a "social network for the real world" investors yawn and say no one needs apps to be social. That they just have facebook. LOL.
When was the last time you used Facebook to go out to dinner with friends?
Who would pay $1/month?
But then if you can freely share anything you could rival netflix?
It seems like they are giving their children a chance in life that is a little less morbid than waiting to inherit half a house.
That there might be better ways doesn't mean they are as bad as the average. I'd take 4X at these odds at 10X the average UK salary (even if 2 of them might be short careers) and a possible business over a less than certain chance of 2 mediocre UK employee lives with not as many family obligations. But each to their own.
I was really interested in knowing how and where did they actually spend money. I dug further:
- They have 100-500 installs on app store.
- A good amount of their twitter followers are spam with most of their tweets with keywords such as giveaways and contest.[2]
- Their play by play commentary is coming from performgroup.com. I would think this would be their highest cost.
- Their site is hosted on aws.
[1] - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.gameda...
[2] - https://twitter.com/GamedayXtra/followers?lang=en
What could be the significant cost here?
Additional costs could be through marketing, not sure if they're doing paid ads? Or simply the costs of travelling to events and investors to pitch it?
Despite being based in Manchester they seem to have registered their company ('GameDay Xtra Ltd') in Gibraltar. I assume as some sort of Tax Dodge? Or do they incur some other benefit by having an Ltd in Gibraltar vs in the UK?
[0]https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.gameda...
This doesn't sound like an organic growth social network, and I feel they are misjudging the ROI on all the investment of time, effort and money.
What path does one take to find themselves in a conversation with foreign investors?
Over time you'll get good at measuring people's potential. Rich people in these contexts are always bored. They're always looking for something to play with. Either shopping or investing - or a mix of both. It's intimately connected to their social relationship with the supplier.
It's a lot like being on the game.
Disclosure: I have never done this - however I grew up knowing someone who made their very good living in this way.
This was someone who knew nothing about our area. We were starting an ISP and he had never had a computer on his desk (this was '95...) - he'd always had secretaries to do "that stuff"; to him it was pretty much a game and a gamble based on getting on well with my co-founder that evening in a bar.
So I'm guessing Perry has a few connections and can get some PR when he wants. Perhaps 'selling one of the family homes' doesn't provide the same punchy headline.
if that's the case then that sounds much more reasonable (though still kind of weird; why put your assets on the line when cheaper capital is available? especially if you're well connected and can obtain it?)
Looking at the app, I really can't believe they spent this much creating it. My immediate reaction is it's a bad outsourcing job with clipart purchased from Fiverr. Also, the screenshots and App/Play Store presence is just awful.
There is a big chicken-and-egg issue here, in that they need to get a large number of users on the site in order to make it somewhat self-sustaining. That pretty much seems to be what is happening now - yes, this is a PR puff piece, that means they're serious about growing the site.
If there's an interesting enough niche, people will come to this. I remember seeing boxrec.com in the very early days; it was still a server under someone's desk and had a handful of users - but the guy who set it up knows boxing inside out. We don't know the background of this family, but I don't think this is just a "let's set up a social network!" hail mary.
The play-by-play looks genuinely interesting, and we know people want to talk sports in real time. They use Twitter for this (poorly), and Facebook, but it's not a venue for hard-core sports fans. If they can bring together detailed play-by-play across a variety of sports, and enable people to talk about it together, and maybe bring in streaming / commentary (maybe this is phase 2), this is a very interesting proposition. Building that kind of audience would be massively difficult of course, but also clearly very valuable. Bet-in-play is huge, and that's just one aspect.
I wish them luck. I hope they're not as all chips-in as described, but it feels to me like an interesting idea that should create a valuable product.
1. An "idea" is nothing. An "idea" is not a competitive advantage. If it does take off in even the slightest, Facebook will just copy it, throw resources behind it and crush them.
2. What is their "unfair advantage"? From what I can tell none of them are developers, designers, or have a network of people that they can leverage in the industry.
I, like most other people here, have what I think is a great idea for business. I'm not going to quit my relatively well paying job for it or risk my family's well being for it.
I'm going to talk to people I know in the industry I'm targeting, I'm going to personally use my skill set to develop the web site and the backend on nights and weekends and host it on AWS.
After I do the first rough design using Bootstrap. I'm sure I can scrounge up enough money to find a real designer to do high fidelity mock ups that I can use to make a presentable site.
The most realistic case is that it will turn into a little extra income. Worse case, I'm out of a few hundred bucks in AWS hosting cost, spent some time getting better at a few technologies, and I have a portfolio of well designed code I can show when I'm interviewing.