Earlier today, Mike Templeton, co-founder and community manager for Des Moines-based ScoreYard, announced (above) that the company’s social platform designed for sports teams is now open in limited release.
Mike gave us a few minutes of his time this morning to tell us about the company and their product:
Silicon Prairie News: What is ScoreYard?
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Mike Templeton: ScoreYard is a social platform for sports teams. We provide coaches and organizers with tools (through our website) that make it easier to perform team management-related tasks like tracking stats, scheduling games, and sending announcements.
The “social” component to our platform is that everything is opened up for players and fans to access too. ScoreYard allows organizers to build an online community around their team and will enable fans to share photos from the game, cheer on the team, or track their progress throughout the season.
SPN: Who is involved in the company?
Mike: There are three people (all co-founders) on our team: Caleb Harrelson (left) and Levi Rosol (right) are doing development, while I’m handling marketing and building our community of users.
SPN: How did the idea of a sports league social platform develop?
Mike: The idea for ScoreYard (originally conceived as SportsLeeg) started in 2008. Levi’s son was on a baseball team that had a lot of trouble communicating with parents. It wasn’t the coach’s fault, but rather the lack of a solid, consistent messaging system. Levi recalled driving an hour from home to an away game only to find out when he got there that it had been cancelled. Levi thought he could do something to change frustrations for parents like that and ScoreYard was born.
Though Levi has been kicking this idea around for a few years, our team came together towards the end of 2009. Levi met Caleb through a local user group meeting and discovered Caleb was working on a similar project to manage the hockey teams he played for. Levi and Caleb joined forces and I came on shortly after that. I had been introduced to Levi’s project sometime earlier, but I noticed things were really picking up steam and it seemed like a project that would be a lot of fun.
SPN: What’s involved in today’s launch?
Mike: Our launch today won’t go down in history as a turning point for our startup (well, maybe for nostalgic reasons); it’s more a symbol of our progress and our willingness to get users inside the application. If you mapped us against the traditional web app model, I’d say we are in early alpha. We have a functioning product, but it doesn’t do everything we want it to do…yet.
The goal for this launch is to get real users inside the system and give us feedback about the app. We don’t just want to build something that we would use, but something instead that others would use too. Our team is very interested in the Lean Startup Methodology, which pushes you to develop against real problems and real data, rather than what you think makes sense. The famous quote from lean startup thinker Steve Blank is, “Get out of the building and talk to people.” This is our “get out of the building” moment.
SPN: What’s the business model for ScoreYard?
Mike: Though there aren’t a lot of indications as to whether ScoreYard is or will be a paid service, it is true that we’ll be charging money at some point. However, that doesn’t mean every user will have to pay. We are working through what some pricing models would look like for different types of accounts (leagues and teams versus fans) and what features would be available at different price points.
One thing I will say is that the site will always be free for spectators, fans, and players. We’re focused on creating value through paid plans for our league and team users.
