In the world of social media, heavyweights such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube capture the most industry attention. Boston-based Fancred, meanwhile, has built a mobile-focused, sports-only social network, striking official partnerships with a variety of pro teams such as the Carolina Panthers, Washington Redskins, Boston Red Sox and Liverpool FC. The company secured a $3 million round of financing last year that included the likes of Atlas Venture, also an investor in daily fantasy sports giant DraftKings. Linda Pizzuti Henry, wife of Red Sox owner John Henry, also was an early investor in Fancred. The company’s CEO, Kash Razzaghi, talks here about Fancred’s approach.
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There are 500 million sports fans on their mobile devices every day. There is a massive opportunity to provide a specialized and differentiated experience for this very large and active interest group.”
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Photo by: FANCRED
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On Fancred’s role in the social media landscape: Our mission is to build the world’s largest fan network by giving fans a platform that allows them to express their unique sports identity in the form of fan profiles. Whereas broad social networks allow quick communication, Fancred paints a complete picture of someone’s collective experiences as a fan. Very similar to LinkedIn’s representation of your professional life, Fancred represents your sports life.
On forming partnerships with pro teams: As with anything, you have the early adopters and you have the laggards when it comes to team adoption of new technologies. As we’ve grown our user base, we’ve seen teams that see themselves as innovators reach out and join our platform. They want to be first-movers. In other cases, teams have a wait-and-see attitude.
On Fancred’s demographic trends: One of the stats that we’re really encouraged by is that 30 percent of our user base are females. We want that to be closer to 50 percent by the end of the year. Most sports-oriented properties are certainly skewed higher toward males. The great thing about what we’re building is the range of sports fans is incredibly broad, and Fancred represents that.
On the venture capital market for sports-oriented startups: I generally think the capital market, especially in the case of consumer businesses, is volatile. In some instances, if your company is within a certain industry that’s deemed to be “hot,” you’re able to get instantly funded with little or no product in the market, users or revenue. In other cases, the bar for companies to get funded past a traditional seed round has risen dramatically.
