Two Starkville natives will be launching a mobile sports application and website later this fall.
Hossein Kash Razzaghi, chief executive officer of Fancred, said he has often resorted to text messaging and email when talking Mississippi State University sports with childhood best friend and co-founder, Michael Pan. However, about a year ago, they decided being a sports fan was not as simple as they would like and used their experiences as inspiration for starting the company.
“During Mississippi State games that we would watch, he was in Chicago and I was in Boston, and we would always find ourselves texting each other and emailing, but it would be a long thread of emails back and forth. There isn’t enough time during the day to spend visiting 15 different sports blogs or websites to keep up with the latest in Mississippi State athletics,” he said.
“So, the premise of Fancred is to enhance your life as a sports fan by giving you a single point of access to the information and content from people you trust: the beat reporters, the blog writers, the journalists. In that same place, we want to give you a forum to have conversations with people you trust and enjoy,” Razzaghi said.
Pan, vice president of product for Fancred, said while social networks and easy access to the web have allowed a better way to stay connected, he and Razzaghi said they found despite the technology and apps available today, what existed was not good enough for sports.
“Hossein and I have been lucky enough to be born and raised in a town centered around a great university and sports culture, (but) all the daily things we were doing as sports fans were getting lost in the noise and fragmentation of social media and news providers,” he said. “Sharing and celebrating going to a game at Scott Field seemed less meaningful when it was mixed in with baby pictures and Farmville requests. With Fancred, hopefully people won’t have to download another sports app again and they’ll finally have one place to go to for their sports life.”
The mobile app is expected to be launched in early October or late November, just in time for football bowl season and college basketball, and a full web experience will be launched several weeks after that, Razzaghi said.
“We’re going after college sports first because college sports fans are usually the ones that are more likely to use social media, have sports conversations and be in-the-know about their teams,” he said, “But it’s (Fancred) really a tool for any kind of sports fan, regardless of which sports they like or where they live.”
Razzaghi said there will be no cost for consumers to access or use the mobile app and website, and anyone interested in getting involved with Fancred is encouraged to do so.
“There are different types of fans out there, and some are really active and always want to promote themselves or talk sports,” he said. “Others just want to spend a few minutes and find conversations and content that they can be sure is credible, so I think Fancred will help both kinds of fans.”
Landon Howell, who is based in Birmingham and serves as the voice behind Fancred’s Twitter, said his role with the company primarily involves communication and outreach, and he said he agrees sports fans have no app to call their own.
“We’re looking for avid football and basketball fans who would like to be first users. We will be inviting a select group of Beta users mid-fall before opening Fancred to all,” he said. “Anyone who is interested in being a Beta user can reach out to me at [email protected] or @fancred on Twitter.”
Along with Razzaghi, Pan and Howell, the Fancred team is composed of Craig Johnson, vice president of engineering and Jeremy Merle, chief experience officer.
Unlike on sports blogs and forums where people can post under a username, Razzaghi said Fancred users will have to first log into either Facebook or Twitter for verification purposes.
“When you log in, we’re authenticating you to make sure you really are who you say you are,” he said. “The coolest thing about it is if you are a passionate sports fan, you probably already told Facebook or Twitter that you like Mississippi State, and so, we’ll be able to know which teams you like and we can immediately give you content for those teams and hook you up with people that are like-minded.”
When measuring the everyday life of a sports fan, Razzaghi said each user will be given points, or Fancred, which can be tracked.
“We’ve created an algorithm that essentially takes into consideration anything that we believe you can do as a fan, and that algorithm will always be changing because there are always new things that people do to show their
. For every action you take, there’s a weight we will assign to it, he said.”
“We’re not asking you to do anything you don’t do already. Some of the things that you do as a fan, in my opinion, are more impressive than others. For instance, if you go and read a blog about Mississippi State sports, you get points for that, but if you actually go to a game or travel to an away game, that’s even more impressive. You can use that score as a tool to find other people or you can use it as a tool to sort of brag about your fanhood Razzaghi said.”
Users will be informed about what they can do to increase their Fancred, Razzaghi said.
While Fancred has already begun to gain a lot of traction and his team has done quite a number of press tours, Razzaghi said they will be doing a lot more, including a full SEC press tour, to make sure people know about the launch.
“The encouraging thing is that most sports fans get that their life is fragmented when it comes to being a fan and they get that their life is probably not as easy as it should be so it hasn’t been too hard convincing them that this (Fancred) is something they need, he said.”
Overall, Razzaghi said he is greatly anticipating the initial launch as well as what the future may hold for Fancred and its users.
“I think through time, we’ll be able to do a lot of different things and provide a lot of features and functionality. We’ll launch and see how people like it,” he said. “I think, at the end of the day, most fans will agree that their life is just too busy when it comes to sports and the way they get their information, and that’s the problem we’re trying to solve.”