Profile: Mike Fry of DraftOpt

Profile: Mike Fry of DraftOpt

How did you come to be an entrepreneur?

I, and my partners, all have fairly technical training with PhDs in either engineering or computer science. However, I ended up taking a job as a professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Business just after finishing my PhD. Teaching MBAs and being around other business faculty showed us that there were opportunities to take our technical research, combine it with an interest in sports, and develop something that was commercially viable. Being an entrepreneur has also forced us to learn about many of the other functional areas of business in more depth which greatly helps our teaching in the classroom.

How did you come up with the idea?

I got my PhD from the University of Michigan. One of my classmates and good friends was Jeff Ohlmann, now a professor at the University of Iowa. We shared some common research interests in developing models for stochastic, sequential decision models. We also shared a passion for sports - in fact Jeff was the first die-hard Cincinnati Bengals fan I ever met... even though he has no geographic or family ties to Cincinnati. We realized that a sports draft is a perfect example of many of the esoteric research models we were studying. It's sequential since each team picks in turn. It's stochastic (fancy word for "uncertain") because you have no idea how the players will actually perform on the field or who the other teams will pick during the draft. It's an exceptionally hard problem to model and solve, but we had the tools to apply to it and the persistence to keep working on it. Once we had the mathematical models in place, we saw that they actually worked very well. We first developed some software for our own fantasy football leagues and then decided that there was a much larger market for similar software.

Why did you start your business?

One of the things that we are encouraged to do as professors is to bring our research into the real world. Many of the mathematical models we work on can be quite complex. However, the University of Cincinnati has made it a priority for us to work on real problems that have an impact on society and local businesses. Now, some might question the impact of software for fantasy sports leagues, but the truth is that fantasy sports are now a multi-billion dollar industry with millions of players in the United States alone. It has completely changed the way sports are covered (for instance think of the "fantasy tickers" used by ESPN and all other networks during NFL games) and it has resulted in hundreds of associated companies providing content and support services to fantasy sports players.

Where did you find your first employee?

We are very lucky that as professors we have access to some of the best and brightest young minds available. Our first employee was Matt Gibson, who is also now a full partner in our company. Matt was a PhD student at the University of Iowa in computer science that Jeff knew. Similar to Jeff and me, Matt has a very technical background and a huge interest in sports. He has become our main programmer and does the heavy lifting to make our algorithms a reality. Other part-time employees have been our web designer, who I met through a local running group, and a graphic artist who was a friend of Matt's.

What’s next for you and your company?

We were very lucky to be one of the winners of the CincyTech Commercialization Awards at this year's Cincinnati Innovates competition for our smart-phone application for fantasy drafts, DraftOpt. This award will allow us to continue to develop some new technologies such as expanding our software applications to the Android smartphone platform. Right now, our software is only available for Apple products through iTunes. We will also be developing additional software applications that can be used during the fantasy sports season, such as TradeOpt, a tool that players can use to evaluate potential trades for their fantasy teams. But, perhaps the biggest next step for us is to ramp up our marketing. We've been very careful to focus on product development before spending dollars on marketing. While we have our products available through iTunes, we have done no other marketing. We see our current sales as the best way to get actual user feedback and continue to improve our product (which is why we offer our current products at a very discounted price). Now we feel that we are about at the point where we can start to market heavily and grow our sales.

We're very excited about the future opportunities!