Haven't thought about it too much, but sports site, casino, social gaming company, things like that maybe?

I'd have no problem eventually stepping aside like I did with CR. Actually that's sort of my goal, build some companies and then move on from the day to day while trying to add some value.

i didn't disagree with this - my point was that way more than 5-10% of players in the average 2/4 NL game beat the rake. since we're comparing poker to daily fantasy where "massive multitabling" is possible it's far more important to look at whether a single game is beatable than to look at what fraction of the total player pool is +EV. as in poker, this percentage should increase as we go higher in stakes. on draftday, this percentage currently declines as we go higher in stakes since the difference in rake doesn't make up for the convergence in ability.

if you want sustained volume at higher stakes, where most of the revenue potential is, it needs to be structured so that at *least* 30-40% of the players in a given 8 or 10-man game can win. a lot of the higher stakes players don't yet realize this, but once they do they'll gravitate even more toward the sites with lower effective rake (like i and some others have).

as i said before - i love your site and would love to play there, but the competition is currently providing a better product for *me*.

daily fantasy sports is already aligned to the bumhunter. at $25+ stakes, a single 10 man game almost never has more than one legitimate fish. the HU games almost never go because not even the top players want to risk playing against a mediocre reg when they're losing 10%+ of their potential profit to rake in a game they'll win no more than 53-55% of the time. a loyalty program wouldn't exacerbate this. it might even help, since the top grinders would be more willing to play with regulars and would be able to join the games where mediocre regs are trying to hunt bums, making bumhunting -EV.

while you're right about new fun time players being necessary, the game also needs winning regulars to gain popularity. online poker blew up in large part due to the potential to make a good living/get rich. everyone knew someone who won 5 figures or more and then wanted to try it themselves. the fish need to hear stories of people making it big in daily fantasy sports, because they're arrogant sports fans and they'll think they can do it too.

Taylor,

Re: your "get more technical" rec, this is a program (and i'm sure there are tons, this is just one I've been hearing about) for people who want something a little more serious than codeyear/etc that has been getting a lot of good buzz among startup people I know: http://devbootcamp.com/

Regarding "sidestepping" gaming laws, how close can you get to offering straight props?

Could you have a head-to-head game where each person picks one player and most points wins?

As long as your games don't depend on the outcome of the game, no pointspread is included, there is a pre-set prizepool, and you draft from at least 2 sporting events, then the contest is legal.

You could have some head to head games that followed these rules, but not soley "o/u 88 rec yards, Calvin Johnson" or something.

One thing I thought I should say is that I've found it interesting working with the founders of Groupon. Groupon gets a ton of **** from the media but the guys who started are really sharp. Getting a chance to work with some people who have way more experience than you do is something I recommend for anyone.

So, for instance, you assign weights of 1-10 for props like:

1) Calvin Johnson receiving yards + LeBron James points O/U 110
2) Falcons 1st downs + Tim Lincecum strikeouts O/U 25

and then whoever gets the most points wins $10k?

Can you charge people $10 to enter?

Just want to second this as Taylor and I have talked a fair bit about it. I've also gotten to know them fairly well and have been extremely impressed. A lot of people don't realize that Groupon was their fourth company taken from an idea to an IPO, which does help to mitigate the haters a bit who say they're just insanely lucky (they're lucky, but there's def skill.)

Don't want to turn this into a Groupon discussion, but I think Lightbank is one of maybe 5 top VCs I would've encouraged Taylor to work with, and the amount of hands-on experience they get is invaluable both for DraftDay and any future projects the DD team enters into. Also, there's a really exciting startup culture in Chicago, and I think the collaborative culture is a huge net positive for DD's learning curve and future.

Ezra

Congrats to Taylor and the DD crew, great news, great story, and thanks to Taylor for sharing here.

The DFS market is still growing, there are a near twenty sites now in the market, DraftDay is by far the clear leader in UI/UX. FanDuel and DraftStreet are bigger, as they have been around much longer but DD should rise. I would say FanDuel is the PartyPoker of 2004, DraftStreet the PokerRoom.com of 2002 and DraftDay is the PokerStars equivalent to the DFS market.

Keep up the great work, DD crew, great product that is a lot of fun.

I think the live draft and longer (weekly) games are trying too much to be like season-fantasy-sports (SFS). I believe daily fantasy sports (DFS) and SFS are two different games, just like live and online poker are two different games. The online poker sites that tried to be more like live-poker (remember the old TruePoker and the current PKR poker), are terrible versions of online poker.

Roster expansions or game/scoring structure changes could help level this out as well as a better algorithm for salaries.

This is an interesting idea but what happens if LeBron is a last minute scratch? Could you edit your roster? Lots of issues arrise.

While I agree with the issues you have brought up, there has to be a better way to address them. I find DraftStreet and DailyJoust's salary algorithm really quickly to adjust and adjust well, they keep the % salary high for premium players, creating diversity (and increasing variance.) While FanDuel and DraftDay are a bit slower to adjust and you can really load up a lineup if you know what you are doing. In turn, I almost strictly play at the latter two, and most where the traffic is (FD).

Fantasy sports is a HUGE market and it will take time for the DFS market to carve out a greater piece of the what people think of fantasy sports. However, in years to come, the now-mobile-fast-me-instant crowd will start to move in as the disposable income increases in this generation, DFS is catered for this crowd.

I got my first credit card walking through campus center when I was an 18yr old freshman. If DFS or online poker where around then I would have used it to play. (dating myself but only email was around at that time...)

-Joe

That looks awesome, but $12k and a waiting list, WOW. Can you teach RoR, ElD?

I'd be interested in what types of advertising you are doing? The reason I ask is because I don't think I would know about the site if it wasn't for 2+2.

I do love the site and hope it becomes huge.

One of DraftDay's competitors, StarStreet is attempting to do this with their market approach. They are suffering from a few issues imo: lack of liquidity, low volatility, and a 4% commission on sell orders. That combined with the inability to short is making the market inefficient but unfortunately unexploitable at the moment. They do run a daily game as well but it is unclear to me how the prices between the two games relate, if at all.

Completely agree on the weekly + leagues. While I hope someday DD offers year long leagues, I think it should be a completely different concept from the daily stuff.

I disagree your comment on the live drafts. People love drafting. But more than that, people enjoy rooting on their favorite players. If you and your opponent both are playing Lebron, Kevin Love and D12 on the same night, what fun is that? The casual fantasy player doesn't want leagues to come down to Nicolas Batum or Delonte West, or at the very least they don't want it to be so obviously apparent.


I agree, but the roster expansions must be across the board. You can't have deeper rosters in the "expert" tab and expect those games to be better.



Yes, but you'd be refunded the amount you paid, not the amount he currently is. So you couldn't buy him at 8K, sell him at 12k and have 12K to spend.

Yeah, when I do play I play mostly on FD just because of the traffic as well. The good part is that I definitely do think there are possible solutions to the issues we're experiencing. I think the games will only get better from here, as far as DD and the "smarter" sites go.