PRIT ... volume has picked up today, probably thanks to the ISR email that went out Sunday. (This is an email newsletter). Here's what they had to say (there's quite good DD here):
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Internet Stock Review Online, Sunday 5/16/99
Palm Springs 71....91F Sunny.
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New Watch List company. Predict It Sports (PRIT) $3.75.
9,000,000 shares outstanding.
Okay Sports fans. We have come across an ingenious little company, who if they play their cards right, will become a household name right in front of our very eyes. And we found it first. We just have a gut feel about this.
Very basically, imagine if you could play a game (picking stocks, picking baseball games, picking horse races, etc.) and have all you picks automatically tabulated and the results nationally ranked and instantaneously available for viewing. Period. Think about that. Toss it around in your mind for half an hour. Or take a day or two. Hmmm.
Let's see. Let's say I'm an expert (or least I think I am) at picking baseball games. Everybody in the neighborhood knows. Bartenders, bookies, they all call to hear my latest picks and pans. My nickname is "SammyTheSpread." Suddenly the whole world could know about my picking prowess if I just go to www.Predictit.com and put my picks in there. That's it. They do the rest. Then when I'm (or my friends) are at www.broadcast.com (or thousand of other sports sites) checking out the sports section, they can simply click on the Predict It
button and there I am, right at the top of the list. It says:
Analyst: Sammy The Spread
Rating: 32.3
% Wins: 66.7
Wins: 50
Losses: 24
Ties: 1
Next to that it has a section called: Pending games and Future games: Quite simply my friends can now see what I'm picking that day or in the future. It has the name of the upcoming game, the time, who I'm picking and the over and under. Very cool. One might even call it addictive.
Let's go to reality. Let's do this together. There is an fella (and this is real) named "The Duke." He is quite the baseball picker with 67.2% wins. He has 84 wins, 41 losses and 4 ties. Let's see who he is picking for Monday night, May 17th.
First go to the Broadcast.com site to register.
broadcast.com (click on Sports, then SportsWorld.)
At the SportsWorld site look for the "Predict It" link on the left side navigation bar. Click on that and you can see the "Get Started Now" link. Before you sign up, click on "Baseball, MLB" in "Choose A Sport" under "View Top Analyst." Then pick on "Winners and Total Scores" and "For The Season." This pulls up the ranking page. Now since you may be getting this letter after the tabulation of today's game, the Rankings may be different from what we are about to tell you about the The Duke. But as of now it shows:
67.2% wins. He has 84 wins, 41 losses and 4 ties.
You could alternatively go directly to sign up at the Predict It site
(www.pedictit.com) but doing it this way gives you an inkling about their revenue model.
To see his picks for tomorrow night you have to register, so go back, register and then look for The Duke's name and click on FUTURE. If he did really terrible today and got knocked out of the Top 25, put the name "Theduke" (case sensitive) in the search box and you can find him that way.
It shows for the Tampa Ray Devils vs. the Anaheim Angels game, he picks Anaheim and the Over for the Line which is 10. How cool is that. Imagine that your able to see your standings at hundreds or thousands of sports sites across the Internet. AND imagine this, if you really are as good as you think you are and your are nationally ranked, that you will get paid $10 for each thousand people who click on your name to see what you're picking next. Hmmm. Almost an Oh, my.
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How we expect Predict It to become a household name is more through
co-branding rather than via it own site which currently gets 50,000 users and 300,000 page views per monthly. What do we mean by that ? Think of BigCharts.com, which we believe is a household name (at least among stock traders). There are literally thousands of sites where you see a "get chart" box. You enter the symbol, hit enter, and you go to the BigCharts server with your logo up at top. You (the stock web site owner) pay nothing to get the free BigCharts and BigCharts gets
all your traffic.
And importantly, Predict It will share the co-branded advertising revenues generated. Creating a co-branded version of Predict It is simple, fast and painless. They serve out generic Predict It pages either within your frame or next to a custom-designed menubar with your look and navigation. When your users register with Predict It, their registration records will be marked such that if they access Predict It directly, your look and feel will always be presented. They always drive your customers back to you and your existing content.
We can assure you, you will see a Predict It link on the Internet Stock Review site. While it only covers sports right now, we are told the same system will soon be available for Stock Picking. Think about that. There must be 50,000 stock sites out there. We're dying to see the real cream float to the top (in terms of stock picking), and we Predict it won't be the Wall Street experts!
Currently Predict It has Co Branded agreements with Broadcast,com, Nando Times, Data Broadcasting, The Sports Network, The Sport Daily, Sports Feed, Silly Sports, Gaming Guide, Bettors World and Web On-Site.
Predict It was founded in September 1997 in Colorado under the name of
SportsCappers, Inc. The beta application was launched using the SportsCappers name in March 1998. The company relocated to New York in August 1998 upon acquiring funding by the venture group Dawntreader LP, founded by Bob Lessin. The new company name Predict It Corp. was adopted in December 1998 as a strategic move to better communicate the breadth of the proprietary prediction engine, and its application across multiple markets. The Predict It brand was introduced on the web in March 1999.
The Predict It engine lends itself to any set of events whose outcomes can be measured objectively, and which occur with some regularity. Given this criteria, Predict It will expand its product offerings into five categories: Sports, Finance, Entertainment, Politics, and Weather. In Finance, Predict It will soon launch its stock market prediction application, where independent investors can have their portfolio performance tracked, and can earn money sharing their analysis and expertise with others when they do well. The Entertainment category will include an application to predict the winners of the many Awards Shows for excellence in music, television, movies, theater, and sports, as well as an application to predict new-release movie revenues. The Politics category will focus on predicting the winners of elections. And who would have thought that there is a market for weather predicting.
Predict It Sports (PRIT)
41 East 11th Street
11th Floor
New York, NY 10003.
212-331-1120
predictit.com
Investor Relations:
Venture Catalyst
310-399-4059
Management:
Tom Counts. Mr. Courts founded Predict It (then known as SportsCappers) in October 1997 in Aspen, Colorado. The idea came about as Mr. Courts discovered the popularity of Internet bulletin boards for those interested in sports predictions as a way to share their analysis and picks on upcoming games. What was clearly missing, he thought, was an objective intermediary that tracked everyone's picks as a means of identifying the top performers. The ability to
document the results of everyone's analysis to determine who was really the best, then get that person's picks on upcoming games, may be quite powerful.
Robert Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs brings experience in sales and management with aggressive start-up and large Fortune 200 organizations in healthcare distribution, healthcare technologies and investment banking. Prior to joining Predict It, Mr. Jacobs spent 8 years with Bergen Brunswig Corporation, holding several sales and management positions of increasing responsibility. Most recently as Director of Health Systems Sales, Mr. Jacobs maintained strategic and tactical responsibility within a sales force representing $3.1 billion in
annual revenue. His responsibilities have included building sales teams, strategy development, and process innovation.
Directors.
Christopher Brown. Mr. Brown is a Director of Global Emerging Markets North America, Inc. and a partner in GEM, Ltd., where he oversees the New York office and manages private placements on a global basis. He began with Drexel Burnham Lambert as an associate in 1985, later joined Smith Barney as an Investment Advisor from 1986 to 1988, and worked for Shearson Lehman Brothers in a similar capacity from 1988 to 1993. Mr. Brown holds a degree in Economics from UCLA.
Edward Sim. Mr. Sim is currently a Senior Vice President with the Dawntreader Fund, a New York-based venture fund founded by Bob Lessin, the former Vice Chairman of Salomon Smith Barney and prominent Internet Angel investor. Mr. Sim adds significant value advising Dawntreader's portfolio companies on operational and strategic issues. Prior to joining Dawntreader, Mr. Sim was an Associate at Prospect Street Ventures, a New York-based venture capital firm. At Prospect Street, Mr. Sim focused on Internet and software investments.
Notable deals include Comet Systems, where he served on the Board of
Directors, and 24/7 Media.
Andrew Weissman. Mr. Weissman is currently a Senior Vice President with the Dawntreader Fund. Mr. Weissman adds significant value helping Dawntreader's portfolio companies identify and structure critical relationships and ventures in the Internet space. Previously, Mr. Weissman was Senior Counsel at America Online, with responsibility for structuring and negotiating content distribution, marketing and e-commerce-related transactions with AOL's largest strategic partners.
Robert Lessin. Mr. Lessin began his career at Morgan Stanley where he became the youngest-ever partner in 1987, Vice Chairman of the Investment Banking Operating Committee in 1990, and Chairman of the Investment Bank's Strategy Committee in 1993. Mr. Lessin left Morgan Stanley in mid-1993 to become Vice Chairman, Member of the Executive Committee and Head of the Investment Bank at Smith Barney. In the spring of 1998, Mr. Lessin became Chairman of Wit Capital
Corp., one of the leading investment banking firms for the offering and trading of securities over the Internet and on-line capital raising.
Stephen Klein. Steve Klein is a Managing Partner and the Director of Media & Interactive Services at Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, one the country's most successful independent advertising agencies. Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners is well known for their brand-building work for clients like Snapple, Citibank Advantage Card, Prudential Healthcare, Olympus Cameras, Hennessy Cognac, Grand Marnier, Neuberger & Berman mutual funds. Steve also founded and serves as chairman of the board of iballs llc, an internet media planning and buying
agency. In addition to founding kb&p's media department, Steve built the agency's Interactive Services Group, and runs client business in the interactive arena, including Netscape, Sony's Station, N2K (Music Boulevard), 800-Flowers and theglobe.com. iballs does on-line planning work for jcrew.com, Sonicnet, Gamestorm, Sixdegrees.com, 1travel.com, uproar, and Variety on-line among others.
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So what is there to watch ? Basically the technology is done. What they've done in sports should in all likelihood be easily duplicated in stocks picking and other games of chance. What we need to watch is marketing. We need to see their banner or a link to their service at 1000's of other sites.
Predict It began trading on May 4th. Here is a link to closing prices and volume.
financialweb.com
F16%2F98
Would you like to Partner your site with Predict It ?
predictit.com
Disclaimer: Perry & Co. was paid 20,000 shares (a relative bargain) of Predict It from a Venture Capital firm to provide ongoing coverage for Predict It as it reports news. Thank you very much. |
