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Interview with the Creators & Owners of BallHype & ShowHype
Written by
Peter Schiller on March 18, 2008 – 12:55 pm - Hi everyone! I take this slight detour in baseball talk to bring you an interview with the creators and owners of both BallHype and ShowHype, Erin & Jason Gurney. BallHype was launched in April of 2007 and will be celebrating its 1 Year Anniversary next month! Way to go you two! I’m not only the interviewer, but I’m also a client! J
Q. Where are you both from? Who were your favorite baseball teams growing up and who are your favorite baseball teams now (being a Baseball blog, I had to ask)?
A. Erin: I grew up in Minnesota and was in high school when Kirby Puckett and the Twins won the 1987 World Series, and had just left for college when they won again in 1991. Pretty hard not to love your home team under those circumstances, and no other team has really replaced them for me.
Jason: I grew up far from any major league teams, and adopted the Dodgers when I was young. That lasted until the Mariano Duncan era, when cable TV and WGN made it a lot easier to follow the Cubs. Nowadays I’m rooting for both Bay Area teams, which made last summer a bit dicey.
Q. How did you two meet?
A. Erin: We were both working at Intel when we met. And no, it wasn’t an office romance – Jason left the company before we started dating.
Jason: That was almost a decade ago, but I remember at the time thinking that this was the kind of person I could launch a pair of niche social media web sites with.
Q. What did both of you do for work before BallHype?
A. Erin: I spent 5 years at Intuit doing online marketing for QuickBooks and Quicken. Prior to that I was a product marketer at a startup called Bigstep, and my first job out of business school was in finance at Intel.
Jason: Lately I’ve been doing software engineering for a handful of technology companies, most recently a small one called Biz360. The most enjoyable job I ever had was a part-time business school gig, working on NBA.com.
Q. How has your former careers helped you with creating and running BallHype?
A. Erin: The finance background helps with managing the business side of BallHype, and for years all I thought about at Intuit was improving the user experience on our web sites.
Jason: Most of the prior jobs I’ve had have been relevant in some way – building high-volume consumer sites, managing large-scale content analysis, dealing with difficult finance managers, etc. But what helped me the most was my experience building striketwo.net and its sister sites, which were side projects prior to BallHype.
Q. What does each of you do for BallHype?
A. Erin: Jason writes every line of code, and I check it… Just kidding (about my role – he does write every line of code), I manage the marketing and business side, so promotions, finances, copywriting, outreach.
Q. Do you get any time off or have any time to get away on vacation without having to think about the site?
A. No. We finally have a regular evening babysitter for date nights, but we usually still end up talking about BallHype and checking our Blackberrys between the soup and the main course. Fortunately we have a great community manager (Howie - http://ballhype.com/profile/thehype/) who helps keep an eye on things when we need to take short family trips, but we also take the laptops with us.
Q. How do you manage the site while having two toddlers running around the house? Do you have a BallHype Office in your home that’s set aside from normal family use?
A. Fortunately, the kids can’t get to our office because we’ve surrounded it with a 4-foot moat. Plus, they’re pretty used to us working out of the house now and don’t seem to mind when we leave them with the babysitter and disappear upstairs. The nice part is that we get a lot more time with our kids than most people who are running startups. We can stop for dinner and just go back to work after they’re asleep.
Q. I know that you launched the site in April of 2007, but can you tell us how long it was to build the company?
A. We didn’t actually start building a BallHype prototype until December 2006, although we were able to get off to a running start thanks to striketwo.net.
Q. Also, when was it that you first decided to do something like this and was BallHype always that same brainchild?
A. We started thinking about a new business that we could run together when Erin was about to return from her last maternity leave. We knew that the growth of blogs and new media created an interesting opportunity – help consumers find the best content, and help producers find an audience – and after some discussion about what vertical to launch in, realized that Jason’s prior work with lowpost and its sister sites made sports the obvious choice. Plus we’re both sports fans, and we knew it had to be something we wouldn’t mind spending 20 hours a day thinking about.
Q. Is BallHype based or modeled after a particular online community?
A. Not one site in particular, but we certainly credit Digg for popularizing story voting and Facebook for advancing social communities. We also rely heavily on content analysis to help drive our top stories, and that facet was largely inspired by Techmeme and its sister sites.
Q. What do each of you like most about owning & running your own company?
A. Erin: Being our own boss. It was a bit scary at first, leaving comfortable jobs and great salaries for the complete unknown… especially when you live in the Bay Area. But it’s been worth it. There’s never a day when I wake up thinking, oh god, I have to go to work today.
Jason: The commute is unbeatable.
Q. Did either of you ever write a blog before starting BallHype? If so, what was it about & is it still out there?
A. Jason: I maintained a blog on lowpost.net (http://lowpost.net/blog/) before we launched BallHype. I had no idea that there was such a strong community of spots bloggers out there, and that kept me in it for nearly a couple of seasons despite the fact that I can’t write to save my life,
Q. What can we expect in the future for BallHype and/or ShowHype?
A. We’re working to get our blog rankings to replace alpha-numeric ordering and the Dewey Decimal System.
Thanks you two, thanks for both the interview and the cool sites! If you are reading this interview, please visit both BallHype and ShowHype!
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Posted in Baseball, Interview | 2 Comments »
An Interview With A Florida Marlins Fan
Written byPeter Schiller on February 5, 2008 – 9:18 pm - This interview is with Ohad from Fish@Bat which can be found by clicking this link or you can catch him here at BallHype. My idea was to see the reaction of a Marlins fan to the recent trade with the Tigers, their two World Series titles and how they later dismantle the teams after they win. I also threw in a few other questions that were relevant to the conversation. Enjoy!
Baseball Reflections: What are your thoughts on the Cabrera/Willis trade with the Tigers?
Fish@Bat: It was a difficult trade and I think most in the Marlins fan base are upset. It’s not about trading Cabrera or Willis, it’s about trading both. I think people were ready to lose Dontrelle (despite him being the nicest guy in baseball). Miguel was a different story. He feels like a once in a generation franchise player. But, when you see the kind of deals that super stars are signing these days, it’s hard to image the Marlins giving him $200MM. That’s just an astounding number. I will say that unfortunately many Marlins fans have turned on Loria, rehashing some of the misleading arguments made against him in
Baseball Reflections: What are your thoughts on the Marlins in 2008 and beyond?
Fish@Bat: It’s an interesting year because we are handing the team over to Hanley Ramirez. He has had two tremendous years without a real slide. If he slows down this year, the impact could be huge. That being said, there is something to build on (including the pitching). I think the single most important thing to happen this year is the decision on the ballpark. If it goes through (and it feels like it will happen in a matter of weeks) then everything changes about the future. If not, things will stay the way they are until the next round of arbitration.
Baseball Reflections: Do you think that getting a new stadium will provide revenue enough to stop this revolving door of salary dumping that the Marlins management has been doing?
Fish@Bat: Yes, I think it will make a difference. They are not going to spend like the Mets, but they will invest and keep good players. I will say the Beinfest proved that you can build with young talent so I still think they will trade away older talent for younger talent if it makes sense.
Baseball Reflections: Do you think that the owners are just penny pinchers (no pun intended) or are they truly handcuffed by poor revenue streams?
Fish@Bat: I think they’re trying to run the company like a business with a strict P&L. They’ve splurged on players before and sometimes it worked, sometimes it failed. I won’t be surprised if the ownership is “saving” money right now so they can pay their portion of the upcoming stadium deal. Contrary to what some fans think, I do think that the ownership is not pocketing the money.
Baseball Reflections: As a fan of the Marlins, would you trade one or both World Series
victories if that meant that the team would avoid all these salary dumping they keep doing? Why?
Fish@Bat: No, would not trade the championships for anything in the history of the team. Yes, I lose my favorite players every few years but nothing beats the joy of winning. Ask Cub fans.
Baseball Reflections: As a follow up question, are you less loyal of a Marlins fan because of this ownership/method of dumping salary and loosing good players to other teams?
Fish@Bat: No, I’m always loyal. I love the team and have been through these kinds of difficulties before.
Baseball Reflections: How hard is it to watch players like Beckett, Renteria, Burnett, Lowell and Penny all having successful careers elsewhere, seeing that they were basically salary dumps?
Fish@Bat: I think we’re proud of the players. Not all trades were painful. In retrospect, people feel more comfortable about the Beckett and Lowell trade because of Hanley Ramirez and the potential that we may seen from Anibal Sanchez. In Burnett’s case, he left on bad terms. As long as the trade pays off people get over it. Do a quick search and see reaction when the Marlins traded Matt Clement and Antonio Alfonseca to the Cubs. People slammed the new Loria ownership. Now, it looks like a great trade because we picked off a double-A pitcher named Dontrelle Willis.
Baseball Reflections: Does the salary dump experience get any easier to swallow the second time around or does it pretty much suck whenever it happens?
Fish@Bat: Much easier. The first one was tough because we were left with no one (team president tried to gut the team so he can reduce the cost and buy the team). Since then, it’s been with the goal to rebuild and frankly Larry Beinfest has done an incredible job.
Baseball Reflections: What are your views on Joe Girardi as a major league manager?
Fish@Bat: Hard to read. Some loved him, some hated him. He’s a smart baseball guy, but his attitude may be risky. He should never have challenged Loria in the middle of a game. You don’t do that to your boss anywhere. Hopefully he learned his lesson because that won’t fly with the Yankees.
Baseball Reflections: Do you think that Girardi will be a good manager in NY? If not, will his downfall be not being able to cope with the media frenzied NY fans, the frenzied NY media itself or the egos of so many high priced players?
Fish@Bat: If he does well, they’ll celebrate him; if they lose, they’ll hate him. I’m focused on Fredi Gonzalez and hoping he can make the right choices for the Marlins. The Fish need to improve their defense and they need to work on their starting pitchers lasting more than 5 innings a game.
Thanks Ohad, we’re glad to have you back online as one of the voices of the Marlins!
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Posted in Baseball, Interview, Team Analysis | 5 Comments »
Interview With a Twins Fan
Written byPeter Schiller on December 15, 2007 – 8:14 am - The Johan Santana situation, the Twins, and Blogging with Sooze from BabesLoveBaseball
I recently contacted Sooze from BabesLoveBaseball for a Twins fan’s perspective on the latest rumors coming out of Minnesota and about how she began blogging. BabesLoveBaseball has become one of the best baseball blogs around, it has a strong following and is unquestionably unique. Sooze is one of the 4 female writers as well as one of the founders of our beloved blog. I hope you all enjoy it! Now, without further adieu, let’s get on with it already!
Pete@BaseballReflections: In your opinion, should the Twins trade, pay or just play Santana and loose him to free agency after the 2008 season?
Sooze: In my sensible, baseball-minded opinion, Johan should be traded as soon as possible for some top-tier prospects and a decent slugger. In my homeresque opinion, the Twins should give him whatever he wants, no matter how ridiculous, so I can continue to root for the best pitcher in baseball every five games.
Pete@BaseballReflections: If he is to be traded, what rumored offers do you like best? Why?
Sooze: I really liked the Red Sox offer. I liked it with Ellsbury, I loved it with Lester. But what I really would love to see is the Twins pull off something in the ballpark of what the Tigers gave the Marlins for Cabrera and D-Train. The window of opportunity for Championships opens and closes so fast, that sometimes clubs just have to take advantage of the here and now, and worry about the future later, which is exactly what Detroit has done this offseason.
Pete@BaseballReflections: Were you concerned during the 2007 season that Santana didn’t look like the same 2nd half tyrant that he has in years past? In your opinion, was this just due to a weak run producing Twins team?
Sooze: A starter can only do so much. Technically, your team must score at least 1 run to win the game, and the Twins had a difficult time crossing the plate last season. Carlos Silva is another example of decent pitching gone awry due to a lack of run support: it’s just a sad reality for Minnesota these days. On the other hand, Johan did have a lackluster second half with an abnormally-high ERA and more losses than all of his post-All-Star runs put together. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a machine, I just think he might have spoiled us with his Cytana-like dominance in years past.
Pete@BaseballReflections: Santana did not have the typical Santana-like year. He gave up more HRs in 2007 than he normally does; likewise, his ERA was over 3.00 for the first time since 2003, and had double digit losses for the first time in his career does/did any of this concern you during the 2007 season or moving forward if they can keep him?
Sooze: It really doesn’t concern me at all. Johan gives the Twins a chance to win every time he steps foot on the hill, but he can’t go out and fan 15 batters every gtart. He needs a productive lineup behind him again — like in 2005 — to get more of those W’s.
Pete@BaseballReflections: If they trade Santana, do you think that they will trade Nathan next?
Sooze: Absolutely. I really think they have some quality set-up men (Pat Neshek and Matt Guerrier for example) just waiting to be the future Twins closer.
Pete@BaseballReflections: Do you believe them when they say that they are working on a deal to sign 1B Morneau, given all this Santana & Nathan talk?
Sooze: Not really… I don’t believe anything they say until I see it happen. Morneau signed a one-year, $4.5 million deal in February, which was nice, but this was just before they inked Mauer to a four-year, $33 million deal with the hopes of keeping Hunter and/or Santana. But it’s a whole different ballgame with Bill Smith replacing Terry Ryan, and the last thing they need is to lose one of their only power-hitters and a darn good first baseman.
Pete@BaseballReflections: With the increase in revenue that was recently reported by MLB via the commissioner, do you think the Twins will hold onto Santana in hopes that another profitable year can allow them to give Santana the extension he is loving for beyond 2008?
Sooze: One can only hope! The Twins’ payroll has increased dramatically, and with another productive season, you’d think there would be a little more wiggle room financially. However, Smith is adamantly opposed to giving any pitcher — the best in baseball or not — such an enormous, long-term contract, especially if we’re talking six years for upwards of $150 million.
Pete@BaseballReflections: What other Free Agent signings or trades would you like to see the Twins make in the remaining time this off season out side of a Santana transaction?
Sooze: Whether they let Johan go or not, the Twins need a power-hitter. I’m not talking about my Canadian Crusher hitting 30 bombs here, I’m talking hard-lumber swinging brute force in the form of a young man no older than 25. They need a real designated hitter, and Rondell White/Jason Kubel/Jason Tyner are just not cutting it.
Pete@BaseballReflections: Why & when did you start Blogging?
Sooze: BLB started as a Myspace blog two years ago. I needed a place to rant about Brad Radke’s arm falling off, Johan’s badassery, and baseball in general. So, I chose that outlet and I think maybe only two people who felt obligated actually ever read it.
Pete@BaseballReflections: What made you think up Babes Love Baseball?
Sooze: The name actually started as an inside joke - some friends and I went to a Twins game at the Dome and we overheard some guys telling a buddy that babes like baseball, too. I blurted out, “Babes LOVE baseball!” The rest is history, I suppose.
Pete@BaseballReflections: How do you select the other three ladies who write for Babes Love Baseball?
Sooze: I met Lizzy on Deadspin and we decided on making BLB a joint effort of random baseball news, rumors and satire. From there, we’ve been fortunate to add two hilarious and talented writers in Sarah and Melissa, who we met around the blogosphere, as well.
Thanks again Sooze!
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Posted in Baseball, Interview, Off Season | 5 Comments »
