There comes a moment in the life of a young company when a product changes from a great idea that helps some people solve a problem into an essential product for a large group of people.  The kind of product that forms the backbone of a large company, the kind of company a college football bowl is named after.  Earlier this year, that moment may well have happened for local start-up StatEasy.

StatEasy was started many years ago by former volleyball player and active coach, Mike Ressler.  As an undergraduate assistant for the women’s volleyball team at Carnegie Mellon University, Mike applied his computer science skills to create a better way to track volleyball statistics.  A few years after graduation, his wife, also a volleyball coach, and a few other coaches asked Mike if they could use the software for their teams.  At that point, Mike smelled an opportunity.  He immediately began to improve the product to make it usable for a wider variety of people, even adding huge enhancements such as the ability to synchronize statistics with video.  He soon found more and more coaches that wanted to use StatEasy (and who now love it and swear by it), including the head coach of the men’s team at my alma mater, Penn State.  So many coaches liked StatEasy that Mike brought on a co-founder, and they are currently turning the idea of accurate feedback through statistics and video synchronization into a legitimate competitor in the volleyball market.

Then, out of the blue came bowling, and with it, a chance to pivot from lifestyle business to growing company.  The volleyball coach at St. Francis University showed StatEasy to the new head coach of the bowling team, and he was immediately stoked.  It was exactly what he needed, and something like he had never seen for bowling – a way to reliably score and capture statistics (not to mention break down video) for his team’s every match.  Mike and his co-founder got to work immediately and answered the call by creating a complete solution for bowling in only 6 weeks!  Their solution solves many problems for bowling coaches, one of the biggest being the complicated nature of the collegiate scoring systems (some of the scoring rules of bowling are so new and complex that even the coaches aren’t comfortable with them), and their hopes are that StatEasy could become the standard way to score and capture statistics for entire bowling conferences and eventually the NCAA.  And then it only gets better from there. When most colleges are using StatEasy for bowling, what do you think the high schools will start using?  What about the parents who want their kids to get a bowling scholarship?  And the bowling leagues that the collegiate bowling players join after they graduate?  When a company solves problems for an entire sport (while already helping numerous coaches in other sports), that’s the kind of company that grows big – really big.  The kind of company that can help Mike Ressler realize his dream of the StatEasy Bowl, with him watching the action from a bright orange blimp in the sky.

StatEasy’s Website:  www.StatEasySports.com
StatEasy’s Twitter Feed:  @StatEasy

The following is from a blog post by Burgher Jon:

I traded a couple tweets with Mike Capsambelis (@mikecaps) several weeks ago and it got me thinking about the bubble in tech investing.  The Pittsburgh startup scene is one of the fastest growing tech startup scenes around, for the full year of 2010 the VC dollars in our system were up almost 68% compared to a national increase of only 12%.  If this growth is bubble related, it would make Pittsburgh a likely target to become a GIANT splatter when the bubble bursts.  I’m not overly concerned about this though, and I’ll give you three reasons why…

[click here to read the full story]

Last week Tim, the CEO of Wawadoo made time to have a drink with me. I had met his co-founder, Chris at open coffee club last week and was anxious to find out more about the young Alphalab company.

Wawadoo is the recommendation engine for events. As they explain it, “just view our list of events, vote ‘thumbs up’ or ‘thumbs down’ if something interests you, and receive increasingly accurate recommendations on things to do every time you choose.” On the concept level they may have something: how many times have you wondered what to do or found out about something you wanted to go to after it was over?

I was excited to hear that Tim’s thought this through much further than the concept level, it’s a potentially interesting business model. Like many interest-based sites, there is a lot of potential for related business to leverage targeted advertising. For example, if I’m a bar I could advertise to people who frequently attend events at the neighboring concert hall or happy hours that are similar to mine.

The difficulty in a business like this is getting to critical mass. The users have to be present in order for the businesses to find value. Tim and Chris, the founders of Wawadoo, think they can do it. “We’ve seen a great response from local organizations. I think they see something like this as the future of finding an event” says Chris, the COO of the company (and a talented developer). “We haven’t opened the site yet and we already have interest of event promoters and organizations who want to co-promote with us,” Tim added, “This will be a great way to get the word out to users. It also means that the businesses must see something there.”

Soon you’ll get to decide. Go to www.wawadoo.com, enter your email address, and you’ll be one of the first members of the public to try it.

Since Groupon is now a household name, I was excited to see the news that ShowClix, a local startup and Innovation Works portfolio company, landed a partnership with them.

The partnership comes just after they experienced a 275% growth in new clients in 2010. Now with this new deal with group buy juggernaut Groupon, ShowClix’s is proving once again their local startup to watch.

I remember a few years ago when I first saw there ticket scanning doohickey at a local show. I thought, “What is this, there is no way this scanny thing is going to take down Ticketmaster”. I’m glad there making me put my foot in my mouth on that one.

ShowClix has also announced that there are over 100 new features for administrators of events. You check out the video below so see some of them in action. These new features add more robust social media intergeneration and tracking. Two very important thing to success in this Facebook and twitter dominated world.

Read the full press release after the jump.

ShowClix Lands Partnership with Groupon, Ramps Up Social Media Integration & Launches Latest Version of Ticketing System

PITTSBURGH, PA – February 3, 2011 – ShowClix (www.showclix.com) – a full-service event ticketing company – today introduced the Spring 2011 release of its ticketing and event management system. The new release offers venues, promoters and event organizers over 100 new features, an integrated partnership with Groupon and deeper connections with social media websites Facebook, Twitter and Disqus. The release comes on the heels of the company experiencing over 650% growth in ticket sales and over 275% growth in new clients in 2010.

The partnership with Groupon makes ShowClix the only ticketing company to integrate the group discounting service into a full-service event ticketing solution. The integration gives users the ability to seamlessly apply for, manage, track and run reports on their Groupon offers – all from their ShowClix ticket seller management console. ShowClix clients can now easily engage Groupon’s collective buying power to reach a targeted, savvy audience of active event goers looking for new ways to enjoy their city.

“Our clients are always looking for new ways to promote and sell tickets to their events. Groupon, Facebook and Twitter are powerful selling tools for event promoters,” explains ShowClix CEO Joshua Dziabiak. “By introducing these new features and seamless integrations, we’re providing our clients with increased exposure for their events, new customers, word-of-mouth promotion, and measurable marketing tools that will help them move more tickets in more ways than ever before.”

The company’s increased integration with Facebook and Twitter gives venues, promoters and event organizers the ability to easily share information about their events, promotions and discount codes on the social media websites, directly from their ShowClix ticket seller management console. The social media tools also make it easy for people viewing ticketing pages to tweet about, share with and promote events to their friends, followers and fans on Twitter, Facebook and through Disqus.

Additional features in the Spring 2011 release include advanced user permission settings; recurring event and timed ticketing support for museums, exhibitions and attractions; an integrated email marketing system; and support for third-party merchant accounts and multiple currencies.

To watch a video that highlights some of the new features found in the Spring 2011 release of the ShowClix’ ticketing and event management system, visit http://bit.ly/dSMRSd.

About ShowClix: ShowClix is a full-service, primary ticketing company that provides venues, promoters and event organizers with innovative solutions to manage every aspect of their ticketing operations, including online and telephone ticket sales, box office management, admissions control, and event promotion. The company currently works with over 1,700 live music venues, performing arts groups, museums, festivals, nightclubs, artist management companies, non-profit organizations and colleges and universities around the world. For more information about how ShowClix is bringing innovation to the ticketing industry, visit http://www.showclix.com/ticketing.

The following is from a blog post by Burgher Jon:

Pittsburgh’s own Accelerator, AlphaLab was in the news last week as a founding member of the TechStars Network. TechStars is a nationally renowned accelerator with centers in NYC, Boston, Boulder and Seattle. One of the primary men associated with it is Brad Feld, a guy I’ve mentioned several times on this blog. The TechStars Natwork was formed to help develop synergies with other accelerators across the country in conjunction with Barack Obama’s Startup America. I think the move positions AlphaLab well to take advantage of some network benefits and perhaps even some Federal help. Just exactly what ends up coming out of it, will be interesting to see.

[click here to read the full story]

AlphaLab has been helping startups get off the ground for six cycles (has it been 3 years already?), so they have a nice pool of alumni to offer advice to new batches of companies.

Thankfully the advice they share is not always private. Last week AlphaLab posted a few highlights from what the latest grads had to share with the new guys.

1. Launch Quickly. This is often the first piece of advice alumni offer up–and for good reason. Both a pillar of the lean startup model and adopted maxim of many startups, “shipping fast, and often” allows companies to test out market assumptions and use valuable user feedback to quickly pivot their product or service to fit the needs of their customers.
2. Learn How to Say “No.” This refers both to taking on potential customers that will cause you more problems than you can handle, and the laundry list of features your customers will inevitabply want you to add.

Click here to read the rest of the advice the alumni had to offer. Take special note of number three and be sure to add this blog to your PR email list. Thanks!

The following is from The Blog of Burgher Jon:

It occurs to me that I should probably give some space to Project Olympus on this blog. After I spoke last week about the number of CMU software engineering students who leave Pittsburgh (CMU Professor Lenore Blum estimates it’s 95%), I thought a project specifically designed to help keep them was worth noting. The project is known a Project Olympus. The goal, as you can see from the chart above, is to more actively place CMU (and by extension Pittsburgh) at the center of their most talented software engineers’ projects. If you click the picture above it will take you to their about page. They have a list of their probes online and while a disappointing number don’t appear to have gone anywhere, they can claim ReCAPTCHA has a huge success (acquired by Google).

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Fred Wilson, as usual, had some valuable insights on his blog yesterday. The topic this time was particularly interesting, how the government can stimulate the startup ecosystem. He started by saying that there are at least two ecosystems in NYC, one around BioTech and one around Software/Internet/Digital Media and that the two are seperate. While this seems obvious to those of us who live this day in and day out, politicians tend to be a little dense.

Fred points to two primary ways that public funds and energies can be applied to nurturing the NYC tech scene. The first one is the chorus that resounds through just about every community trying to build a tech scene, WE NEED MORE ENGINEERS! This of course applies to Pittsburgh as much as anybody, but I think there are plenty of engineers (at least more then the Pittsburgh tech scene can currently handle) to be had coming out of CMU. This is why I think it is so awesome that Google confirmed today that their offices are going to be twice as large as we previously believed. This, and a growing startup community, can form the basis for a community that’s attractive to the top engineering talent.

[continue reading]

In the past 7 days Mashable has posted over 10 How to be a startup success tips. Its part of their Digital Entrepreneur Series that started later this year. I guess they decided to put it on overdrive this week.

Just in case you might of missed them here is a quick rundown:

• 5 Tips for Startup Success from the CEO of Meetup:
  1. Focus on Solving One Puzzle at a Time
  2. Build for Surprise
  3. Work on What’s Most Fascinating to You
  4. Be a Maker and Builder of the Product
  5. Form a Killer Team
• 5 Tips for Startup Success From a Co-Founder of HootSuite:
  1. Address a Real Problem
  2. Work with the Right People
  3. Division of Labor is Your Friend
  4. Stay Focused
  5. Be Visible

When I look at both of these lists two things jump out at me; being focused and having the right team. I guess those two things really do set you pace to be a successful startup.

This fact make me excited for whats coming out of Pittsburgh. Most of the up-and-coming startupers I meet in Pittsburgh have these qualities. When I ask them what there doing they have clear idea and mission of what the want to accomplish. They also have about 1-3 more people, usually working away, right behind them.

Pretty soon the word Startup and Pittsburgh are going to be like bacon and eggs. Seeing one without the other is going to look strange and unsatisfying.

Hearing about Shoefitr during the presentations at AlphaLab’s Demo Day left me not only impressed but wanting to know more. I got in touch with CEO and COO Matt Wilkinson (who founded Shoefitr along with Nick End and Breck Fresen) for an interview to talk shoes, startups, and Pittsburgh.

Did you and your co-founders know you wanted to start a business, or did the idea to start Shoefitr evolve from the problem you saw that exists in online shoe sales?

We had each previously attempted our own respective ventures prior to Shoefitr so we are entrepreneurial and always looking for opportunities. With that said, Shoefitr was started from a problem we experienced first-hand when trying to buy shoes online. Although we knew it would be a challenge, we felt strongly that we had the technical experience and background to find a solution. Its not magic, there is a reason somebody fits better in a certain shoe than others, and there just had to be a good way to capture fit without trying on a shoe.

How did you find out about AlphaLab, and did it benefit you?

We heard about Alphalab through a friend/entrepreneur from Carnegie Mellon, Matt Humphrey, who is on the advisor board at Alphalab. The Alphalab experience has been extremely valuable. The mentoring and resources were crucial in getting us to the next stage but most importantly being accepted into the program gave us that extra push from working part-time on Shoefitr to going fulltime.

How did you balance growing your business while maintaining outside employment?

We had been working on Shoefitr part-time for over a year, including a complete revamping of our approach. We had mitigated as much risk as possible before quitting our previous jobs and going full-time.

For now, Shoefitr is integrated into affiliate sites, such as Running Warehouse. You mentioned during Demo Day that Shoefitr would like to build into “a comparative fitting site where consumers can search by fit before purchasing through an affiliate network.” Can you elaborate?

Shoefitr will be integrated into retailer’s websites, but at some point, it might make sense to reach customers through a fit-centric comparative shopping site as well where Shoefitr can drive more traffic to retailers. We think that there could be a demand for a site like this because 35% of shoppers first visit comparative pricing sites prior to purchasing; however, our market research shows that fit is a bigger concern than price when it comes to buying shoes online. Our vision is to create a comparative shopping site where customers can search by fit and price.

Has Shoefitr received funding?

Outside of Alphalab, Shoefitr has been self-funded and will be looking for funding in the future when the time is right.

If/when you expand to other markets beyond athletic shoes, will the technology be able to detect other possible fit problems? What do you see those being?

Our approach and most of our software will not change when moving to new footwear verticals; however, different types of footwear may require different fitting algorithms and measurements for our recommendation engine. For example, high heels will obviously require us to look into heel heights. Discovering exactly what those are will require some more research, user testing, and also understanding the shopping/fitting behavior of those consumers.

Where are you planning to move your operations after AlphaLab?

Shoefitr will keep its operations in Pittsburgh, and we are currently exploring our options for office space around the city.

How do you and your co-founders come to be in Pittsburgh? What do you like about it in general and for startups in particular?

The 3 of us are all from different places, Breck grew up outside Chicago, Nick came from Milwaukee, and I am from New Jersey but all came to Pittsburgh to attend Carnegie Mellon. We all really enjoy Pittsburgh. Breck’s favorite spot is the Pretzel Shop across from the Alphalabs where he can be found eating for most meals. Nick and I enjoy Double Wide, their TV Dinners are awesome. Nick and Breck like running in Shenley Park and head there almost daily. Pittsburgh is a very start-up friendly city. We have friends working on startups in the valley and there are just so many out there that it’s hard to find people who want to help you. In Pittsburgh everyone is excited about all the new companies and willing to help.

How did Nick become a professionally sponsored runner?

Nick and Breck both ran cross country and track at CMU and Nick continued afterwards. He start runnning marathons last year and after a fast one in Boston he applied for a small sponsorship with Saucony. He really likes their shoes and gear. He runs daily and every month or so enters a big race. On most days he convinces Breck and I to run with him which I always regret as I am in no condition to keep up with them.

Last question, do you have a favorite startup company in Pittsburgh?

Our favorite Pittburgh startup is DeviceKnit. They introduced us to a bar that has 10 cent wings so it was the perfect place for all of us to hang out and talk about startups.

Editors Note: Shoefitr has also just won a global pitch competition. Check out the Alphalab blog for video of the winning pitch!