SportsDataIO

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of ProfolioX, a cloud-based company that processes real-time data turning athletes' brands into stock options.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with SportsDataIO?

Our team was working with a technology company to implement a real data source into our platform and establish the APIs that we needed. We were looking to solve a need on what data to fuel our data entry. We contacted SportsDataIO to work with us, and they liked our idea and concept. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They mainly provided the data and didn’t do much of the integration work. Then, once we had access to the data, our developer was able to use their API keys to pipe in data into our platform. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve interacted with two or three people so far. One of them is an account manager, and the other two are tech support. 

How did you come to work with SportsDataIO?

We were using a data source that we found on the internet. However, it wasn’t working for some reason, so we had to find a new data source. Our team did internet research and looked up different places. 

Sports data is costly, so we were trying to find companies willing to work with us. SportsDataIO offers a free tier where customers can use at least some of their data to test them or see if there’s something you’d be interested in. We decided to give it a shot. 

We were running into some issues with it, so we had to reach out and contact them. We talked to their sales and account management team and developed a relationship. They said they were willing to work with us, and that’s how the partnership started — it went from us needing free data to them making it inexpensive for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $3,000 so far. 

What is the status of this engagement?

The engagement began in November 2020, and we’re still working with them. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

SportsDataIO’s data is accurate. They’re willing to help us and provide us with access to data at very nominal costs. 

How did SportsDataIO perform from a project management standpoint?

Our contacts are great people and very much engaged. Whenever we have questions, they respond to us, even on the weekends. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very flexible and definitely understand our situation and needs. Everyone else that we were looking at seemed inflexible, but SportsDataIO is extremely flexible. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They have a lot of data that’s available, and it can be very overwhelming. It would be good if they explain how the data evolves and categorize them as “basic,” “medium,” or “advanced” data. 

We don’t need some of their advanced data, but we need some of the more intermediate data. Some of the more basic data they offered drove up our costs, and we didn’t even need them. 

Once we realized what we needed and didn’t need, we could better understand our price point a little bit easier.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask the right questions. Be open, honest, and transparent about what you need, what you’re going to do, and what the challenges are. It allows whoever you speak with at SportsDataIO to understand better how they can help you. 

It’s a unique perspective being a startup, being able to see people get inspired. At the end of the day, the people we’ve talked to want to help us. They want us to succeed and really do believe in us. 

They think we’re going to do well, but they wouldn’t have known or believed that if we didn’t tell them exactly what we needed and why we needed it and asked them questions about how they could help us.