Kyle
For those of you old enough to remember, back before 9/11 Cantor Fitzgerald was the outfit behind a virtual stock exchange called HSX. HSX stood for Hollywood Stock Exchange and it was one of the first virtual stock exchanges that allowed users to buy and sell celebrities, movies and movie options. Unfortunately after 9/11 and the loss that Cantor Fitzgerald had in the tragedy, HSX faded. It was revived for a short time but not the same way.
Houston Startup Sports Tradex has revived the model except instead of Hollywood it’s all about sports. Sports Tradex gets to the core of the fantasy sports lover with a financial background. It’s the ultimate place to go if you like to armchair quarterback sports and the stock market.
Sports Tradex really heats up when it’s game time. The market stays open throughout a sporting event so traders can trade in real time.
Sports Tradex is the brain child of co-founders Ben Lipson and Omri Buzi, both entrepreneurs. Lipson’s first entrepreneurial experience was actually a root beer company while Buzi has a more traditional background in web development.
We got a chance to talk with Lipson in the interview below:
Sports Tradex is a marketplace for the virtual trading of sports teams and athletes based on performance. Sports Tradex operates at the intersection of fantasy sports, finance and prediction games. Users compete on the site for big cash prizes against the entire Sports Tradex community and against their friends to see who can predict sporting event outcomes like the world series or the player that will hit the most postseason home runs. During an event, the market is open 24/7 allowing users to be active and interact DURING games. Sports Tradex offers an innovative new experience in sports entertainment with a focus on playoffs and championships. Visit www.sportstradex.com to sign up and start playing today!
Sports Tradex was founded by Ben Lipson and Omri Buzi, two Houston area friends with a background in business and technology. Ben’s first entrepreneurial venture was a mid-coast Maine root beer company, Port Clyde Quencher, Inc. Omri owned and operated a web development company focused on Texas clients. Both founders have experience working on in banking and trading but feel more passion for sports.
Houston, Texas
The startup culture in Houston is vastly underrated. Due to a relatively strong economy and the presence of the Oil & Gas industry, Houston offers great opportunities for startups and the VC/entrepreneurship community of resources is growing fast.
Vegas futures bets represented an inefficient market with no liquidity to take a profit or a loss as odds change. Sports Tradex is a marketplace for future sports performance where users set the prices and probabilities and trading liquidity is highly encouraged. Compared to fantasy sports, Sports Tradex offers much more excitement and engagement with a focus on playoffs. No more complaining about rogue or trigger shy owners.
This question is well-phrased because all startups can list myriad challenges. For Sports Tradex, completing the first round of funding was a major challenge. Now, we at least have money to continue to expand operations. Our challenges certainly didn’t go away. They just changed and new challenges pop up daily.
We have to give a shout out to Shark Tank. An aspiring entrepreneur can really learn how successful entrepreneurs and investors strategize just from watching that show. Who says you can’t program intelligent television anymore?Honorable mentions: parents, siblings, girlfriends and Kevin James.
It’s going to be huge
We will be launching more contests all the time and expanding to all major sports or sporting events. We are also developing mobile applications to give Sports Tradex users better features from a broader range of devices. Sports Tradex will also be improving the web features to include live statistical update and streaming sports news in Phase II of web development.
