St. Louis Startup LockerDome Inks Deal With USA Today

LockerDome, St.Louis startup,startup,sports startup, USA TodayMonday our friends at St. Louis based sports social networking startup announced a new partnership with one of the most recognized sports brands in the world. USA Today Sports is now partnering with LockerDome by adding their content within the USA Today network and also partnering to sell advertising on the site that’s growing at a tremendous rate.  LockerDome is one of the hottest startups in St. Louis.

LockerDome has over 1450 networks of professional athletes, sports teams, brands and other sports properties. FL superstars Troy Polamalu, Larry Fitzgerald, Maurice Jones-Drew, Antonio Brown and Marshawn Lynch; MLB All-Star Felix Hernandez; baseball legends Pete Rose and Wade Boggs; and NBA stars Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, David Lee and Stephen Curry, are just some of the professional sports players that have pages on LockerDome.

Since launch LockerDome, which is backed by Square co-founder Jim McKelvey and other major investors in the St. Louis community, has grown to over 8 million monthly unique visitors. They are currently growing at a rate of more than 100,000 uniques per day.

Under the partnership, effective immediately, USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties will begin selling advertising on LockerDome, and LockerDome’s traffic will now be included within the USA Today Sports Properties network. Additional 2013 strategic initiatives between the two properties are currently being planned.

“By delivering an innovative platform for publishers, LockerDome has quickly become the fastest growing sports website in the world,” said Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO, LockerDome. “USA TODAY Sports is a top-tier media brand that we’ve always had a great amount of respect for, and becoming an Official Partner of USA TODAY Sports is a fantastic marriage between two world-class companies that opens up a number of exciting growth opportunities across the board,”

“We’re excited to welcome LockerDome to the USA TODAY Sports family,” said Clay Walker, Vice President of Affiliate Relations for USA TODAY Sports Digital Properties. “LockerDome’s unique social media platform enables us to provide our advertisers with engaged, highly targeted audiences inside LockerDome’s vast—and growing– ecosystem.”

What sets LockerDome apart for publishers is its ability to reach a more engaged, targeted sports audience and increase their overall social media footprint. Since its initial launch, LockerDome has delivered 50% average growth across Facebook and Twitter for its properties in their first 4.5 months. One of its key differentiators is LockerDome’s cross-promotional flexibility, allowing its networks to grow their existing audiences with each other, a service Facebook and Twitter do not currently offer. While contests on other platforms traditionally average the industry standard of 2% – 3%, LockerDome boasts an average landing page conversion of 23%.

Sports enthusiasts join LockerDome to become a part of interest-specific sports communities where they can consume content and interact with like-minded fans around their favorite professional athletes, teams and sports. Milestones for LockerDome since its launch in January 2012 include surpassing one million uniques in June, two million in October, three million in November, four million in December and eight million in January. At its current growth rate, LockerDome is on pace to be a top-10 most visited sports site in the next 12 months.

LockerDome founder Gabe Lozano will appear on “Grinding For Cash” (raising money everywhere else panel) and giving his own talk at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference

LockerDome The Hottest Startup In St. Louis

LockerDome, St. Louis startup,startup,startup newsSports social networking startup LockerDome is the hottest consumer facing internet startup in St. Louis and probably the hottest sports startup period. The social network that allows anyone at any age to build a profile at their level, continues to grow at a rate reminiscent of a Silicon Valley startup.

Just two weeks ago we reported that LockerDome, founded by Gabe Lozano, had surpassed 3 million monthly unique visitors. Now they’re reporting that they’ve topped 4 million monthly unique visitors (MUV).

LockerDome continues to grow at a rate of 14% week over week since their launch in January of this year. They passed the 1 million mark in June, two million in early October, three million in late November and now four million.  LockerDome experienced more growth on one single day in December than it did in the first 12 weeks of the year combined (5.6%).  At the pace they’re at they are poised to be a top 10 most visited sports site within the next 12 to 18 months.

Their growth is fueled by the fact that LockerDome allows anyone to jump on the platform wherever they’re at in their sporting life. Founder Gabe Lozano explained to us back when we toured the LockerDome offices earlier this year, that everyone has three basic lives, work life, personal life, and for many, sports life.

Whether you’re the parent of a child playing tee-ball or 5-6 year old basketball, a semi pro baseball player or even a pro athlete you can join LockerDome and become part of your teams network and the network of other teams, including professional teams and players that you’re a fan of.

LockerDome is designed to be the one single sports social networking destination for their user throughout their entire sporting life. If someone starts out as a young tee-ball player and in 15 years becomes a pro baseball player, the network is robust enough to grow throughout that career. If a pee wee football player plays college ball and then becomes a coach, LockerDome can handle that path as well.

Even if after playing in a competitive city league and ending your sporting career, you can continue on with LockerDome as a fan, keeping your entire sporting life history in your profile.

Pro Athletes including Memphis Grizzlies’ Rudy Gay, six time PGA Tour Winner Dustin Johnson and NFL All Pro Larry Fitzgerald are all participants in LockerDome.

“Every professional athlete needs to be on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome as the social media hub for my personal brand, I’ve been able to better engage my fans and grow my entire social presence across Facebook, Twitter, and LockerDome,” said Larry Fitzgerald, All-Pro NFL wide receiver with the Arizona Cardinals. “From a content standpoint, I use LockerDome not only to host unique fan giveaways, but also as a daily source to post behind the scenes, interactive content.”

“This is just the tip of the iceberg for LockerDome. As explosive as LockerDome’s growth has been in 2012, we will undoubtedly be even more dominant in 2013,” commented Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “The overwhelming demand for LockerDome by professional athletes, media partners, brands and the targeted audiences these publishers reach, and the subsequent meteoric growth from that demand, is a clear indication that the LockerDome platform will only continue to strengthen.”

Linkage:

 Sign up for LockerDome here

Here’s more startup news from St. Louis

Gabe Lozano is speaking at everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference, you should attend

St. Louis Startup LockerDome Surpasses 3 Million MUVs

LockerDome,St.Louis startup,startups,startup newsLately St. Louis startup LockerDome has been on fire. We recently reported that the sports social networking startup announced the first game/app built on their platform. Soon after we reported that 19 year venture capital veteran Mark Lewis, had joined the company as CFO.  Thursday, they announced that they’ve surpassed 3 million monthly unique visitors (muv).

In addition to offering a sports social network for any stage athlete, from childrens intramural sports, up through college and pro, LockerDome also features over 1350 professional athletes, brands, media personalities, parody sites and other recognized sports properties that host their brands on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome, publishers are able to reach a more engaged, targeted sports audience and increase their overall social media footprint. Since launching in January, the interactive sports social media platform has delivered 47% average growth across Facebook and Twitter for its properties (average 4.3 month span, 109,018 to 144,746 followers).

Sports enthusiasts join LockerDome to become a part of interest-specific sports communities where they can consume content and interact with like-minded fans around their favorite professional athletes, teams and sports. The company has been growing at an average rate of14% per week since its launch 11 months back, surpassing one million uniques in June, two million in October and now three million in November. At its current growth rate, LockerDome is on pace to be a top-10 most visited sports site in the next 12 – 18 months.

Contributing to LockerDome’s tremendous growth are the contests that professional athletes, brands, and media personalities host on its platform, with its high-profile contests attracting more than 100,000 entries. Unique to LockerDome is the ability for its properties to easily cross-promote one another, as well as run their contests seamlessly across Facebook and Twitter, maximizing the audience that each property reaches. Contests on LockerDome boast an average landing page conversion of 19%, more than six times above the industry average of 2% – 3%. Current featured contests include MLB Hall of Famer, Wade Boggs, MLB’s all-time hits leader, Pete Rose, NFL Superstars, Larry Fitzgerald and Troy Polamalu, and the iconic baseball brand, Rawlings.

“This is just the tip of the iceberg for LockerDome. As explosive as LockerDome’s growth has been in 2012, we will undoubtedly be even more dominant in 2013,” commented Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “The overwhelming demand for LockerDome by professional athletes, media partners, brands and the targeted audiences these publishers reach, and the subsequent meteoric growth from that demand, is a clear indication that the LockerDome platform will only continue to strengthen.”

“Every professional athlete needs to be on LockerDome. By leveraging LockerDome as the social media hub for my personal brand, I’ve been able to better engage my fans and grow my entire social presence across Facebook, Twitter, and LockerDome,” said Larry Fitzgerald, All-Pro NFL wide receiver with the Arizona Cardinals. “From a content standpoint, I use LockerDome not only to host unique fan giveaways, but also as a daily source to post behind the scenes, interactive content.”

“As one of the world’s premier sports agencies, we’re always looking for unique technologies that give our clients an edge. LockerDome has become part of our secret sauce,” said Adam Rosenthal, Director of Athlete Marketing at Octagon Sports. “LockerDome not only enhances our clients’ brands, but also provides them with new monetization opportunities. LockerDome will become a standard across all professional athletes and notable sports figures.”

Linkage:

Go get a LockerDome account today, here

Here’s more St.Louis coverage at nibletz.com

Yup, this is the biggest startup conference in the country, got your ticket yet?

St.Louis Startup LockerDome Adds 19 Year VC Veteran Mark Lewis As CFO

Lockerdome,St. Louis startup,startup newsNews keeps pouring out from our friends at St. Louis startup LockerDome. Earlier this week the largest sports social network startup in the world announced that they had just partnered for the release of the first app/game built on the LockerDome platform. Thursday the team at LockerDome announced a new addition in 19 year venture capital veteran Mark Lewis, joining the team as CFO.

Lewis’ venture capital experience includes working with Gateway Associates and Two River Associates from 1998 to 2006. Most recently Lewis spent the last six years as a principal at Advantage Capital Partners, one of the nations leading venture capital firms with over $1.3 billion in invested capital.

While LockerDome founder and CEO Gabe Lozano is no beginner when it comes to startup and entrepreneurism, adding Lewis to the team brings a plethora of welcomed experience.

“As we continue to invest in the team’s growth, we are thrilled that someone of Mark’s stature, energy and talent will lead LockerDome’s efforts toward securing an even brighter financial future for the company,” Lozano said in a statement. “Under Mark’s financial leadership we will continue to build on the momentum the company has had this year in amassing over 1,300 properties and 2.5 million monthly unique visitors since January.”

“Joining a visionary leader such as Gabe Lozano to help build LockerDome into the premier interest-specific social media platform is an incredible opportunity. I am quite excited by the prospect of sustaining and managing LockerDome’s explosive growth,” said Mark Lewis, LockerDome’s new CFO “I look forward to securing a strong financial future to execute Gabe’s vision and LockerDome’s brand.”

LockerDome is a sports social network that allows anyone at any level in sports to join, create a profile and interact with others. From school age leagues to the pro’s, a wide variety of athletes make up the LockerDome social network. Hundreds of thousands of sports fans have also joined the network to keep up with their favorite sports stars, teams and even media sites.

Linkage:

LockerDome is here

More St. Louis startup coverage is here at nibletz.

LockerDome will be at the largest startup conference in the world, will you? CLICK HERE

St. Louis Startup LockerDome Announces First Game Built On LockerDome Platform

LockerDome,Dime Magazine,St. Louis startup,Gabe Lozano,startup,startups,startup newsWe’ve been continually covering St. Louis startup LockerDome since April of this year. LockerDome is a venture backed sports social network that allows players of any age and any level to engage throughout their entire career. LockerDome was founded by Gabe Lozano who’s the son of online payment software pioneer Bob Lozano. The elder Lozano helped launch cloud solutions and development firm Appistry as well as PayLinx.

LockerDome is backed by Cultivation Capital as well as Square co-founder and local St.Louis entrepreneur Jim McKelvey.

We’ve had the privilege of talking with Lozano quite a bit over the last six months. In fact he served as an impromptu, remote mentor for one of the teams that participated in Memphis’ Startup Weekend over the summer.

On our last trip to St. Louis Lozano was very excited when he was telling us that they had started to open up the LockerDome platform to developers and some of the ideas that may come out of that. Today they’re announcing the first game/app that has been built on top of the LockerDome platform, “Basketball Memory App by Dime Magazine”.

Dime Magazine is the the basketball lifestyle magazine that’s been around since 2001. The Memory App by Dime Magazine will live on the Dime Magazine Network on LockerDome and leverage LockerDome’s over 2.5 million monthly unique visitors. Users will match the popular basketball lifestyle magazine’s covers featuring the biggest names in basketball as quickly as possible and win cool basketball related prizes. The first of these prizes is a pair of the recently launched “Polarizing Pink” Nike Air Foamposite One shoes provided by Foot Locker.

“We are pleased to be partnering with Dime Magazine and IDC Projects to deliver the first game to LockerDome’s rapidly growing and highly engaged sports audience,” said Gabe Lozano, co-founder and CEO of LockerDome. “This exciting new game featuring the stunning artwork from previous Dime covers and the wonderfully addictive Memory Matches technology represents the next step in the evolution of LockerDome as a sports media platform.”

“We’re excited to use our expertise in mobile games to be part of this synergistic approach to encourage interaction between basketball fans and brands.” said Michael Orlando, CEO of IDC Projects.

“Over the past decade, Dime Magazine’s covers have featured the best basketball players in the word. We’re excited to bring Dime to a robust mobile platform like LockerDome, and to give our fans a fun, new experience through this innovative and wonderfully addictive new game,” Dime Magazine’s CEO and co-founder Josh Gotthelf said in a statement.

Since re-launching in January, LockerDome has been one of the fastest growing sports-specific websites in the world. Many top sports agencies are leveraging LockerDome as a means to maximize their client’s social media efforts on Facebook and Twitter and to better engage their fanbases. The official brands and networks the St. Louis-based company represents includes NBA superstars Blake Griffin, Rudy Gay, David Lee and Stephen Curry, NFL superstars Troy Polamalu, Larry Fitzgerald, Maurice Jones-Drew and Marshawn Lynch, and MLB Legends Pete Rose and Wade Boggs, among others.

Linkage:

Download the game for your iOS device today, here

Sign up for LockerDome here

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from St. Louis

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Take A Look At St.Louis’ Thriving Tech And Startup Scene INFOGRAPHIC

St. Louis startups,Iten,Lockerdome, St. Louis tech,arch angelsSt. Louis’ Information Technology Entrepreneur Network released a great infographic on Tuesday highlighting the goings on in St.Louis. This was just ahead of the Startup Connections conference that happened in St. Louis yesterday.

Although we’re not based there we do consider St. Louis one of our second startup and technology homes and even spotlight their tech scene, sometimes more than their own local sites. St. Louis is ripe for startups and entrepreneurs. In fact when looking at St. Louis from the outside, all of Brad Feld’s “Boulder Thesis” is in place in St. Louis.

Aside from that though, the infographic put together by iTen tells a great story. Take a look at some of these factoids.

  • New York’s cost of living is 145% higher than St. Louis
  • Seattle, Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin also have higher costs of living than St. Louis
  • Washington University (St. Louis) Entrepreneurship Program is ranked 6th in the nation
  • Missouri ranked top 10 (6th) in the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Index
  • St. Louis has 9 strong investor firms
  • St. Louis startups have raised nearly half a billion dollars
We’ve covered some great startups in St. Louis. Lockerdome is a big success story in St. Louis, one that founder Gabe Lozano hopes to keep in St. Louis. In fact Lozano is speaking at “everywhereelse.co The Startup Conference and App Fest” There are a lot of reasons to pay attention to the things going on in St. Louis. See for yourself, check out the infographic below:

Video Interview With St.Louis Startup: LockerDome

Back in April we asked if St.Louis startup LockerDome was the Groupon for St.Louis,you know the standout startup that stays in their hometown and grows. By all accounts LockerDome is shaping up to be that startup.

LockerDome is a social networking site focused on team sports from just about every level. Whether your son or daughter is on a neighborhood soccer team, you’re a high school athlete playing on the football team or you’re a professional athlete LockerDome allows you to make a profile to correspond with the type of team your on.

With your profile you can keep friends, family, teammates, scouts and anyone interested up to date with how you’re doing as an athlete. For kids, think back to when you had trading cards made with the team photos, now grandma and grandpa across the country don’t need to wait for the mail, they can just go online and check out your profile.

One of the great things about LockerDome is that athletes of all levels can be found on the network. Pro Athletes are often the inspiration for many young athletes and you can find pro athletes from all kinds of sports on LockerDome. Imagine playing pee-wee hockey or pee-wee football and having a LockerDome profile just like your favorite professional athlete.

LockerDome has already attached some major attention. St.Louis native and Square co-founder Jim McKelvey sits on the LockerDome board and has invested into the company through Cultivation Capital.  LockerDome has raised $2.1 million to date with their latest round totaling $1.04 million, which closed in June.

Check out our video interview below:

 

How about some Linkage:

Click here to check out LockerDome, start a profile why don’t ya?

Nibletz is the voice of startups “everywhere else” here are more startup stories from St. Louis

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St.Louis Startup: LockerDome Announces $1.04M Round

Our good friends at LockerDome have announced some great news this morning. They’ve just completed a $1.04 million dollar round of financing led by St. Louis Arch Angels. Cultivation Capital, Capital Innovators, the Missouri Technology Corporation and several individual angel investors participated in the round.

This new round brings LockerDome’s total investment to date to $2.1M.


In addition to this great funding news LockerDome has also announced today that they’ve seen a 25% increase in users week over week for 24 weeks straight. In just about five months the sports based social networking site has seen growth to 850k monthly uniques. They also have 80 pro athletes signed up including Pittsburgh Steelers Safety Troy Polamalu. They’ve also secured iconic brands like Rawlings.

LockerDome allows users to create their own sporting profiles for their local sports teams. Within LockerDome, teams can create their own social networks whether it be for a 5 year old T-Ball league, a 15-17 year old basketball team or a semi pro team. Even pro-athletes can create their own profiles.

Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey has been a strong believer in LockerDome and the St.Louis startup scene. McKelvey has invested in LockerDome and holds a seat on their board.

“We’d like to give a huge thanks to the St. Louis investor community, whose support has been fantastic. Oversubscribing on a million-dollar financing round in only a matter of weeks not only speaks to the strong growth and demand that LockerDome is experiencing, but to the quickly emerging St. Louis tech startup ecosystem,” commented LockerDome CEO, Gabe Lozano.

The St.Louis Arch Angels invested $3 million dollars in the thriving St. Louis startup scene in 2011

Linkage:

Check out LockerDome for yourself here

Find out more about St. Louis Arch Angels Here

See Nibletz’ coverage of St. Louis’ startup community here

St.Louis Startup: BonFyre Brings Social Network Back To Campus, Attracts Square Co-Founder Jim McKelvey

Last month we brought you the story of LockerDome a social network for amateur athletes based in St.Louis. LockerDome was able to attract some key investors and advisors. One of those is St.Louis native Jim McKelvey who just happens to be the co-founder of the widely popular mobile payment startup, Square. McKelvey co-founded Square with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

Another social networking startup has also received backing and advice from McKelvey. McKelvey sits on the board of Off Campus Media LLC, the paurent company to the BonFyre app.

BonFyre was founded by Mark Sawyier, a graduate of Washington University. The app is a social media and location sharing app aimed at college students looking to plan what’s next with friends, find out what’s hot and save money around campus.

One of the main concepts behind Bonfyre is to take the social network back to students. We all remember the days when Facebook was exclusive to students with a college email address. While everyone wanted to join this exclusive club (and we all eventually did), the exclusive college nature of Facebook at the time, made it more about sharing social events with friends and then getting out and doing stuff together.

More after the break

Read More…

Is LockerDome St. Louis’ Groupon?

LockerDome is one hot startup coming out of St.Louis. It’s the first ever dedicated sports social network for youth and amateur sports. LockerDome has been likened to the Facebook or LinkedIn for athletes.

LockerDome allows individual sports organizations to develop their own sports networks, and most of the well known sports programs in the country have already joined and have thriving networks. The Dallas Texans, one of the top ranked soccer teams in the country has a LockerDome network, as does the East Coat Pro Showcase, a well known east coast event that’s made up of more than 100 of the 2011 Major League Baseball draft picks.

LockerDome and CEO Gabe Lozano aren’t just making a big name for themselves in the sports world, they’ve already chalked up a lot of funding. In December of 2011 they raised $750,000 in an angel round.  Participants in the round include serial entrepreneurs Brian and Carol Matthews, co-founders of Primary Network and CDM Fantasy Sports; Capital Innovators, a St. Louis-based technology accelerator fund; Moosylvania Marketing, a nationally-recognized marketing agency; and Hal Gentry, co-founder of Capital Innovators and GridLogix, among more than a dozen other angel investors.

LockerDome also caught the eye of Square’s co-founder Jim McKelvey who invested and also took a seat on the company’s board of directors.  But McKelvey wasn’t easily sold at first. He’s not the kind of investor that looks to pump money into a “flavor of the week” just to catch a big windfall he has three businesses that he’s started and still runs today, including Square which he founded with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey.

More after the break

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