One-man-startup StatSheet just received 1.3 million in a first round of funding from a group of investors that includes Valhalla, IDEA Fund Partners and assorted angels, most notably Adam Smith of Xobni.
Founded by former Cisco engineer Robert Allen, the StatSheet Network platform is run on StatSheet.com and provides fans and bloggers with statistical analysis, charts, and sport stat embeds. At some point their roster boasted Twitter accounts for each NBA, NFL, and college team. StatSheet was also a 2008 Crunchies finalist in the Best Bootstrapped Startup category (won by GitHub that year).
Allen will use the new funds to hire a developer team in order to expand the variety and automate the creation of new sports content; His intention is that StatSheet become, “a new type of sports media company that is focused on technology and automation instead of paying people to research and report news like is the norm with traditional sports media.”
StatSheet’s future plans include rolling out an extensive network of team-specific sites update in realtime with game previews, player news and recap analysis. They are currently tracking over 250 million sports stats and hope to extend their reach to all major sports soon.