This is my first post on HexagonalBlog in quite some time, and I've been thinking about my current responsibilities and how they impact the future of this site.
As most of you know, I have a company called Soccermetrics Research (formerly Soccermetrics Research & Consulting), which is a spinoff of the Soccermetrics blog, which in itself was a spinoff of HexagonalBlog. My company is now part of the summer class at Flashpoint, which is a startup accelerator based at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
In case you don't know how these accelerators work, the founding team receives a nominal amount of funding that allows them to work full-time for 3-4 months on their company, they receive mentorship and feedback on their company idea, and at the end of the program (typically 12-14 weeks) they present their company to a room of prospective investors.
We are five weeks into the program and we are being challenged on every assumption surrounding our business idea, which is hard at times but very beneficial in the long term. We have also been talking with a lot of prospective customers, and we sense that there is an opportunity to do some really great things as far as data analytics in sport are concerned. You'll be hearing more from us toward the end of the summer.
I don't think I have to tell you that my top priority right now is Soccermetrics, and in particular making sure that we are in the best position possible heading into the Demo Days. (We have three -- Atlanta, New York, and Silicon Valley -- and they are all in a ten-day period in September.)
So what does all this mean for HexagonalBlog? It means that I am very conflicted about its future.
I have enjoyed writing for HexagonalBlog over the last seven years, and I am pleased to have established myself as a leading writer on football in CONCACAF. I've enjoyed the stress relief outlet that writing has given me. It's opened a lot of doors to me and spawned what is now an exciting opportunity. I also feel that there is so much more to be done with HexagonalBlog, and I have some ideas about the integration of sports reporting and data that I would love to try out. (One of my original motivations for starting Soccermetrics was to develop metrics that could generate original content for HexagonalBlog.)
And yet...running a startup is hard work. Really hard work. It's either done at maximum effort or not at all, and you only have the capacity to work on one startup at a time.
I guess I'm saying that I'm not able to continue writing on HexagonalBlog at the level that I would like, and my ability to maintain certain features of the site will be greatly limited for the foreseeable future.
But as I said, I have some additional ideas about the future direction of the site. For that reason I'm not interested in selling the site or just handing it off to someone. I have thought about having multiple writers provide content, but I'm extremely picky about a shared site. I've built up a style of writing about soccer in CONCACAF and I've worked pretty hard to show that there is more to CONCACAF than the USA and Mexico, and whoever I select has to understand that.
So I will still write some posts from time to time, but my ability to write a lot of posts will be limited. Perhaps you will be fewer but more substantive posts on higher-level issues in CONCACAF, like an op-ed piece. I haven't settled on my exact involvement yet.
In closing, I want to thank those who have followed the site going back to February 2005, from just two or three people to the thousands I reach now. I have learned a lot in the last seven years and I have been impressed with the reach of this site to places I never expected. I will always be proud of my work on HexagonalBlog.
Best of luck Howard, and do what you need to do. We'll be here whenever you get to post.
Posted by: Eric Vormelker | July 13, 2012 at 02:38 PM