The Sacramento region has no shortage of creative, innovative, hard-working startup founders. In this latest spotlight on Sacramento region startup founders and innovators I interview Fanalyze® co-founder Juan Juan. I first met Juan through the Sacramento Founder Institute cohort. Later, we were also pleased to include him in our first StartupSac Warm-up Pitch competition. It’s been great to see the progress they’ve made as well as their resilience in adjusting to the Covid pandemic.

Juan Juan

Let’s start off having you introduce yourself —what’s your background?

I grew up in the Bay Area and fell in love playing sports at a young age. After graduating from SJSU, I worked at several tech startups in marketing and web/mobile design. I also, worked at established companies like Apple and Charles Schwab. Working with startups gave me the motivation and experience to start my own startup. Fast-forwarding to today, I used my 20 years of startup technology experience and love for sports to launch Fanalyze®.

What does your startup do?

Fanalyze® is a sports search engine and analysis platform to speed up research for fantasy sports and sports betting while providing users aggregated relevant data to help with winning decisions.

Fanalyze

How did the idea for Fanalyze® come about?

My co-founder and I have played fantasy sports for over 15 years. We saw how time consuming it can be to do weekly research to help with your fantasy football lineups.

There were several websites that I viewed to gather the information needed for my research. My co-founder, Chris Longboy, who I’ve known since we were kids was the engineer and he had his spreadsheet with stats with formulas. We decided to build software to combine the two methods and at the same time speed up the research process while providing relevant data to the user. This was the beginning of Fanalyze®.

Tell us about the problem/challenge that you’re solving.

We’re solving for the problem of the significant time of researching in fantasy sports and sports betting with the overwhelming sports data online. The average fantasy player spends about 10 hours a week on research.

Fanalyze

How did you validate that your solution was viable?

First, we validated with ourselves to make sure we would use the software and if it would help us. Then we developed a few fantasy football and baseball apps on the CBS Sports App Store from 2012-2014. There we earned the top #3 developer with about 300,000 users. We talked to potential users through customer interviews, surveys and user testing.

What are some of the biggest accomplishments or wins you’ve had so far?

  • Top #3 Developer with 300,000 users on the CBS Sports App Store
  • Graduated from Founder Institute Sacramento
  • Completed Nex Cubed Accelerator Program
  • Accepted to the Sportradar Acceleradar Program
  • Launched Mobile App with MLB and NFL Data
  • Top 3 on Product of the Day on Product Hunt
  • Won the pitch competition for the Sports Betting USA Conference

What were some key entrepreneurship lessons-learned you’ve learned so far?

  • The startup journey is not a sprint but a marathon.
  • Make sure the market you are building for is huge and growing.
  • Build and launch to start getting users and revenue from the beginning.
  • There is no secret formula for a successful startup.
  • The idea can be great, but only passion will get you through the finish line.
  • Surround yourself with great people because you will need a village to get you through the toughest thing you will ever do.

What stage are you at and what’s next?

We are at the pre-seed stage having built a product and have some traction. We currently have MLB and NFL data with NBA soon to launch. We are currently fundraising and improving our traction metrics to help us close our round.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve had to overcome as a startup founder?

The biggest challenge is finding the right investors and partners to help accelerate our startup growth.

How has Covid-19 affected your startup and what have you done to adjust?

The pandemic has definitely hurt our startup with no live sports in the beginning and Covid-19 continues to create chaos in the sports industry with games and the control of the virus. We adjusted by rebuilding our product from scratch to improve scalability, performance, design and user experience. We also focused on protecting our IP with trademarking Fanalyze ® and filing for a utility patent.

What needs do you have to grow and take it to the next level?

We need to find the right investors to help us grow our user base and prove out user retention, growth and revenue.

What’s your take on the startup scene here in your area? What has been helpful?

I can honestly say StartupSac took the lead and I have seen the startup scene grow with the events I have attended. There are more organizations and schools focused on entrepreneurship since I first moved to Sacramento in 2013. It has been helpful with all the networking, collaborations and webinars to keep the startup in Sacramento going.

What do you think as an entrepreneur would be more helpful to have here in the region?

I think we need more investors and programs to help with very early stage startups. To continue to grow the ecosystem, I believe with have to start at the bottom and help these startups grow to be big companies as they will come back and help the companies starting up.

Do you have any words of advice, inspiration, or encouragement for aspiring entrepreneurs?

If it is something you truly believe will work, don’t give up. Only you can lead your vision to reality and success.

How can people find out more about you and your startup?

You can find us at: