Need vs. Want

By Reece

@JoeYevoli and I had a great conversation the other night, as he wraps up his month spent living with my family and me on Cape Cod. We spent a lot of time discussing what it takes to be a good person, and a lot of our theories pointed back to our youth, and how we were raised.

I consider myself extremely fortunate. I have loving parents who supported me through school, sports, activities, etc., all while running the family business (a restaurant). Sure, sometimes I was picked up late from hockey practice by one of the cooks, but my parents made it work. And not just work, but they were (and are) successful.

But that didn’t mean my sister and I had it easy. We were taught to work, too. By the time I was 13, I had two jobs. At 15, I was working three summer jobs - a dockhand by day and at nightscooping ice cream at Smitty’s or bussing tables/dishwashing atthe family restaurant.

My parents fed me. Housed me. Put me through school. My basicneeds were taken care of. Why was I working so much?

I brought up our conversation to my dad last night.

“It’s needs versus want. We took care of what you needed. If you wanted something, you had to work for it.”

It’s a simple premise, but I think it’s lost on a lot of people these days, and it applies to more than just wanting spending money. It’s about working hard, and placing a value on your time, and your life.

In my experience, I’ve grown to appreciate the things I need in life. Sure, there are occasions when I want things that I don’t need - Smitty’s Ice Cream or a night out with friends - and I like being able to afford them with my hard-earned money, but I place less and less value on frivolous expenditures and a greater value on the things I need.

Think about it, really, and apply it to your life. Consider what you need and what you want, and over time, you may find that what you need, is only what you want after all.

Like right now, I need to get back to work (and it’s what I want, too!).

I originally posted this at reecepacheco.com, but it really applies to what we're doing here at Overtime Media. When building HomeField, we put the players' needs first. We knew that players needed better access to their game video and we knew coaches needed a better way to share it with them, but without sacrificing their playbook to the competition. The result? HomeField is 100% focused on game video, and it's totally private for your team. It's everything you need (and everything you'll want).

HomeField is Disruptive Tech

By Reece

This quote recently came through my inbox via a fellow entrepreneur.

“Disruptive technologies do not immediately replace existing technologies because they are better. In fact, in the beginning, they are worse. They’re just simpler, cheaper, and more convenient. They appeal to the low end of the market (in this case, netbooks), which doesn’t need all the bells and whistles that the high-end needs. They initially gain share in the low end, and the incumbent doesn’t care about losing it because it’s low-margin share. But then… the disruptive products get better and more fully featured and they begin to migrate up to the mid-market. And the incumbent is forced to retreat to the high-margin high-end. And then, eventually, the disruptive product becomes mass market and the incumbent becomes a rickety old colossus that crashes in on itself.” -From TechTicker by Henry Blodget

In the past few days, @JoeYevoli and I have really been brainstorming around our product, HomeField. We have a lot of great users who love our service already, but there are still a lot of coaches sitting on the sidelines, afraid and/or unaware of HomeField can positively impact their life as coaches, and the lives of their players. If Joe has his way, he’ll go to every national coaches’ convention and just say, “This is HomeField. This is what it does. Give me one reason why you wouldn’t use it?”

But this quote has a lot to do with it. We believe we’ve tapped into a market that is rife with over-engineered junk, rooted in hardware that coaches shouldn’t have to deal with. We believe the future is in the cloud and sports media needs to get moving. The players are thirsty for video, coaches need to cut costs but keep up with player demand, administrators need to keep track of all this media, fans want to see it on their phones…

Yeah, HomeField is simple. Like, stupid simple. No unnecessary editing tools, no file format restrictions - we stripped it down to the bare bones, but it does what it needs to do, and it’s awesome at it. Is it a different behavior than usual - putting video online? Yes. But is it more efficient, and more powerful? Yes.

So, really give me one reason why you wouldn’t use HomeField?

Update: @JoeYevoli claims the quote above is a direct bite from Seth Godin. Re-reading it, I certainly agree. It's got Purple Cow written all over it. We're trying to figure it out, but we want to make sure we give credit where credit's due - especially because Godin is the man.

What are Your HomeField Ideas?

By Joe

If you were watching the MLL All-Star game last night on ESPN2, you may have heard Joe Beninati and Quint Kessenich mention HomeField. It was great to get a little press, and we can't thank them enough, because they did a phenomenal job at describing HomeField.

I was especially excited because Joe mentioned something about our company that we sometime fail to mention ourselves. He said, it's a company made for athletes, by athletes. Every member of our company is an athlete that played Division I sports. Including the guy building the site, our CTO Dan Spinosa. We're not a group of geeks who never stepped foot on an athletic field, and decided to build a sports application because our schools football coach said he wanted something like it.

We built HomeField to fill a void we felt as actual athletes. We wanted greater access to video, and scouting reports. We wanted to watch video more then just 10 minutes after practice. So we designed HomeField to fix our own problem. With features we believe other athletes want and need. We made our features simple, we made them convenient, but most importantly, we made them with you in mind.

With that being said, we want to hear what features you would like to see built into HomeField. Here is a link to our feedback forum. Please go there as often as you can to suggest things you'd like to see in HomeField. We want our application to be built with your help. We've already released a new version, HomeField 2.0, which was designed using feedback we've received from coaches who used it this spring. With their suggestions we've improved HomeField quite a bit from it's original version.

As long as HomeField has users, we'll always be looking for ways to improve it. Shoot for the stars, give us your ideas no matter how crazy they may seem.

We'll write the code, you design it!

Joe Beninati called my house/HomeField + the MLL

By Reece

"Joe Beninati!!" That was all the email said that I got from Yevoli earlier today, but sure enough, Joe Beninati called my house an hour later to talk to Yevoli about HomeField.

Pretty awesome, because tonight is the Major League Lacrosse All-Star game, and he's the announcer. What's more, all of the MLL teams are HomeField users!

I guess it slipped through the cracks on this blog, but Overtime Media partnered with the MLL earlier this summer, because we believe the players of the MLL should have the very best. Yevoli and I used to play in the League, and it was baffling to us that we didn't watch any game film.

Step back a few years, and there's Dan and I playing at Brown, trying to arrange meetings to watch game film. The system didn't make sense, so we built HomeField and we made it super easy for coaches and players to safely review their game film online, so everyone can play at their very best.

Since we officially launched this past January, we've had some stud programs using HomeField, from high school to college to the pros. They realize that we built HomeField from a player's perspective, but they've been giving us tons of feedback and feature requests and because of it, we're happy to announce the recent launch of HomeField 2.0 - a slicker, tighter application. It's still HomeField, it just looks better, works better and it's exactly what our users want. Cool, right?

If you haven't already checked out HomeField, go to TeamHomeField.com and watch our demo video... or just sign up and create a free account. Why not? Don't you want the HomeField advantage?

P.S. - Got some ideas of your own? Let us hear 'em.

HomeField in the summer: Lax Elite at Bucknell Brawl

By Reece

Earlier this week, Patrick made the long trek down Route 80 West to Lewisburg, PA - home of the Bucknell Bison. Despite being an '05 Bucknell grad, Patrick wasn't back in the 'Burg to re-live his glory days at Christy-Mathewson Memorial Stadium, he was there to get some video of our partner team, Baltimore Lax Elite, coached by our former teammate at Bucknell, Ross Albers. Their team was there for the Bucknell Bison Brawl, a summer tournament for competitive players to get some exposure to college coaches. Patrick filmed eight games over a few days, and got some great footage. Here's a slick turn-around shot and goal for Lax Elite:

Since getting back to civilization, we posted all the video to HomeField for Ross's team. He's been active on their team account, using time-coded comments to stir discussion about their game video. The players, all scattered about Baltimore with busy summer schedules have a chance to log in to HomeField, check the video, communicate privately with Ross and their teammates, and be ready for the next time they'll play together which is another major tournament - Hotbeds in Newark, DE at U. Del.

Got some video of your summer lax or any other sport for that matter? Start uploading it to TeamHomeField.com and whether you're in Lewisburg, PA or Newark, DE, you'll have the HomeField advantage.