Word: soccernet
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...lanky British lad hasn't even finished high school, but already he has two successsful start-ups under his belt. The first, the football site Soccernet, is now part of Disney's online kingdom. His current project, the education site Schoolsnet, was valued at $60 million in a financing round last year. Who is this kid? A nerd? A spoiled brat? A calculating opportunist? And what can he possibly do for an encore...
...Soccernet was born when an online chatmate in Australia asked if anyone knew the Arsenal score. Hadfield wrote back, "Yeah, 2-0." Turns out many fans abroad waited days to get football scores from the papers, so he started sending results by e-mail. Next came requests for attendance and match reports. Then, he says, "it was 200 people instead of 10, and it was like, 'Let's just...
...Several kitchen-table brainstorming sessions later, Hadfield and his father Greg had a business plan. Soccernet, one of the first commercial football sites, attracted thousands of Net-savvy fans with its trove of data on English soccer, including match details and player bios. After Greg quit his job as chief reporter at the Sunday Express to work full-time on the site, father and son spent 14 hours a day together - "the best thing about Soccernet," says Tom. The two found a buyer, Britain's Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), which let them retain creative control. But after World...
...named Schoolsnet its 2000 Start-up of the Year, and funding has been problem-free, even in the dismal dotcom climate. So what's Hadfield doing with his off-line wealth? His answer: there's not much of it. DMGT paid only something in the "mid-six figures" for Soccernet. (In 1999, Disney paid $25 million for 60% of the site and bought the rest a year later for an undisclosed sum.) While Hadfield's Soccernet stake was valued at about $11 million in a financing round last April, that's just paper wealth. "I don't drive a flash...