Charles McDaniel

Rockwall, TX (USA)
Role(s):
Founder/Owner/Principal

Winners Huddle

Find More Startups Startup
Location: Rockwall
Industry: Internet
Year Founded: 2010
Number Employees: 1-10 people
Business Stage: Creation/Idea
Entity Type: Not Incorporated
Description: The card game poker has taken the “WORLD” by storm. The World Series of Poker (WSOP), played each year in Las Vegas, Nevada has rapidly built a huge “Fan Participation” audience. Unlike other fan based pass times, Poker has become the largest fan based audience in the world. On any given National Football League Sunday it is known that there are about six times as many people, worldwide, playing poker on line as watching all the NFL games combined. It is estimated by GOOGLE that there are about 300 million to 360 million poker players’ world wide who play at least once a week or more. Amazingly, the Poker market is still growing at a fast pace. Once the Poker market went main stream, the idea of dimly lit back rooms, has faded in the mind of almost everyone except the most extremely conservative religious groups. In short, Poker is now the largest fan based pass time in history. The sheer numbers are staggering. A GOOGLE search using the one word…POKER…gives more than…28,400,000 potential websites, books, and articles on the subject. Some of the websites are actual gaming sites, some are newspaper sites talking about poker, some of those websites are software download sites, some of them are mathematics or statistics sights, and there are hundreds of books that have been written on the subject. No one really knows what all those 28,000,000 sights are about as there are just too many to visit. Even Google has not computer categorized all of the potential hits…mainly because the POKER industry growth has outstripped any firm’s ability to statistically analyze the industry. The founders of (URL removed) are passionate about a far reaching vision within this Industry. There are about 279 known POKER sites where you can actually gamble in live play against other live opponents. There are about 16 known poker sites where you can play for free and win points ONLY…no money. Currently, it is illegal to gamble on line in the United States of America. So the USA players are relegated to playing just for fun…or…by getting around the law by establishing a foreign credit card…supposedly not tracked by the USA authorities. It is believed that as many as 120,000 USA players may have obtained the overseas credit connections in order to be able to play POKER on line even though it is against Federal Law. It has been proven tine and again that prohibition “NEVER” works. Consider alcohol, marijuana, gambling, and of course the houses of ill repute. It is anticipated that the law will be changed and that the online poker industry in the USA will be highly regulated. There is one online company who is operating out of San Francisco who has taken a very different approach to FREE online play. Basically, everyone can go to that website and play for free…or they can become members for $24.95 per month and play in tournaments that range from prizes (IPods, laptops, cell phones, etc.) or they can play in tournaments for real money that ranges from a $10.00 minimum up to a $1,000.00 maximum every day. The name of that company is (URL removed). By their own stated numbers, they have 2.4 million total members with about 700,000 of those members paying an average of $20.00 per month. 700,000 members X $20.00 per month average = $14,000.000.00…MONTHLY. Charles McDaniel one of the WinnersHuddle com founders has played on this site consistently for the past three years or since the “no online play law” was passed by congress. After three years of observation and contemplation Charles McDaniel discussed his ideas with Alan Anderson about a different type of website domiciled in the USA which has members just as with (URL removed) but offering a completely different type of format and prizes. The costs of Pure Play’s prizes come out of the $14,000.000.00 monthly income stream. Alan quickly saw that Charlie’s ideas made a great deal of sense and a much larger amount of cents, and Alan added other ideas which improved the viability of the project. Due diligence was needed at that point so Alan and Charlie made an appointment with Mr. Gene Losey the President and CEO of Unified Data Systems (UDS), Inc of Plano, Texas. UDS has been in operation for more than 20 years and is a support company serving the internet industry and with his doctorate in computer science, Mr. Losey is considered to be the most knowledgeable independent internet guy in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. After a two hour initial discussion and several subsequent discussions, Mr. Losey has looked at all the possibilities and has agreed to entirely run the computer technologies needed to operate the kind of “HUGE” website proposed. Losey has stated…”It looks like you got a winner.” The name (URL removed) has been reserved with many additional file extensions. IE: (URL removed), (URL removed), (URL removed), (URL removed)o, etc. One of the principle ideas of the website is to outsource out all operations of the website except for management and customer service. Losey with handle the technologies end of the business for a monthly fee. An independent accounting firm will handle all bookkeeping, payouts, and payroll for a monthly fee. Overall management, and customer service and support are all that will be operated in house. That will make monthly costs very easy to predict and control, which is one of the major hazards of any new business, especially rapidly growing internet companies that can literally take on a life of their own when successful. Unique websites can grow more rapidly than most can anticipate. In addition, contact has been made with one of the largest advertising firms in the USA and the President and CEO of that advertising agency was so excited about the potential of the project that he offered to represent (URL removed) in establishing relationships with major advertisers. This is a critical step in the success of the venture, as major advertisers will drive poker players to the (URL removed) website to play in that advertisers sponsored tournament. This also gives that advertising agency, the opportunity to establish relationships with the major advertisers that it has never done business with before. In essence, this opens the door for the advertising agency to establish relationships with companies with which they don’t currently do business. This agency, currently manages the promotion dollars for companies such as Southwest Airlines, Blue Bell Ice Cream, Wal-Mart, IBM and many other advertisers that any business person would recognize. The key to ultimate success of most websites is marketing. Better stated, how do we get paying customers to our website, and keep them coming back again and again? Alan and Charlie’s ideas automatically build the website, not only through word of mouth, but by being talked about on almost all major media websites. ESPN, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, CBS and a great deal of radio…all FREE to (URL removed). (URL removed) will offer prizes too, but now that POKER has become main stream and is no longer considered illicit activity, the prizes will be donated by major manufacturers and purveyors. The prizes will also be much more substantial than offered on other websites. For example, a major beer brewer may want to sponsor a $10 million dollar tournament and advertise on TV that they can play to win that $10,(URL removed)rnament for FREE at (URL removed). What does this do for the Brewer? They are currently heavy advertisers. They can sponsor an event which may draw millions of fan based players thereby giving them worldwide exposure. I am sure that an event that large, which cost nothing to enter, will literally have the capability of taxing the website’s resources unless prepared for large audiences in advance. Years of marketing experience by both Anderson and McDaniel make them certain that the large advertisers can get exposure on affiliate TV and Radio news programs too. Basically, we are giving the advertiser the ability to develop an advertising program and be able to actually measure the results from the number of hits received by those who actually want to play in the tournament the advertiser has sponsored. In addition, the brewer will have hours and hours of captive audience during the tournament to keep the brewers name in front of the world wide myriad of players. To compliment the idea even further, we have talked to the marketing director of one of the world’s largest casino operations. They would be willing to co-sponsor the event and have the final 100 players stay at their facility…Free…as long as the final part of the tournament is televised in their casino. Thirty-five years of corporate marketing management experience has taught me that all “Fortune 500” sponsors will want to take advantage of having the final 100 on television because of the large number of fan based audience wanting to see who actually wins. Many of the (URL removed) ideas have come from exercising the needed due diligence. This has also brought many other excellent marking ideas for future use, that it is expected that we can build our user base to several million users within three years with about 30% of those users being paying members. All users who join the website will be given a certain number of chips to play with each day. Users will want to be paying members because the paying members are only charged 50% of what non-paying members are charged to enter a tournament. Simply stated, paying members will have twice as many opportunities to win. For example, if it cost $1,000 of the play money they have been given to play in a tournament, the paying members will only have to pay $500.00 to play in that very same tournament. The writers feel that everyone will want to belong…because they can get twice as many shots at winning a big prize. The founders need to raise $500,000.00 to implement the website and their ideas. The funds are to be used as follows: Wages and Employment costs for one year $ 96,000.00 Website Design and Set-up $ 80,000.00 Equipment and Software Costs and Connectivity costs $ 95,000.00 Advertising to Manufacturers, Purveyors, Ad agencies $ 34,000.00 Legal $ 60,000.00 Travel expenses $ 60,000.00 Misc and unforeseen expenses $ 75,000.00 Total $ 500,000.00 For more information please contact Charles C. McDaniel (URL removed) (Phone # removed)Alan Anderson (URL removed) (Phone # removed)