So we’ve been live for just over a month, and I’ve got at least one excuse for not blogging enough (I’ll do better): we’ve been busy learning — a TON!

Since we launched StarStreet we’ve learned a lot about our market — and also seen many of our expectations confirmed, which seems like pretty good news. We’ve seen that our pricing mechanism is causing the market to act very rationally.

Personally, reviewing the current market from top to bottom (in terms of total value), I would change only a couple of rankings. (I’d say Garcon might be a bit too high, but with I guess with Peyton throwing to him he certainly has potential.)

Maybe most encouraging to me - there are multiple traders doing better than I am - and you can imagine how much trading I’m doing!

Even better, the learnings from our early traders have really helped us define our path.  We have been able to prioritize our looong feature list (right at the top is the ability to see what you have paid for a player and what your most recent transactions were).

Over the past month we have also had some great opportunities to learn from the earlier companies that weren’t successful. We have been lucky enough to talk with people who were involved with all three major prior attempts at creating a sports stock market: Wall Street Sports, ProTrade, and OneSeason - Pretty cool, huh?

I don’t want to bore you with too many details, but simply, it’s amazing how much we’ve been able to learn by getting something live (which has absolutely no bells and whistles – you can ask the current traders).

Even better, I have the feeling that a whole lot more learning is still to come…

Feedback please! This is just a first draft so please leave comments or email us with all your thoughts…

And with IPO’s:

Though StarStreet is in its absolute infancy, I feel as though giving birth to it is a pretty important accomplishment. Over the next couple of weeks I want to tell you about how StarStreet has got to where it is now and about the people who have helped get it off the ground…

So a lot of people are asking what’s going on behind the curtains.

Right now there are 69 traders (we invited 74 and 69 created accounts – if only we could keep those rates!). Each trader was given $500 (in play money) to start. There are now 13 players on the market (including Brady, OchoCinco, Sanchez, and Peterson, to name a few).

The site is very unpolished (to say it in a nice way) and there are some serious bugs. Shares and funds are sometimes locked when they shouldn’t be, the trading page is pretty damned ugly and it barely works on IE 6,7, and 8. Moreover, many important features are still missing. For instance, there is no transaction log and no way to see what you have paid for your holdings.  But despite the issues, people can trade… and they have been!

We knew we were releasing very early - really our minimum viable product. But as the saying goes, “If you’re not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.”

I’ll get into the business side of things in another post. The good news here is that by releasing so early we have learned some hugely valuable lessons that we wouldn’t have otherwise.

First, we have learned which bugs we need to fix (lots of them). Second, thanks to an amazing amount of feedback from our traders, we have been able to prioritize our (massive) to-do/feature list on the basis of criteria that are far more substantial than just my intuition. Third, we have learned that we need to explain things better. We have added tooltips, which have helped, and we have more enhancements in the works.

Most excitingly, we are seeing trades happen. Even though the site is in an early stage and clearly flawed, our users are already trading and prices are fluctuating. (My account is up a ton – and encouragingly, a couple of traders are doing even better than I am!)

We know there is a LOT more to do. I just wanted to let you know that we are here, we are working hard, and we are listening. Those of you who are already in the site will see a big update soon. Mostly it will contain behind-the-scenes stuff, but I am sure you will notice it. Those of you who are still not in, patience please! Once the platform is stable for the first bunch, we will send out some more invites. We’re eager to hear from you about what doesn’t work, what ideas you have, and what features you want next.

We’re all yours!

I figured this was as good a time as any to start a blog, so here goes…

To quickly introduce myself and give you some background: I’m Jeremy Levine, and I am the founder of StarStreet.

Ever since I was a little kid collecting sports cards I’ve had this idea. I always thought a sports stock market would be the coolest thing. Now I’m 23, I recently graduated from college and I’m lucky enough to be building the idea that I’ve been dreaming about.

My dream is now a young startup. Through following my love of sports I’ve found another love – startups. Through working my hardest to make StarStreet a reality, I’ve learned a ton about building a company (makes sense, huh?).

This blog is going to focus on StarStreet. It’s going to have updates on all things StarStreet as well as posts about my experiences running StarStreet. It will be principally a company blog, but there may be some personal stuff in here as well.

I hope you enjoy my writing, and I really hope you enjoy StarStreet.

Thank you for your interest and please don’t hesitate to be in touch. I would love to hear your feedback and have your help in building StarStreet.