Virtual meeting via Google Meet
RSVP

The Cleveland Club is pleased to be meeting with entrepreneur and baseball enthusiast Niv Shah on September 28 from 5:00 to 6:00 PM. The discussion will be conducted using Google Meet. Please RSVP here to attend.

A graduate of Hawken School (’00) on Cleveland’s East Side, Niv became a Cleveland Indians fan while developing computer skills he honed later at Tufts University and Silicon Valley. Over the past 10 years, Niv has developed arguably the most popular and best fantasy baseball site on the Internet. Called Ottoneu after Otto Neu a player on the 1917 St. Louis Browns roster one day but who never got to bat, the site allows players to act as a team General Manager, building a team over multiple years against other GMs in leagues that are very competitive. Using real-time statistics of real players, an Ottoneu GM takes chances on young players, trades away or for expensive ones, makes deals in the off-season and so on; the 2003 book Moneyball was an inspiration.

Ottoneu now has 4,000 active “GMs” building their teams. Ottoneu is so good that many players have moved on to Major League Baseball front offices, and the Indians’ manager Mike Chernoff reached out to Niv with compliments and advice. Niv and Ottoneu were the subject of an April 13 story in the Washington Post. The success of Ottoneu has allowed Niv to run the site full time, and he is developing similar games based on football and basketball.

Please register to join us at the pinnacle of baseball season for a stimulating discussion with one of the region’s most successful Internet sports developers.