Luke and Matt Geiger have been big basketball fans for about as long as the two young men have been alive.
The brothers weren't able to play organized ball much beyond high school and recreation leagues, so they built a mobile app dedicated to the sport they love.
"It's the next best thing," says Luke Geiger, CEO of
6th Man Apps. "Basketball is something we love to do."
Luke Geiger was one of the first developers with
UpTo, a up-and-coming startup in the M@dison Building. He and his brother are looking to set up 6th Man Apps' 4-month-old shop in the
Grand Circus co-working space. Its first app,
HoopMetrics, uses advanced statistics and analytics to help coaches and teams maximize their lineups.
The startup describes the app that "identifies the players that don’t necessarily light up the stat sheet but when they are on the floor, good things happen." It breaks down "player performance beyond basic statistics" so it can pinpoint the team’s highest scorer and its most efficient scorer.
"We got a lot more in-depth with our statistics," Geiger says.
6th Man Apps launched HoopMetrics last summer, selling it for $60 a pop. It now claims about 750 teams using the app, including teams like the
University of Detroit Mercy. The startup and its four-person team is now looking at expanding to other sports later this year, such as baseball.
Source: Luke Geiger, CEO of 6th Man Apps
Writer: Jon Zemke
Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.