Loosetalk
Mark Phillip
Founder and CEO of Are You Watching This?!
Austin, TX
What exactly is Are You Watching This?! (RUWT)?
At Are You Watching This?! we monitor tens of thousands of games every year, looking for instant classics in the making. When we find one, we alert fans with the exact channel number to turn to in order to catch the finish. The core of the site is RUWTbot, our patent-pending engine that’s able to identify whether a game is epic or a snoozer in less than a tenth of a second.
How did you come up with the idea for the RUWTbot?
A couple months after finally launching a good friend asked, “Wait, so are you just sitting at home watching all of the games?” Right away I knew I had to do a much better job of explaining how the technology worked. I batted around a few different ideas like a made-up person or a mascot, but with some inspiration from the now defunct dating site Consumating, I decided a robot would be the way to go.
What’s your favorite sport?
That depends on if I’m playing or watching. If I’m the one doing the sweating, then basketball is at the top of the list. If I’m spending quality time on my couch, then it’s football.
What’s the craziest game that you missed because you hadn’t developed RUWT yet?
I love and hate to tell this story. I’m originally from New York, and I’m a big Jets fan. In the fall of 2000, not long after I moved to Austin, the Jets and Dolphins were set to play on Monday Night Football. I bought some food, some beverages, and decided to make a night of it with my favorite team. My night didn’t last long. By halftime it was a blowout, and by the 3rd quarter I was asleep. I woke up in the morning to find that not only did the Jets come back, but it ended up being one of the most epic comebacks in the history of the NFL. Anytime a game has its own Wikipedia page, you know it must have been good. I’ll never stop getting razzed by friends for missing that game.
Any plans to expand this to other live television events (award shows, news programs, the Olympics)?
I decided to focus purely on sports because it’s the most DVR-resistant genre on TV. As our algorithms and visualizations get better though, expanding to other genres is definitely a possibility.
