About beRecruited.com, Inc.
beRecruited.com is the nation's No. 1 online networking destination for high school student-athletes seeking recruitment from college coaches and universities. beRecruited provides a platform for student athletes to connect and interact with college coaches across the nation, giving students the tools to research and build profiles of verified athletic and academic information, as well as providing coaches with a vast, searchable database of potential recruits. To date, beRecruited has more than 200,000 registered student-athletes, 10,000 college coaches and 5,000 high school & club coaches.
RVS Ventures, Inc., the investment company of entrepreneur Raymond Sozzi, and Madison Parker Capital, LLC, a Boston-based private equity firm, acquired beRecruited.com in October, 2007 and formed beRecruited, Inc. As part of the growth strategy, the Company hired former ESPN.com executive Jeff Cravens as president.
beRecruited.com was founded in 2000 by Ryan Spoon, a collegiate swimmer for Duke University, in an effort to make the recruiting process more efficient for high school athletes and NCAA coaches. The service allows high school student athletes to build profiles of verified academic and athletic information, as well as research information on universities from around the country. It provides college coaches with a vast, searchable database of potential recruits. First created exclusively for NCAA swimming and diving, in the summer of 2003, beRecruited now serves athletes and coaches from 18 different sports.
Our People
Raymond Sozzi, Chairman
Raymond Sozzi is CEO and Chairman of the Board of RVS Ventures, Inc., a private equity and consulting firm. He also sits on the Board of Directors of several private companies and non-profit organizations. Over the past 10 years, he has orchestrated nearly $200 million in acquisitions and public and private company financings. In 1992, he founded Student Advantage, Inc., a leading youth media and marketing company. For more than 10 years, he served as President, CEO and Chairman of the Board, charting the company's growth to more than 500 employees and nearly $75 million in revenue. Sozzi has appeared in more than 200 different publications, including the New York Times, Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal and Ad Age. He was featured by BrandWeek as a Marketer of the Next Generation and in Chief Executive Magazine as one of the top 10 up and coming CEO's in America. In 1999, Sozzi was recognized by Ernst and Young, USA Today and Dow Jones as the nation's Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Sozzi, a graduate of Dartmouth College, began his career as an associate consultant for Bain & Company.
Jeff Cravens, President
With more than 10 years of executive management in online businesses, Cravens joined beRecruited.com in October 2007. He joined the business after serving as Vice President/General manager of ESPN360.com. Cravens oversaw the successful relaunch of ESPN360.com, with a strategic programming focus on live events and an enhanced user interface. ESPN360.com is ESPN's premier broadband service distributed to more than 17 million homes. Cravens was responsible for overseeing ESPN's programming on other digital platforms, including Video On Demand, Digital Downloads (iTunes),online pay-per-view programming and other emerging digital platforms. Previously, he lead the FANSonly/Official College Sports Network (OCSN), providing content delivery and Internet business solutions to more than 150 university athletic departments. OCSN was a Student Advantage Company, and is now CSTV Online, owned by the CBS Corporation. Under his leadership, OCSN grew its base of partners from 43 to more than 150, and averaged annual revenue growth of more than 137 percent over five years. He began his career in the collegiate and Olympic sports realms, first at the University of Kansas and then moving on to the United States Olympic Committee (USOC). While at the USOC, he was instrumental in developing a strategic planning process for National Governing Bodies, which focused on athlete development. He was a senior manager of the Torch Relay for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games and moving to Turner Sports in 1997, where he was involved with strategic planning, sales, programming and marketing for the Turner networks. Cravens received a Bachelor of Science from the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas. |
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