About Us
Thanks for your interest in RaceTechs
RaceTechs Corporation, founded in 2009, maintains its headquarters and technology development in Austin, TX with business operations in Portland, OR. We are on our way to becoming the leading digital sport technology company dedicated to delivering enterprise-grade, on demand web-based athletic event management systems and tools for race directors, managers and producers.
RaceTechs provides a suite of online tools in the form of a highly integrated platform addressing all aspects of event management — from registration, to bib number creation and distribution, to timing, tracking, and results broadcast and publication. RaceTechs offers the RT DirectorStudio™ for these purposes and SmartBib™ with SmartTab™ technology for state-of-the-art full color personalized event Bib IDs. We partner with your timing company to produce a single source for all event participant related data.
Company History
RaceTechs is another story about how digital innovation ends reliance on dysfunctional disparate information systems and data feeds. The co-founders of RaceTechs are long time athletes and participants in road running, cycling, and triathlons. But perhaps more importantly, they are long time information technology business professionals, with deep experience in a variety of areas all important to managing an athletic event, including: software development, commercialization of the Internet, rise of the World Wide Web, mobile technology and telecommunications, online banking and financial services, and high technology printing processes.
The Problem
Three years ago, this team recognized a lack of a truly enterprise-grade integrated information management system for large-scale – actually any scale – public participation event. By “enterprise-grade” we mean the kind of technology platform that is has the reliability, scale, strength, and trustworthiness of the systems Corporate America relies on for operational continuity – in other words, services that are always-on, always available, and “fault tolerant.” Until now, the world of race event management has had to rely on several disconnected systems – often times PC-based – for different aspects of the operation. This meant challenges and difficulties in reconciling data from registration to timing, to tracking and then on to results. With RaceTechs, that difficult, opaque process is history.
The Solution
RaceTechs has done the “heavy lifting” to design and build a patent-pending integrated, highly scalable “platform” to provide a single source for all data management related to your running, walking, cycling or triathlon event. All data associated with a participant stays in one comprehensive easily updatable record, available anywhere, anytime. And this platform empowers a host of services to better engage your participants, volunteers, and spectators. For example, advanced tracking services combined with timing, allows you to give your participants the ability to broadcast their progress towards the finish line with split times and finishing time through any means they wish: SMS, Facebook, Twitter, etc. While you’ve heard the promises of such capability, now you can experience it, at scale in production with RaceTechs.
Importantly, we wanted to leverage the power of the Internet and Web to make this platform available to you wherever you may be in the world, on your schedule and at your convenience. So we’re using this notion of Web applications – your own private “I.T. Shop” in the cloud for your event management tools. And we will continue adding capabilities and features to this platform to empower you to manage more and more of your entire event lifecycle from this single source service. This means no software to buy, no annual rental fees or service commitments, and no vendor solution where you have to live with competing, conflicting or 3rd party ad-banners. RaceTechs will be there when you need it, with as little or as much as you need to cover any size event.
Glancing Back; Looking Ahead
So, how did we get here? Here’s a brief timeline:
April, 2009
Business venture co-founded by 4 principals with particular expertise in technology and business development directly applicable to target market
April, 2010
First to market with integrated platform for event management, registration, training, fundraising, and RFiD/bib timing for running events
Custom look & feel across products
December, 2010
Serviced 10 events in a proof-of-concept in Austin, TX area
Without a web site, marketing campaign or any official launch, but on word of mouth alone, had generated interest from 100 events including 120,000 participants.
March, 2011
Launched our initial public web site (where you are now)
Continuing to expand our technology development and offerings
Looking ahead to the exciting prospect of delivering a cost-effective, single-source race event management platform to events beyond Texas and the Pacific Northwest into cities all over the country this year, and we hope yours next!