Everyone's Brent Musburger

Epstein, a graduate of Columbia University and the University of Michigan law school, grew up in Berkeley, Calif., with his dad, "a counterculture type, but a big sports fan," and it was watching sports with pop that planted the seeds of FanCast in young Adam's mind.

"We'd watch Niner games or Warrior games or whatever, and if he didn't like the guy on television, if he didn't like the sportscaster, we'd mute the television and listen to the radio," Epstein says. "I think a lot of people do that. So that was sort of the first inkling that you don't have to go with what they're providing. It gives you a little bit of a choice."

As he got older, Epstein found himself less and less interested in the sportscaster, whoever it was. "I'd gotten to the point where I pretty much always muted the television, and I'd be watching with college buddies or law school buddies, or whoever it was, and they were always more interesting than the guys on TV," he says. "So when I was out in Kalamazoo living by myself, I was watching all these sports on television, and I was sort of subjected to the guys on TV, and I was like, 'OK, this is ridiculous. Normal sports fans are more interesting than the guys on TV, whether it's my friends, who aren't even all that funny or interesting, or the people at the ballgames who are yelling things out, or people in the barbershop who are talking."

Back in New York, he watched games with his friends again, "and I was like, 'God, what I missed about watching sports was you guys kind of riffing.' I'd much rather hear my contemporaries talking about a game than the guys on TV."

Epstein figured that in the era of the Internet there must be some kind of technology that would allow for live, real-time broadcasting on the Web from a PC, so rather than returning to his job at a Midtown law firm he began the process of starting FanCast. He quickly learned that no such technology existed.

So he began researching, looking for people who might be trying to create it. "Going around the Internet, sneaking into seminars, sneaking into conferences," he says, "and actually it was while sneaking into one of these conferences that I got busted."

He wanted to hear "an Intel guy speak about streaming media," but a conference official told him he'd have to pony up $1,000 or leave. Epstein struck a deal: He could stay if he tore down the audiovisual gear after the lecture. When he was through with that work, he approached the speaker, who was just finishing up with individual questions from audience members.

"He sort of went, 'Who are you? Don't you work here?' And I said, 'No, actually I got busted for trying to sneak in here and watch you,'" Epstein says. "And he totally changed his demeanor toward me. He was very, very helpful, kind of flattered about it, and he put me in touch with somebody who put me in touch with somebody who put me in touch with these guys in Seattle, Wonderhorse, who had just developed this one-second-delay broadcasting company."

Epstein approached Wonderhorse, which was founded by Microsoft refugees. "They thought it was a great use of the technology, so I'm marketing it, they're doing the tech stuff and we went live about a month ago."

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