BOULDER - An Oregon-based Internet startup for managing recreational sports team is headed for Boulder and being led by a familiar face, Dave DuPont, one of the original six members of LeftHand Networks Inc., which was sold to Hewlett-Packard Co. last fall for an estimated $360 million.

DuPont, who was a senior vice president for marketing at LeftHand and continued in early-stage network companies in the several intervening years since he left the company, said he's bringing a whole different animal to Boulder.

TeamSnap LLC, is a online application that helps volunteer coaches manage their youth and adult teams, quickly communicating player availability, changes in schedule and other often time-consuming tasks.

"The way I describe it to people is that I've been doing the plumbing of the Internet for the last couple of decades," he said. "The market for this kind of thing is a very different kind of beast - it's people like you and I. But a lot of what I've learned is the same - you are selling people a way to be more productive in what they do."

Since leaving LeftHand, Dupont has worked for an optical-storage company, Plasmin, and another storage networking play, Sanrad. He was brought into this play through the initial interest of James Wall, a former British attorney who runs a Denver-based public relations and marketing firm, Agency 33.

"We had created a beta site for OurTeamBase.com, which we had six or seven teams use, and about this time last year I started to raise capital," Wall said.

"I went to the Boulder Innovation Center, and they said what you need is a seasoned CEO who has done this before and could inspire confidence. We spoke to Dave and several others, but he was clearly enamored by the statistics, such as the potential market size."

DuPont said as he researched the opportunity he was struck by some of the mistakes made by both early and existing companies.

"I looked heavily into a concept called MyTeam - they failed. They were too early, and they didn't really understand the market very well. The great bulk of the solutions approach the problem from a top-down. Companies that do signups for sporting events and do league activities.

"None of them appear to have any traction," DuPont continued. "In this space, having an established market and critical mass are a big deal."

A former Harvard Business School mate, who runs an online restaurant reservation business, suggested that DuPont look into TeamSnap. From that point on, DuPont said, he quickly realized it was a matter of acquiring an existing platform, rather than designing one from scratch.

"They never really commercialized it, although they clearly saw the opportunity to do that," he said. What they did have, however, was more than 100,000 users who had been attracted mostly by word-of-mouth, but who also were located around the world.

Even more incredible, DuPont said, was that a staggering 42 percent of the users had opted for the pay version of the application. With a well-established revenue stream already realized, DuPont said he knew it was a winner.

The free version allows for rosters, schedules and messaging, and a $6.95-per-month version also allows the entire team to track player availability, payments and refreshments, as well as post photos. A $9.95-per-month version - off-season months are not charged - allows for tracking statistics, playing fields and weather conditions, as well customizing the site and making RSS feeds available.

DuPont hopes to bring about half-dozen people to work in a Boulder area office this year and is looking to attract about $1 million in early investment. He doesn't expect much trouble.

"We were also able to ascertain, by domain name, that 30 of our clients were actually involved in venture capital," he said. "We've already had three or four of them contact us without prompting.

"There's an outstanding opportunity for a very fast, and large, return on investment," DuPont said. "I'm looking for $1 million in investment, and I think we can quickly build to $20 million in revenue. Compare that to LeftHand, where our first (round of investment) was $10 million, and that was just to get us going."

"There's not much competition right now, but I'm not naive," he said. "The bad news is everybody and his brother is coming."

Look for the first jobs available in Boulder to be in classic Internet marketing techniques: Web site and organic (free) search-engine optimization and paid search-engine placement. The more interesting jobs, however, may be in business-to-business plays, or affiliate marketing, that will follow.

Because there's a wealth of potential partners selling sports equipment and clothing, there's also quite a lot of potential for marketing through the TeamSnap site. That's where this play differs quite a bit from many Internet plays of the past.

"I get messages all the time trying to sell me something like shirts with logos, and usually it's just a bother," DuPont said. "But if I see that opportunity when I'm managing my team that becomes a service."