The StockStat Story
Rhett Bain is the founder of StockStat.
Now in his second year of college, Rhett conceived the idea of a mobile app to organize Stock Show events and information when he was a junior in high school. Working on one of his livestock 4-H projects at the State Fair, he saw an immediate need and set about creating a solution. Through many hours of hard work and collaboration with others, Rhett saw his dream through to completion with StockStat. Now stock show livestock exhibitors and spectators alike can keep track of event details at a glance. Which means more time for everyone to enjoy the overall show experience.
The story behind StockStat.
Growing up Rhett Bain always envisioned himself a veterinarian. His caring spirit and passion for animals seemed like a natural fit for such an occupation. Whether it was aiding with livestock and wildlife development on the family ranch in West Texas, tending to his personal livestock projects in 4-H, or just hanging out and spending time with his dogs, Rhett spent many hours as a youth dreaming about the future.
When he was 15 years old the intrigue and platform of modern technologies captured his interests. He quickly became fascinated with the newest tech trends and followed them closely. Always an entrepreneur, Rhett developed a repair business for smartphones and other iOS devices. With this business he became self-sufficient as a teen providing for all of his financial needs during his teen years.
It was also during this time that Rhett became enamored with the explosion of social networking and social media. His father has told the story many times of all the miles of talk spent on the road going to and from livestock shows that Rhett would constantly be running his ideas past him. The elder Bain laughs as he quotes, “He would start the pitch of every idea with Dad, you know what I think we need is . . . .” Mr. Bain readily admits that he probably heard what seemed to be a million of Rhett’s ideas and had almost developed selective hearing when he heard his son’s opening catch phrase.
Then one day that all changed.
On an early fall morning in 2013 when Rhett was a junior in high school, the “crew” had just settled in for breakfast after tending to the show steers for the next day’s State Fair. Almost before the meal’s blessing had reached completion, Rhett began with “Hey guys, you know what we need”. He then rambled off a five minute presentation on the concept of an easy-to-use livestock show mobile app that would provide real-time schedules, results, and announcements coupled with the ability to spotlight exhibitor profiles. He also envisioned the app should have social media compatibility and be able to provide user enhancements such as tolerance calculators and time stamped notes. In short, the app would give an exhibitor access to all the information they needed in one place. Needless to say, there was a brief moment of silence as the group pondered Rhett’s words before in complete agreement the group concluded that “yes” . . . that was exactly what was needed! Thus, on that early fall morning – StockStat was born.
On the way home from that State Fair, Rhett and his father discussed development plans. What seemed like a difficult task for his father never fazed Rhett in his enthusiasm to begin his development of ideas for StockStat and the ease of how it would work and flow. Countless hours were spent at the family kitchen table compiling notes and schematics of his different ideas on how he dreamed of the end result. Being industrious, Rhett began to take coding courses off of the Internet initially thinking that he would design and develop every aspect of this app. Soon he realized that this task would be too monumental for one person and again sought advice from his father on how to proceed. Together they researched third party companies which could aid in website and app development to move the project along faster.
After talking to a few providers, there was something missing in the overall feel of the concept and project. Then one day after an innocent conversation about the slow progress that had been made, a reference was received to talk to a young college student in Dallas, Texas about the idea. Rhett immediately contacted the young man and scheduled a meeting to pitch his ideas about the app. Interestingly enough, the meeting actually took place exactly one year to the date after Rhett had originally proposed his ideas that morning at breakfast.
The meeting turned out to be exactly what Rhett had been looking for and dreaming about. The development team (now known as Codedge LLC) came well-prepared with knowledge and expertise of website design and functionality as well as a solid basis for iOS and android development. Although the members of Codedge had never attended a livestock show before in their lives, their knowledge and ideas of app design resonated with Rhett that these were the guys that he was meant to build his dream with. Being that the members of Codedge were just on the verge of graduating from college and looking to get started intrigued him even more. He knew the financial cost and effort it takes as a startup company and by working with another startup company, they too would have the same hunger and understand the sacrifices it takes to get up and going in business. Now with aid in the development side, Rhett could focus more on design and functionality of the app while pursuing the process of Trademark, Copyright, and Patent applications. What an awesome experience this idea has created for this young man at such an early age.
Now that Rhett Bain is a junior in college, his pursuit to build StockStat and follow his passion is stronger than ever. The development, fine-tuning, legal copyright and patent processes of StockStat have taken over two years to complete. The end result is a first class mobile app that exponentially helps a show in providing enhancements of the overall experience to livestock exhibitors, advisors, family, friends and patrons.
The story is just beginning, and the experiences along the way have and will be rewarding to watch as they develop. With more to come, we want to express a warm and sincere thank you to all of you that use and appreciate StockStat.