Two local companies, StarStreet and DraftKings, prepare to launch new fantasy sports sites

Right now, users will be randomly matched to others who want to put the same amount of money on the barrelhead, but Levine says he eventually wants to make it possible to play against friends. "We've noticed people getting totally addicted, playing every night," Levine says. "The game creates the excitement of the do-or-die fantasy game every single night." (A screenshot from the StarStreet "Head-to-Head Daily Fantasy" game is below.)

Launching around the start of baseball season is another site, DraftKings, created by a trio of former VistaPrint executives. Jason Robins, Matthew Kalish, and Paul Liberman left the Lexington online printing company earlier this month — though they'd been developing the DraftKings concept for a year prior. "We got about as far as you can get without working on it full-time," Kalish says. They've already received a funding commitment from Ryan Moore at Atlas Venture in Cambridge, but Kalish tells me they're still talking to other venture firms and angels.

"VistaPrint is an Internet direct marketing company," Kalish says. "It's very good at low-cost customer acquisition and site analytics. So [investors] buy that we can apply those things to the fantasy sports daily model." He wouldn't comment on the amount the start-up is hoping to raise.

DraftKings will launch as a one-on-one competition, but Kalish says they also plan to support "five man leagues, where you can win a little bit more." Their aim is to launch the site within a month of baseball's opening day this spring.

"Estimates are that there are something like 30 million fantasy sports players, and only about 50,000 of them have tried daily so far," Kalish says. "That's a huge opportunity."

Right now, the company is operating out of CTO Paul Liberman's house, but DraftKings may soon share an office with LuckyLabs, another Atlas portfolio company.

Here's a screenshot of the StarStreet daily fantasy game, launching tomorrow: