view episode transcript
If you go for a training session which lasts one hour, you’ve got 20 bodies on the ice if you like the whole team, so it’s statistically proven that every player is in action in between like 10 to 12 minutes during that one hour session and every player actually holds the puck on his hockey stick for no more than one and half minutes over an one hour session.
Jay Clouse: 00:00:24
The startup investment landscape is changing and world class companies are being built outside of Silicon Valley. We find them talk with them and discuss the upside of investing in them.
Jay Clouse: 00:00:37
Welcome to upside.
Eric Hornung: 00:00:52
Hello. Hello. Hello and welcome to the upside podcast first podcast, finding upside outside of Silicon Valley. I’m Eric Hornung and I’m accompanied by my cohost, Mr Three sport athlete himself, Jay Clouse. Jay. How’s it going, man?
Jay Clouse: 00:01:06
I think you’re overestimating me.
Eric Hornung: 00:01:08
I am not. I saw you dance and I know you’re a Professional Dancer. I’ve heard you’re incredible at swimming and I saw a picture once of you playing football in like sixth grade.
Jay Clouse: 00:01:19
Wow. The anti triple threat. Cannot dance. Try to dance last night. What’s the dance move I tried to do last night called?
Eric Hornung: 00:01:26
I don’t know the name of it, but it’s a that Fortnite dance.
Jay Clouse: 00:01:29
Fortnite dance where you’re pumping a fist and you’re kicking a leg and you’re doing it in tandem.
Eric Hornung: 00:01:33
And do you want to demonstrate here just just again for fun?
Jay Clouse: 00:01:36
No, the listeners can’t see it and if they could they wouldn’t believe it.
Eric Hornung: 00:01:40
Right. So maybe what I’ll do is just record you doing it so we can attach that to the show notes.
Jay Clouse: 00:01:46
I will be very vigilant the next time I try to do that dance to ensure that you are not recording.
Eric Hornung: 00:01:51
For a little bit of background, Jay got up as we were listening to music yesterday and was like, Oh yeah, I can do that dance. And it looked more like he was trying to escape bondage.
Jay Clouse: 00:02:04
I was just wrapped in a cord. I couldn’t get out of it. Yeah, a little bit like a lane, but I will. I did play football. Give me the football, kick the football.
Eric Hornung: 00:02:11
I saw a picture of you in pads when you were like in sixth grade.
Jay Clouse: 00:02:14
I was on the All star team my senior year.
Eric Hornung: 00:02:17
Wow. What position did you play?
Jay Clouse: 00:02:18
I played most of the offensive line, but I played all kinds of. I mean I played running back at one point. I played receiver at one point I played linebacker and defensive line.
Eric Hornung: 00:02:27
How many people were on your high school football team?
Jay Clouse: 00:02:30
Not a ton. It was pretty small.
Eric Hornung: 00:02:31
You guys? D Four. D Five.
Jay Clouse: 00:02:33
I think we’re d three.
Eric Hornung: 00:02:34
Okay. D three.
Jay Clouse: 00:02:35
Pretty small. Especially for the years that I was on junior varsity. We only had at one point 16 players on our JV team and so everybody was playing both ways double game. It was awesome though.
Eric Hornung: 00:02:46
That’s cool. I went to Ignatius, which is a school in Cleveland for those who are not familiar and our freshman team had like 150 kids or something.
Jay Clouse: 00:02:55
Crazy.
Eric Hornung: 00:02:56
So there is no chance that you’re playing both sides of the ball.
Jay Clouse: 00:02:58
That’s crazy. You played Lacrosse most high school, right?
Eric Hornung: 00:03:01
Yeah. I played Lacrosse for all four years and I played football for my junior and my freshman year.
Jay Clouse: 00:03:06
What made you move to the Lacrosse?
Eric Hornung: 00:03:07
The speed of it. I think that it it brings in a lot of football, a lot of soccer, a lot of basketball, a lot of hockey, and it kind of puts all those together and it was just a challenge.
Jay Clouse: 00:03:18
We didn’t even have that as an option anywhere near me where I grew up.
Eric Hornung: 00:03:21
Yeah, it exploded. I think when I was playing there were, this isn’t the right number, but there was something like 36 d, One programs in Ohio and when my youngest brother graduated, so that’s 11 years after me. I think there was like 80 or 90. So that’s just [inaudible] zoo. Extrapolate that into D, Two d, three high school Lacrosse on Ohio really blew up in the last decade.
Jay Clouse: 00:03:44
Do you think that Lacrosse will ever be a national sport to the level of NFL, MLB, NBA?
Eric Hornung: 00:03:49
It just comes down to people playing it when they’re younger. That’s I think what every sport is in the United States. You need to have like a die hard audience of people playing it when growing up because the rules are the hardest thing to understand, but if you can understand the rules of any sport, right, and you can get the general vibe, I think then it can become a popular sport. But right now, no.
Jay Clouse: 00:04:09
You know, adding on to my triple threat. A couple things that I am also terrible at rollerblading and ice skating.
Eric Hornung: 00:04:17
Really. So you’re, you’re bad at swimming in water, you’re bad at seeing on top of water when it’s frozen. Really just anything around the water, not your thing.
Jay Clouse: 00:04:28
The basic rule of thumb is if it requires coordination, I probably am not good at it.
Eric Hornung: 00:04:32
Okay, that’s interesting. So we have ice skating. We’ve talked about like national sports. Hockey is one of those. Today we’re going to go down a hockey route.
Jay Clouse: 00:04:42
Yeah. Today we’re speaking with Bob Tetiva, who is the founder of Sense Arena. Sense Arena is a unique, powerful and innovative tool for developing hockey players, improving their cognitive skills and hockey sense using virtual reality. They bring the ice to players’ homes, gyms and centers. So they can execute drills just that they would do on the ice, but do a thousand times more repetitions is number that they say.
Eric Hornung: 00:05:05
It’s an interesting concept. I remember when I was growing up, when you would go to bed, my dad would always say, okay, lay in bed and think through the thing you want to do a hundred times. So I played on the right wing attack for Lacrosse, so I would think about like all the different types of dodges I could do. So I would just lay in bed and think about how the offender could position himself and what I would do in that given situation. So that was kind of my VR I guess of the time.
Jay Clouse: 00:05:31
Is offense in Lacrosse called attack?
Eric Hornung: 00:05:33
Yeah. Offense is called attack. Midfield is usually goes by middies. Defense, the slang term is like long poles because they have the six foot poles and then goalies, goalie.
Jay Clouse: 00:05:44
So you played some hockey growing up.
Eric Hornung: 00:05:45
My Dad played a lot of hockey. Both my brothers traveled for hockey. My Dad was actually too cheap to buy the equipment for me to play hockey, but I did go through like all the training and I can skate and I know how to play enough.
Jay Clouse: 00:05:57
So Sense Arena is basically taking that idea of walking through what you’ll be doing in those situations and saying, now you’re awake, your eyes are open, we’ve got a headset on you and you can practice it against a simulation.
Eric Hornung: 00:06:07
That’s my understanding. Yeah.
Jay Clouse: 00:06:08
Yeah. Company was founded in 2017. It has headquarters in Prague and Boston and to this point they’ve raised about a million dollars in funding and they’re here at CES just as we are here at CES, recording this in the blue microphone podcast suite. Finding a lot of innovative companies and a lot of different issues. It’s been hard to pick and choose guests to be on the show here with literally thousands of exhibitors all with their own unique story and twist on things.
Eric Hornung: 00:06:34
Yeah, absolutely. It’s insane. The number of exhibitors here, I think there’s over 4,000 and everyone is. Could be on the show.
Jay Clouse: 00:06:43
Yeah. Well, we’re gonna jump into this interview with Bob, but if you guys have any thoughts as we go through this interview, be sure to tweet at us @upside.fm where you can always email us, hello@upside.fm.
Eric Hornung: 00:06:54
Hey guys. Wanting to cut in here real quick and let you know about something. Jay and I have been getting ready behind the scenes in 2019. When we started this podcast, Jay and I said that you, the listener, will have an opportunity to learn in real time to think like venture investors with us as we meet a wide variety of personalities, examine a wide range of industries. Well, now we’re going to share something new and it’s a little different. This new idea is called the update. It’s a carefully curated quarterly publication of editorials, trends, and stories happening outside of Silicon Valley. Jay and I will be writing stories about what we’re learning about on the podcast. Have guests editorials on interesting topics and share news and updates from our podcasts and some cases we may even share some exclusive content or first looks. Our goal is to stay at the cutting edge and of course bring you along with us. We’re super excited about it and know you’re going to love it. If you want to be the first to hear about our q one launch and subsequent letters go to upside.fm/update to get on the mailing list.
Jay Clouse: 00:08:04
Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob Tetiva : 00:08:05
Hi, pleasure.
Eric Hornung: 00:08:06
It’s great to have you here. We’d like to start on upside with the background of the founders. So can you tell us about the history of Bob?
Bob Tetiva : 00:08:12
Um, okay. Well, I’m a Czech guy, so, um, I’m from Europe, from a country that is in the heart of the old continent originally. Um, I’m a basketball player. I used to play basketball professionally for a couple of years and then I gave up and finished my university degree and move onto my professional career in marketing and products to give you my bio full or just a snapshot. Been working in corporations mainly in telecoms for like 11 years, I guess. 402, which is a global brand taking care of product development for, for innovations there. And that’s something that is in fact in my soul. So then, uh, when I finished this corporate part of my career, I went onto entrepreneurship and actually Sense Arena is my third company. I started with a friend of mine who used to be a professional downhill skier in the Alpine World Cup and we introduced new skiing gloves and helmets to the market. Obviously it was a rather romantic dream from a small country in the heart of Europe to do something like that without real technological innovation. So, uh, the company exists still, but I kind of stepped out of that. And then a launch, a digital agency where actually I came across VR virtual reality three years ago, got up to speed with what the capability and then having the roots in sports and because of my son plays hockey, those two things merged.
Eric Hornung: 00:09:50
All right. So that was an awesome like rocket ship through. I kind of want to dive into some parts of it. So you said you’re from Czech Republic?
Bob Tetiva : 00:09:56
Right.
Eric Hornung: 00:09:56
Are you from Prague, Praha?
Bob Tetiva : 00:09:57
Prague, yeah.
Eric Hornung: 00:09:58
That’s all. I was just there this summer and I loved it.
Bob Tetiva : 00:10:01
Thank you.
Eric Hornung: 00:10:01
Very like the city of spires, right? Like just beautiful city
.
Jay Clouse: 00:10:06
I remember when I visited Prague seven years ago, we went to the castle, which I think is just called the Prague Castle.
Bob Tetiva : 00:10:11
Yes. Prague Castle.
Jay Clouse: 00:10:12
And the tour guide was explaining. He was looking at the outside with all the things that are adorned on the outside of this building and he says, and you see those two guys there in suits. And we looked and sure enough there were a couple of guys in suits. He’s like, those are the guys who financed this building. I thought that was funny. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but that was really interesting to me. So…
Eric Hornung: 00:10:30
Do people actually live in like the beautiful downtown part of Prague?
Bob Tetiva : 00:10:33
Yeah, they do, they do it. It’s quite unique. So basically it’s very expensive nowadays, but you know, in back in the communist era, which is like almost 30 years ago, there were just some apartments so, so absolutely affordable. So regular people live there and obviously it was like, you know, grandma, grandpa dad lesve together with their families there for ages. So um, there was a continuation and then obviously the free market came, uh, so these people understood that this has a value, so they moved out of the city center and those who can afford to live there and have that spirit of being really in the, in the old ages of Europe, they lived there.
Eric Hornung: 00:11:19
What was that transition like? I’m guessing that, I don’t know how old you are, but you said 30 years ago. So…
Bob Tetiva : 00:11:25
47.
Eric Hornung: 00:11:25
Okay. So you have some memory.
Bob Tetiva : 00:11:27
I’ve got a birthday today.
Eric Hornung: 00:11:30
Birthday on the upside podcasts. How about that?
Bob Tetiva : 00:11:34
Quite unique, I hope so.
Eric Hornung: 00:11:35
It’s awesome. So you have some memory I would assume of that transition period where it was communist and Soviet inspired and then not. So like can you talk a little bit about that and what it was like going through that..
Bob Tetiva : 00:11:52
I assess that as being extremely lucky, because I was 19 when the regime broke actually right at the right time when you kind of finish up with your childhood and suddenly everything opens up for you as well as like the new companies, new brands that are coming to the country were looking for fresh bloke, not for, for you know, 50 years old guys that were absolutely used to the different type of working and, and uh, working spirit mainly. So that was a huge opportunity for everybody at that age. Like a guys who were 10 years older, having a little bit of working experience the time are even better suited. So many, many of them launch their enterprises at the time really catching up with, you know, like foreign companies coming in. So they, they, they launched their subsidiaries and things like that. So those are now developed ovens. So I was a bit younger for that but still doing my university degree already in the new regime. But having in mind what has been happening before or what had been happening before, which is, which is quite unique because if I employ people right now that are 15, 20 years younger than me, they do not have that experience from that time at all. They don’t feel that, that difference that opportunity in a like, hey suddenly, you know, you can travel, you can, you can, it’s only up to you if you are clever enough and if you put your soul into something, it’s not like expecting, like unfortunately I don’t know what’s happening here, but the new generation that came after us, it’s almost like I’m expecting that they will have good time and that they don’t need to do much in order to get there. Which is unfortunate.
Eric Hornung: 00:13:42
So you mentioned earlier that you kind of identified as a basketball player.
Bob Tetiva : 00:13:45
Yep.
Eric Hornung: 00:13:46
Is that around this time when you were about 19 years old?
Bob Tetiva : 00:13:48
Yes. So, um, yeah, but well my dad was a two Olympics so we are a basketball and sports family. So, but back in the 50/ 56 Helsinki and 64 Rome. So he is a big athlete. He’s 87 nowadays, so…
Eric Hornung: 00:14:05
Can he still like.
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:06
He can, he can, he can, he can walk. That’s for sure, but he doesn’t play anymore.
Jay Clouse: 00:14:11
Believe it or not, Eric used to be able to dunk.
Eric Hornung: 00:14:12
I did back in the day. Not very well, but enough. I could jump. That was really all I had goin for me.
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:19
Good on you mate. Yeah.
Eric Hornung: 00:14:21
What position did you play?
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:22
Play maker. I was the shortest guy. So we call a point guard point guard?
Eric Hornung: 00:14:26
Yeah. Okay.
Jay Clouse: 00:14:27
The title is called playmaker.
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:29
Yeah.
Jay Clouse: 00:14:29
That’s awesome.
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:30
Yeah.
Jay Clouse: 00:14:31
That’s so much better than point guard. Why not just call them playmakers?
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:34
Playmakers. Yeah.
Jay Clouse: 00:14:35
I love that.
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:36
At least this is how it was named in the time of night. I used to play.
Jay Clouse: 00:14:41
So you, you grew up in an athletic family and sports was a part of your life. You mentioned that you went to university at one point. Did you, did athletics factor into your decision and where you went to school?
Bob Tetiva : 00:14:52
Yeah. This is very important because my strong belief is that people who have the sport experience and even better if it’s a team sport are well suited for the professional career. Because you know, that forms your brain the way that you want to achieve something, you know that you have to fight for that. That doesn’t come for free. Plus, you need to have a team around you and if it’s not just, you know, be able to use sitting on the bench. So if you want to play a significant role then you have to work on your own as well. I mean improve improve yourself. And that’s exactly what’s happening. Then in, in the real life, like in companies, if you want to be like the leader, then you need the team behind you. You have to motivate the team, you have to work together. So I see there’s so many parallels for me, like I won both of my kids to, well both of them do sport and my son plays hockey. So I, I feel like this is, this is a perfect for his future life.
Eric Hornung: 00:15:54
How did he choose hockey? You got basketball in the blood and he went hockey.
Bob Tetiva : 00:15:58
Well, yeah, that’s, that’s a great question. I said that, uh, I used to play basketball professionally, but that wasn’t my only sport that I played in my life. Hockey was kind of in, in my roots since the beginning. What strike me a lot was back in 1985, there were world championships in Prague, hosted by our nation and we were lucky that it was kind of postponed in, in the scheduled til May. So like the Stanley Cup was a thing in semifinals, so, so many of the players were already like after the season. So we had Mario Lemieux there, the Goldie from rangers from bees brook. And I was watching the games suddenly with all of these stars and most of all the Czech’s volume, it was Czechoslovakia at the time. So that really grated my passion for, for hockey, but you know, as a basketball family. So also, uh, I played basketball and when I finished then I’m from my childhood, there was another dream that I wanted to kind of execute a, that was alpine skiing. So at the age of 30 I decided that let’s say, you know, I should give it a go, give it a chance to see if there is not a wasted talent for, for my country. And I started to compete in Alpine skiing on not in the World Cup level and not even on the European cup level but on the FIS international to order level. So for another six years, I was running like every weekends around Europe, racing slalom and giant slalom where I met a number of people like my partner for that company that produced skiing goggles and helmets and again it was, you know, close to the sport. So. Great. And then finally when I finished this, because it’s really time and physically demanding. So uh, you mentioned that the age of 37 used to be working hard.
Jay Clouse: 00:17:48
You did this for seven years?
Bob Tetiva : 00:17:50
Yes. Yes. In parallel of
Eric Hornung: 00:17:51
Did you grow up skiing?
Bob Tetiva : 00:17:53
Yeah, it is.
Eric Hornung: 00:17:53
Okay. I was going to say, Jay, can you imagine three years society, you want to know what
Bob Tetiva : 00:18:00
It was not like that, but yeah, it’s mostly my in. I knew how to ski. Obviously. I had to like improve to be on the competitive level. I was going to say that today and when my son grew up, it was actually my wife who bought the first skates for him, so we went on a pond and he’s, he’s talented athletically talented he can do, he can play football and he’s a basketball everything, which is, which is a really important if you want to be an athlete. And then I told him, hey, you want to go and try it on the real ice rink with the other guys? He was at the age of six. He said yes, of course, because we were going to watch games together and that, uh, how it started. So I don’t know whether he’s going to be professional or most likely not otherwise before it, but it can end up going to be a skier for the future.
Jay Clouse: 00:18:50
You mentioned at one point that this is Sense Arena is your third company, so at the time that your son is starting to get more into hockey and hockey starting to become more of a aspect of your life because of it. What were you doing professionally then?
Bob Tetiva : 00:19:03
I was, uh, I had the digital agency, a marketing agency, so for corporations, like a [inaudible] car manufacturer, global brands, FMCG and Sutra doing websites, mobile apps, social media campaigns, things like that, and it was almost two years ago when the technological know how and the sport understand the ink, I would call it, although it doesn’t sound very English, clicked together and it was obviously the, the understanding to hockey and what’s going on the field with my son because I was helping as a, as a hockey debt to the Co, the local coaches on the rink that I found an insight or opportunity that technology can help in the athlete’s development. And it was like the trigger that then evolved into Sense Arena.
Eric Hornung: 00:19:57
So you made the conscious decision to leave this Alpine skiing company that you created?
Bob Tetiva : 00:20:04
Oh yeah.
Eric Hornung: 00:20:05
Right. So you’re making helmets and gloves and you make this conscious decision to leave that. Is that going well at the time? Is that falling off? Is it plateauing?
Bob Tetiva : 00:20:15
Yeah. Well, okay. So the story went like we had two years of being on the market, we created the products, found the the right manufacturers in the Far East and at that time you either like keep the company being a garage company so you don’t do economy of scale and you have to find out the different cells arguments and longterm benefits for for the customers to actually survive or you, you go mass market and you have to grow in a scale. Otherwise the production doesn’t make sense and that’s what we quarrel with my partner Andre Bunk, he wanted to stay low in a garage and I wanted to grow. So that was where we actually nicely say goodbye to each other and I, I started the digital agency age in my life.
Eric Hornung: 00:21:06
One question before we get into sensory, not geographically, are you in the Czech Republic, this entire story or
Bob Tetiva : 00:21:12
For Sense Arena, you mean?
Eric Hornung: 00:21:14
For everything. Because I thought I saw something about Boston and
Bob Tetiva : 00:21:18
Oh yeah.
Eric Hornung: 00:21:18
How does that play in? Do you live in Prague right now? Do you live in Boston? Okay.
Bob Tetiva : 00:21:22
Well, so Sense Arena story, it started in Prague, although I live out of Prague one hour drive up north in the mountains, but since I started in Prague there is lots of stories that we can touch, touch on it because we are not only in Prague but we have one more office in, in the country and logically the biggest market for hockey’s here in the states and in Canada, so to launch, you know, an office here, it’s an inevitable step that you have to do. So we founded the company June last year in Massachusetts and as of October last year, we have office, local office kind of base for the North America in Boston. So I’m always saying like that veal ended in, in Boston.
Eric Hornung: 00:22:05
You’re like a pilgrim?
Bob Tetiva : 00:22:07
Yeah, yeah, yeah. With the ship.
Eric Hornung: 00:22:09
Yeah. Why Boston? Why’d you pick Boston out of, I mean you could have picked any, any city in the United States.
Bob Tetiva : 00:22:15
Well, couple of things like merged. One is, as far as hockey, there are pretty much three states that, that are hockey states. They call it three, 3M: Massachusetts, Michigan and Minnesota. Then pragmatic decision is like if you want to, if you have to fly from Europe, every hour counts. So the closest one is Massachusetts. It’s a, it’s a nice business. This is beautiful city. And then finally when we approached David Pasternak the bruins finger currently among top 10 NHL players and we discussed how to get him onboard and when he did it might have absolute sense to land in Boston.
Jay Clouse: 00:22:59
Makes sense.
Eric Hornung: 00:22:59
So I think we should turn into Sense Arena. What is Sense Arena in your own words?
Bob Tetiva : 00:23:07
Sense Arena is the first still the first and the only professional hockey training platform in the. In the world that runs on VR. The, if I speak about professional hockey training, I speak about training of your brain, your cognitive functions improving in your hockey sense. Somebody calls it hockey IQ or hockey intelligence. So our. We don’t want to replicate what’s happening on, on the ice or what you can do in a shooting range. That would be stupid to do because obviously the reality with the physical park and definitely what’s going on on the ice is there and we. We are virtual reality, but on the other side one thing is that our vision is that in team sport, in the future, in the near future, the differentiator is going to be about what you can execute in your brain, how you think about the game, not how fast are you because everybody’s already stopped already fast enough and also if you skate like a jet but you go wrong direction and then you do a wrong decision doesn’t really pay off. So.
Jay Clouse: 00:24:18
So is the core user somebody who doesn’t have access to the space to do this in the real world or is it a different net benefit for them versus just saving the space?
Bob Tetiva : 00:24:31
Well, honestly we are still at the beginning of our journey. The platform has been released to the market or we launched to the market commercially with the version one only on October, last year. So we are collecting feedback and the like the, the use case stories and would be naive to think that right at the beginning we, we know everything so we have to listen. But majority are pretty much two use cases. One is we can deliver like a thousand times more repetitions of execution, of, of drills and training certain skills. Then you can do all the eyes just by the logic that if you go for a training session which lasts one hour, you’ve got 20 bodies on the ice if you like the whole team. So it’s statistically proven that every player is in action in between like 10 to 12 minutes during that one hour session. And every believer player actually holds the puck on his, a hockey stick for no more than one and a half minutes over an hour session. So that’s definitely not enough. So, so, uh, the, if I speak about the a thousand times more intensive training in number of repetitions, that means that in, in our environment, because you hold your hockey stick, you are visually on the eyes, but it’s, it’s you, there and all of the players around you, the environment and even like the drills, the schemes than follow your actions. And the are the artificial intelligence of your body. So the demon is set the way that, that it’s you to be making the decisions. They do their decisions. But they do the right decisions, so they like if a good example is to train, like break out for the game, you do that five on five. You are one of those five offensive players. Obviously there are other four that can make a mistake before the puck comes to you. So within one year, sorry, one hour of training session you can count how many times you actually touched the puck in that given scenario of a breakout.
Eric Hornung: 00:26:37
Those other four players in this virtual world, are those actual humans or are those like computers? Like is it a social thing where like the three of us could sit down and all strap it and do like a three on three drill or is it I strap in and there’s two computer simulations,
Bob Tetiva : 00:26:55
At the moment they are artificial intelligent avatars because the technology is not there yet to to make it like multiplayer experience. But it’s almost to the VR heading where we are heading to. But we want to observe one thing and that’s a, that we do not want to create another game, like a video game because obviously there are companies that do really good hockey video games, they do it for many, many years with a great experience and that’s not something where we would like to compete. But for us, I call it always like professional hockey training, which means that you really feel like being on the ice, the physics of it, the stick with the puck and everything works almost a hundred percent the same. It has nothing to do with, with, with a game, although like gamification mainly for the younger players has to be there. So you’ve got a score, you’ve got to rank, you want to be your, your, your buddies. Uh, you want to know, uh, at what rank are you among your age group in the whole world, which can be nicely achieved. And besides that kind of without almost letting you know, you train something that is useful and you train your, your whole, whole body and mainly or brain.
Eric Hornung: 00:28:06
Who is the audience here? Because you said the younger players seems like older players, when you say professional hockey training, that makes me feel like older players. So like is it anybody who plays hockey is, are there different levels? Like give me a little bit of insight there.
Bob Tetiva : 00:28:19
The platform is suited for young kids the age of 12. So one thing is, is kind of um, medical that uh, obviously I don’t want to put a VR helmet onto 6 years old kid, because the development of her or his eyeballs, it’s not there yet. Plus see, you have to have certain hockey skills because as I said, we do not you know fake anything in there. So if you do not know how to stop the Puck, how to cash in the past and how to release then not being a hockey player, you will not enjoy the training there.
Jay Clouse: 00:28:56
So in this world, in this space, am I operating drills from a stationary perspective because you’re not strapping into ice skates and you’re not on ice. So is it like here, here are the scenarios, you’re stationary and do this.
Bob Tetiva : 00:29:12
You. Well, uh, another good question. Thank you for your, your pass passing me on this because we do trainings in sensory now on skates as well is just a matter of in the gym to have synthetic ice. So even here at the CES you can come over to our booth. We have synthetic ice and we can demonstrate how you can perform all of the drills in skates. One can say that it’s stationary, but the room where you actually operate, all the drills can be up to like 25 x 25 feet. The minimum size of the, we call it gym is 10 x 10. So within that parameter you should be moving your yourself. I mean like because the training is. Let me give you an example. We train scoring situations in front of the net were you know 25 x 25 is already big enough because that’s exactly the space where you know, the, the scoring is happening. So in order to get to a position where you can shoot, you have to move yourself in order to get open for a pass and that’s something that you can stay still and then all the passes will be blocked by a demon defensive demon in front of you or you have to make a couple of side steps in order to get open. So this is exactly where the athletic performance comes into the game, the, the, the training. So it’s not like standing still, but you really make moves in order to actually learn something.
Eric Hornung: 00:30:40
You can build up a little sweat doing this.
Bob Tetiva : 00:30:42
Of course.
Eric Hornung: 00:30:43
Jay, what do you think? Do we go down there?
Jay Clouse: 00:30:45
Do you want to see this? You wanna see me on synthetic ice?
Eric Hornung: 00:30:46
I want to see you. He doesn’t know how to iceskate.
Jay Clouse: 00:30:50
I’ve never done it. So I’ve tried to rollerblade a couple times. All right. I just haven’t done it. Will stop by the booth.
Eric Hornung: 00:30:56
My follow up question that is we talked about audience, like who? Who’s going to be the users? So this space, this gym, 10 by 10, 25 by 25. Who’s the customer of this? People don’t have that in their house.
Bob Tetiva : 00:31:09
Yes, well, uh, there are two types of customers. One of our teams and training centers were for teams. It makes perfect sense like next to the dryland facility or within their dryland facility when they have a shooting range, they typically have some other room where we can install the technology in. If the team comes for training, uh, one group, the does shooting practice and the other one comes to the VR environment and thus the hockey IQ training. So that’s one group. The other group, our household, so obviously because we have a version of the platform that suited for typically, you know, a basement or a garage physically the technology is, is all built in. We call it VR equipment case, a nice polycon case books which you can store them in a garage open press a button, it comes up and then you can start a training. \So there are two scenarios.
Eric Hornung: 00:32:08
What’s pricing look like on those two?
Bob Tetiva : 00:32:10
As for the teams, we are typical software as a service SAS company. So we licensed the platform on a monthly basis which, which is $1,500. As long as you pay, you are getting new content, new upgrades, updates and Sutra, and then there is an upfront payment for the heartburn which includes a very powerful gaming pc, touchscreen monitor, and mainly the, the VR equipment helmet sensors to is wireless adapter etcetera. And that is 5,500. It comes in a, in an ice cold it computer kiosk, so it’s all hidden there. Again, for us customer experience is very important. It’s on wheels so we can push it somewhere to the corner. Uh, etc. And then for, for the households content wise, it’s exactly the same. You just limit the, like the usAge because in those 1500 for the team it’s unlimited user license. So it’s then up to the team whether 100 guys is using it or twenty for households in the typical scenario is like you know, for a hockey debt and the sun. So we call it dual license. So for 200 bucks they get the same content for two players. And then the upfront payment in the, the professional version is the same. So $5,500 in the computer, a VR case. And we have a cheaper version, which is based on the previous version of a HTC vive helmet, which is certified 100.
Eric Hornung: 00:33:41
What does maintenance look like? Is that a big feature? Do you like if the thing breaks down for a team and they’re paying $1,500 a month and they want to be able to use it, I would assume you have to be able to get someone there quickly. What does customer support look like in this business?
Bob Tetiva : 00:33:56
Well, there are, we’re still distinguished between the software maintenance and the hardware maintenance. Software maintenance, we can nicely do remotely actually to hook into the computer or computers because in some cases we have two gyms next to each other in that given a location so we can remotely fix a problem. Obviously, our customer care, you know, is all over the phone or instant messaging, things like that. So that we talked to the customer and it’s very important, As for hardware replacement, what uh, what can happen is that some of the technology pieces can, can break obviously. So one thing is that they are very, let’s say standard ones meaning like the we’re on own HTC vive platform which can be replaced easily and then we solve just the commercial issues like to get it sorted out. The other thing is that we’ve got a unique hockey stick which is in fact a standard hockey stick just pumped up with technology. So there is a special sensor and then two more modules hidden inside of the shaft of the stick that produces a haptic feedback and that’s something that we can ship pretty much overnight and get replaced if that, that breaks obviously if that breaks because you treated not well, then
Eric Hornung: 00:35:10
Hockey players don’t have tempers. So probably never happens.
Bob Tetiva : 00:35:13
Yeah.
Jay Clouse: 00:35:14
So if I am a training center or a team and I have this unit in here, how do I split time with my team and avoid the problem of an hour on the ice? You only get 90 seconds of the puck on your stick. If we have one unit, how do I make sure I’m maximizing that for my team?
Bob Tetiva : 00:35:30
Yeah. Well, the typical scenario is the platform has three, let’s say, usage modules, one of the modules is we call it, diagnostics. So what you as a coach should do at the beginning of season. You should run diagnostics. You should run your layers through the diagnostics and get the results, the results out of that which tell you weaknesses and strengths of your guys and then it can easily happen that you will find out that not all of them are need, really improve on their cognitive and IQ hockey IQ skills. But those, that the that should typically schedule like once a week as well, like a half an hour training session. And if a for more. We were talking about 12 years old guys before, but we have like professional teams that uh, that use that for instance, you can, you can train one timers. Not really from the perspective how, how many times you, you hit the net, but from the perspective of how you actually hold a stick, how you bend your knees. Very hold a stick, how you rotate your body to work on the technique and all not on your ability of of speed reaction if the puck comes from different angles, not under perfect conditions. So for instance, to train this on the ice, you will have to have like, you know, hundreds of pucks and you will have to devote a complete, you know, two hours of session in our case in 90 seconds rail for one timers you can shoot 50 pucks. So that’s up to the skill coaches like saying, hey, let’s work on this now intensively for two weeks, like after the morning for and own ice training, let’s go for 22nd, 20 minutes to the VR gym and let’s, let’s work together. I’ll, I’ll help you with your body positioning and things like that. So over over two weeks time you can get improvements that are then transferred onto the ice.
Jay Clouse: 00:37:26
You mentioned the old model was on a HTC vive. What is the new model built on?
Bob Tetiva : 00:37:31
It’s still HTC vive, but just the, the pro version with the wireless adapter. It’s wireless is wireless of course, because you know, getting tied up by.
Jay Clouse: 00:37:40
I was thinking about having a cord and I’m like, this sounds miserable. I don’t know.
Bob Tetiva : 00:37:44
We touched on this technical base. Then we use devolve trackers for a sensoring of the stick and your body position plus exceptionally to the standard setup of wife. We use four base stations in every corner of the room to actually observe the precision of, of the tracking because you know every millimeter counts here and makes a big difference if the puck goes left or right up and down. So it’s really a professional setup if even like software solutions that are proprietary in order to to observe the quality.
Eric Hornung: 00:38:19
How many drills are there in the software?
Bob Tetiva : 00:38:21
More than 70.
Eric Hornung: 00:38:22
More than 70,
Bob Tetiva : 00:38:23
70, seven zero. And we at like one drill per week. We’ve got customers that demand custom made drills, which is something that we can deliver as well. So it’s, it’s, it’s working like real well real platform that can be pumped.
Jay Clouse: 00:38:38
How difficult is it for you guys Sense Arena, the company to create and implement new drills? Is that like a very expensive development process for you?
Bob Tetiva : 00:38:48
No, not really. We built up a framework that we pretty much, it’s a software development that allows us to reuse components frankly, so based on the coaches can be creative, but it’s not like, you know, creating a completely new environment so we can nicely reuse components and as I said within a week we can deliver a new drill with all of the measures which is very important. Every drill has a number of events that we, that we track and measure because that’s the beauty of the, of the VR that’s digital cage, so whatever happens on, on the stick or in the body movements we can measure which is obviously position velocity, reaction speeds, decision making, and as soon as we implement logic into that and I was expressing myself wrongly not as soon as. But if you on top of this, let’s say physical and mathematical events, if you add the logic like aveda, the guy has made a correct or wrong decision, then you can start measuring something that’s has been almost impossible to measure a at. That’s exactly the hockey intelligence.
Eric Hornung: 00:39:59
And I can track that over time. Me getting better.
Bob Tetiva : 00:40:01
Yeah. Absolutely.
Eric Hornung: 00:40:02
So you mentioned our customers a couple times. I’m curious to hear about the traction you’ve got. How many customers do you have currently? Why is it, why were you going up against the relaunch? Was this like beta product product? Talk to me a little bit about number of customers, how that all kind of works out.
Bob Tetiva : 00:40:19
Yeah. So we’ll um, obviously we were on like two regions. One, one is Europe, one is North America, it all started in Europe where we have nine installations of the platform and as I said, we started in October last year only and they are split like it’s, it’s two universities, three professional clubs and now newly a two household actually. We have a customer who bought it for his son and they’ve got it in their living room, including synthetic ice, it’s a, it’s a great story.
Jay Clouse: 00:40:55
That’s a real hockey dad.
Bob Tetiva : 00:40:56
Yeah. And then here in the states we’ve got the installation to installations in Colorado springs at the tigers. We will be installing next week at the little caps in Washington at the couplers sports center and uh, we have signed up this week actually with, but for sports center or close to boston. So it’s gonna be altogether five installations was just like, you know, this show when, so, so fantastic. So that we have another four orders out of that.
Eric Hornung: 00:41:27
What is the sales funnel look like for this? Because it’s for orders at CES. That’s pretty quick open since October. Have like 15 or so installations either existing or in progress. It seems like it’s quicker than I would expect for something that seems
Jay Clouse: 00:41:41
it’s a high investment item.
Bob Tetiva : 00:41:42
It is. That’s actually very interesting because you meet a, we do every week one or two showcases to potential clients. So, so the, the sales process, the funnel goes like that, unless you actually give the helmet to the client to really experience it, you shouldn’t have to expect that they will buy it because it’s um, it’s kind of unbelievable that this can really happen. So we have to, we do the, the, the showcases. And what is interesting about it is that you meet people that are kind of traditional minded hockey guys who think that way, like, okay, this is, this is not real hockey or, or, um, don’t make it too complicated for us, like it’s, it’s a hard short and be fast and that’s it. And then you meet the other group that thinks ahead, hope those who are the visionaries or, or, uh, those that are seeking actually ways how to improve their players or obviously how to differentiate their hockey program against the other. So I mean on a commercial basis as well. So definitely those are our customers and our prospects. It all comes with the vision, that brain function and the intelligence of the players is something that should be and we believe in that will be, will be the game changer in the future. And there is not much tools how to learn it besides like playing twice as many games which just going to be devastating for the, for the players. So to have an intensive training on yours, reaction speed, multiple object tracking, decision making, proprioception since ionize the unique in that,
Jay Clouse: 00:43:19
does it seem easier to sell to teams and training centers or to the households?
Bob Tetiva : 00:43:24
I don’t want to like really differentiate between those two. You getting know how out of both of them. Obviously for us it’s, it’s, it’s easier to sell to teams frankly. And it’s, it’s more beneficial because even cried creates like an appraisal for exactly as you pointed out. Like you know, you, you, you’ve got the one guy training there for half an hour, but you’ve got 200 guys in the program there. So obviously they could buy multiple units. YeAh, yeah. I’m hoping for it and all having a in the household sales for those that cannot get there so often
Jay Clouse: 00:44:00
if you just saturated the entire US and European market in just like we’re selling to every team. How big is that opportunity? Like how big could Sense Arena be in this niche?
Bob Tetiva : 00:44:11
Well, in terms of size of the hockey community, I mean, I mean the, the, the, the, the players, number of players in a, let’s say hockey developed countries, then we speak about 1.3 million and I’m not counting China because I haven’t found any numbers, but they’re going to be huge honestly.
Eric Hornung: 00:44:31
That probably all a facility in western China.
Jay Clouse: 00:44:33
Yeah.
Bob Tetiva : 00:44:34
So one point 3 million for um, the hockey countries in Europe and Canada and the United States. A number of teams. It’s a, it’s another number and that counts for around 40,000 teams.
Eric Hornung: 00:44:49
So one thing that I think about is the kind of upfront intensity both from a cost perspective with the hardware and installation perspective. So scaling that is going to be expensive, right? It’s not something that is easily like it’s not like software where you can just roll it out, roll it out, roll it out. You have to actually go manually do it. I would. We already talked about the customer support side. So I’m curious to talk about fundraising and are you guys fundraising, is that part of the model going forward or is it grow and use the revenues to kind of scale more slowly? How does that, how does that look?
Bob Tetiva : 00:45:28
To your question, our greater vision is I, I always call it like that we do not want to get frozen by, by the ice hockey. Our greater vision is uh, to roll out this, a approach this, this, this, this platform to oh, other team sports. So ice hockey was chosen logically because my son, but the other very important factor is the Czech republic, if to be important in the world at some sport then it’s hockey. So the heritage of the country helps to actually are gained credibility elsewhere. So ice hockey is kind of like a pilot journey for us and the other sports should come after that. So that’s one important aspect. The other important aspect is that an I, that’s what I like about the enterprise a lot, is that we run the same direction as all of the technological vendors. So whatever, even it’s a, if it’s HTC or a supplier of some kind of haptic devices, whatever they invent to the market and come to the market. We made a leak, can use advice, whereas a, through creating our content, we can help them to grow, to grow in the economy of scale and bring other other people the experience of, of using VR. So, so those two things run together. You are absolutely right. That the installment process, uh, it’s definitely like going into a website or browser and get,
Jay Clouse: 00:46:58
just click download and you have it.
Bob Tetiva : 00:47:00
But that’s what’s happening at the moment. So if you’ve, if you look like in five years horizon, how does this, this can be running, it can be completely different. He uses scenario plus given the fact that the market is not going to be just about those figures for ice hockey then we are looking at a quite a big potential.
Eric Hornung: 00:47:20
Okay. So we started this off talking about your son. He plays hockey, you’re kind of hockey background, your hockey dad, now you’re running this. How do you balance both of those? Because I remember my dad taking my brothers every morning at like 4:00 AM because time is so expensive every morning to practice and then every weekend they were traveling to a new city. How Are you running a company while also like dealing with the craziness that is like being a hockey dad?
Bob Tetiva : 00:47:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well it’s not only that, it’s another thing and that’s a, you know, if I’m in europe as I commute up and down, obviously I finished my shift in the, in the time zone of europe and you guys just are waking up. So then my wife, to whom should I give a big thank for, for support gets nuts sometimes because for me the, the, the time, the working time does not end by eight but much later. But the main thing is that I love what I do, so it’s a great much of being upsold to support my son. So whenever I’m at home I’m the same. I had the games nowadays I do not have to go to the practice because he’s already a big kid. No, that’s not a small child. But whenever I’m at at the rink or travel with him to the games, it means that I, I meet people from the hockey community, I watch what’s going on, so it’s kind of humping me back with, uh, with, with what’s going on in the community happening there in europe, happening here and on the other side of the office, I’m still like doing hockey. So it’s a great sale.
Jay Clouse: 00:48:58
That’s awesome. Well, Bob, thanks so much for being on the show. If listeners want to hear and learn more about you or Sense Arena after the show, where should they go?
Bob Tetiva : 00:49:04
They should go to ww.SenseArena.com and they will find out all the complex details there.
Jay Clouse: 00:49:12
Awesome.
Bob Tetiva : 00:49:12
I thank you.
Jay Clouse: 00:49:17
Alright. Eric, we just spoke with Bob of Sense Arena here at CES. Before our deal memo, you and I are not hockey guys, so we thought it’d be a good idea to bring in a hockey guy to talk a little bit more about the implications of using VR in the hockey arena.
Eric Hornung: 00:49:33
Yeah. Our friend Shane is hockey guy. In fact, he runs a hockey podcast called for check back check paycheck. It’s a podcast from the fan’s perspective that humorously discusses the latest NHL news. It’s a top 50 sports and recreation podcast and it has tons of guests, former players, coaches, beat writers, and hockey historians. So I think you’ll have some good insight here into how Sense Arena fits into the current hockey landscape. Shane, welcome to the show
.
Shane Darrow: 00:50:06
Thanks man. It’s been awhile since I’ve seen you, man. I appreciate it.
Eric Hornung: 00:50:08
I know it’s, it’s great to talk to you. Even if it’s a virtually. I know we only live 160 miles away at this point, but it’s definitely been a long time.
Shane Darrow: 00:50:16
Seems further than that though.
Eric Hornung: 00:50:18
True. So can you kind of give us a little bit of background in kind of your life in the perspective of hockey?
Shane Darrow: 00:50:24
Sure. Yeah. So I actually learned how to skate before I knew how to walk. So I, I grew up in northern Michigan where hockey is pretty much everything, kind of how in Ohio or wherever football is, everything where I grew up, hockey was the number one sport, you know, skating on lakes and bays and everything. Like that was commonplace in the winter. I played my entire life from the time I was two, three years old all the way up through college at Ohio university. I’ve been a sports writer for the last decade. I’ve written for four or five different publications covering a ton of different NHL teams. And then now I run a hockey podcast called for check backcheck paycheck where I guess he talked to a lot of former players and coaches and scouts and things of that matter. So it’s been, it’s been a huge part of my life honestly, since, you know, I have my first memory.
Eric Hornung: 00:51:09
Yeah man, you definitely have a lot of experience that Jay and I don’t have. I famously didn’t play hockey when both my brothers and my dad did and Jay touched a hockey stick for his first time in his entire life at CES. Will will definitely post the video of jay playing hockey on this virtual reality system for the first time and scoring his first goal. We’ll post it in the show notes.
Jay Clouse: 00:51:33
I’d love to see it.
Eric Hornung: 00:51:34
So one question I have for you is kind of setting the foundation of what hockey workouts look like today. I know that ice time is expensive. Is there off ice work? Is there on ice work? Can you just kind of lay out what that’s like growing up?
Shane Darrow: 00:51:48
It switches as you get older. When I was in high school, obviously youth is just all about fundamental skating, figuring out what hand you are passing, understanding the rules of the game. You know when you’re growing up, usually you don’t even change on the fly. They blow the whistle every minute and you change. It’s real, real basic. But then as you get through travel and high school, you know it’s all about figuring out zone play. Defensive zone, offensive zone for checking schemes, powerplay penalty kill, things of that nature. But as far as training is concerned, usually there’s an on ice session and then an off ice session. At least that’s how I was growing up. We used to do off by sessions three times a week and then you were expected to, you know, hit the weights and stuff like that on your own. And then we skated every morning before school. When I got to college it was very similar, you know, it was just club hockey that I played at Ohio university. So it’s a little bit crazier for the, you know, if I’m speaking for the d one athletes, the guys that I’ve talked to who played d one NCAA, it’s a full time job. Everything from your meals to your off ice training to your on ice training to the weight room. It’s all scheduled. Finding a way to fit classes in is difficult for these guys. Not to mention that, you know, they’re traveling across the country. You know, I’ve talked to some guys who played on the east coast and they played games in Alaska, you know what I mean? So that’s, you know, because there’s three or four NCAA programs up there, so it’s Definitely more into it than just, oh, you’re on the ice for an hour or two. You know, a day or a few hours a week, these elite players, it’s, it’s everything from their meal, so they’re off ice training which can consist of anything from, you know, puck handling to sprints to cal aesthetics to whatever, you know. Um, and then they’re on ice, you know, usually the, their on ice play is more focused towards strategic stuff like zone play and things like that. You know, most of the conditioning is what takes on off the ice.
Eric Hornung: 00:53:39
Talk to me about this idea of hockey IQ. Is that developed mostly on the ice or their boardrooms that you’re kind of sitting in with a whiteboard and walking through? How does that get developed?
Shane Darrow: 00:53:50
Hockey IQ is. It’s one of those immeasurable things that some people have and some people don’t. I always like to think that I got as far as I did due to my hockey iq, I was never the best skater. I never had the hardest shot. I was never the best puck handler, but I knew systems and I watched a lot of hockey. I watched a lot of film and that was kinda how I advanced, you know, in the playing in college and getting to play junior hockey and things of that nature because I was never the fastest. The biggest they ended up was just never really me. I think hockey IQ is really at its most basic form. It’s kind of knowing where the puck is going to go before it happens. Understanding situations like when you’re killing a penalty and you’re not trying to go through the defenseman, you know, you’re just dumping the puck in because you’re killing a penalty. It’s a understanding that you’re up a goal and not taking a dumb penalty. Whereas in a different situation maybe that is actually the play, so it’s definitely there are teachable aspects and there are non teachable aspects of it and some people have it and some people don’t, but it’s definitely something that you can work towards. I think you see a lot of guys who are great athletes and don’t maybe make it to their potential because they just don’t have that IQ.
Eric Hornung: 00:55:06
What do you mean by it’s not. There’s non teachable aspects.
Shane Darrow: 00:55:09
What made like wayne gretzky, for example, obviously the greatest of all time. What made wayne gretzky so great was that he always knew where the puck was going to go before it got there. He could read the plays 20, 30 seconds in advance and he always, he used to say, you know, I don’t go to where the puck is. I go to where the puck is going to be and it’s like almost like an instinct type thing for some players where you know, some guys just know where to be at the right times and then can capitalize when they get there. Whereas other players, they just don’t, you know, if they’re fast, if there’s good skaters, they just zIp around the ice with no intentions at all. If they’re bigger guys and they play a more physical game, they just follow the puck and try to hit everything that moves. so having a high hockey IQ is just one of those things that’s just some players develop in time and can adjust their game too and others just don’t. And that’s kinda what hinders them from maybe making it to that next level.
Eric Hornung: 00:56:03
So develop in time, is that another way to say they get like a lot of reps? Is that a, is that a fair assessment? Is it fair to say that wayne gretzky played a lot more than other people and that’s how he was able to develop that mastery? Or is it something more innate?
Shane Darrow: 00:56:18
It’s probably honestly, you know, I don’t think there’s a perfect answer. It’s probably a little bit of both. You know, gretzky played with kids like four or five years older than him his whole life, so that, you know, the game was always faster than him. Then what, you know, the rest of his peers were used to for that reason. I definitely think that it’s something that’s teachable. When I was growing up, my dad used to sit me in front of the tv in front of a pro game and let’s say if, you know, the redwings were playing where I grew up in, instead of just watching the game, like 99 point nine percent of people do, he would pick a player and say, just watch that guy. The whole shift. And that’s how you kind of learned was by watching where he went when the puck was in one spot. That’s how you kind of develop it. So there are, you know, there are instinctual parts of it that I don’t really believe are teachable, but I would say probably 80 percent of it probably could be taught just by. Yeah. By, by reps in practice and being in the situations, you know as often as possible.
Eric Hornung: 00:57:14
Along that line. I understand that ice time is pretty expensive and that’s why there’s maybe not a lot of time spent on the ice. And I think you mentioned you have ice time, you have off ice time and a lot of the time is spent off the ice doing calisthenics and training and puck handling and things like that. I’m curious about your understanding of Sense Arena and whether or not you think that adding that to the off ice regimen would be beneficial or what you see positive about it and what you might have like some cautions about.
Shane Darrow: 00:57:46
I definitely think that when I first saw it, I think the fact that it’s so innovative is, is probably the biggest positive. Not to mention that if I was doing one of my college workouts, I would much rather jump into VR booth and have to go run sprints in a field, you know what I mean, or go run hills or things like that, or do you know lunges and stuff like that where it was just basic stuff. I think that it’s the innovativeness and the fact that I think players would actually get really excited about it, you know, is, is the, is what it really has going for it. Like I said, it’d be a good sick, you’re a scout or if you’re a coach for like a d, three NCAA team and you have that in your training facility and another school doesn’t. That’s something that you could leverage to your advantage as far as how you’re going to develop your players. One of the, the, my worries about it is, is the fact that hockey is such a different game of just the simple fact that it’s played on ice and it’s very difficult to develop a skill set when you’re not actually skating. There are guys who are great stick handlers. They have a great shot. Things of that nature when they’re staying still or when they’re, you know, there may be they’re shuffling a little bit. The best players in the world are the guys that have great hands and great vision at full speed. I’ve seen some videos where guys are actually skating using this VR system and I think that’s a closer step in the right direction. It’s just a, it’s obviously a developing technology and that’s kind of where my only gripe was, is with it. I think that it’s real useful and I would love to personally try it and if I was, like I said, if I was an NCAA d three team, maybe a US HL team are really where you’re in the. You’re in the business of developing guys. I think it’s a huge. It’d be a huge addition. I just think that there are, I think it needs to be used the right way. I don’t think you’re gonna you’re gonna really turn like a fourth line guy into a firstline guy just by using this, but I think you’re going to get guys more excited to train off ice and sometimes half the battle is just can people show up?
Eric Hornung: 00:59:51
That’s funny. Well, I hope that you get to use it at some point. Maybe next year you’ll come to CES with us and uh, there’ll be there again and we can try it out. One thing that I want to mention is I actually did it as well for goals or three goals. I forget. Doesn’t matter. That number goes up every time you tell it. Pretty soon it’s going to be 14. The weirdest part about it is there are no pucks, but it feels like there’s a puck hitting your stick. Just a very odd sensation.
Shane Darrow: 01:00:19
Yeah, I can imagine. That’s kind of one of the things of what I mean about it is when I first saw it, I got super excited. I thought it was the coolest idea I’ve ever seen. Obviously VR is just is a huge, you know, just a huge new technology over the last whatever, five you would know better than I would, you know what I mean. But obviously a developing technology that’s like I said, that’s another issue with it. Hockey is so much feel and how much, how much feel can you really get without an actual puck. I know that when you and I talked offline and I kind of said, you know, I’d rather just, you know, have an actual stick without anything connected to it. Actual pucks and actual net an actual piece of plexiglass to just shoot off of. But you know, if there’s ways to, to, you know, increased the players hockey IQ or put them in certain situations time and time and time and time and time and time and time again, you know, things that you can’t do off ice, you know, where you can actually put nine other guys on the ice with them virtually as opposed to just, you know, shooting on a shooter to it or something like that. That I can see Where the positives are certainly start to outweigh, you know, maybe some of the negatives.
Eric Hornung: 01:01:24
Awesome. Well Shane, thank you for joining us. I’ll be sure to talk to you man.
Shane Darrow: 01:01:29
No problem. And a big fan. You guys keep doing what you’re doing. Tell Jay thanks for the lunch money. By the way,
Eric Hornung: 01:01:36
Everyone. We’re here at CES and today’s podcast is brought to you from the blue microphones podcast suite at CES 2019. You probably know blue from their bestselling yeti mic that’s all over the internet. In fact, Jay and I built upside on the back of the yeti mic this week at CES lewis, announcing the ember. It’s a new studio, xlr microphone for professional recording, youtube production, streaming and podcasting. It’s 99 bucks. Blue offers a full range of premium usb and xlr studio mics, which are actually recording with today from podcasting to youtube to music. If you’re a storyteller, blue wants to help you amplify your voice. Visit bluedesigns.com to learn more.
Jay Clouse: 01:02:27
Before we get into this deal memo, I’ve got to clear up the elephant in the room, which is the lunch money that Shane said I gave him and he’s right. I lost our fantasy football league this year.
Eric Hornung: 01:02:39
Yeah. Shane. Shane is in our fantasy football league. He won it.
Jay Clouse: 01:02:43
He won?
Eric Hornung: 01:02:43
Yeah, he won, which is very annoying. And the fact that you don’t know is also annoying.
Jay Clouse: 01:02:47
Well, I’m glad that he won because now I don’t feel bad for the trade. That ended up being much better for me than for him of jimmy graham for uh, the running back for the broncos. I don’t remember his name, but he did great. I had no running back. Yep. Lindsey was good. Yeah. I stopped paying attention after I lost. I lost my first playoff game by a point because I didn’t play a roster spot because I was meditating and could not even access my roster. So I was super salty and I stopped paying attention.
Eric Hornung: 01:03:16
I had a nice, friendly wager with Shane on your first playoff game that I won money on. So that was nice.
Jay Clouse: 01:03:22
What was that?
Eric Hornung: 01:03:23
Well, I had a buy in the first week of the playoffs, so you were out and Shane was also on a by so he was like, hey, anyone want to bet on the cloud game? And I was like, yeah, I will take Jay but I want 25 points and then you covered the spread. So good work sir. Betting on betting on fantasy football is interesting and it also gets into Shane’s name of his podcast, which is for check back check paycheck. The last part about that is sports betting and he’s not very good at it except for fantasy.
Jay Clouse: 01:04:00
I’m not a huge sports guy as the fans will see on the video of me playing or not playing, but like using Sense Arena, but I do always look forward to our super bowl prop bet pool.
Eric Hornung: 01:04:13
I do love the super bowl prop bet pool. It’s something that we put together. it’s called the superbowl owl, which I stole from Steven Cole bear back when it was the cold bear rapport. He would do a segment every year on the superbowl, but the network was not allowed to call it the super bowl for some reason, so he called it the superbowl owl, which I just thought was hilarious.
Jay Clouse: 01:04:35
It sounds like a hoot.
Eric Hornung: 01:04:37
No, you didn’t. Uh, has a wise crack.
Jay Clouse: 01:04:41
That was good. All right. We’ve strayed from the path.
Eric Hornung: 01:04:44
We strayed from the path, but let’s not forget that Jay pickup a hockey stick for the first time after recording Sense Arena and scored his first goal ever. But it wasn’t a virtual world.
Jay Clouse: 01:04:55
Yes, but it did earned me an official Sense Arena, flat billed cap, which Bob emailed to me with the subject line photo of the star in all caps. So I feel good about it. I feel accomplished.
Eric Hornung: 01:05:09
Awesome. Well, Jay, let’s dive into the product itself. This isn’t a question we usually talk about on our deal memo. Usually we have four questions we wanna answer their about the founder their about the opportunity, but here this is a real product. This is something that you and I both used at CES. What was your take on it versus what your expectations were?
Jay Clouse: 01:05:35
It was smoother than I expected. I was playing around with AR and VR, I would say relatively early, you know, I know that AR and VR, I was existing in some degree in like even the eighties, so I’m not like Kevin Kelly early here or anything, but when oculus was first a thing and we started getting these new devices and the five I played around pretty early and it was gnarly. It was not great and then I stopped paying attention for a couple of years because it wasn’t that great and now it seems like things are much smoother and you can do so much more in these worlds. So what I was really, really impressed with how smooth receiving the puck, feeling like I had a puck on my stick, shooting the puck. It all felt very fluid. The goalie Was moving in a fluid way. I was impressed with that. I got to say one of the things that sticks out to me as I listened to your interview with Shane about the product and thinking about my experience about the product where all three of us, you me, well maybe not you, maybe you can be the one in the middle, but me and Shane are on two ends of the spectrum where I’ve experienced Sense Arena. I’ve never experienced anything close to ice hockey. Shane has experienced ice hockey. He’s never experienced Sense Arena, so we’re both projecting in some way and so it’s hard for me to know just how close sense arena is to hockey. Obviously Bob thinks it’s very close. Obviously Bob has a natural bias. Not gonna. Hold that against him. It’s just true. So have you played ice hockey at all, Eric? And can you be the in between here?
Eric Hornung: 01:07:06
So I’ve never played in an actual game of ice hockey. I have skated on the ice, I have shot. I have played around a lot of street hockey growing up. Not the same thing, but I have experience on the ice. Never playing a full game, never do anything like that. I did practices growing up until my dad decided not to buy the equipment, which we talked about and is definitely not a sore spot, but I would say I wish I could have thrown on the skates. Been on this synthetic ice. I saw that there were skates there and done a drill that was not just a shooting, catching and shooting drill. I would have liked to experience that. I would have liked to see what that was like because I think that’s where the real value add from Sense Arena is is all right. There’s nine guys on the ice. They’re all virtual. Sure. But I’m on skates. I’m skating around and I have to get open for a puck like that to me is. I just think, I think the utility of that in the future is going to be so huge when you have different offices and different coaches who want to run different drills and they can customize those drills to their offense and their sets and and I can get 60 reps in 90 seconds of getting open, getting a puck to me like with a real virtual virtual world. I think I missed a little bit of that with the just shooting drill and I understand why they did it for CES, just having the shooting demo like it makes more science, more people can try it, more people can experience it, but to me I would have liked to experience that more hockey IQ side to see what that was like.
Jay Clouse: 01:08:43
Something Bob talked about a lot and it’s on their website, the you get 1000 times more reps using this machine. I didn’t quite get that or buy into that in the interview, but being like using the machine totally get it. It’s like, wow, you can get a lot of reps very, very quickly here with is catching and shooting drill and I do feel like, again, I’m projecting a little bit because I’d never been on the ice. It felt very realistic from the standpoint of being stationary, catching the puck, shooting the puck. what Shane brought up in his insight was he said, best players in the world are those who have great hands and great vision at full speed, so that is the difference to me of what I need better perspective from real users, real players relating to Sense Arena, the product to say, is this enough to do the hand eye coordination catching and shooting here or like you’re saying, does it need to be more on the move to get the full value and full benefit out of it
Eric Hornung: 01:09:39
And I think that there’s some validation to the this concept with having [inaudible] whose name I’m probably pronouncing wrong because it’s Czech and pasternak who is an all star currently playing in the NHL as investors and advocates for the brand. I also think there’s a lot of validation from having 14 customers who obviously find value in it, who are professional and amateur programs
Jay Clouse: 01:10:05
And having how many, how many sales did Bob say he made at CES? Just having that there and having people experience it
Eric Hornung: 01:10:11
On the second last day he said they had made for more sales, so that doesn’t even count friday, which they may have made more. We don’t know. So people in the community get it. He obviously is solving a problem. I think that why they’re starting with hockey is ice time. I mean I remember my brothers, when they would play, I think they would get up at like 4:00 AM to get to the rink at 4:30 to work out for a half hour off ice doing like stick handling drills to get on the ice at 5:00 because that was the cheapest ice time because they were the youngest people and as you got up like ice time is just so expensive and it’s getting more expensive as Shane said. So I think that’s why they started with hockey. I think the value prop is there. I think the technology has caught up to make the product usable. I think that the technology is going to get better. Like you. I played with some VR. I think the last time I was on a VR headset was 2017 and it was an oculus and an air force booth where I was flying jet through like some rings and I just wasn’t sold on it. Like the graphics weren’t that good. It didn’t feel real. The thing that felt like I didn’t have any grips, I didn’t have any haptics. This had like feel and touch and I can just imagine when you put on the sensors on your legs and skates and arms, it feels a lot more real.
Jay Clouse: 01:11:32
A lot of times wearing a VR headset feels heavy and awkward, but I would imagine that’s also more natural in a setting where you’re wearing a helmet.
Eric Hornung: 01:11:39
Yeah, that’s a great point. So let’s migrate off of the product, which I think we both agree for a V1 is surpassed our expectations.
Jay Clouse: 01:11:51
Something that launched in 2017. Yeah.
Eric Hornung: 01:11:53
And will continue to get better as they have more and more customers with more and more improvement. And I think the secret sauce of this is actually the software, not the hardware. Their ability to customize something in one week. If I’m a college coach and I want to put it into new, authentic or a new scheme and I can get all of my players to get 300 reps in it, in a virtual booth in call it two weeks. That’s incredible. Like versus being on the ice and actually having to do it and then we can all go out in the ice with the same base level understanding of where I’m supposed to be, what I’m supposed to do and get that real physical immersion. That could be game changing for college coaches. We can start in hockey, but I mean I played lacrosse growing up and like this is so applicable for lacrosse. It’s not even funny how many times we would stay on the field for an hour and a half because one person couldn’t get their specific position down or they dropped a pass or just something that’s so basic that we were all kind of waiting for this person to just get it and if they would’ve been able to just go into a VR booth, knockout 300 reps, they could come back out and be like, okay, I understand where I’m supposed to be, where everyone’s supposed to be. This makes more sense now.
Jay Clouse: 01:13:03
That’s interesting. So let’s talk about the opportunity a little bit in as a investor or potential investor into this. Are you thinking about things like lacrosse and the other implications that this technology could have when you’re thinking about whether or not Sense Arena makes sense as an investment opportunity?
Eric Hornung: 01:13:20
I am 100 percent thinking about how this expands to other sports. To me football doesn’t make sense. I don’t think that this. Maybe for a quarterback?
Jay Clouse: 01:13:29
They have that there is. There is a major player in the quarterback VR. I forgot the name of it, but I’ve seen it.
Eric Hornung: 01:13:37
Okay, so football doesn’t make as much sense to me because it’s not as core as much coordinated movement maybe for a quarterback. Otherwise I just don’t really see it. I could see lacrosse definitely being something where this makes a lot of sense. Basketball makes a lot of sense to me. I don’t know. Obviously there’s some technical challenges with basketball because you don’t have a stick or something that gives you, you need like some sort of haptic gloves maybe not really sure. I think that baseball doesn’t make a lot of sense, but soccer does, so really I think you got hockey, lacrosse, soccer, basketball. Those to me would be like my universe of what I would think about for the opportunity in the next five to 10 years.
Jay Clouse: 01:14:18
And so let’s talk about the size of that and the model here behind Sense Arena, I think you and I are both a little Surprised by the pricing model of this. I was. Maybe I’m projecting on you. I was a little surprised by the pricing model, which I think makes the opportunity bigger than I would’ve expected initially.
Eric Hornung: 01:14:37
Right. So the pricing model, just to just for the listeners, is you pay for the hardware plus a little bit of a markup upfront. I’m actually not even sure if there’s a markup on that. It’s.
Jay Clouse: 01:14:46
I don’t know. It depends how they’re valuing it. I think you said that an HTC vive is like $3,500. the hardware cost to customers of Sense Arena is 5,500.
Eric Hornung: 01:14:55
Right? And they have sensors on the stick and they had a stick and they have all of this stuff. So maybe it’s just at cost. The hardware which is $5,500. So let’s say they’re breaking even there and then they charge $1,500 per Sense Arena unit to like institution. So whether that’s amateur professional teams. Yeah, per month to individuals which have less user licenses. It’s $200 a month, but you have to pay the same hardware cost up front. So when we think about how big this opportunity is personally, I do not think about the individuals. I think that that market is a nice cell that may happen. But to me this is B2B. This is for the individual, a extremely luxury product and I just don’t see it gaining mass adoption in the hockey community no matter how dedicated you are as a hockey dad paying almost 10,000 a year on top of all the travel for hockey on top of all the equipment, on top of everything. That’s just a lot of money for an individual and I know that some people will do it, but to me it just doesn’t make sense to analyze the market from through that lens.
Jay Clouse: 01:16:06
I know a lot of winter sports people that do like winter olympics or exports, athletes in the winter category. Usually they come from fairly affluent homes because just practicing those sports is pretty expensive. Is hockey in that camp or not?
Eric Hornung: 01:16:22
Yeah, hockey is definitely in the either affluent or crazy camp like there is no, you’re crazy because hockey is in your blood, right? You’re in one of the big cities or you’re from Canada where you grew up and it’s just all hockey all the time, or you’re from a affluent side of things. I mean, we know that there is a dispersity between like wealth and race in America and it’s telling that there are very few African American hockey players.
Jay Clouse: 01:16:55
That would have been my assumption too. So I was, I was still considering the hockey dads side of things. I think the bigger, I mean they have to have the space, right? They have to have the open space that they can install this thing, which I think is a bigger consideration than the expense itself, if that’s the type of demographic we’re talking about.
Eric Hornung: 01:17:14
So the average size of newly constructed single family detached home in Canada is 2200 square feet. That’s not a lot of space to have effectively a full room dedicated to a VR system.
Jay Clouse: 01:17:31
Yeah. It sounds like you’ve got to have a 100 to 625 square feet to house one of these things.
Eric Hornung: 01:17:36
Yeah. So you’re essentially giving up five to 30 percent of your house.
Jay Clouse: 01:17:42
Uh, it could be the garage though. you could put, you could put your car on top of synthetic ice. It’s a weird thing for me to know, but I know one of the major manufacturers of synthetic ice, it was on shark tank and a lot of a selling point is we can put this in your garage and you can park on top of it.
Eric Hornung: 01:17:58
Okay. So if you could do that. I guess that opens it up a little bit more still from my end. I’m not thinking about the individual consumer. When I think about the opportunity. If you want to that’s fine. I think that that is like a nice bonus to have, but for me it’s like if we say hardware breaks even then you’re looking at $2,400 a year from the individual consumer. I don’t think the penetration rates are going to be so big that it really moves the needle on the overall opportunity number.
Jay Clouse: 01:18:28
That’s fair. That’s fair. Okay. So let’s talk about teams then. How big do we think the market is for teams of the software right now?
Eric Hornung: 01:18:37
So if we think about it, we have a $18,000 per unit per year ARR, you figure that the teams are locked up for like at least three years because that’s how long the equipment lasts and then they make a decision whether or not they’re going to buy again. Which is a nice feature to know is that once you sell it to them, you essentially have three years until you have to renew. So didn’t we get some numbers from bob on how many programs are in the world?
Jay Clouse: 01:19:06
40,000 teams.
Eric Hornung: 01:19:07
So there we go. We’ve got some easy math. There are 40,000 teams, assuming none of them get discounts. $18,000 a year. That gets us roughly 700 million in potential revenue on a annual basis. Is that as big as you thought? As little as you thought. I’m just from the hockey side.
Jay Clouse: 01:19:27
It’s bigger than I thought, but that’s also dependent on this revenue model which is still pretty early in. Will it stick? Will it stay at that price point? Will he raise it, will lower it or to say it’s. At this point, it’s bigger than I thought it was, but so is the pricing. My experience of him telling me what the pricing was, I was like, whoa, that’s awesome. Are people buying that? And he said, yeah. I said, whoa, that’s awesome.
Eric Hornung: 01:19:53
Well I think about if you can get into the NHL, they’re not going to pay $1,500 a month for this. They’re going to get five of these booths, pay more than $1,500 a month and likely mandate that they have a full time software engineer who can update within a day so that they can scout other teams. Think about thinking about being able to put in other teams like now that all these sports have different sensors on them. You could put in what other teams are doing and play against the other team before you actually play against them. You can play on some 10 times in a day.
Jay Clouse: 01:20:23
That’s true. And that’s something to think about. The kind of said, but didn’t quite say specifically the average order size for one of these 40,000 teams is going to be above one.
Eric Hornung: 01:20:32
Right. So regardless of what it is, if it’s one point one, if it’s one point two, I think that you’re looking at initial orders will probably be around one, the bigger teams will order more obviously the ones with the bigger budgets, but I mean you’re looking at roughly a billion dollars of for an opportunity for one sport and hockey is one of the big four sports for sure. But it is still a smaller sport in comparison to like basketball and basketball academies and so when we expand that opportunity, I think you’re looking at a total addressable market in the. Let’s just keep it easy for sports that I, that I see it potentially branching into. I think you’re looking at maybe a three to $4,000,000,000 potential market, which is definitely expandable once you get into like the professional realm.
Jay Clouse: 01:21:20
Yeah. And I wonder if, you know, I’m not convinced that the model won’t change in some way. You mentioned that you think that the software. Is that a bigger play? It doesn’t seem unlikely to me that there’s a world where they’re charging different licenses for different types of software simulations.
Eric Hornung: 01:21:34
You’re saying it doesn’t, you don’t see that world.
Jay Clouse: 01:21:37
I do see that world where instead of a $1,500 flat monthly fee, it’s $1,500 for this program and you can upgrade it for some level of money to this other simulation. I don’t know. Hard to say.
Eric Hornung: 01:21:51
Yeah, so for me, I see it as hey, we have our standard package for teams which is $1,500 and then we have our pro package which is you buy 10 units and when you buy 10 units your price per month is $2,000 instead of 1500. But because of that you get a dedicated software engineer who can update your software given any program you want with any kind of inputs you want. We’re hooked into all of the data feeds that come through the NHL. We can create any offense you want off of like your drawing off of a piece of paper so that your team can practice any offense in one day like that kind of maneuverability ahead of the game would just be like incredible. If everyone can jump in a booth for, call it a half hour of practice time throughout a day and the next day be able to run a brand new offense like offenses, take weeks to put in and this can really accelerate the speed of innovation in the game and you can change offenses or defenses. I I focused on offense because I played offense and pretty much every sport but or defenses in, in just such a faster time that you’re optimizing against your opponent. I know that that’s looking maybe five, 10 years into the future, but that’s what I see for this opportunity is the ability to. This is a new tool for coaches.
Jay Clouse: 01:23:09
I like Shane’s point about coaches using it for recruiting to going a little long here, so let’s turn our attention to Bob, the founder. What stuck out to you about Bob?
Eric Hornung: 01:23:19
That he’s a hockey dad. I like that. I think that it’s good to have an understanding of the sport from that perspective. He’s obviously an athlete, so he grew up around this kind of world. He gets coaching, he gets watching film and learning from all those kinds of things. He comes from athletic family, so it’s in his blood. He’s been doing it for forever. All of that makes sense to me. I think one thing that really stands out is the presence of mind to open something in Boston. Boston’s a big hockey town. I liked that he understands like, all right, I’m sticking to my roots, which is Prague and we see this like one of our themes of this show is not that we’re anti coast, it’s that we think that there are great companies being built outside of the coasts and some of the companies that are being built outside of the coast go to the coast. I mean look at script drop. When they started, they built their MVP in New York, but he started out of a trailer in Nashville and started his company in Columbus. So like I liked that Bob didn’t sell out of Prague. He’s still maintaining progress. Our headquarters. Prague is what we’re doing, but we understand that there is opportunity in Boston and that is a great place for us both from my time perspective and also from a market perspective.
Jay Clouse: 01:24:36
Yeah, like that he’s a hockey dad. Like that he’s a professional athlete. I think a business like this is enabled by being an insider into the professional and collegiate athletic realm. I think he’s got that going for him. It’s not his first business. He was running an agency before this, so we have some experience running a business, growing a team. I was going to make the point about setting up a second headquarters in Boston, but you beat me to it, but let me just plus one that this is the first time that he’s told his background story in English. He told us on his birthday.
Eric Hornung: 01:25:07
I love that because it came across so well and not polished but like authentic. I don’t know. I really enjoyed it.
Jay Clouse: 01:25:15
Something I think points to his ability to be an entrepreneur and succeed in something that’s new is his decision to take up professional alpine skiing at age 30. He had been skiing before, but at age 30 and be like, you know, I think I’m gonna try to do this professionally and then do it. I think that speaks to his work ethic. That is something we see as a trend in athletes and also a lot of entrepreneurs tend to have athletic backgrounds and I like that.
Eric Hornung: 01:25:43
So Jay, I Think there’s only one question we need to ask before we get to our last question and that is, are you and I going to Prague in 2020, 2019, 2021? Who knows when to take you down your first alpine skiing.
Jay Clouse: 01:25:56
Oh gosh.
Eric Hornung: 01:25:57
We did hockey, let’s do alpine skiing. I’m a terrible skier.
Jay Clouse: 01:26:02
So I’ve been skiing once in my life and I bled. I wiped out so hard that I bled.
Eric Hornung: 01:26:09
All right. Jay, what are you looking for in the next six to 18 months from Sense Arena?
Jay Clouse: 01:26:14
I’ll be really interested to see. I know you hate when I say revenue, so I’m going to try not to say revenue.
Eric Hornung: 01:26:19
Here’s, here’s why I hate when you say revenue because everything that we’re getting at in this question is driving towards revenue, so like the first layer of thinking is always revenue, but like what’s the second layer that drives revenue? So if you want to say, go ahead.
Jay Clouse: 01:26:35
I want to see how the pricing model has evolved if at all and I would like to see how well they are entering the professional in collegiate market. Are they continuing to get into that realm or has the hockey dad side of things picked up? You know, I want to learn more about who the core customer is and what they’re gaining from it, what their experience has been after implementing it for some time.
Eric Hornung: 01:26:57
Yeah. I think half of my answer has to do with getting into the NHL and is it the IHL or AHL, whatever the secondary league is. I feel like they’ve changed that name a couple times and then also like the big college programs in the United States. If they’re getting into that then they’re going to have a lot of status and status drives a lot in sports. I mean just think about like beats headphones once people started wearing those in sports, it was everyone wore them in sports and odell was catching passes in the end zone and beats headphones and for recruiting tool like when you see high school kids being like, well do they have Sense Arena or not? That’s kind of like where you want this to go and I think that starts with being able to sell into the professional and college levels. The second thing that I want to hear about is what I think is their secret sauce, which is the software and the ability to customize things in the software. So right now they say they have a one week lead time. How does that change? Does that. Are they hiring more software engineers because they have more requests? Is that getting extended because it’s getting harder. What roadblocks are they running into with the software? Are they able to go multiplayer on the software where I can have 10 people and 10 booths and have everyone essentially running drills against each other. That reset. Are they able to bring in third party data like sensors from the NHL, which are monitoring where people are on the ice and how they’re working together to create real life scenarios that aren’t just like pre programmed in but are based on real body language and real time kind of understanding. I think that the software here is just like such an incredible asset and I’m really excited to see how that develops in the next six to 18 months.
Jay Clouse: 01:28:40
Yeah. And can it be developed in such a way that they have unique software that can spawn a copycat that takes just some portion of the market because of price differences or whatever. Alright guys. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode. You can tweet at us @upside.fm or email us, hello@upside.fm and we’ll talk to you next week.
Jay Clouse: 01:29:00
That’s all for this week. Thanks for listening. We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s guest. So shoot us an email at hello@upside.fm, or find us on twitter @upside.fm . We’ll be back here next week at the same time talking to another founder and our quest to find upside outside of silicon valley. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please email us or find us on twitter and let us know. And if you love our show, please leave us a review on itunes. That goes a long way in helping us spread the word and continue to help bring high quality guests to the show. Eric and I decided there were a couple of things we wanted to share with you at the end of the podcast. And so here we go. Eric Hornung and Jay Clouse are the founding parties of the episode podcast. At the time of this recording, we do not own equity or other financial interest in the companies which appear on this show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinions of devon phelps llc and its affiliates unreal collective llc and its affiliates or any entity which employ us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. We have not considered your specific financial situation nor provided any investment advice on this show. Thanks for listening and we’ll talk to you next week.
Sense Arena is a unique, powerful, and innovative tool for developing hockey players, improving their cognitive skills and hockey sense.
Using virtual reality, they bring the ice to players’ homes, gyms, and centers so they can execute drills just as on the ice but with 1000 times more repetitions.
Founded in 2017, Sense Arena is based in Prague (Czech Republic) and Boston, Massachusetts.
This episode was recorded at CES 2019 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
//
Shane Darrow is the host of Forecheck, Backcheck, Paycheck.
Listen to Forecheck, Backcheck, Paycheck on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/forecheck-backcheck-paycheck/id1389666153?
//
Learn more about Sense Arena: https://www.sensearena.com/
Follow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm
Subscribe to the update: https://upside.fm/update
