 This is StartupStoreFriend. SwingVision started as an app that leveraged the Apple Watch to help tennis players improve their game. Players could now track their swing movements, hits, and scores. But after working at Tesla, Swapno, the co-founder of SwingVision, realized there was a lot more they can do with this simple idea. By mounting an iPhone on a court and through motion tracking within the app, they can now offer automated scoring, line calling, recorded match highlights, and so much more. In this episode, we talked about the impact of having SwingVision featured on the Apple Keynote, coaching players with AI, and last, between you and me, we also talked about Diego paying a little extra to have the speed of his serves register faster than they actually are. Alright, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Swapno, founder of SwingVision. Thanks for coming. Welcome. Yeah, thank you for having me. For people who don't know, what does your company do? What are you working on? Well, we've built essentially a mobile app that provides automated stats and officiating using just your iPhone. That's what it comes down to. I'm a user of the product and a big tennis fan. You're a big tennis fan, I imagine. Oh, for sure. That's my main sport, yeah. And I follow the professional tour as well pretty closely. What I wanted to have you on was two reasons. One, I used to be in tech a long time ago at a bow tie company, right? And we launched an app and it was like this try before you buy feature. And at the time, an iPhone screen was the size of a bow tie. So that's why it was a bow tie company. And we just let people put the phone up to their neck in the mirror. And it was like this high res image. Even though the camera was 3.2 megapixels, it was like a high res image. The concept was try before you buy and it was cool. And then we got all this press around fashion meets tech. And then all of a sudden, we thought of ourselves as an app company. And then we ended up becoming a bow tie company. That's how it happened because people were like, oh, what a cool way to get a bow tie. And so in your journey, it's similar, I would imagine, where it's like you have this, your background obviously is in tech. And so it's like, okay, what is the technology that we're creating? And then how can we apply it to something? At the very beginning of it, what was that like for you? What path were you going down around like, here's the tech? Well, it was interesting for us. Actually, there's just a problem we were trying to solve, which was for me fundamentally, I just wanted data on my game. That was like the simplest thing. Like I just, I play tennis match, I lose. I don't know why I lost. What do I need to work on for next time? That was like the fundamental problem. And so it was interesting because we didn't really know, like what tech we could use to solve that. So initially when I first started working on this, I was in grad school out in New York and the Apple Watch had just come out. So like my initial idea was like, oh, I have this like computer on my wrist now. Maybe I could get some data from that. And so the initial version of the product was actually just an app for the Apple Watch. So it didn't really do anything with your phone, but we would use the sensors in the watch to like analyze your swing. So you could tell you like how fast you're hitting, what type of shots are you hitting, am I hitting like more forehands versus backhands, things like that. And then we also added like the ability to keep score manually. So you could like use the touchscreen to like input the score. But over time what we found was like people wanted things to be automated. They don't want to have to like manually input the scores. Right, totally. And so over time we realized, okay, so this is still the problem we want to solve, but we actually need to evolve the technology to make it like more automated. And how can we do that? Well, you can't really do that with a watch. You have to use the phone. You have to use the camera. And so then it switched into computer vision as a solution basically. So it's interesting, like we weren't super like hinged on any particular technology. We were just stuck on this problem that we wanted to solve. We tried to solve it with this other, this initial technology, which is like pretty good, but still kind of rudimentary compared to what we ended up making, which is a lot more impressive. So what does the camera unlock from a tech perspective versus like the Apple watch? Yeah, so the camera, the thing is, well, first of all, you can see all the players, right? So with a watch, like I can only see you. And then with the watch, you're also restricted to just your swing motion. With the camera, I can see the entire trajectory of the ball. How are the players moving on the court? What's actually happening in the entire scene? And then that lets you do things like line calling, which is like the most popular feature now in the app. So, you know, it just opens up a lot more things. You can just do, you have strictly more information if you think about it. And so you can just like track more data and you can just provide more benefits to the customer. And how long were you guys like building this out? Or at least like maybe in beta or at least getting to the point of like, okay, can we take this to market? Yeah, well, so the initial watch app we were probably working on for like a year while I was still in grad school, just like a side project. And then we finally released it. And it was still just like a hobby on the side. It wasn't anything that we did full-time. So my co-founder Richard and I were just working on it. And then later on after I finished grad school, I worked at Tesla. I was there full-time. So I still wasn't doing this full-time yet. We're redoing at Tesla. And at Tesla, I was working on their autonomous driving team, autopilot. So that's where I started to get more, I guess, experienced in computer vision. And I was specifically working on object tracking. And so that's when things started to click for me. Like, oh, I could use some of this to track like the tennis ball with an iPhone camera. And so that's when we decided to switch to using computer vision. And so that took us about six months to make the first version. So I left Tesla, my co-founder left his company. We started working on computer vision full-time. This is like summer of 2019, so three years ago. And then within six months, we built a kind of working version. And at that point, we had an experience that we knew, like we just need to release it right away. We're not going to wait to perfect this. Yeah, smart. It just needs to go out the door. Yeah, break it. We just released at the end of 2019, right before the pandemic hit. But it was right to release it early. Yeah. Because that helped us get like a lot more feedback and data. And this is, did you guys, at this point, you're not, you're not looking for funding, right? We did get some funding. Yeah, we got some funding. It was mostly friends and family. Actually, my neighbor ended up investing a little bit. And then that's also only got Andy Roddick and James like to invest. So they invested in that initial kind of angel friends and family around. How did you meet them? What was the connection there? Yeah, that was pretty cool. So a friend of mine from high school played professional. So he ended up going pro. He was ranked as high as like 600 in the world. So, you know, it did decently well. And his physio knew James through like another company they worked on together. Okay. And the physio was also an active user of our watch app at the time. Okay. So that was the connection. Fan loyalist friend. Yeah. Exactly. So I worked out to like, okay, I'll make the intro to James. Cause I was like, I'm trying to get like somebody in the tennis space to like, yeah. So I went to San Diego, pitched James at the time I was at Tesla still. And I told them, this was my vision, which was like, we've been trying to solve this problem for a long time. Now we know what the solution is. It's using the iPhone camera. And he just loved it right away. And he was really impressed because he felt like even the pros could use this, which was, I was surprised because if you're a professional player, as you probably know, like you have Hawkeye, you have all this amazing technology in the matches. So like, why would you need this? But he was saying it's because once you're off that stadium and you're practicing all around the world, you don't have any technology. You have no data. And that blew my mind. I was like, oh, that's a good point. Like you actually probably don't have that data. Especially something that's portable that you can carry with you no matter where you are in the world. Exactly. Or like one of your coaches could easily, yeah. Your coach doesn't even have to be there. Yeah, exactly. So like your coach could just like literally bring their iPhone, just set it up and like record your practice session. And like, you'd get all the same data you get in your match. And so that blew my mind. So he was like really sold on it from that perspective. So he ended up investing and then he invited me out to like this exhibition match that he was playing in Texas. And he's like, hey, Andy Rock is going to be there. John McEnroe is going to be there. Jim Carrier is going to be there. You can meet all these guys and maybe try to convince one of them to also invest. So I went out there with him there. I got to meet all of them. Basically like pitched the whole idea and everything. And then Andy was the one who was the most interested. And so he was the one who ended up investing as well. So when you roll this out, what's your strategy there aside from just like making it public on the app store? Yeah. Are you going to local tennis clubs, events, tournaments? Like what's that like for you guys? Yeah, that was something that we started doing more recently, I would say. I think initially when we launched, the idea was like, let's just put on the app store and let's maybe try to get featured on the app store because we'd been featured once before for the watch app. How do you do that to get featured? Is it super random or is there like someone you know in a department and you just like take a special look at this? Yeah, it's a bit of both. So the first time we ever got featured was actually for the Apple Watch Series 4. So when the Series 4 was announced, if you went on the actual website of Apple's like Series 4 page somewhere along the screen, if you scroll down, it would show you like great third-party apps. And so it showed like the Nike running app and like a surfing app and then swing vision. Okay. And was that huge? Like would that really materialize? That was pretty big for us. Yeah. You saw the massive bump. There was a big bump when the Series 4 came out for us. We got like a lot of traction, which helped with all these conversations with James and Andy. This all happened like at the same time, which is great. But you know, ultimately it wasn't like that big of a spike. I knew that we had to move to like a different model. But what was nice was it established incredibly with Apple, that like now they know us. There's like multiple people there who know about us on their PR team, on their marketing team, on the editorial team. They're paying attention. And they're paying attention. And so after that point, I could just reach out to those same people and be like, hey, we're working on this new thing. It's going to use computer vision. It's going to use your iPhone. It's going to be amazing. And so we could kind of feed them sort of like this is what we're going to work on. Now at that point it's up to them. Like I've done what I can, but you know, at least we have put our name out there. And then we always focused on just having like really open in the app, just like great usability. Like, you know, make the app as if like Apple made it just make it feel like user friendly, easy to use. And so that's what we always focused on. And so there's like tons of tennis tracking apps out there. But I think we have the best interface by far. And so, you know, all those things like help you get noticed. So, you know, a little bit of a lot of class. And then when you do launch the app, you get featured. Some investors, they don't want to be public in any capacity. Right. And so it's Andy very much like, because I see him talking about it. He'll go on shows and he'll talk about it. Obviously he's active on social media to some extent too. And so he seems more than happy to be a fan and an investor. But that's sometimes not always the case. And so do you ask him, do you push them? James or Andy? It was interesting. Like do you ask for a, are you like please like do yourself a solid? You know what I'm saying? It's like help me help you. Exactly. No, it's actually really easy with them. I'm just like, I try to be conscious of their time because at the end of the day they're just investors. Like they don't have like a ton of equity in the company or anything. So like I'm not going to treat them like an employee. So I just, you know, let them know like, Hey, we had this opportunity coming up. It is a way for you to get involved. If you could give us some of your time, it'd be awesome. I never like tried to pressure them or anything. And then in the early days when you first launched it, we knew the app was like really sub optimal and like not working that well. And so we didn't really ask them for anything actually at all. Like we didn't want their name to be attached to the product until it had like some traction. So we kind of kept it on the wraps. We didn't tell anybody for at least a year that they were actually involved. And then once it started to do a lot better, we started to get good reviews from customers, good retention, things like that. Then I was like, okay, this is actually becoming real. It's doing well. Now you guys can start promoting it. Like I think I feel comfortable having you guys attach your name to it. And I feel the confidence it's going to actually work out for everybody here. So, you know, that's kind of how we did it. And I think they were appreciative of that too. They didn't want to just put their name on anything. Right. So they want to know it works well. Yeah. They want to know it works well. And they're just not, you know, because ultimately like they're not that familiar with the app themselves. Right. They just like the concept of invested in it. So they're kind of trusting us to like, yeah, make the call at the right time. And then, so when you launch your little pre-COVID, and then COVID hits, and then from what we see, everyone's saying like, ton of skyrocketed in terms of playership and as a sport in general. Yes. Did you see that also? Yes, but initially it was pretty terrifying because in March, initially March, 2020, all the courts closed. So everything was locked down because we were just like, we don't know what we're going to do. Yeah. The whole world was just like confused. The ball had COVID. The ball had COVID. You couldn't touch my ball about writing something, my name on it. Exactly. You were like, this is a dumb as shit. You're like, mine's pen two years, pen three. Yeah. Yeah, I was just thinking about the other day. I was like, this is so silly. We also had this MIT professor come on that was studying COVID and he's like, it's an airborne illness. Right. It doesn't live on surfaces. This is crazy. Yeah. We felt like we were like conspiracy theorists because we were told us all the science. Right. Yes, it exists. It's real. But the news was like still, you know. People were bleaching them. Think about the fact that some humans were out there spraying each other with bleach before they went in their homes. Yeah. Terrified to kill each other. Yeah. I guess everybody has different risk tolerances, but yeah, especially when you just don't have much information. So march it. The courts are closed. Yeah, so all the courts closed. So that was scary for us because the user base went to zero. And so then we're like, oh my God, what are we supposed to do now? When are we going to open up again? We actually did a little bit of a pivot and started making some drills in the app that you could do at home. Oh, nice. So you could put your phone on the ground and swing the ball in the air. These are the targets that appear on the screen. Or you could hit against the wall and it would count your shots and stuff. So we actually started to work on that for a little bit. And that did fairly well. But then, as you just mentioned, by the time it was summer, things started opening up again. And then everybody was playing tennis because that was the safest thing to play. And so then we started to see a big growth. But really for us, it was like September of that year when the iPhone came out that year. That was probably iPhone 11, I guess. We got featured in the keynote. That was our first time getting featured in a keynote. Huge. And that's where we started to see a big lift. Did you know beforehand? Like, are they asking for content? They won't tell you why, but I'm assuming they're asking for materials. In this case, we didn't know beforehand what it was for. All we knew because also it was weird because they featured us in the iPad section, not the iPhone section. I guess they also released a low-cost iPad at the same event. So that's where we had no idea. I was like, there's no iPad release in September. Maybe it looks better. It's a bigger screen. Interesting. And so we're trying to film some content. Can you guys add some things into this build of the app and we're like, sure. And we had no idea what they were going to do with it. And then we just saw in the keynote, we were just like all going crazy. We're like, what is happening right now? Like, we're all in the keynote. They don't invite you either. No. Unfortunately. Well, this was also pandemic time, right? So it was all digital and they aired it. Yeah, that was a little bit sad because like maybe in a normal time, I would be there on stage or something. For sure. So we missed out on that. You and Drake and Tim Cook. At least they don't like tune in like, hey, you might want to watch this. No, they don't even tell that because they don't want to give any hints. I know they're very, very secretive. Yeah. So that one. They were everywhere. Exactly. They were super secretive. So last year's was different. Last year, the iPad keynote and the iPhone keynote, we were a lot more involved in that one because we had to go there to make sure like they were filming it correctly. And I actually spoke it as part of the keynote. So that was like, I kind of knew, but even there, they didn't confirm anything. They're like, well, we might keep you. We might cut it. We don't know. And it's like, you don't know it to the last second. Like they still don't confirm until you like watch it because they kind of want to be surprised. So from being featured, what is that spike like? I mean, that spike is, you know, it's like maybe on the initial keynote itself, it's maybe like a 10X bump and like daily downloads. And then it kind of sustains for a bit for like maybe a week or so. Then it starts to like come down a little bit, but it's still, you can see that it's like a little bit higher than it was. Your baseline has changed now a little bit. Yeah. And that maybe lasts like a quarter, I would say. But that's a significant amount of time. Yeah. And the exposure is huge. Yeah. The exposure is huge. Great time to raise capital. 10 raised capital. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, all of that works out nicely. Yeah. Off the back of that, then we raised like another round at the beginning of the following year and all this stuff. So that was really helpful. Like a seed round, a proper seed round at that time. Yeah. Yeah, we did seed round. This was like last summer. So that was, we raised about $2 million. Okay. So it was like a super big round. Yeah. Smart. Earlier you mentioned you're looking to raise a Series A, right? Is that coming up? Yeah. That's coming up for us. We're still trying to figure out what the market and everything right now. I know there's like a lot of investors are just kind of sitting it out, trying to see what happens. But I mean, we feel like we have kind of the traction to do it today if we wanted to. I think we're just trying to figure out what's the right time and to, you know, it's going to suck up a lot of my time, obviously, to go fundraise, right? So I just want to make sure I'm sending my time wisely. But we have good runway. We don't need to do it anytime soon. But I think we're thinking in the next, like six months or so. And I imagine it's mostly tech, right? Mostly tech companies or VCs. Yeah. It's going to be kind of your classical VCs that are mostly based in Silicon Valley. There's some like sports focused ones, which are pretty cool, like sports tech focused as well. So we're looking into some of those too. But we'll see, you know, kind of market will deem what happens, I guess. Yeah, dude. The way I look at this recession is like, yeah, you know, we'll hit pause on some investments. But it's more of like, we're just going to take a harder look. Yeah. I think that's what it is. That's really all. Which is fine for us, because I think our economics are great. Totally, yeah. You've done a really good job with our like tech and everything. And we just made sure we're growing responsibly. We're not just like burning cash for the sake of burning cash and like growing as fast as you can. How did you decide on your subscription price? So for people listening, you know, there's an offering. It's a monthly offering. Yeah. I think it's like 120 bucks, 150 bucks a year, something like that. Yeah. And I always wonder on how do these apps calculate what someone's willing to, like, is it a best? I remember, I met the mixed panel CEO. This is a long time ago. And he's like, I started at a dollar. And then I went up until someone said no. Yeah. I was like, oh, thank you. That's fine. Legendary. You know, it's like, okay, that's too simple. But when it comes to apps, it's hard, right? It's hard. It's like, it's a different market. There's tennis people. Yeah. There's a lot of money, but how much? It's more expensive than Netflix. Like, I don't even know how you, like, what's the analysis? It was really hard for us because, I mean, I feel like what we've built is so different from anything else before. Like this isn't just like Airbnb for something else. I can't describe my app that way, right? So I had nothing to compare it to. So what we did initially was we just sent out a survey right around the time that we were going to launch the first version of the video analysis product. And we asked people, like, if we built an app that could do these things, like, how much would you pay per month? And so the answers ranged across the board, but we typically saw, like, $10 to $20, and we were like, oh, that's pretty good because, like, people pay, like, $10 from Netflix. I guess now Netflix is, like, $20. Yeah. But back then, it's like $10 or whatever. So we were like, okay, that seems reasonable. So initially we started at, like, 120 a year. That's roughly $10 a month. And then as we started to make more improvements, it got, like, a lot more accurate. We introduced a line calling. We're like, okay, we're providing, like, a lot of value here. I think we should increase our prices. And we asked our customers, again, who did some surveys, if we added, like, automated line calling, like, automatically kept score for you. Like, what would this be worth to you? And then the answers started to go up. They're like, oh, I'd pay, like, $20, $30 a month for that. So I was like, okay, that's interesting. So then we said, okay, maybe we should plan for something that's going to be around $25 a month, but we'll give you a steep discount if you get annual. So it should be cheaper. So we said, let's do $150 for annual now instead of $120. So we did an increase last year in April from $120 to $150. And then we've kind of kept it that way since then. So now we have annual plan $150. We have also now introduced a monthly plan because a lot of people ask for an actual monthly plan. So we have introduced a $25 a month monthly plan. But most people do the annual. It's like 95% to the annual. Are you seeing, like, in the data, is the hard part getting people to come back? It's like, so there's this thing of, like, what you're really doing is helping people improve, right? Right. But at the end of the day, not everyone wants to improve every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mentally, they don't want to lock in. That's right. It's the hard part of, like, all right, Chad used it for January. Right, right. And in February, he's like, fuck this. Like, he just doesn't use it anymore. Are you seeing anything? And then they come back. Not really. Like, the pattern of human improvement. Yeah. Well, it's been interesting. We built it with that in mind, which was like, I want to improve my game, right? But a lot of people now are just using it for the purposes of, like, entertainment. Like, they just love seeing highlights of their match. Yeah. And they just want to share that with their friends. So true. And once you get into that, you want to do that every time. Yeah. Like, if you play a match and you, like, forget your curd, like, oh, I missed all those shots that I hit today. I wish I had that highlight reel right now. Right. So I think that starts to get a lot more sticky. That's true. And so what we're finding is the biggest hurdle is actually just convincing someone to do that first recording, because you do need some equipment. You have to, like, buy, like, a stand or something to, like, mount your phone. But once people record, what we're finding is that retention is really good after that. So once you get them to record, like, one or two times, then they're, like, sold and they're recording constantly, because of the highlights, the stats. I mean, improvements, obviously, is still a big part of it, too. What about batteries? Is that another hard challenge that you're dealing with where it's like... Where the matches last so long. It's a two-hour match, right? Yeah. It's a two-hour video to some extent where the camera is really paying attention until it drains it. Yeah. It does drain it quite a bit. You know, we recommend people, like, charge fully. What's pretty cool is in the latest iOS that came out last year, you can now set it up so that your phone will automatically turn on low power mode when you're using SwingVision. So that's really helpful, because low power mode actually increases the battery another, like, 50% or something over what you would normally get. So now you can comfortably record, like, two, two-and-a-half hours, no problem, on, like, the latest, like, 11, 12, 13. Yeah. So that's, it's become less of a problem, and that's something where we think of the future. We're, like, five years from now, this just becomes less of a problem, right? As battery technology improves. Yeah. I mean, do you ever think about it, like, I mean, obviously this is probably not important, but it's, like, integrating this, like, share on social feature where it's, like, an immediate TikTok with a song. Yes. And it's, like, a winner. Like, you hitting a winner. Boom. We have thought about that, and we do want to go into that area. And one thing that's also cool is just making gifts of, like, Oh, yeah. your four-hand winner or whatever. Right. And just send that to all your friends or your friend who just beat, you know? Yeah. Almost like video gaming, right? It's almost like the highlight, but it's you, and that's cool. Exactly. So that's a big thing for us, is just making content easier, faster to share. We're going to be doing a lot of that next year. And then speaking of video games, like, a big area for us now is also going to be live streaming. And we want to make this eventually almost like a Twitch where, like, you could stream your game. Interesting. You could be, like, providing commentary in between the points and things like that. So, like, if Andy Roddick is playing, you know, a practice round or whatever, he can, like, hit a shot and then turn to the camera and explain it. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. So that'd be kind of fun. At our club, they live streamed the tournaments and so this would be the move. Yeah. All of these entrepreneurs that come on the podcast are looking for a competitive edge. That's what we partner with Athletic Greens. I ditched my vitamin C packets. I was previously drinking in the morning and I've never felt better. 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So we literally were just doing user interviews last week and this was the most common thing people told us which was I choose English to look at their opponents. It looks like they're listening to Brad Gilbert. But basically yeah it's so cool you can go into the app and show me all of Diego's forehands that he missed or all of his serves that he missed I can easily see that instantly and so I can look at what patterns is he struggling with and so then I can figure out okay that's how I got to play him and something we're going to release later this year which is going to be super cool is she'll show you a playbook of where you should serve and then where so it's going to be like personalized gameplay and so like at this point once this comes out like if you're not using swing vision you're going to be losing a lot of matches because like everyone else is going to know what's up it's crazy when USTA matches they started like a doubles USTA matches now like the guys will be like do you mind if we record so I've started to see it being used in real play would you ever be able to upload so let's say Diego and I have never played $100 a month yeah the next question is what would you pay for that right that's funny we do have the ability to upload because people typically will like sometimes they'll record like their GoPro or like the Android phone because we're iOS only right now and it'll upload the footage so technically you can already do that but I hadn't thought of anybody doing it that way that's pretty funny I could go look up his like YouTube videos or something and like find his old matches I mean now at this point like there's so many more people using it you can just find them in the app a big social aspect to it yeah it hasn't been fully I feel like fleshed out but it's there like you can use it for that purpose if you want to has your game improved dramatically since you started the company to where you are today I do feel like I'm playing a lot better than I did back like when we started the company and then I just feel like I can improve faster like I feel like every match I play there's like something different that I did wrong but I can just find that out faster now I think I feel like I've solved that problem I had back in the day which was like all my service is off today or my forehand's off today I don't know what's wrong but something is wrong if you go back and look at the video it's like so obvious and so you can say like show me all my service that I missed and it's like ah that's why that's been really helpful to understand like okay I need to just be like turning my body a little bit more or like my toss was a little bit off or you know it's like little things but yeah I think the apps helped me with that what I would love is eventually the app could just tell me what level you're at because right now I'm figuring it out myself but if I was maybe like a more beginner player I wouldn't really know like how to diagnose like the next thing for us is like coaching some sort of yeah I have the AI actually provide the coaching turn your body at the end of the day it's a complex game but there's only so many adjustments you can make so it's like you know I think we could automate a lot of that eventually when I ran sales teams I would film them and so this whole thing of like it's weird to tell someone that like cause no one believes that they're not like if you were awkward in a meeting you don't believe it you're like what are you talking about cause everyone's so and they don't want to they're so in their head you know the memory of what happened basically yeah like it's like you never ask the client for XYZ they're like yeah I did you know and so then and so like I would just train people and I would video the first two weeks was all video and I'm like you see you do this weird twitch why do you do that thing and then like before you say something you do this and it's like you're in the client's face for no reason like why are you doing that right and like you're sweating here like you're awkward why are you sweating and the whole thing is nobody enjoys it like every sales person but then by like the end of week two they were so much better and the camera was gone and they knew they got I mean instant feedback and so when I saw Swing Vige that's what I thought immediately I was like oh this is like you're recording people's performances and now you don't have a scapegoat like cause in my head I feel like I'm hitting the ball like an adult and then I watch myself on the video and I'm like who is that rookie like what is that person doing and so the feedback of it really helps performance in general in anything you're recording yourself even on this podcast for sure it's like you're like what am I doing with my hands just awkward and then you figure out then you move on that's what I like about the app that's my base I mean yeah you summarized that so well that's exactly what like coaches love the most because they run in the same issue totally yeah they'll do a lesson or their student will play a match and they're like you weren't doing this this and they're like yeah it was and like let's look at the video you're not doing it okay so it's exactly what has you said it like you want it swears he serves 100 something miles per hour and I'm like dude like this is funny this is poking at like the ego you know I'm like I don't know if the technology like you've never ever served with this mile per hour thing yeah but you think you serve right everybody has this yeah I'm like where's the reference coming you're imagining the screen at Wilmelden popping up at 140 miles an hour yeah exactly but was that like are those things that are hard to figure out with the technology that's pretty straightforward so speed is actually the hardest metric for us to do okay and it's probably the least accurate to Yvonne's credit don't talk about that because we're using a single camera so when you have like that single vantage point it's just it's hard depth perception is just hard in general and then speed is even harder because it's like the change of death over time so that's really hard so that's really challenging for us I think it's something we can solve eventually but it's been hard to get that accurate it gives you like line calling and things like that which we felt like it was a bigger problem but I mean everybody loves seeing their speeds on swing vision everybody wants accurate speeds so I know that's a that's a big improvement you should just add add 10 yeah we probably could just do that make everyone feel good it would help the social they would share it too I would share the shit out of it yeah I paid extra for more miles per hour okay it's a bonus feature it's a feature yeah well I'm thinking on Strava one of the competitive aspects that makes the app is is like KOMs yeah where you can compete with everyone and you can see so like with this mile per hour or whatever it might be you could set up a leader board that they could serve in LA yeah exactly and you could do local you could do regional like whatever it might be that'd be cool or at least LATC exactly so like you know you're the people that you're playing with all the time now Yvonne's like hey on the app I'm number one and then everyone else is coming up and trying to compete with them yes that is very high priority on the roadmap for us leader boards and as you said it's going to start with clubs so we're going to have like club specific leader boards let me know it'll be cool you're going to have like at least five or something people at your club playing to actually unlock the leader board oh great to encourage you but LATC has enough people I'm sure yeah we want to work with brands as well we got LATC you get like a hat is pickleball on the roadmap or is that already possible that is on the roadmap as well and a lot of people have been using it for pickleball and it already kind of works which is kind of funny because it's really just a smaller court at the end of day a lot of the shots look pretty similar so it works decently well but that's going to be our next sport we'll be pickleball next year so we'll have it in beta and Q1 actually on the other side of it is there a play for you where you can think about like acquiring right then and then that way you're sort of all in one you know what I mean because the technology I do think that that would be pretty cool because one other problem we've wanted to solve which is another I don't think anyone's done a good job of this it's just like finding someone to play with at your level like that is so hard to do everybody rates themselves makes up numbers like inflates numbers whatever some people decrease the numbers because they just want to win like it's just weird people do weird stuff it's so weird and I think we have the best data like literally what can you get than that right so like I feel like we could match people better than anybody in the world and I think the the key to making that experience really nice would be having a booking platform because that's like okay tomorrow 6pm book the court for me find someone for me just deal with it it's like Uber right it's just like tomorrow 6pm done and then like book it it'd also be good if it could like instantly like integrate with UTR and so that way you're also basically like there's USDA and UTR and they're just rating systems but UTR is out of 16 and so like Nadal is like a 15.8 something whereas like let's call it like a really good junior tennis player it could be between a 7 and a 10 and like most D1 students are like a 10 UTR but you can start as low as like a 3 or 2 right so it's this but it's this thing where it's like it's almost like a handicapping golf it's you the more you play against players so if you beat a 5 cool it'll go up to like 6.0 well maybe 6.06 or something but if the 5 beats you then the 5 jumps up a lot more and then years would decrease that makes sense yeah and so it's basically just a but it keeps everyone honest because the USDA is basically 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and that's kind of it whereas UTR is like to the decimal and it's out of 16 and so if someone told me a UTR I'd know exactly much more precise way more precise yeah it's a lot better but it's also this thing of like people don't like uploading because if you get embarrassed in a match everyone's like oh my UTR my UTR everyone's like worried about their UTR yeah it's been interesting to see that especially the juniors they like UTR because it's so granular but then it's like there's a lot more pressure for every match all of a sudden so it's interesting but yeah I think that's in the right spirit I think we need more rating systems like that and then as you said I just want to be able to play and then see that reflect in my rating eventually what would be a strategy how do you you know how do you view that as an app obviously Apple's helped tremendously when Andy talks about it on camera that's also helping tremendously running ads against that it's probably smart but how do you view just the stickiness I guess of the power of social and just amplifying that message yeah it's interesting I mean so we've had the most traction probably on Instagram and YouTube so you have an Instagram page where we'll just post highlights from our app so we'll just pick just like clip that post it and that's gotten very interesting because now we get more and more people saying like oh they'll actually send us a rally it's like hey can we get featured like I hid this tweener last week like can you guys feature that so we got that happening which is cool so I think that's going to start to happen more I think it's just about demographics like Instagram's probably younger YouTube's going to be kind of the older demographic so we have a lot of people who post on YouTube for them I think it's more about instruction and so there's a big community of tennis players on there and so we've been trying to put more content on there that's more instructional related and we're going to be doing a lot more with that next year or even partnering with like Patrick Monaglu or whatever his name is yeah exactly or maybe Brad Gilbert I feel like there could be something cool there you look at the swing vision video and they go like oh Diego you're not turning your body exactly like I would think it would be so cool to get a celebrity to just like review matches on swing Brad would do that that'd be sick by the way he loves he's the best commentator he's so good he's so good even when he was here I was like are you from Boston dude you are mad about something he's just like angry and with it and funny I relate well to that type of energy so it works for me but not everybody does yeah we'll have to make sure it works with our brand but I'm sure it will make it happen when you look to the future and you're thinking like big picture I know that you mentioned that you were looking at incorporating you've already started incorporating pickleball so in my mind could it be used for other sports such as like cricket baseball golf are you thinking about down the line incorporating and bringing more sports under the swing vision umbrella for sure I mean I think that's like the dream for us is to be like the next Strava essentially right and doing this for like ball and racket sports which no one has done basically so I think there's a big lane there I think we're the farthest ahead in that lane so I think now what should we tackle in terms of like biggest market and also just technologically like what's the easiest to go to so for us right now because we saw this problem in tennis like racket sports are just really easy for us to go into initially just because like we know that problem so well and just fundamentally it's easier because you have fewer players to track you have this kind of like fixed court size you can see everything with one camera which I think is just really nice a little bit trickier you have to set it up every time set it up every time it's great for like the driving range right but I think like if you're playing an actual game it's maybe a little bit more friction so we're trying to find sports where we can kind of be you can use a product both for practice and actual gameplay so like racket ball or squash would be yeah those might be a little bit higher priority although those are like slightly smaller in terms of player base but like table tennis for example right huge in Asia massive sport also big here and then badminton massive sport are very compelling because it's like we can solve it easily massive market a lot of players but I think baseball is a really cool one because you do have a lot of players but most of the actions around kind of home plate so I feel like you could do something there volleyball is another interesting one as well because not that many players and you can see everything with one camera if you just put it kind of behind or something so I think there's like some other sports that we're thinking about but initial focus I mean we're not sure yeah so much here so much here plant your flag we spoke to the Thera body Thera gun founder and when we spoke to him they were just starting to sponsor athletes like they were and they had just sponsored Colin Morakawa the golfer and then he like won the US Open like immediately after which was insane that he did that like the timing of the sponsorship perfect for the brand essentially but do you ever think about that yeah for sure these juniors coming up maybe so cool like the next US Open champion was like powered by swing vision that'd be amazing yeah that's the goal eventually I think it's a it's like a high budget thing to do but I think we're going to get there you know maybe maybe after a couple more funding rounds but we have started seeding the app to a few pros so some pros have started using it and their coaches are using it with them so that's been really cool to see they're finding value I think you have to just figure out like the sponsorship angle so they can actively promote it I'm a gamer that makes money if I'm a YouTube creator the creator makes money in this setting it could be like your pro that swing vision sponsors can literally make money I could see that actually that would be cool it could be like learn from the pro I'm in my app I'm messing up my forehand and then it's like watch this quick video on this guy this pro and then it's all in the app and then that and then he can get revenue I could see it well I mean if we're really going to the twitch model I'm using a practice match with Venus or something ahead of the US Open I can stream that match I can provide commentary and I'll get like millions of views obviously and then you just make a bunch of money for that that's hard for you isn't it it's like you don't know where this would go but you can feel like this would actually be very compelling it would change the game you could do it in any sport you could do it in any sport you could do it with LeBron I think there's something there I think there's some things that kind of need to click in terms of like 5G connectivity and like upload speeds and all that so it's like a little early break it yeah you'd break it yeah that's exciting but it's around the corner it's coming like it's not far alright brother thanks for coming on the pod really appreciate the time tell people where they can download the app and do all the good stuff yeah it's just on the app store super simple swing vision should be the first result Tim Cook's favorite app yeah well he's on a test score that's definitely what he's using so thanks brother thank you if you made it this far I bet you loved the episode so you should join our YouTube channel membership for only $2.99 a month this gets you access to one the whole unabridged conversation two you get the episodes on Monday one day earlier three you get two additional entries to our giveaways check out our Instagram to see what we've given away and four you get access to seasons one through 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