The Next Next: Update #19
Slipping deeper into sports tech
For those of you tuning in for the first time, The Next Next is a ‘build in public’ type of journey from founder Jason Jacobs (me!) to explore 1) how I can build my next company differently (prioritizing health and family, not just work, while still building an ambitious and important company) and 2) how AI can help, and more broadly, how it will change how startups are built and funded.
There is this newsletter (subscribe here), which publishes weekly and chronicles the ground I covered that week, insights I’ve gleaned, topics I’m wrestling with, and where I plan to dig in the week following. And there’s also this podcast, which publishes twice a week, and explores these topics in-depth in a series of interview-style discussions with others who are well placed for me (and you!) to learn from. You can subscribe from your favorite pod player, like Spotify, Apple, or YouTube.
The goal of this public learning journey is to have it evolve over time from a journey into a livelihood, to prove to myself and others that it is possible to ‘have your cake and eat it too’, and to help define a new playbook for how to build companies that inspires many other founders to follow suit and gives them a roadmap for how to get started.
If you want to catch up, the historical weekly updates are here:
Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 12, Week 13, Week 14, Week 15, Week 16, Week 17, Week 18
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Another productive week! I feel like I am learning so much every week, which is super energizing. And meeting lots of interesting people. Dare I say the beginnings of a self-reinforcing flywheel is starting to take form.
Some updates, in no particular order
I am feeling good about the frame for how I will build my next company. Small team. Hard working and committed, but lots of flexibility/control to build on our terms and dial up/down based on what else is going on in life. Large percentage of my days in flow state, doing things that give me energy. Straightforward and makes sense.
I am not set on building “an AI company”, per se. But I am grateful to be taking this time, before anchoring, to invest in understanding how AI will change how startups are built and funded, and what is becoming possible. These tools are already helping me a lot (I am getting so much leverage, even just on the content side!), and I have no doubt they will provide increasingly more leverage over time. I am excited to keep learning about what’s happening at the tip of the spear, and finding more ways to incorporate these tools as I get further along. From what I can gather, this is what it feels like to be “AI native” or “AI first”. It just means a constant mindset of learning/experimentation and a steady stream of incremental improvements that, in the aggregate, pay compounding dividends over time. In other words, while the processes and tooling may change, the fundamentals do not.
I also remain excited about doing something in sports/fitness. There is literally no category on Earth I am more passionate about, and youth sports in particular, I am fully immersed in as a (hyper)active sports dad. It has been really fun and rewarding to start to dig in and map out that landscape - it’s like a puzzle and I am starting to put together little clumps of pieces that are like lego blocks that will ultimately connect with each other as more of the puzzle gets assembled.
I remain excited to do something in youth sports, specifically. I am cautious, as what’s been happening in youth sports (privatization, increasing competition/specialization, etc) doesn’t always feel like it puts the kids first. And if I did something here, I would want to do something I can be proud of, not just be another hand on the wallets of already-strained families. But for example, if there was a way to open up the accessibility of high-end, personalized, specialized coaching to many more people using AI, at a price point that was far more accessible, that might help the cause. If there was a way to get kids to spend more time outside practicing their sport(s) of choice and less time eating junk food and playing video games, that might help the cause. If there was a way to help kids who aspire to be great but might not know where to start to dig in, make meaningful progress, and gain confidence, self worth, and a process of working towards mastery in any new craft, that might help the cause.
I am going to continue to dig deeper into the small team/AI/computer vision/youth sports/coaching intersection. One analogy that is interesting to me is ‘Duolingo for youth sports skills training’. I don’t know how big the market is. I know how hard it is to crack the code in consumer and get people to pay. And I am aware how crowded the landscape will be as it gets easier and easier to build. But I can’t help but feel like there is an opp for someone to build a household name consumer brand that is trusted, and known for it’s great user experience, its great results, and a rich network of users/data that makes it possible to know where you stand relative to others like you, challenge your friends/teammates to friendly competitions, and tie in your holistic training progress with any specialists you go to IRL, the same way you would want to tie your health data in with your doctors. This way it gives you a central repository (general contractor, if you will) to help you get results over time, and invaluable data that can help the specialists you work with be more tailored with their instruction.
Imagine, for example, if the system could ingest your game footage, review your shifts, and get to know you as a player. It could get to know your likes/dislikes from a training standpoint. Your schedule. Who you like to train with, etc. It could assign you what to do, and it could adjust/adapt as it sees what you need, what you want, and what is/isn’t working at delivering results. It could make recommendations for which specialists to work with, and maybe you could even book them through this system. Similar to airbnb, you can see which of your friends have worked with which specialists, and how their experiences have been.
There are lots of ways something like this can evolve over time. If you own the relationship with the kid/family, you can tap into and help them navigate more of the things they do with the sport (gear they buy, coaches they use, tournament teams they play on, travel they book, etc) over time. That is one way. You could also take the recipe you concoct for one sport and apply it to other sports, or even to other categories of mastery over time (with separate brands, of course!). Or you could just stay small and focused and profitable, opt not to scale, and be happy with serving a small market super well.
I am still not anchored here. I reserve the right to switch gears at any time. But my exploration thus far, while still very early, is feeling good!
People I’d like to learn from
People building tools using AI to analyze a craft, any craft, and helping you improve at that craft over time. I found someone doing this for esports, for example and he is scheduled to come on the show (thanks Seth for the intro!).
People who have built fun, addictive learning tools online, like Duolingo or others like it. Anything that breaks task mastery down into micro tasks and helps you get there over time in a way that doesn’t feel like work.
People building interesting stuff in sports tech more broadly, especially if it is relevant to the areas I am thinking about.
People who are thinking a lot about (and building around?) the hypothesis that AI will bring about the next wave of breakout consumer companies.
Anyone else whose perspective you think would be valuable, based on the things I am thinking about and where I am in my journey.
Of course, my preferred mode of learning is as a recorded episode for the pod, but I have plenty of great discussions with people that we don’t publish as episodes, as well.
New content this week
Two new pods:
Hadley Harris, Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
Andrew Lau, Co-Founder & CEO at Jellyfish. You can find it on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
And one bonus episode:
I went on my friend Bryce’s show, which can be found here. Bryce was a Runkeeper board member from 2010 through our acquisition in 2016, so to say we have been through a lot together is an understatement :)
Other things I am thinking about
It is my son’s Bar Mitzvah next weekend, so not sure how productive this coming week will be!
A friend sent me this text, which was some nice validation for the stuff I am thinking about
This post from James Currier got me thinking (thanks Thai for sending!)
This turkey in my neighborhood has taken a run at 3 of the 4 members of my family on separate days! A mean bugger.
Have a good week, everyone!
Jason