The Next Next: Update #27
Lots of excitement for what we are building (which is what???)
For those of you tuning in for the first time, The Next Next is a ‘build in public’ type of expedition from founder Jason Jacobs (me!) to chronicle my path building a new kind of athlete development company from the ground up, starting with ice hockey.
I am learning in public, ideating in public, and eventually building in public as we try to create a new kind of development experience for athletes. One that’s digital-first, built for modern families, grounded in real performance improvement, and accessible to anyone, anywhere.
I am still super early, and as anyone who has built companies from zero before knows, what comes out the other side will likely look far different from where I am starting. But the benefits of building in public along the way are invaluable for accountability, feedback, accelerated learning, and meeting lots of interesting and relevant people and potential collaborators along the way.
Each week in the newsletter (subscribe here) I share behind-the-scenes updates: what we’re testing, what we’re hearing from parents and athletes, and what’s coming next. The podcast goes deeper, featuring conversations with coaches, founders, athletes, and experts who are shaping the future of sports and human performance.
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, Week 19, Week 20, Week 21, Week 22, Week 23, Week 24, Week 25, Week 26
Thanks for coming along for the ride!
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Hi all,
Another week in the books. Loving learning about athlete development. Loving the hockey focus. Loving all of the fascinating people I am talking to, learning from, and recording with on the pod. Loving that I feel myself climbing the learning curve at an accelerating pace. While I still can’t articulate what I am building exactly, it feels like I have found a home.
Here are some snippets of the progess we have been making and what’s on my mind
The podcast and off-the-record discussions are the areas I have been leaning into the most in these early innings. I have a bunch of episodes in the tank now (recorded but not published yet, only one hockey episode has been published so far!) and amazing off-the-record discussions, including with NHL players, NHL player development leaders, D1 college players, D1 basketball coaches, founders/CEOs of startups focused on player development, college recruiting, etc, prep varsity coaches, academy heads, player agents, sports psychologists, renowned hockey skills coaches, and more.
Here is a sampling of some of the topics I’ve been probing on:
For the athletes that made it far, how much of it was self directed and how much involvement did parents have.
At what age did they take the reins fully. how do they look back on their experiences and journeys w/ the benefit of hindsight.
What tools/resources do they wish they had that they didn’t.
How has the landscape changed for kids coming up now vs when they did.
How are they raising their own kids, and how does that compare with how they were raised.
Single sport vs multisport and pressure to specialize.
Burnout/overuse injuries/etc and how to avoid them.
Short-term vs long-term success in life and where sports fits in.
I’m also starting to spend time looking at the current landscape, how coaches and families do athlete development today, what tools are available, what’s working well and where there is room for improvement. I am not very far along in this exploration and it is going to take some time to get my brain around it, so I am not in a rush to lurch and start building. I am sure that is anti-Silicon Valley conventional wisdom or whatever (ship early and often, fail fast, blah blah blah), but I am old enough to not give a f*ck.
Here are some of the criteria I am thinking about for where to anchor
We want to help kids work towards excellence and reach their fullest form, both in the short-term with athletics, but in the long-term too with good habits, confidence, grit, and leadership skills that will serve them well throughout their lives.
We want to help kids that want to be great. We don’t want this to be an offering for parents to force down their kids throats. If the kid isn’t psyched about it when the parent isn’t looking, this isn’t the service for them.
We are starting in hockey because that is what we know the best, are the most passionate about, and the one I am living as a dad, but we think it’s important to be multi-sport over time.
Burnout is not reaching your fullest form. Overuse injuries are not reaching your fullest form. Losing your love for the game is not reaching your fullest form. Maintaining the right mindset, keeping things in perspective, and rest/variety/etc are important for long-term development. We are a long-term development company.
Within hockey, here are some areas that are interesting to us
The higher the level you play, the more access you have to video analysis and personalized development programs. If we brought together expert video analysis and expert development specialists across disciplines (with a healthy dose of AI, of course!), it could be interesting to make this kind of personalized and holistic guidance available to emerging athletes that don’t have access to it from their teams (which is most!).
Today, much of those programs are delivered by PDF, hard to consume, and there is no concept of adherence or analysis. We are intrigued not only by making these plans more personalized, but by delivering them in more compelling ways that include powerful feedback loops.
Today, in order to get experiences that don’t suck, it requires you to be in person with an instructor and/or your teammates. We are intrigued by how to create compelling, social, competitive experiences in a remote, distributed way.
There is SO MUCH manual crap that players, parents, coaches, scouts, trainers, etc need to do. All the tech bros talk about how much of this could be automated, we are intrigued to see how much that holds true in the areas above (note: human coaching is paramount in our minds, more for manual shift clipping, shot counting, etc etc etc).
We love the concept of a really well run in-person academy model. We are intrigued by what elements of that could be packaged and delivered digitally/remotely, not as a replacement for school or your in-person training activities, but for continuity around your athletic development.
It is great to learn from experts, but others going through the same journey have a lot of knowledge that could be useful too. We are intrigued by providing better, higher signal, more curated formats for you to be surrounded by others on a similar path as you in a safe space to compare notes freely.
As you can tell, we still really don’t know what we are building. But what I hope you can also tell is that we are chipping away each week and making progress at what feels like a pretty good clip, and that we are fired up and committed to building something important.
Two new episodes shipped this week
One was the first hockey episode! This one with my longtime friend and former business partner (he was an exec at Lose it! when I was founder/CEO of Runkeeper, and we integrated the apps so your athletic activity would be inputted into your food tracking app), Kevin McCoy, who I had no idea had gone deep down the youth hockey rabbit hole as a former player, crazy hockey dad, club owner, and coach.
You can find that one on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
And one was with Alex Stone, the CEO of CoachUp. CoachUp is a marketplace to help kids/families find trusted, vetted private skills coaches in their area across a wide range of sports. It was fascinating to talk to Alex about how they managed the biz through the pandemic, how tools like Stripe, no-code websites, etc enabled skills coaches to set up shop on their own, and how CoachUp found a way to thrive through ruthless focus on quality, expanding into other skill types, and now opening up physical locations to further solidify their brand.
You can find that one on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.
As I mentioned above, tons of hockey/athlete development content will be cranking out in the coming weeks!
Here are some kinds of people I am interested in connecting with
Team coaches at all levels, from club to prep to juniors to college, especially those doing video review and putting together personalized development plans for their players.
Skills coaches who focus on player development specifically, ideally at higher levels of the game.
Trainers, sports psychologists, nutritionists etc who have experience working with athletes from the pros on down, especially in hockey.
Anyone who can provide insight into how video review is done, how hockey IQ is taught, how personalized development plans are made, and how burnout/overuse is managed.
I think that’s it for now. Until next week! Thanks for tuning in.
Jason