The Next Next: Update #28

Getting closer to breaking ground

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, Week 27

Thanks for coming along for the ride!

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Hi all,

Another week in the books. Shipped one kid off to overnight camp today, and the last one goes tomorrow. Then I am going to work (and party, haha) like I am 22 again for a month. I will miss them, of course, but LFG - I am ready to work!

Progress since last week

This week, we’ve been really honing in on this concept of “human-in-the-loop” as applied to athlete development. The thought process is this:

First, there was a rise in private skills coaches. Then, these private skills coaches began offering their services remotely, using zoom or equivalent. This isn’t just happening in sports, it is happening with tutoring, medical guidance, legal guidance, etc etc.

As AI proliferates, increasingly, it is becoming able to take on more of what has historically required humans to do. We don’t believe it will take the place of humans, but we do believe it will make human expert bandwidth go much further, while stripping out the rote/mundane tasks that give the human experts less energy.

Now, bringing that back around to hockey, with the rise in on-ice skills coaches, the youth game is more skilled than ever. But with the rise of instagram/tiktok/etc, kids have been watching less full games on TV, and spending more time scrolling through clips and highlights. Some would say this has led to a decrease in hockey IQ.

Now that LiveBarn makes it fairly easy to clip your shifts from a given game into a single file (and I hear from Helios they do as well automatically with a shoulder pad-worn wearable, which sounds even easier!), having access to your shifts has never been easier. Video review coaches have emerged that charge ~$80-125/game to review your shifts and give you a write-up and/or a zoom call to walk through what you did well and what you can work on. This is great, but ~$80-125/game adds up fast, and often there isn’t great continuity across games or personalized development plans to work on the things that were flagged as development areas.

Our insight is this

We could start by delivering a service like this in a 100% human-powered way - not on a per-game basis, but as an ongoing monthly service w/ continuity across games - like a development partner. As more game videos are submitted and as more write-ups are done giving feedback on those game videos, we can start to train an AI model to do more and more of the analysis, making the human’s bandwidth go further.

This is a non-trivial thing for the model to get right, and even as it starts to get more and more right, the edge cases will be significant. The “human-in-the-loop” part we think is essential, both for oversight and as the interface to work with the players. But we do think the model should be able to play a more meaningful role over time. Our hope is that this may be a way to increase the accessibility of this type of high level instruction by lowering the price without compromising quality, which would help grow the players and grow the game.

In terms of who the humans would be, one idea is we have heard from several former NHL players/coaches that they left the game to spend more time with their young families, but still love the game and want to find a way to stay involved with it. We think it would be interesting to explore almost like an Uber driver model for former high level players, where they can work remotely, whenever they want, helping kids get better without mucking with the other things that are important to them. The AI would tee up an initial baseline analysis, and the human coaches would review it and the game footage, make any corrections, certify it and deliver it to the player.

This is just an idea, we haven’t anchored here. But we are working w/ one former NHL player currently to build an MVP (a rough first version) and run a pilot. I should also add that while we are experimenting in video analysis/hockey IQ, we think this similar human-in-the-loop model could potentially be applied in adjacent areas as well, like sports psychology, nutrition, off-ice conditioning, etc.

I also think having the data scale of all these videos and corresponding analysis write-ups could bring really interesting insights in terms of patterns, and especially when paired with personalized development plans and the results they bring about, about the most effective ways to increase hockey IQ across the sport (and ultimately across sports!).

Next steps

We are going to march towards defining the offering, outlining what an initial pilot might look like, and how we might implement it.

In parallel, we are continuing to be students of the player development process, the technology landscape, and best practices for how to do this right. This means not only being a student of what’s happening in hockey and youth athlete development, but also of building digital platforms, how to structure the data on the back end, and how to leverage AI to make the platform smarter over time.

New content this week

This was our first full week of hockey-specific content! Two new episodes shipped:

One is with Colin Wilson, a 3rd generation NHL player who recently retired after playing 11 seasons for the Predators and Avalanche. That episode can be found here.

The second episode is with Jack Ramsey. Jack is a former pro player who had a great four years playing for University of Minnesota (where he was assistant captain) and now works in tech while color commentating for the Gophers and helping coach at Minnetonka. That episode can be found here.

How you can help

• Let me know if there are guests you want to hear from.

• Let know if there are people we should be connecting with and/or learning from given our current direction and focus.

• Any feedback on the stated direction, things to watch out for, etc.

I think that’s it! Thanks everyone, have a great week.

Jason