The Next Next: Update #33
Incentive structures matter.
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.
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Hi all,
Another good week - one foot in front of the other. The hardest thing as a one man band is managing your own psychology. Rationally, it has only been a couple of months with a hockey focus, and things are moving along nicely. But as my wife reminds me, I put a lot of pressure on myself and things always feel like they are happening much slower than they should be.
My conviction in video as the next wave in hockey development is only growing. With a bunch of highly skilled individual players out there, more hockey IQ, more cohesiveness, better movement without the puck, etc would go a long way. May not be as tangible as “faster”, “stronger”, or “harder shot”, and certainly not a replacement for those things. But gosh, more investment in video for players and families would be an obvious way to take the skills you already have and make them go much further.
So, the questions I’m asking myself are:
How do you deliver high-quality video analysis at scale.
How do you do so affordably.
How do you then better connect the dots between where a player is in their development and what they work on.
High quality video analysis exists, for sure. But it is so labor intensive that it costs a lot of money to get access to. It is great that you can pull your shifts from LiveBarn now and hand them to a player development coach to analyze. But how can getting that analysis be as easy and inexpensive as pulling the shifts? And then how can that analysis inform what you work on in between games in a more personalized way?
This is where I think the machines can help. Directionally, how amazing would it be if every game were analyzed with professional eyes, each week you worked on things in between games that would be highest gain for you specifically, and you could track your progress over time in a way that was objective and measurable — all done affordably and accessible by many.
As an aside, throwing money and time at the problem (of player development) blindly is NOT the answer. More of everything all the time leads to inefficiency and burnout. I am finding that there is an opportunity to help kids/families work smarter, not harder. Maybe even less hard with better results.
So, how do we get there?
I have found a bunch of player development coaches who want to help. They aspire to reach more players, they aspire to make more money and are capping out with hours in the day, and they aspire to build an annuity that will generate income whether or not they are on the ice in case, god forbid, they get hurt or otherwise incapacitated. They also want more flexibility and control of their schedules.
What I don’t know yet is what the right incentive structure is to engage with these coaches. Am I working with one? With a few? With a bunch? Is it a rev share? Is it equity in the business? How much of their help is up front vs ongoing? How operational is it? Is the value prop more compelling for players that just left the game? For seasoned player development people with established client bases? Both?
There are also different ways for these coaches to engage. There is the upfront in terms of training the model to do its part in terms of game analysis. But then there’s also engaging with clients directly, either around the game analysis, with the personalized training in between games, or both. While I plan to start w/ game analysis specifically (which is narrow, and hard in itself!), helping players improve in between games is an obvious expansion path.
As I have started making the rounds with technical people who can build the analysis piece, what they need is the data. And the player development people have the data and are keen to collaborate. But I find I need to pause and really think through the right incentive structure here, as I want to make sure that anyone that gets involved in the company (which is not even an entity yet, to be clear!) gets treated fairly and generously while setting up the company for long-term success and not handicapping it before we even get out of the gates.
To further complicate things, I envision that if we are successful in hockey, we will expand to other sports over time. This is not a little lifestyle thing to me, I am setting out to (try to) build a big, enduring company. It’s the only way I know how to operate - evolve or die. And people are the lifeblood of any company, so making sure that incentives are aligned with anyone/everyone getting involved is such an important thing to get right.
Competition/partnership/overlap
It remains fuzzy to me how much overlap there would be with LiveBarn/Sportlogiq/49ing/Hudl, as well as some of the hardware providers like Helios/Catapult. Unclear to me if these would be competitors, partners, or just adjacent players in the ecosystem serving a different purpose. I know we would start direct to consumer. And I know that the personalized development is where we want to get to, focused on the player/family, not on the coach/team. What I don’t know is whether the data the Sportlogiq’s and 49ings are pulling is the same data we would want or of it is different, and how much it would make sense to partner with them vs going it alone.
I do know that my spirit is one of collaboration, and I’d prefer to collaborate wherever possible. I am not setting out to build this company to “win”. At this phase in my career, I am just trying to work on something I am passionate about, build something I am proud of, and do good for the players/families, for the team we assemble, and for the sport.
Founders/execs from some of these companies will be coming on the show in the coming weeks, so I will continue to learn more as we get further down the path. The player development coaches (and tech team!) will also be invaluable in helping me make those determinations, once I have each of those pieces in place for the company officially.
How you can help
Advice on how to structure the relationship w/ player development coaches.
Advice on how many is the right number (balancing a clear point of view with removing bias from the analysis and eliminating single point of failure in case one leaves).
Advice on whether the data coming out of the existing platforms would be helpful, and whether it makes sense to partner vs go it alone.
Intros to consumer product people, full stack engineers, and AI/computer vision/machine learning people that are passionate about the mission and are open to exploring getting involved.
Advice on the best way to lay the foundation for success on the technical side re: training the model, etc.
Advice on how much of the service should be automated vs human-powered, and which is which.
Advice on business model.
New content this week
Two episodes shipped this week.
One was with Brian Collins, former BU assistant captain who played several years professionally and now coaches his little guys for the Boston Jr Eagles. You can find that one here on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
And one was with Pete Gintoli, who played four years at Salve Regina and is now Assistant Coach at Tabor Academy, after stints in hockey ops at Yale and at Canterbury. You can find that one here on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube.
While my personal bandwidth continues to be an issue between balancing company building and cranking out podcasts, neither seems to be something I am willing to dial back or give up, so I just need to find a way to fit it all in.
Until next week! Thanks for tuning in.
Jason