[00:00:28] Jay: Hi everyone. Welcome to the First Customer podcast Today I am lucky enough to be joined by Bill Near, he is the founder and CEO of Helios helping athletes and teams get better faster. I don't chase people around on this podcast, but Bill, I chased you around mainly because,we're a customer.

I've got three kids. In hockey, hello to Blake, Harper, and Jack, all three hockey kids. We love Helios very much. Bill, how are you, buddy?

[00:00:57] Bill: Yeah, I'm doing great. Thank you for being a customer and for this opportunity to get on here.

[00:01:01] Jay: Yeah, man. my wife, as she does is the head of the hockey organization here in the household. She found Helios and was like, this is great. Like, I love this thing. And our son loves it. And,I have a one interesting question that I thought about as I was preparing for this show, which,

[00:01:18] Bill: Yeah, fire away.

[00:01:19] Jay: I do very little preparation, but here we go.

now I was wondering, about tech fatigue. Like new tech fatigue, right? You're like, everybody's like, oh my God, I got this. Cool. Then we all do it, right? We get a new phone, we get a new whatever. We're like, oh, this is the coolest fucking thing ever. And then. Two weeks later, it's sitting in a drawer somewhere.

And, you know, I guess we would call that churn or something, in the product, world. do you guys worry about that? Do you combat that? Is it something that, you know, you kind of have noticed that it's like a big spike at the beginning and then usage kind of tails off. How do you guys keep people engaged in a hardware, software kind of thing, where they have to remember to charge something, they have to do some things to, to use the product.

How do you guys make sure the life of the product is as long as you would like it to be?

[00:01:59] Bill: Yeah, no, I think it's like an existentially important like topic. We talk about it probably like every day, and I think it, it gets back to like things that we. Believe in, in sort of like first principles about wearables and I've been wearing wearables for many years and I've always believed that like a data only wearable that doesn't provide recurring value will like, stop being charged, stop being used.

If it's a subscription, people will stop paying. so for us it's like all about creating like recurring value. And I think, you know, we do an okay job of that today. I think we're always like our biggest critics on like what we need to keep doing to drive value around that. a big thing for us is our ability to interface with video.

And so like by providing time savings around shift video, it's one way we sort of think that we design ourselves in to like add value is for as long as you're like. Taking hockey games or practices and you don't wanna watch the whole thing, and you'd like to just see the moments when your son or daughter was out there if you need that.

We provide that value. And so that's like one thing we think that like is part of our kind of lifetime value driving stickiness. On the data side, we're doing a lot of work right now to just integrate more like AI coaching function and really bringing more to the surface that's sort of like player development plans and like player development recommendations for the player.

And our whole thought there is like if that's really like your secret weapon on like giving you advice based on your data, the data in the cloud. Knowledge about hockey player development. like if we can do that, well, plus the video thing, we think we're there for the long run, which is like, for as long as you're playing hockey, you're gonna want this sort of like unfair advantage to give you this leg up.

I love

talk about it every day. It's like super important.

[00:03:38] Jay: No, I love that. And I love that you guys are very tuned in, you know, 'cause the feedback loop and always talk about, you know, the customer cycle and, people always, you know, want to get feedback. But you mentioned some things when our, on our pre-show. That I found interesting because those were the exact problems that we had as users.

Like, it was like, oh, our kids in the locker room and like, we have to have the phone, but like, we don't want, you know, and there was, you know, so you guys are like really dialed into, how your customers use the product. tell me a little bit about just like what the infrastructure is around that, to collect that data, to be aware and then to like actually apply it to the product.

Not in a knee-jerk way, but in a way that you get enough of the feedback that you actually make changes to the platform.

[00:04:23] Bill: Yeah, I think one of the cool things about building like a cloud connected device through like the app experience that we've built is that we get a lot of information. So if a user has like a device crash in the field, we get a report. And so we, you know, we honestly get so much information that we can't necessarily be sitting there sifting through all of it.

But if a customer comes to us and like they have a question, or if they've had an issue. What's nice is like we can sort of go through like the CSI kind of like crime scene data and just like fully resurrect like, well it looks like you started this session at this time and this happened at this time and it's given us a lot of resolution on understanding exactly what our users are doing in the field.

Like one of the big assumptions going into the market was that the. Player would be doing like the majority of the work with Helios. And then I think what we found was like for the nine to 14, 15 year olds age group, the parent was actually maybe more, more involved in like using the app than even the player was.

And things the parent would do in the rink were just different than like initial assumptions that we were making. And so like having all of this like. Backend reporting has like really allowed us to understand that use case better. both for just like normal improvement, but also like if there's an issue, it gives us like really good clarity and allows us to kind of resurrect.

One of the things I found early on was we were building trust with the customer and even if we weren't hitting like a feature on like the right way yet. Just by being able to show them that we're dialed in, like we could like repeat back to them. Like, your session started at 7:03 PM Here's what we can see happen at 7:42.

This happened. Just the fact that we could show them a, like a log of like, we understand what's happening here and here's how we're improving it. It like went really far because they weren't off on like some island. You know, just having like a standalone experience. And so that level of connectivity has really been our ally in terms of growing the product from the beginning.

[00:06:24] Jay: I can echo that. sentiment, I'm a huge Peloton guy. I had to call their customer support about something really stupid. It was like early, I was like, I had a streak of a hundred things going on. Like, what? You know, why did my thing? And they're like, they could tell. And just to your point, they were like, we saw you started this thing at this time.

You know, it didn't, it wasn't the, and I just was like, I, like they are looking at data and giving me an answer, not just kind of like reading from some scripts and being like. We've seen this before. Sorry. We're like, we'll let you know later if we can help you. Like I, I love the fact that you're using data kinda like live customer service and that gives that people that feeling of like, oh, they are actually looking at stuff that I'm using.

So this is pretty beneficial. So I love that. But let me, lemme back up. I jumped to ahead 'cause I'm so excited. where did you grow up and having the impact on you being an entrepreneur?

[00:07:11] Bill: Yeah, I grew up in Central New Hampshire, pretty like small town life. My family had a horse farm, one of four kids. went to a really small public high school, didn't we actually like, shared a hockey team with a town next door. So I was mostly playing like travel team hockey, although my high school got a team my senior year.

I had other kind of entrepreneurial, kind of like traits in my family. My great, my grandfather was very entrepreneurial and for me there was always sort of just like that itch to kind of like invent, create, build things. I was probably doing better in school than hockey for pretty much like my entire life.

And so I got to 18, I got into MIT and that took me down a path to study engineering. But I was also really lucky to get to play hockey while I was there. And that opened up just like a whole new world for me in terms of like a, you know, being an entrepreneurial, and build things.

[00:08:03] Jay: How was MIT, I mean as somebody who, went to a ridiculously. Different college. I went to full sail down in Florida, which was specialized for like video game stuff. So it was definitely different. And then you have your kind of normal-ish colleges and then you hear of the MITs of the world, right?

You just assume it's just a bunch of guys, with pocket protectors, which I don't even know if they wear those anymore. And calculators and just like big rim glasses. And so what was the actual vibe going there? Did it feel like a normal college? Were you, like, did you know you were in some place with a bunch of super smart people?

Like what was the vibe there in MIT.

[00:08:37] Bill: I think it was a super humbling experience. Like it was extremely hard, particularly the four years of undergrad. I found grad school to almost be like in. Enjoyable relative to undergrad and that you had more time to freethink and build stuff and work on what you like wanted to work on.

Whereas the undergraduate four years felt like every minute of every day, including the weekends, was super clocked against something that was like hard to actually even accomplish. So it was extremely hard. It was humbling because there's all these people who are better at everything except for like, maybe one thing that you're good at and you just get like, really brought back down to Earth freshman year realizing that 'cause you have a lot of people who did really well at their high schools and now they're all together and it's like, oh wow, I can't actually be good at everything anymore, which is humbling.

and, yeah, but it was like transformational. I have a hard time even like. Relating to the person that went into that four year college process initially before I did the tiers of grad school as well. so it kind of changed my life forever, gave me like a toolbox and a skillset. And it also just beat bad habits outta me.

So I used to. Occasional procrastinator and find ways to like burn time. And what you learn there is like that just stacks up on itself and it really comes back to bite you. So you quickly learn to have much better habits in order just to survive and get through.

[00:09:59] Jay: IT has a hockey team.

[00:10:01] Bill: Got a hockey team

[00:10:02] Jay: How did I not know that? What's it called? What's the team name?

[00:10:05] Bill: so the, we're the engineers, but the actual like mascot is a beaver, like a

[00:10:10] Jay: Okay.

[00:10:11] Bill: a builder, right? As like an engineer. And so all the uniforms have this like angry beaver kind of on the front of 'em.

[00:10:19] Jay: The engineers, what a hilariously perfect name for mi that is just like, that's fantastic. I, my daughter and I had a lot of fun the other day. I'm a big fan, actually. I'm wearing, I, I love, minor league baseball team. Logos and hats and stuff. And we did like a pass through of all the minor league hockey teams and I was like, oh my God, there's so many.

Like, there's this Savannah Ghost Pirates, and just like these wi like, I'm so excited to like, start to accumulate a collection of minor league, just with the names and the logos and the mascots. So I, that's why I love the MIT, being the engineers. let's get back to Helios. You raised your seed round recently, but walk me back through like kind of just the genesis of the product.

I mean, I know you have some patents out there, which some seemed completely unrelated to hockey or sports in general, but then it looked like there was one maybe that kind of was a little bit related to this. where did the idea come from and how did you start to execute on it?

[00:11:13] Bill: Yeah, so I mean, you've got, I was a lifelong. Hockey player. Spent these six years studying electrical engineering, computer science at MIT, played hockey for five, kind of looked back at my own player development experience and really felt like I had sort of developed up until about 16 years old and a bit of what I call a vacuum and that like I didn't have somebody really giving me a crystal clear sense of like where I was at in hockey and what my opportunities were or were not gonna be at like a college level.

That's changed a lot today in terms of just like the access to seeing other players through social media, but like. Those things didn't exist when I was growing up, and I always imagined that like there would be a technology for player development that would give you more insight and sort of be your coach and help you out.

So I spent about a decade working, close to kind of like motion sensors and in electrical engineering. spent five years for working for an automotive active suspension startup. And what I saw happening was that these like motion sensors that we all have in our watches and our phones today, accelerometers, gyroscopes, imus, they were integrating this like AI block and that AI block would allow you to build a wearable.

That could, detect the motion of an athlete. And the reason why I think nobody had gone out and built a product that like your three kids could use before this was everybody was thinking about position tracking. And position tracking means you've gotta like install something in the ceiling of the hockey rink because GPS doesn't work when you go indoors.

And if you look at like the cost structure of doing that. Like, who's actually gonna pay to put something in hockey rink? There's nobody who's gonna pay to put infrastructure in hockey rinks. And so that was like dead on arrival for like creating a business around that. And so when I saw this sort of like mega trend coming to like how these chips were working and I was designing with them, all of a sudden a light bulb turned on and it was like, wow, you could really build like a zero infrastructure platform, Helios.

That would track performance with no infrastructure, just based on seeing the motion of the athlete, in this case, a hockey player taking skating strides. And that was sort of the whole genesis of the company. And it was fortunate that I had, you know, made some good connections when I was at MIT on the hockey team with like Ron Francis, who was the GM of the hurricanes at the time, and now the president of the Seattle Kraken, to kind of loop him in.

He became the first backer of the company and we got started in.

[00:13:32] Jay: and along those lines,partnerships, I, you know, I see them on your announcements. We're huge proponents of, kind of ecosystem led growth is what we kind of live by in the agency world. You know, you mentioned having a connection to somebody, which obviously is either going to continue to pay off or will pay off, you know, being, having access to somebody in a, in an NHL organization.

Talk to me about partnerships in general. Like, how do you guys view 'em? I mean, there's so many options when you're like wearable and you have all these leagues and people and players in schools and you know, NHL. Who, how do you pick which ones to focus on? And then how are you trying to engage with these companies and or organizations, in a partnership, kind of collaborative, you know, environment so that you guys can move units but also actually provide real value, to these organizations you're working with.

[00:14:22] Bill: Yeah, for sure. I mean, on the definition of customer front and kind of I guess viewing partnerships maybe with like teams that we end. Up selling to. we've definitely, especially I've recently been forced to start to like really get tighter on like what our ideal customer profile is. I mean, today we have everything from like 10 U individuals and hockey teams using Helios to the US Women's National team as a three year customer.

We were at the Seattle Kraken dev camp with all their prospects. And it's a pretty like broad set of, stakeholders and users that you're like. Partnering with selling to, in that sense. and they want very different things at the two extremes of like an NHL franchise and like a 10 U parent. And I think for us really coming to terms with that, like as a small company, even as we're growing, we have to be laser focused because we wanna be really good at like one segment to allow us to unlock other segments in the future.

And so. Naturally, like the volume for what we do is down market. It's the 10 to 16-year-old and their parent. And I think that's really where like we have the biggest representation today and the biggest focus today. And so that can be an individual or it can be a team. that's the customer side on more of the classic kind of traditional partnerships for like.

The product. I think for us it's, you know, it's data integrations and video integrations that have been the focus. On the video front we have this pretty magical like feature that I think is really like amazing, when it is living up to like its full potential, which is that the wearable texts, periods of activity, so in a hockey game it shifts or in practice it's drill runs and instead of watching like full length video, we extract just those moments.

When you had a shift or when you had a drill run saving a ton of time. The comparable to doing this today is literally humans, doing this overseas. so. What we try to do is like partner with video providers, live streamers on demand video providers, to basically integrate the camera, feed directly with the Helios profile so that ultimately like the user takes zero action to then look down at their phone and see like they have those shifts right after the hockey game.

And I think that's an area where like partnership unlocks product and unlocks customer experience to create like the best version of something that we've been working on and envisioning here.

[00:16:38] Jay: And that's, that was,I was talking to my son about this podcast and I was, you know, I was, his friends were there and one of 'em didn't know who he was. that was how I described it. Right. I was like,it's a tracker for when you're playing hockey. And that, that, that integration is probably one of the cooler things about the platform to mean just as a dad who like, like is doing exactly what you said, sifting through.

three 20 minute shifts or 20 minute periods, like find my son, like when he is on the ice. And like, just having that quick ability is just a really sexy, kind of cool feature to people who are in the space having to deal with it all the time. Being a parent. do you,is there any, like, have you guys learned anything about, how.

To build new features or what features to pay attention to, based on kind of a split demographic, right? Let's say you're selling to parents 'cause they have the money obviously to the 10 u kind of crowd. But you want the kids as they get older and like hear more about their progression to be the users of the data to some degree.

So they're like buying into it and they're actually, you know, improving and like the system works and all, you know, it's kind of a self self-fulfilling kind of loop there. how do you, Desi, how do you continue to, like, iterate on the product and make sure you're focusing on the right person, if that makes sense.

[00:17:54] Bill: Yeah, no, it definitely makes sense. 'cause there's this handoff that happens. Probably like, I don't know if you have a. Kind of corroborating opinion of this, but like we view it as like 14 to 16 year olds start to take more autonomy and like their own development, they're making more of their own hockey decisions.

Sort of maybe pushing the parent out a little bit or maybe just taking pride in, like getting to take those. Like make the decisions. And at that point, like by 16, it's kind of like you're probably as at a user level needing to have the 16 to 18 plus year old player really buying into like, I'm using Helios for this.

And I think a big thing that we've realized there that's common to the parent and then the individual player user is that the data just has to take you pretty far towards like a level of recommendation or insight. You know, maybe early on with a tech forward data-centric parent that like works in kind of a technology industry, you can get by presenting things that are a little bit more technical and they're helping kind of buffer the data down to the kid.

But as soon as you get to just the kid using it at 16 to 18 years old, it needs to be really simple. And I actually think this is an area where we're investing a lot of cycles right now because we sort of view like our app as. Presenting information at like a pretty common hierarchy, and we're trying to move towards like a more streamlined kind of like top level score hierarchy where if you wanna drill down into more detailed metrics, you can.

That's what we present today as like the numbers, but we think it's like maybe a little too tech forward, a little too data centric, right? Especially in that handoff to that player. other things that I think like just the individual player cares about, they care about who else is on Helios.

They like to be able to look laterally and both see peers that they know. Those are friends, but they also like to see like the kids who are the known like megas

[00:19:47] Jay: year that everyone's talking about. And so I think having really good top end players that everybody talks about plus like your son or daughter's friends on Helios, makes those like comparables plus just the social interactions about our product richer.

[00:20:03] Bill: And so doing things to continue to drive, like feature development that enhances those is important, especially when the parent moves onto the picture.

[00:20:11] Jay: Yeah. No, and that was gonna kind of be my next question was what are the things, that drive the kids to use it more? But I think you're dead on, I mean, now, like the leaderboard kind of stuff and like, and are you guys like actively scouting any of these really good players to, even in youth hockey, like their parents to be on?

how are you getting. better kids, right? Because I mean, if we're all being honest, like majority of our kids are not gonna be in the NHL one day, but like, how do you, know who the mega kids are or whoever? Like, are you talking to orgs? are you focused on that at all?

Is it important to you guys? Like, what are you doing there? I.

[00:20:43] Bill: Yeah, we are, I mean we're picking up some of them just through like customers. So for example, like last season we had Gavin McKenna wearing Helios at Medicine Hat Tigers. So like there's like probably one of the most electric players you're hearing about today in hockey playing at Penn State. Who had it on last season when he was playing in the Canadian hockey.

So we're naturally like picking up like references on some really good players just by virtue of some of like our team customers in more of a direct relationship sense. One of the benefits is like we did these partnerships with Carolyn Harvey and Matthew Nice. And those types of athletes. When you work with like an elite college or an elite like professional.

NHL or PWL player, you're typically working with their agent. And so you have these hockey agents and what's really kind of fascinating for the folks that dunno, the hockey world is like agency, like pipeline of future kind of representation literally goes down to like 14 year olds, right? Like they're forming relationship with 14 year olds who might play in the NHL someday.

And identifying like who is gonna be the best and who do we wanna be like? Of hitching the wagon with, to have a relationship so that if they become an NHL player, like we're their agent down the road. And that's like something that I've learned that's kind of wild. and so through those relationships I think we can get to a breadth of like really top end players from that like youth level all the way up to like the Math Uniteds of the world.

and I think we're definitely leaning into like some of those agency relationships where we're actually able to provide some new value for the agency. to have their clients like using Helios, and that's getting us to a certain caliber of just like top end players, even in those younger birth years.

[00:22:23] Jay: I was gonna ask, you know, how do Helios users get the most out of it, and is the answer just to wear it? Is that what they need to do?

[00:22:35] Bill: depends on the, it depends on the age group. I mean, wearing it definitely is the first step. some users are like literally. Starting using Helios exclusively for that video feature that I mentioned a few minutes ago. And so like, yeah, you wear it, you put your game video in, you start watching your shifts, you save a bunch of time.

Some people then take those shifts and they pass 'em off to a coach that like provides a service where they review game. They coach your son or daughter to how they played in that game. Most of those coaches are not willing to take a two and a half hour full game video and be like the video editor. And so what we're finding is there's a lot of synergy in handing them the precut shifts from Helios as part of that workflow.

[00:23:21] Jay: Some of the other things we do around like driving kind of like rankings by birth year and showing you your progress over time. The intention there is to allow you to see strengths and weaknesses and also where you're actually getting better and to use that within your own player development ecosystem.

[00:23:38] Bill: So it's today maybe not fully turnkey and that like as a parent, you still might take your son or daughter to a skill development coach and you might need to like actually make Helios a part of that conversation with them. To say like, this is the data we're getting from this product. It's sort of emphasizing that like my player has a really high foot speed, but it's not that productive.

They don't have a lot of explosiveness in their stride. Like, can you work with them on that? Right. Part of where we're going is providing more sort of like full turnkey recommendation and insight to. Parent and to that player, they'll still probably take that over to their trusted development partner, but we want them to feel more like fully informed and, empowered through the information that we can give them, in like a more recommendation sort of way from this like AI coaching angle.

[00:24:29] Jay: I love that. we're getting to the end here, but I am curious, I mean, as somebody who's smart as shit and has a ton of just. Great experience along the way. You're busy, you're building this company, you're raising money, you're doing product market feedback, so you're just all, what do you do as a founder, as a CEO?

as a founder and CEO who loves my business very much, I love the, just the, everything about business just excites me. what do you do to get outta that and like, get into another head space and just come down and relax? Is it going and playing hockey? I hope the answer is maybe some, maybe you have another hobby or something else other than just hockey.

What do you do,as a successful founder in your downtime?

[00:25:10] Bill: Hockey actually still is like a major outlet for me. I think it's, I always wondered if building a business in hockey would make it so that like going and playing hockey no longer would make it an outlet, but it's still very much so is so I try to get on the ice at least once a week just because the level of exercise and exertion that you don't realize you're doing because you're just consumed with the act of playing hockey is still, in my opinion, like the best exercise you can do versus.

Standing on a treadmill and like watching the clock count up to 20 minutes and wondering like how it's only at 10. but beyond that, like completely separate from hockey. I am a father of two and a husband, and that actually does, give me just like a ton of joy, a ton of gratitude. So I really enjoy spending time with my family.

My daughter's four and my son is one. my wife is also an entrepreneur. so we live kind of a fun life, you know, both building businesses, but You know, living in New Hampshire, we spend a lot of time at the lake. we live really close to the ocean, like to be at the ocean, whenever possible, and also just like hiking in the mountains.

So those are, you know, if you take all of that plus, two entrepreneurs in a household, we, find a way to fill time pretty easily.

[00:26:17] Jay: Do your kids have any chance to play another sport, or is it gonna be hockey?

[00:26:22] Bill: No, I'm actually like coming at this like, I want you to love hockey, but I want you to like find it in the way that I found it. Neither of my parents played hockey. I was the first person in my family and that might have actually ultimately capped like what my potential trajectory in hockey was going to be, just from like the age when I first started playing serious and like how long it took for me to really ramp into like a competitive like travel schedule.

I'll be like a little bit more of a leg up on that for my kids 'cause I played competitively, but I think I want them to find it. I'll just be happy if they like, like to stay active and they find something that keeps them really excited. Hopefully they'll always like, wanna watch hockey with me. But,

[00:27:01] Jay: you go. That's a good

[00:27:03] Bill: you know, there's a gentle nudge.

we're skating, whenever we can.

[00:27:06] Jay: I bet you are. I bet. Yeah. we have the 13, the nine and the eighth that are in hockey, but we also have the three and the 1-year-old behind them. I'm hoping for something that I can be outdoors, for a little bit. I just like, I like to be outdoors. I love, I always tell my kids. I almost hate every part about hockey except for the 60 minutes.

They're, that they're on the ice. Every, other than that, like I don't wanna be in the rink, I don't wanna be in the locker room. I just wanna watch them play hockey and I wanna get back outside. Like, that's where I like to be is outside. So I'm hoping for maybe a softball or a soccer or so, just something to get me outside, you know, in the nice days, during the fall.

but I do love hockey and I love watching my kids play, so. Well, one last question. non hockey related, non-business related,I'm gonna give you this caveat because I keep getting this answer and I don't like this answer. It cannot be what you're currently doing today. this is more of a thought provoking question.

If you could do anything on Earth and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?

[00:28:03] Bill: Be a professional.

[00:28:05] Jay: There it is. See, I know, I mean, I, it's a layup, or not a

[00:28:08] Bill: I mean, if I could get paid to play hockey, I think that was, and always remained the childhood dream. I think the window probably closed, but,

[00:28:16] Jay: Now you're doing this, you're doing the next best thing. You're gonna be, you're gonna know all the guys. You're gonna be, you know, you're in the, you're in it. Right? That's all that matters. but in this scenario, you can't fail. So you could, you, you know, you're a hockey player.

Congratulations, you finally made it Bill. you're awesome dude. one of the most put together. Entrepreneurs I've talked to. I love the way you think about stuff. I love how analytical you are, but also kind of business forward and also just with the feedback and the product, it's, everything's impressive.

keep up the incredible work. I love it. my kids love it. if people wanna reach out to you directly to talk about something that you said today, how would they do that?

[00:28:51] Bill: Yeah, I mean, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if it's like in a professional capacity. I'm not sure if that would be. Like the best, for this audience or, you can reach out through any of our like Helios channels and a message that's like directed to me will get forwarded to me for sure.

[00:29:06] Jay: All right, man. Well, Bill, you're awesome. Thanks for all you do. we'll be following along with the story and hopefully have you on again someday, and have a good rest of your week. All right.

[00:29:14] Bill: Appreciate it. Thanks Jay. Thanks for using the product.

[00:29:16] Jay: Thanks, bill. Appreciate you. 

​