Episode 433 of The VentureFizz Podcast features Roy Hotrabhvanon, CEO & Co-Founder of PlayerData.
Some companies seem like they were just meant to happen, which is certainly the case for PlayerData.
Back in 2016, Roy was on track to compete in the Rio Olympics for archery when a severe car accident completely derailed his plans. But instead of letting that tragic incident define him, Roy picked himself up and built a tech company around the specialized performance tracking tools he had originally hacked together to train his own body.
He was using sensors and data to optimize his performance, which certainly was not common practice back then. His firsthand experience seeing what hardware, software, and data could do for athletes sparked the foundation for PlayerData, and his timing turned out to be absolutely perfect.
Fast forward, PlayerData helps athletes at every stage of their game build confidence, stay healthy, and work smarter with the company’s world-class performance tracking technology.
The company recently announced a $12M from Kevin Durant’s 35V, Tennis Australia, Darco Capital, and Pentland Ventures, and what is also really exciting, they announced the move of their U.S. headquarters from Philadelphia to Boston.
As you’ll hear from this interview, PlayerData is relentlessly innovating. In addition to their core wearable tracking platform, they recently partnered with Mitre to launch the world’s first GPS-enabled “Connected Ball” which is FIFA certified. Now, coaches, trainers, and athletes have even more data to optimize training and performance.
In this episode of our podcast, we cover lots of great topics, including:
- A discussion on what it takes to raise capital and build a startup in the sportstech industry.
- Roy’s background growing up in Thailand with entrepreneurial parents.
- His discovery of the sport of archery and how it forged his competitive drive.
- Meeting Hayden Ball, his Co-Founder & CTO, plus stories of the early days of PlayerData’s first generation products.
- All the latest at PlayerData, including how some key early tech decisions helped prepare them for the AI era.
- Why they chose Boston as their U.S. headquarters.
- And, so much more!
Transcript
Keith Cline (03:13)
Roy, thanks so much for joining us.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (03:15)
Really great to be here.
Keith Cline (03:18)
All right, Roy, I’m excited talk to you because I think this podcast interview, it was just almost destiny. So I was at this great organization ⁓ that’s called Sports Business Leaders. And it’s an organization that brings together like minded people in the sports industry for events, and there’s a podcast. The founder that who I know well has done an extraordinary job building out this community. So I was at the event and I met this woman, Jessica, who is part of your company.
And she was talking to me and I was actually at the Philly meeting and she said, Hey, we just opened up ⁓ our US office here in Boston and I was like, wait, that’s what VentureFiz does. We support Boston tech companies.
so that was kind of interesting. So we agreed to do this podcast. As we’re scheduling the podcast, my daughter, who plays field hockey for Providence College, tells me they just recently implemented PlayerData to track their activities in terms of you know the day-to-day training and game performance. And I was like, wait, I’m actually interviewing the founder CEO of Player Data. This is super exciting. ⁓ so we’re gonna talk a lot about your company and what you’ve been building, your background story. But I just noticed you announced a Series A round of funding. So congratulations. But I wanted to talk to you about, you know, ⁓ raising capital for a hardware, software company in the sports industry, right? Those are three things that are
Roy Hotrabhvanon (04:33)
Thank you.
Keith Cline (04:44)
make it more complex and you know, there’s a lot of capital involved in building the type of company that you’ve built. So I just want to talk to you about the fundraise and kind of what that process was like.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (04:54)
Yeah, you know, we’re we’re first off, you know, we’re we’re very, very fortunate to have a great incredible set of investors ⁓ that ⁓ understand our mission, that believe in our vision, ⁓ believe in our vision and and and are willing to back us ⁓ to achieve that. You know, you’re right, like ⁓ being a hardware company makes it ⁓ a degree harder. Being in sports also makes it a degree harder. And you add that all up. It it it it it becomes even more difficult. But fundamentally, you know, what we’ve seen is that is that if you if you have ⁓ investors that share the same values and believe in the mission and you can demonstrate and you can demonstrate you know a a clear sort of need for the capital, how we’re gonna deploy it, how we’re gonna use it to grow, what the TAM is. You know, the core what what they teach you when you’re raising money, you know, the the the core fundamentals, the process becomes a little bit easier to do. And and that’s what we’re really what been building out. We was spent, you know, the last few years, especially in the US, building out is is when we enter the US market, learning about the market, getting early data points, showing trends, building that, ⁓ and and even more so on the hardware side.
Keith Cline (06:22)
Well, I think the timing of your platform and we’re gonna talk about AI and everything that’s coming along with it, ⁓ and the you know, focus on performance and using data to make better decisions around recovery. Like there’s so much going into athletic performance now. So the timing and the history is also I think really important that we’re gonna talk about too. Now, one of the things about PlayerData, like this was your Series A, yet series something A, B, C, D you know, the like there’s seed rounds now that are like a hundred million dollars in funding. So I think those c those letters don’t always match up. ‘Cause this wasn’t necessarily the first round of funding that you’ve raised where one would imply series A maybe could be after seed or pre seed, right? But there’s other rounds that have been raised in the past.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (07:09)
Yeah, we’ve we’ve done several several rounds. I mean, we started in 2017 very, very small. First check in was under two two hundred thousand dollars. ⁓ and then that that lasted us a few years. I think that would be pre pre pre seed. ⁓ but you know, we’re series A now, it’s a more it’s the letter reflects kind of the stage we’re at, the the rate that we’re growing, ⁓ you know, where we are, so from a from a US perspective, ⁓ and from a global perspective.
Keith Cline (07:23)
Ha ha ha.
All right, well, your background story ties into your company perfectly. So let’s talk about your background. So where did you grow up? What were you like as a child?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (07:47)
I grew up in Thailand. so I so my parents are both business owners, I guess you could say. ⁓ they’re both entrepreneurs. ⁓ so my childhood was essentially sort of sitting in, you know, spent at their work. at at their business. They’re they they are ⁓ they are they were jewelers. ⁓ so they basically
My dad moved over from the UK when he was ⁓ when he was young, set up a jewelry business, taught himself how to make jewelry, you know, built a factory, and I basically grew up in that factory. and ⁓ my childhood was essentially dominated by sort of going to school, going to going to the factory, learning from my dad, fixing and and I got into computers, you know, the my the the techie side of me got into computers because someone had to fix all his tech.
And all his computers, and I I I was the designated, the designee ⁓ to to do that. and then when I was 16 moved over to the UK to study. and then went to university in Edinburgh, where kind of like the PlayerData journey really started. ⁓ growing up I didn’t have a chance to do sports. ⁓ it wasn’t really sort of part of the culture in Thailand, it’s very academic focused. ⁓
But when I was in Edinburgh, I picked up Archery and absolutely fell in love with it. realized that I was deeply competitive. And because I was doing my CS degree at the time, I was like, okay, maybe I can do something here and build something to help me get better. So I started playing around with sensors, put it on my body, collected a ton of data, and started to to to to build a system to coach myself.
And that went remarkably well for me. I went from beginning beginner to Olympic level in in in a few years. and I was on track to go to Rio twenty sixteen for Thailand, ⁓ had it been for an unfortunate car accident a month before the Olympics. And ⁓ that that is the kinda like the the origin story of PlayerData.
Keith Cline (10:06)
Which is fascinating ’cause like so this was like twenty twelve ish time frame, correct?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (10:13)
Yeah, twenty twenty twelve I went to uni. Twenty sixteen was when sort of ⁓ you know went through my degree and you know that that was the the Olympics I was working towards. then at that point, twenty sixteen I went, okay, I’m not gonna wait another four years for the Olympics. What can I do now? I just finished my degree, I didn’t have a job, I wanted to do something, and I knew that I wanted to do something with a tech I built. And ⁓ decided to build PlayerData with my co-founder Hayden. ⁓
to to basically on the on the on the mission to to give people the ability to have the same journey I did. Take elite level tech and bring it to everybody. And it just happens that the biggest market in the world and we were in Scotland is global football, soccer. And that’s where we started.
Keith Cline (11:02)
How’d you meet Hayden? Was that in in university?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (11:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We we met during during uni. We were doing the same degree, ⁓ computer science and electronics. It was a niche course. There was about ten of us in total on it. ⁓ and yeah, we just became friends through that.
Keith Cline (11:21)
So this is interviews that I love to have because over that four year stretch, two thousand twelve to two thousand and sixteen, you built something, right? That was based on your own personal use case that addresses obviously a bigger market, but at the time you’re like, I want to build this for myself. So it would be fascinating to actually like like what were you starting to track early on in these, you know, early prototypes that, you know, you didn’t even know you were gonna end up building into a company.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (11:50)
Yeah, I think the the concept that I ⁓ the concept that I was playing around with at the time was that the it was that ⁓ given enough data ⁓ and given enough ⁓ training, I could build a model that would give me feedback that it was specific to me. That taught me, you know, because you know, like the one of the great things about Archery is that it’s like it’s a very sort like a the outcome is very defined.
You shoot the arrow and it goes into a s like you get a score immediately. So what you can actually do is you measure everything about your biomechanics of going in and then comparing to what going out, you can actually spot trends of, hey, this is what happens when your your body is in this position and does this when it’s a 10. so you know, there basically I just built something that let me optimize that and find what made me tick.
And me specifically. And and that’s what a c good coach would typically do for you. just ⁓ hack my way around it.
Keith Cline (13:00)
But it’s it’s an amazing background story and then, you know, ⁓ on the Olympic path and then the car accident happened, so that must have been deeply disappointing. But to take something instead build into a company obviously, you know, must be incredibly satisfying.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (13:19)
Yeah, it was it w look, you know, it’s like things happen for a reason. I think you know, I I I think ⁓ you know, decided to sort of make the jump to build PlayerData off the back of that and ⁓ really, you know, looking at hindsight like just the incredible journey that we’ve been on and what being able to do with it is is just yeah.
Keith Cline (13:40)
Okay, so the early days of PlayerData you’re like, okay, we’re gonna build a company and you know, we’ve got global football or American soccer, however you want to phrase it. How did you get started? Like again, we’re talking like you were doing this for your own personal use case. Now we’re gonna build something that’s going to be used by others, athletes. There’s a lot involved in what you do. So, what was the first kind of generation of products? What did those look like?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (14:06)
So look, you know, I think like truly the archery, like the first product that we wanted to build was kind of like was ⁓ a motion capture suit. So it was basically a ⁓ a top and some trousers, just most mainly focused on the top that had little sensors built into the clothing itself that basically would measure your full sort of ⁓ upper body posture. and ⁓ using that we could apply it to ⁓
Team sports, individual sports, think like golf, tennis, like anything that, you know, with a repetitive motion or something you want to train. ⁓ we we were when building it out, we went, okay, look, you know, we, you know, clot you know, we’re putting sensors in clothing. People are not gonna want to wear the same shirt over and over again. We have to split out the product. So we put all the expensive stuff in a little puck that sat on the back as like the main brains, and then we put all the cheap, like the sensors in the shirt so people could swap.
Click in and swap out. Kind of like the razor and blade model in a in sports. And ⁓ we built that out. And ⁓ the University of Edinburgh ⁓ ladies rugby team reached out to us and said, Hey, we’ve been having you guys ⁓ we heard that you guys are fairly technical. ⁓ you working on this project. We’re having problems with our GPS tracking solution right now. ⁓ so I turn up to a training session, they show me what they have, like the like a pile of USB cables, these tracking trackers that don’t work. And then they told me how much they pay for it. It’s like five thousand dollars a year at the time. And I went, holy holy crap, this is a lot of money for something that’s really hard to use and doesn’t work. So I went, okay, well, you don’t need the tops. Well, we’ll just sell you the little the control modules, just the brains, because that’s all you need. And we’ll sell you 20 of them. And we built some software for them for them to track and get them all metrics. And we made up a price, and here you go.
Keith Cline (15:46)
Right.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (16:02)
This is this is ⁓ this is your solution. And then ⁓ about two weeks later we got a call from I think it was Scottish hockey and went, Hey, ⁓ we heard ⁓ that you’re the GPS company selling ⁓ sell selling GPS wearables. Can we can we get a set as well? And it went, ⁓ okay, you know, we’re trying to build these full suits, like okay, another twenty sets, no suits, we’ll just sell
Keith Cline (16:22)
Ha ha ha.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (16:27)
sell another twenty sets to make another twenty sets for them. And then, you know, when your investors hear that you’ve made money off something, you know, all bets are off. Go make that. Yes. ⁓ and you know, through word of mouth, you know, that’s how it was for the first years. Like, hey, we heard you have this thing and we heard great things. It’s, you know, you’re a GPS company. Can we get 10 please? Can we get 15?
Keith Cline (16:37)
Yes. Right. Product market fit. Go.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (16:57)
And we naturally expanded around Scotland through word of mouth alone off that and we quickly sort of whilst Tate and I were trying to build this full suit, you know, the full sort of like the dream, ⁓ we ended up following you know, building out what the market actually told us what they wanted.
Keith Cline (17:17)
Can I deviate for a second about the suit? Meaning, my question is, does one exist for golf? Okay, so with when you’re talking about archery, I guess, you know, posture would be so important, right? And consistency of everything that you do, repetitive motion. Same thing with golf. When I think of my swing and how terrible it is, yet it’s the same swing almost every time, right? Like there’s, you know, shaffling and everything. ⁓ but is there something that is a training aid that’s like a that type of mechanism that would just be like, you gotta sit in this posture every time, Keith, stop moving around like a training aid.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (17:53)
Yeah, well as far as I know, and I do check periodically, nothing like that exists still. But at this point it’s gonna have to be a different company that we build to do that. Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Cline (18:02)
Right. Exactly. We’ve we’ve moved beyond that. I was just curious ’cause I’m like, yeah, ’cause as soon as you start talking about posture, I was like, This sounds like it would be good for golf. ⁓ so anyways, okay, back to PlayerData. ⁓ okay, so you’re building software, you gotta build hardware, there’s and and and from what I in my research, you love hardware. Like you’re in the weeds even today building hardware.
Hardware’s hard, right? This is always that phrase. And then you gotta have manufacturing, right? So how did you go about building something that, you know, once you went into this direction, right? How did you go about building the sensor, you know, that was on the back to you know, manufacturing it and making sure it was working properly?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (18:50)
Yeah, it’s a good question. Hardware is hard and ⁓ look you know I think the the lesson that we learned on hardware that I just continues to sort of pay dividends every day is that we didn’t have any prior experience in it and we didn’t have any biases. So we didn’t know what the industry way of doing stuff is. ⁓ so when we when when
when we went to make our first hardware, we went to, you know, a consultancy and we went, Hey guys, look, you know, we have this idea, we you know, we wanna make this and they told me they came back to me and said, Okay, it’s gonna be five thousand dollars and it’s gonna take us a month to do. And I went, ⁓ I don’t have five thousand dollars and I don’t have a month. Like, this is crazy, I have to do something else. So I just went onto Google and started learning about ⁓ hardware, how to make make make stuff, you know, what are all the key bits, what can we do house?
And we started what we worked out really, really quick early on was that ⁓ we can there was a couple bits of the supply chain at the time for hardware around PCBs that were really, really commoditized. So you can create a design, you can get it ⁓ made in Asia, and then it gets gets to you within like two days. And then you can assemble it up and and test it. ⁓ and I realized that what we realized at that time was that because it was so cheap and so quick to do that. If we did all the rest of the assembly in-house, we could take a fail-fast approach to hardware, which means that like every week we could try something new, which is actually unheard of in traditional hardware. and that’s kind of how we learnt how to do hardware from day one. It was part of our process. Every week there was a new design, we just tweak, we make some fixes, we got our hands, we tried it out, we took out our customers to try it, we got feedback.
Keith Cline (20:28)
Mm-hmm.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (20:42)
We made tweaks and we got a new version the next day. And that’s how we really quickly iterated. So we had like 50, 60 different prototypes iterating. and then once we sort of started to converge on like a like a like a happy point and things were developed and things were stable, we also realized that if we made small investments, and it was like small investment at the time was like five thousand dollars.
we buy some machines so that we can actually speed up that assembly step and do that in-house and do sort of really, really low volume manufacturing in-house. So we did that for a bit. And that we did that for maybe our first sort of 30, 40 clients is we made everything in-house from scratch. We’ll get the PCBs, we’ll get all the components, we’ll assemble them, we’ll touch them up and put them together. ⁓ and what that what that taught us was that that one that gave us flexibility.
To try different things and be really ⁓ fast moving. But the second thing it taught us is that because we’re doing everything in-house, we had to make it as easy as possible to as possible to make the actual product. So when we went, when we were ready to go, when we went, when we exceeded our in-house manufacturing capability, which was only until like year sort of I think like 2018, 2019.
when we went to a manufacturer, they went to us, this is the easiest product they’ve ever made. Well, yes. Because we we had to spend time making it, so we optimized every everything. and we still run that process today. So you know we’ll spend quite a lot of time in this sort of fail fast post approach in hardware where we’re not afraid to make a piece of hardware, try it, and then throw it away, try the next one, and get to the point where we’re happy with a prototype. That we then we’re now fortunate that we have manufacturing partners where, okay, we’re happy with the prototype, this is what, we now you need you to make ten thousand and they’ll scale it up for us. So we’ve got, you know, we still own the bits that we need to own and then we have great partners that take us and and scale.
Keith Cline (22:56)
Yeah, like what you were saying is almost like an oxymoron. Like rapid prototyping for hardware is something people are like, What? Like that’s not like yeah. So that’s fascinating. I think that’s a good lesson learned for other people building hardware because traditionally you’d go through a cycle of months, like you said, with the contract manufacturing organization or the design shop, whatever. And then you’d like select a partner and pray that you pick the right partner and it’s for the manufacturing only to get the device and being like, This is not functional, it doesn’t work or whatever.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (23:03)
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah. Yeah.
Keith Cline (23:25)
Problem you have, you gotta then go back to the drawing board to ⁓ fix it. So that’s that’s really interesting.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (23:30)
And and and the the key cost out of that actually isn’t the money, it’s the time that ⁓ it’s it’s a time and the opportunity ⁓ opportunity cost out of that. That’s what we learnt is that you know if we can if we could iterate very quickly, then we can cut that down. And you know, we’ve we have we have taken products from sort of zero to ⁓ sort of ⁓ mass production in a year, ⁓ like a brand new products before. And you know, the the the latest one I’m working on on the the camera.
Keith Cline (23:34)
Yes.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (24:00)
We started that ⁓ seven months ago and we’re gonna launch it in a month, two months. Like a complete brand new product, not been done before, but like same same process for us.
Keith Cline (24:12)
Well let’s get into the weeds of what you’re doing like today with the company. We talked about the history and your iteration and prototyping. So PlayerData today, like talk about the company, the platform and how it all works.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (24:24)
Yeah, so player day it’s a day. We are a ⁓ sports ⁓ the the sort of one-stop shop at the moment for physical performance. So we make this wearable. It is a tracker. There you go. It’s the smallest in the world. It has GPS, it has an IMU in it for accelerations, it has LPS, so ultrawide band for indoor tracking, and and has a 12 hour battery life. So what athletes do is they wear these units in v in in our vests and they will do their training or the match and we will we will either stream the data live or they they sync them after and they the the athletes and the coaches get the insights to that training session. Insights around what load did they ⁓ what load did they achieve during that training session and what distance they covered.
But also insights around the the the tactical side as well. So like in matches, you get keep positional heat maps of where you played, where were you relative to the other players, ⁓ and all the information a coach would need to help sort of communicate sort of the style play and make improvements. And that’s been sort of like that was a foundation play. That’s that was phase one for us that up to sort of last year, that was our only product and our core product. What we realized was that, you know, we
You know, the the physical side of ⁓ physical performance side of the athlete was great, positional side, but actually you really need context of the game. And that’s where we started expanding into ⁓ smart balls, because primary primary sport in soccer is like how do we track the ball so that we can get the context of what the ball’s doing in the session to imbue that context in in the reporting. So now that we have we have the world’s first GPS smart ball, and I’ve I’ve got one here.
Keith Cline (26:14)
Okay.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (26:19)
Yeah. This one is one we’ve done with Mitre. ⁓ it’s got a GPS chip inside the ball itself.
Keith Cline (26:25)
So yeah.
And is this something that’s used in game or just practice or both? Both, okay.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (26:33)
Both. Both. So it can be used in game and practice. ⁓ and what this allows us to do is now that we know the position of the ball, so like in matches, for example, you know where the players are, you know where the ball is. I can c completely recreate the game. I can tell you who passed to who, was it successful, was it not successful, what was possession, what the shots on goal are. And this is without someone needing to watch it or tag it or expensive like sort of ⁓ camera setup to to to track every or we we just do that automatically on any field.
Keith Cline (27:06)
Wow. Okay. Wow. I assume this is patented.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (27:11)
Yeah. Patented, protected, it’s part of our pla our ecosystem. Yeah. It’s and like this was a journey journey itself. yeah.
Keith Cline (27:12)
So yeah, well that’s why I like like training ball would be one thing for practice, but to have that end game that’s so valuable that data and that information, yet I could see, you know, different leagues being like, This is not approved because, you know, it’s gonna be a heavier ball. Like how do you get the weight adjustment so that it’s consider the flight of the ball, like like there’s no intrusion.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (27:40)
Yeah, it’s it’s yeah, it’s FIFA quality pr it’s a FIFA quality pro certified ball. So it could be used at the very highest level of the games. I’m very proud of that. But you know, just touching on the training session as well, like one of the things that we are really proud of is that it’s not only for matches and for train it’s the first time that you can get this data in training sessions as well. So you can have you know, our system’s so scalable, you can have twenty balls on the pitch, twenty athletes, and we’ll track every ball individually and we can distinguish who has which ball at what time.
So in training now you know, you know, what load like what is a kicking load for each athlete during that session. You can get tactical information about the the drills that you’re doing, as well in in training. It’s it’s yeah, it’s very, very powerful.
Keith Cline (28:25)
So the thought there is basketball next, football, like American football, like branch out into other categories or sports, I mean.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (28:33)
Yeah, I think next year we we’ll we’ll start to look at different sports. But right now we’re really, really focused on soccer. It’s it’s it’s our biggest vertical. But ⁓ you know, we basketball is fast growing for us and we have the relationships to to expand there next.
Keith Cline (28:48)
Okay, the the other key thing about your platform is ease of ease of use, right, and setup, right? So you know, there’s no like you gotta hard wire this thing into your field, arena, stadium, like it’s it’s it’s transportable.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (29:07)
Yeah, so the ⁓ ease of use has always been a core tenant of our tenant for us and and that kind of that part of the the mission really goes back to our early days. You know, if you think about the early customers that we served, their grassroots teams in Scotland, this was a coach that was the physio, the medic, like the dri the bus driver, they did everything. The system had to be they didn’t have a big team around them.
They were doing everything and this so the system had to be super easy for them to use and quickly understanding they had to get value from it. So that is the that was the reason why sort of from day one we had to solve ease of use for the adoption technology. Now, what we didn’t really fully anticipate was the effect of solving ease of use to larger professional organizations. ⁓ we, you know, at you know, back then wrongly assumed that, you know, larger professional teams like Premier League teams had whatever resources they want. ⁓ that is true in the first team, but actually not true through a academy system. So our first sort of our first entry to the US market was actually MLS Academies, ⁓ Atlanta United in particular, where ⁓ the rector of performance there went, Hey, look, you know, you guys got the perfect solution for us. You know, we can track now, currently only tracking, you know, forty athletes in the Academy. We can track two hundred athletes in the Academy, save money and I you we
We don’t need a staff increase. Do everything you want. ⁓ so that’s been very, very, very powerful for us and and and something we we you know we continue to to spend a lot of time on.
Keith Cline (30:49)
It’s and it’s also the the from what I’ve seen so far, the the athletes have access to a lot more data than other options.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (30:59)
Yeah. And and that again is is again part back to our roots is that, you know, the moment that you know the coach finished the session, the athletes would ask the coach to see the data. So we just put the data in their hands. So the moment the the coach uploads the data, coach gets to see their data, see the whole team’s data, athlete get to see their own data. It’s a great you know, it’s yeah, it’s it’s one is the right thing to do and it’s two, it’s just great to you know, great, great to to have that fast feedback.
Keith Cline (31:29)
This is gonna go this point is gonna go a little bit above my technical know-how understanding, but from what I read, you were always thinking about the data and you made a decision that really played out well, especially as the movement towards AI, of you know, your cloud-first architecture, GraphQL. The GraphQL piece I wasn’t familiar with, ⁓ but it sounds like that’s really worked out for dis you know, that decision has worked out well for.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (31:56)
Yeah, in twenty seventeen when we’re building this business, right? We, you know, we Hayden and I made a made a early bet, like a like a long term bet bet that look, you know, sometime, someday down the line, ⁓ an Apple, a Google, a blue chip company is gonna build some sort of foundational AI that will really unlock our data. For us to take advantage of that, our data has to be not isolated on people’s phones or laptops or specific laptops they use, it all has to be easily accessible from the cloud. ⁓ so this the system was built cloud first from day one. to to do that because we knew that like the value actually of of putting everything in one place that can be accessed from like like for example right now. So if I was running a live session right now, let’s say that I was in Brazil. ⁓ I and, you know, the coach in New York on their phone can view the data from from that live session. Cause it’s all going to the cloud in real time. You know, it’s just it’s just little things like that that that that opens up possibilities. ⁓ so being cloud first was, you know, a a big early move from us and drove everything architecturally and it’s the sort of thing that you could spend years on retrofitting if you didn’t do it the first time.
⁓ the second thing that we did and and not to get too technical and you mentioned GraphQL, like we we decided to not go with like a traditional API approach. So a traditional API approach is that you have like ⁓ a query that goes, hey, give me a list of all the sessions. And then you get have another query that gives me a list of all the athletes. And then you get the list of sessions, list of athletes, and then you have to do your own thing on your your side to like put the data together. It’s called a REST API.
what is powerful with GraphQL is that it lets you ask for exactly what you want in the format you want it in in the query itself. So I can write a query that goes, hey, give me all of Keith’s data, you know, top speeds in, you know, for the last five sessions. And then I would get that. so it gives you ultimate flexibility in terms of ⁓ building and getting whatever you want, either from building an app or hooking up different APIs, but it it was a it was it it’s it was a powerful choice for us.
Keith Cline (34:24)
Okay, so you had this vision and your vision became a reality, right? With the movement to now we are in this AI era. So what are the use cases for leveraging AI within your product?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (34:36)
Yeah, like, you know, it it it was you know, when when LLMs came on the scene, it was very, very easy for us to ⁓ and I think we’re the we we were we were definitely the first to was we we had basically built a a chatGPT but for your data. So a coach should go in to wrap this was I think it was two years ago now. ⁓ coach would go in, had a little chat interface and go, Hey, show me all of Keith’s top speeds in the last three weeks and explain to me the trends and it will
show it to you or compare games that I won versus I lost. ⁓ you know, coaches that we work with, they always have these questions that they’re trying to ask and get answered. ⁓ they’ll probably have like a assistant or sports scientist that can help, you know, pull the reports and they’ll go and spend some time, 30 minutes, an hour pulling reports to help answer the question. This just helps speed that whole process up and puts in any hands. So so that is, you know, that that was a big feature that we launched that people talk to every day.
Keith Cline (35:39)
All right, let’s talk about your company. ⁓ at what point did you decide to expand into the US and you know, today, what does the team look like in the US for, you know, Boston?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (35:49)
Yeah, so we I think it was twenty twenty two or twenty twenty three that ⁓ we started to think about the US and we went, look, you know, we were growing great in the UK market, we had incredible traction across the youth, semi pro, but the US was the biggest market in the world. How do we get there? we went through Techstars Techstars Accelerate in Indianapolis, ⁓ that ⁓ helped us sort of build sort of initial sort of
book of contacts contacts. And then ⁓ I was very, very fortunate after we sort of met our first MLS team around that sort of problem, the Academy problem that I spoke about earlier, ⁓ that I was connected to an incre incredible group of investors that saw the potential of what we’re building and ⁓ led our ⁓ you know ⁓ five million dollar round ⁓ to really really ⁓ build out the the US model and that’s when I met Jess and Jess came on board as well.
Keith Cline (36:54)
Very cool. And why did you choose Boston?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (36:57)
yeah. So Boston is just incredible city. ⁓ from a from a ⁓ really practical perspective, we have a lot of ⁓ a lot of our team members already in Boston. I think like eight to ten of them are within the Boston area and that made, you know, made the most sense for us to put headquarters there. There’s also a lot of other sort of tech companies in the area that’s incredible talent pool that we can hire from. Sports, sports talents, tech talent there. So very much easier than other cities to hire from. And ⁓ you know, just being able to see the buzz of having people ⁓ in the office as well in Boston is has has been has been incredible. It’s been well, well worth worth it in the short time we had the office.
Keith Cline (37:48)
What what’s the scale today in terms of athletes, customers, teams, however you like like what whatever you can share there?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (37:55)
Yeah, so we are in about we’re fifteen hundred teams, with a hundred thousand athletes. ⁓ we ⁓ you know, in terms of like scale of tracking, I think we have tracked data on ninety five percent of all pitches that exist in the UK, for example. products has been used on. our products gonna be in every single World Cup game.
Keith Cline (38:03)
Wow.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (38:24)
as World Cup ’cause the the refs are wearing it.
Keith Cline (38:27)
Wow.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (38:28)
⁓ in terms of like team members, we’ve got I think we’re about seventy five, eighty people now. almost split fifty fifty between UK and US. ⁓ and we’re continuing to grow. Like our main focus right now is just to continue to grow. and we’ve been doubling every year for for several years now as a business and we’re we’re we’ve got a a great path to continue doing that.
Keith Cline (38:57)
And what has your go to market approach been? Because you know, the the way I, you know, see your website and branding and everything, it’s like we want to make this accessible to the masses, not just the premier elite, you know, professional clubs, that this is something that, you know, it could be high school, it could be club teams, right? Like it’s not just the, you know, the professionals that have access to this information.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (39:20)
Yeah, so we what we’ve done in the US has been really sort of strategically we have an incredible sales team with different responsible for different verticals, but really strategically try and sort of land clients in key areas that we ’cause there’s there’s a there’s a ton of terrific ⁓ network effects in sport. And once people use a use a product, they talk about it. We’ve seen in Scotland, you know, the natural network effect. ⁓ so, you know, w what we’ve been doing for the last few years is just seeding.
different areas of US market with key clients and from the top to the bottom and to try to get as much coverage as possible. And we’re starting to see those flywheels really ⁓ work really well for us in the US, especially in soccer. and ⁓ in the UK we we took a sort of more traditional sort of ⁓ marketing led approach when we built them we when we built when we built the business there it was ⁓ ads that, you know, then ⁓ gave us leads and the salespeople closed the leads. But that was that only really worked for us in the UK because the UK as a country is quite small geographically ⁓ and and quite dense. And when we tried to do that in the US it just the economics of that didn’t really work. So but the model we have right now ⁓ is working really, really well.
Keith Cline (40:43)
Well, I do need to give a shout out to your head of marketing, Luke Bonner. I don’t know him, but I know of him. He went we went to the sa we’re both alums of the same high school in Manchester, New Hampshire, Trinity High School. He was a an i an outstanding basketball player. So shout out to Luke. all right, looking ahead, what what’s what’s next?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (41:03)
Finish up the platform. ⁓ you know, finish the continue to scale up products. You know, we’ve we’ve got a camera launching in a few months.
Keith Cline (41:12)
What’s the camera like what is the camera doing? Like what’s the use case there?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (41:16)
⁓ I can talk about it a little bit, but it is a it’s it’s basically, you know, a sports camera that will will record the whole field. ⁓ and we have deep integration with our units. So, you know, we can look at ⁓ the video, we can look at the tactical data, we can look at the physical data all in one platform. but it’s ⁓ when we formally announce it, it will be ⁓ a world first in many respects, which we’re really proud of.
Keith Cline (41:48)
All right, advice for founders on building a tech company in the sports industry. Like what what have been the lessons learned there?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (41:56)
Yeah, I think the ⁓ probably the biggest sort of piece of advice you can give is ⁓ get out to you know get out to your users as quickly as you can. And as early as you can. Like don’t don’t sit on your ideas and wait until you think it’s perfect to get it out there. Get it out there the the soonest anyone can practically seen it. Because what you probably built in your head is wrong.
⁓ and the market will tell you that quickly and and the biggest thing you do is, you know, get as many sort of ⁓ people on board and and and be part of your journey, give you that feedback to so you can iterate as fast as possible. And and sports, you know, is is a really unique market to grow in ⁓ because a lot of these coaches, the sports scientists, they all ha are really competitive and they want every single edge they can get to win.
So you know, if they’re in the same camp as you. If you if you if they feel that, you know, you you guys have mission aligned, it’s it’s a great community to be part of.
Keith Cline (43:03)
Day to day use of AI, that’s a question that I’ve kind of baked into my podcast now. Like are you y like are you using different ⁓ you know, tools, clawed code? Like what like like how are you using AI for your day to day either business, building a company, or even personal?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (43:19)
Yeah, so I’m I I I personally use AI quite a lot. So I use it for orchestrating, organizing, ⁓ keeping track of all the threads that I’m a part of and making sure that I’m is surfacing signals is is a big big part for me. Is is basically I you know, as with what I do in the company and s how many people we are, there is a ton of noise.
So it’s very, very helpful for help for me to to surface signals that I need to see. And then ⁓ AI ⁓ has been incredibly powerful for me as as I’ve been able to individually contribute and directly try and test things myself. Again, without having to bother the team or distract them from what they’re working on. I can just go, right, I’m gonna build myself, try it. I’m meeting with a coach in an hour and and and try it. So I I’ve been using it extensively to do that as well and validate theses that I have.
Keith Cline (44:17)
⁓ all right. Three apps you can’t live without can’t be Slack, email, or calendar.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (44:24)
⁓ okay. I three apps I can’t live without that’s no one’s asked me that before. I ⁓
⁓ well I’m gonna cheat here because I am a big fan of superhuman, which is technically email, but it’s not traditional email, it’s kind of like a s it’s it’s it’s so good. I can I can power through and quickly like with keyboard short shortcuts, just quickly do what I need to do with it. superhuman ⁓ flighty as well is another one I use really heavily. I am
Keith Cline (44:42)
Okay. Yep. Mm-hmm. Right? That’s allowed. It’s allowed.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (45:04)
I have spent half my year traveling and on the road, and it’s great for tracking flights. Is my incoming flight delay? What gate I know? What where do I pick up my bags? All that. Really great. And then Spotify. ⁓ I l like to listen to to to music and just put something on to like calm the noise.
Keith Cline (45:27)
Me too. Listen to music all day long. All right, podcast book recommendation for entrepreneurs.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (45:33)
c a book called Chicken Hawk. It’s about a it’s a story of a Vietnam a Vietnam war helicopter pilot and just his experiences through that. Just incredible, incredible read.
really enjoyed that. Not a business book, not not nothing anything useful, just a great story. ⁓ and a bit of world perspective, I guess.
Keith Cline (46:00)
What do you like to do for fun outside of work?
Roy Hotrabhvanon (46:03)
at the moment I ⁓ whatever spare time I have, I will either sleep or spend time with my partner. ⁓
Keith Cline (46:15)
It’s kind of a silly question sometimes when I ask that ’cause I’m like, there’s not a lot of time to be doing those, you know, hobby things. So
Roy Hotrabhvanon (46:22)
It’s not, no. Yeah. I guess my hobby I guess my if I had one hobby and my partner would agree with me, she she would say that I enjoy eating good food and seeking good food. Big foodie. Yeah.
Keith Cline (46:36)
Okay.
Perfect. Well, Roy, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through your professional journey, obviously all the great work you and your team are doing at PlayerData. And ⁓ all the great advice and thank you for choosing Boston for your US headquarters.
Roy Hotrabhvanon (46:51)
No, thank you. Thank thank you for having me today. Real really great to chat with you.