New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of this series will be to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story. Feel free to contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company: Humon
CEO: Alessandro Babini
Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Humon is building a next generation wearable sensor for endurance athletes. Our solution involves an optical sensor with a strap that is designed to be worn around the thigh, and that measures the way the athlete’s muscles are using oxygen. We then use this information to provide real-time feedback to the athlete about when to push harder or dial back, in order to optimize their performance.
2. Problem & Solution
With sensors becoming smaller and cheaper, and the internet of things connecting us and our hardware, we are being provided with increasing amounts of data about the world around us. The data from these sensors is then processed and analyzed to provide us with information we can act on, whether it is an indication on the dashboard of our car that it is time to change the oil, or a notification on our phone that we should turn the heater on at home. However, despite this, we are still severely lacking information about the most complex and important system in our world – our own body.
This is a crucial problem for athletes, who require information about their body in order to optimize their training and improve their performance. For endurance athletes the most important factor is knowing how hard they can exert themselves versus their limits. For example, when running a marathon, an athlete will want to push themselves as fast as possible for the duration of the race, but not push themselves too hard that they become exhausted and “hit the wall” before crossing the finish line. Solving this problem today requires the athlete to go to a lab and subject themselves to a blood test. This process is inconvenient, expensive, and only provides information about how they performed during that session.
Our solution is a wearable device which non-invasively measures the oxygen levels within the muscle in real-time, giving the athlete the benefits of the blood test every time they train.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Our beachhead market are avid runners, cyclists, and triathletes, of which there are seven million in the U.S. alone. From here, we can satisfy other avid endurance athletes, such as rowers and cross country skiers. We are currently focusing on building our solution to optimize performance for these endurance athletes, but in the future we will be able to optimize training for the amateur market whether it be fitness or weight loss, a market of 100M people in the U.S. alone. Down the line we will also consider going to other sports, as well as satisfying markets outside of the U.S.
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
We have a planned retail price of $300 for the Humon wearable sensor. This will include a mobile app which provides a basic level of insights to the user, such as feedback to train relative to the athlete’s threshold. Additional insights will be available for an additional monthly subscription, which will include things such as long-term training progression, and feedback to optimize warm-up and cool down.
5. Management Team – with titles
Alessandro Babini – CEO
Daniel Wiese – CTO
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
We were finalists at the Techcrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield in SF and just won the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference Startup Competition. We’re launching after the summer, stay tuned!Alpha Award for Trade Show <1M division is humon #SSAC16 pic.twitter.com/Dz6lvNlKb3
— Sloan Sports Conf. (@SloanSportsConf) March 12, 2016
Getting ready to ship! #iamhumon pic.twitter.com/3H4vt3kq0O
— Humon (@behumon) March 7, 2016
Bonus Questions:
If you were stuck on a desert island with any three athletes, who would they be and why?
If we were stuck on an island, we’d want to Arnold Schwarzenegger to be there. His level of drive and motivation are incredibly inspiring, and allowed him to be so successful. He seems really positive and down-to-earth, and it would be great to hear his stories and learn from everything he’s done.
If you were to invite any CEO to dinner who would it be and why?
We would invite Elon Musk and convince him to give a complimentary Tesla to all our customers.
If you could go to any sporting event, what would it be and why?
The Ironman world championship in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. It is such a high-profile event in a beautiful place that must be an amazing experience.