Jacob Rothman - Perch & Quantifying Strength

Hey everybody, welcome to the Future of Fitness, a top-rated fitness industry podcast for over three years and running. I am your host, Eric Malzone, and I have the absolute pleasure of talking to entrepreneurs, innovators, and cutting-edge technology experts within the extremely fast-paced industries of fitness, wellness, and health sciences. Please stop by futurefitness.co to subscribe and learn more. Hey friends, I couldn't be more proud and excited to announce that today's episode is powered by workout, the ultimate tool for modern fitness professionals just like you. There is one thing that fires me up. It's elevating the personal training and coaching industry. For that, the workout app is an absolute game changer. No more promoting top brands without compensation or dealing with confusing social media links. In just a few clicks, Workout's user-friendly app lets top trainers and coaches curate and share the world's most sought-after fitness brands like Hyperite, Vega, and more. Product lines covering everything from fitness equipment to supplements and apparel. Save time and boost your earnings with generous commissions and bonuses every time your client purchases the product you already endorsed. Do not wait. Maximize your income and streamline your business with store by workout. Discover more at workout.com. That's wrkto-t.com. Just 1-0. W-r-K-O-U-T. Go get it. All right, we are live. Jacob Rothman, welcome to the Future of Fitness.

Yeah, it's great to be here. I appreciate you having me here.

It's a pleasure. We've had uh numerous conversations and we got to meet in person, uh finally in Ursa. And uh, you know, like many times you're taller than I thought you'd be.

I don't know about that.

Uh you know, it's just it's funny when you like you ever you in this digital world, like I've had so many conversations with so many people over Zoom and various, you know, online communication tools. And then we meet in person, everyone's like, man, I thought you'd be like 6'1, man. Like, no, sorry, I'm just a medium-sized guy. Uh disappoint you. Anyway, um, so much to talk about with you, man. So so much cool stuff. I mean, your background is really interesting. Um, you know, you're definitely uh, you know, you have an uh an inventor's mentality, I presume. Uh I was just looking at some of the stuff you've done and projects you've done. People can look at his uh websites, uh JacobRothman.me. Uh, I was looking at that this morning. You went deep into the background. Yeah, yeah, I did. I did. Uh I found stuff. Um so it's it's gonna be a lot of fun. Of course, what you guys are doing at Perch is really exciting and very cool um and a lot of promise too. And it's a very uh, I guess, dynamic sector of the industry. So we'll we'll get into that. But start with this, Jacob, as always, give us give us some of your background and how you got to be the CEO and founder of uh or co-founder of Perch.

Yeah, so I'll give you the short version, but background me, I'm originally from Charlotte, North Carolina. Um, came up to Boston where we are today for school. So I attended MIT um from 2012 to 2016, uh studied mechanical engineering there, and was also lucky enough to play baseball while I was there. Most people are very surprised that MIT has varsity sports teams, which I actually like. They're actually not half bad because you get some good athletes that want to get a great education at the same time. So played baseball there, studied mechanical engineering. So both like technology building cool stuff was always very, very much a passion of mine, but also um sports and fitness. Um, and then around like, so I was in college 2012, 2016. Um, I there were kind of two big things that caused me to kind of found perch with a couple of buddies in college. Um, one was I actually herniated a disc while I was strength training, uh, my freshman year. I was a uh like young guy, you don't really anticipate that happening. Um, and unknown exactly why it happened, uh, but whether it be overtraining, sometimes something wrong with my form, but I herniated a disc and I I still struggle with that injury today. And then the second one was just really noticing a um a gap in the fitness market, one that still exists today and many companies are trying to solve, where you had Apple Watch Fitbit, kind of that quantified self-movement was really becoming popularized around that time. Um but as athletes when we go into the weight room, we're still manually writing down our data into spreadsheets. Um, and then it was just very surface level data, right? Like, what did you do, but not how well you did it. So it was kind of these two like injury prevention and getting injured, as well as like, you know, this large gap and trend in the marketplace that made me want to start perch and dive into it. Um, and we started or in college, my senior year at MIT. MIT has a lot of great entrepreneurial resources. They gave us a little bit of funding, went through an accelerator there. I went back to grad school at MIT cancel engineering and actually dropped out of grad school to pursue perch full-time. So it was kind of bad to say, but I was doing part-time perch, part-time grad school. And uh, all the hours I was spending on grad school, I was like, I just want to be working on this company. Um, so I ended up dropping out, and you know, the rest is history. That was like 2017, so we've been at it for you know five, six years now. Um, so that's a brief brief background.

Yeah, yeah, that's fascinating. And it's uh, you know, so I I played sports at Boston College too. So we played against MIT, you know, uh anecdotally. And so my team at the teams I played on the swimming and waterpole teams were both varsity back then before Title IX kind of took a hatchet to it, but uh that's a whole nother story. But we did we played MIT tough, man. I mean, there are some really smart, aggressive players on the water pool team in MIT, and I was I was always surprised because you know, let's just be honest, like, no one wanted to lose to MIT, right? Exactly. Like that's the worst. Like, and we did. And I was like, oh my god, I look walked away from like, okay, what just happened? Well, those guys outplayed us, they outsmarted us in every so many, in every way. And it was uh anyway, so kudos to MIT. Um, yes, you know, with your background too, I'm looking at your your website too. You've you at Time and MIT, you've done some really cool products. I mean, you work with a lot of robotics, you worked with um, I think that my favorite one was I saw in here was the uh the penthouse tenthouse. That was pretty cool. Uh it's all uh it's all really interesting stuff. I mean, give us background. Like, how do you when you're when you're thinking about the stuff you're gonna build or the projects you're gonna work on, like is there a thought process to it? Do you see a problem? You're like, oh, I think I have to find a solution to that. Like, what's the thought process behind an inventor?

Yeah, that's a blast. A lot of those are blasts from the past. Um, be honest, it's like I I'm not doing as much inventing these days. It's like you're inventing solutions to just problems day to day. It's like perch was probably the last idea that I worked on, and now it's just trying to scale, scale this business. Um, MIT was like an incredible like place to be a part of. Out of it, like if you've never been, like I mean, it's just like the campus is awesome. Like, what's incredible about that is I like from early on at my time there, I just I've always loved building things from, you know, it's a kind of classic story, but like from playing with Legos to just like solving problems from high school to college, it's just like identifying a problem, designing a solution, building something, and then solving that problem and building it from that ideation phase to you know, having a customer smile and say, thank you for building this. That's just such a rewarding and exhilarating experience. Um, and I found myself really attracted to that at MIT. So they had a ton of project-based classes. A lot of the stuff you saw on there were projects related to courses at MIT. So that penthouse tenthouse was something called, it was uh, it's my freshman year there. It was a toy uh product product uh design class specifically built for toys. So the penthouse tenthouse was like we embedded air beams in a comforter, and then you can blow it up and it turns into a tent on top of your bed, which is like we just came up with that idea and built it. It was cool. Um yeah, maybe that's my next startup after this. I don't know. Um, but yeah, there was a ton of other ton of other things that we worked on while we were there. Um and I haven't done too much in independent projects, but after I actually hurt my back, um my roommate and I, we built our own sit-to-stand desk. We were like, oh, we don't have the money to like buy you know a $600 desk. So we just like screw it, let's just build our own. Um and it was pretty janky, and we probably should have just bought one, but like it was such a rewarding experience to do that. You learn, you learn so much doing it. Um, and I took that desire and turned it into like a startup, right? And I I don't do as much of that anymore. Um way more on the business side and you know, being the CEO of a company, but it's it's still this exhilarating experience to take something from nothing to you know making an impact on people.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you certainly done that with perch. So let's talk about that. Like, walk us through that. Like, what is perch? Um, I think this will serve as a nice introduction for a lot of people to velocity-based training and some of the and all the technologies that you're you're getting into. But a lot of these technologies that you're working with are very um, very hot within the industry. There's a lot of promise to them. So yeah, describe like what perch is, maybe uh through user experience, tell us tell us what perch is.

Yeah, absolutely. So very high level, it's like we are connected strength training. Um, so we use uh basically computer vision, so cameras and machine learning to quantify uh when people work out. So like sets, reps, power, output, speed, a bunch of different metrics. So the way that kind of manifests itself today, it's like we we basically built our first product geared towards performance, so geared towards pro college teams, military, um, high school. Um so the experience is very much meant for that market. Um, but the product is essentially a small camera that you effortly attach to a weight rack. So you can kind of think of we give a weight rack a set of eyes and a brain. Um, it then pairs to a tablet. So the athlete will walk up, they'll sign in, and then while they lift, we're essentially using those cameras to quantify all those metrics we just talked about. So there's no wearables or something attached to the athlete. Um, after every rep, they'll get immediate, like instant feedback regarding like the speed of their lift or their power output or you know, one of the dozen different metrics that we capture. They'll get um a coach will say, like, set a range that they want their athlete to be within. So they're getting that real-time feedback and that data gets stored. So there's a basically a dashboard that we have where you can view track your progress over time. We have leaderboard functionalities. So University of Georgia, which is a client, they throw this leaderboard up on their TV and their weight room so their their athletes can compete head to head, like on any metric they want on a daily basis, not just what your wonder at max is. So there's a ton of value to the data and a ton of different ways that people utilize it. But at the end of the day, it's capturing good quality data about strength training, that data that really is not captured like any other way.

So why is that what's the benefit, right? Like if I'm I'm an old, like I I guess I'm old school, right? Like I track all my my squats and my deadlifts and my presses, like you know, I track it and I kind of know in my head, you know, whether or not I'm getting stronger or not just by the numbers. But the data that you provide, why is that so valuable to the trainer, the coach, or you know, just anybody who wants to lift more and lift better.

Yeah, that's fair. I we could talk for days about it. Like all like for me personally, if I'm lifting without a product, I actually don't know if I'm getting stronger, right? If I'm like not not to get nerdy, but if I'm just periodizing, right? So if I'm just I go in the next week and I add 10 pounds to what I'm lifting, it's like I'm probably moving that weight slightly slower, um, right, because it's heavier. So you're changing a variable, but you don't know if you're actually getting stronger, if you're actually improving. Like maybe you are regressing, or maybe you're improving yourself in a way that you don't necessarily want to. Maybe you want to focus on moving things faster, or you want to focus on uh getting stronger, or you want to focus on hypertrophy, right? So like increasing the size of your muscles. There's a million different ways to train in that way. And it's really hard without measuring it if you're actually improving in the way that you want to. So we basically give you the way to measure on a day, like rep by rep basis if you are progressing towards your goals. Um, so that's at a very, very high level. It's like there's the analogy that I say a lot, and I've probably said it on other podcasts, is right now when you go into the weight room, it's like people feel like they are measuring their progress because they know how much weight they lifted. But it's like you're really only measuring like what you did, but not how well you did it, which like is it's kind of like going to a track, running on a track four times without something as basic as a stopwatch. It's like, okay, I know you know you did a mile, right? Like next next week, just go do five laps, right? One run 1.25 miles. But you actually, if you don't have a stopwatch, you don't know if like maybe you ran that 1.25 miles a whole lot slower and you actually didn't get any better, right? You improved your endurance, but maybe that's not what you were trying to get better at. Um, so what we offer is basically that stopwatch for strength training. Um, it's like it's kind of as simple as that. Um, it's just quality of movement. Um, it's just extremely important to measure like progress on a day by day or week by week basis. So I'll stop there. I can give I can go into some more specific examples about how some some of the data is used on a daily basis.

Yeah. Yeah, let's do that. And but I but I also want to ask you before we we get into that, is like so lifting as a category is very broad, right? Like when I think when I hear weightlifting, I think Olympic weightlifting. Some people may think bodybuilding, some other people may think powerlifting, right? Um, new categories like functional bodybuilding with Marcus Philly or kettlebell training. Like there's so many different genres within the categories. So what what specifically do you guys work on? And I mean, is it is it all of it? Um, is it some of it, or is there something you really focus on for bang for buck?

Yes, we we basically track everything right now. Um, so there's no really sealing on what we can track in terms of the experience that we've built. We've primarily built it for like athletes and strength and addition coaches. So, really for athletic performance is kind of that main, that beachhead market that we went after first. Um, but within that, there's a ton of different training styles. So, of course, these athletes are doing uh bench press, squat, deadlifts, or like your fat powerlifting movements, but there's a lot of uh cleans and snatches and pulse. So a lot of like Olympic weightlifting movements as well. Um, so it's really we've targeted kind of these large compound lifts, which is like a number of different markets. Um, and then we have some stuff right now. We're releasing a feature soon that's gonna allow us to basically track any body weight movement in the weight room as well, which opens up the use case to of like bodybuilders, for instance, and even home gym users and health clubs. There's a ton of avenues that we're trying to explore, but we've really started focused on the performance space.

Yeah, yeah, because I mean they they care the most, right?

Like they're they're looking for unique advantages. Exactly. And they um and we can get into this soon, but they really know how to utilize the data as well. Um like utilizing like a power output number or speed number. Um it's kind of like the heart rate number in when you're in cardio, right? Like a lot of people don't necessarily know what ranges you should be in, but a lot of people do. Um and in the strength conditioning world, like velocity means something. So we can start as just a data collection tool, present that number and not have to build a crazy recommendation engine for people. Um it's just like here's the number, and that is extremely valuable to those coaches and they know what to do with it.

Yeah, yeah, interesting. So let's circle back to what you're saying, you know, particular use cases. Like give us some some anecdotal um yeah, uh cases where you may use this tech.

So the there's two that I'll start with. So one would be like real-time feedback, and then the other one would be more like longitudinal or like long-term progress tracking. So the real-time feedback would be so let's say, like, Eric, on your program, you're gonna do uh five by five today at 80% of your one rep max. Um but one that would require you to know what your one rep max is, which a lot of people don't actually know or aren't measuring. Um, and then two, based off how well you slept last night or a variety of other factors, like your 80%, like that might be too heavy for you on a given day, right? It might be um, you might be really tired, so you probably shouldn't lift that amount. Um so basically what we do or what how coaches utilize it is instead of prescribing a weight or like a percentage, they say, I want you to lift at this speed. Uh just lift at this speed, and you should probably start at like 225 pounds. And if they can't hit that speed with 225 pounds, that means the weight's too heavy, right? You can't move it fast enough, so it's too heavy. So take some weight off. But if you're actually lifting uh exceeding that speed, it means the weight's too light, you're having a great day, or you've really progressed in your program a lot and you've gotten really stronger. So you can actually add some weight and optimize for that good day or the strength that you've gained. Um give you like bringing that back to like the performance space. Um, when we were working with LSU, um, like Jamar Chase was using the product. Um, so I this is like an anecdote. So they would like run on the field, they'd be monitoring how much the workload was on the field. Um, they use like GPS systems, so they're capturing like they thought the practice was extremely difficult, right? They ran the crap out of these guys. So when they came into the weight room after practice, they were going to not lift them as hard. Um, but they had perch on. So Jamar was just like he couldn't lift the weight slow. He was just always exceeding the velocity. So they were able to add more weight and just like optimize for a good day. Because with without that, you're you're just guessing. It's really just guessing because there's so many factors. So you kind of, with that real-time feedback, really taking the guesswork out of the training that you're doing. Um, and then on the longitudinal side to the long-term side, like every rep you're getting, every set you're capturing, you're you're measuring that and you can store it. So, for instance, a great way to measure progress, how most programs are measuring progress right now is every eight weeks, 12 weeks, you're measuring a one-rep max. So that measuring takes a lot of time for one, and then it can be inaccurate and it's also gonna be dangerous because you don't want to load your guys up or people up to a one-rep max. So, what our technology basically does is if you're measuring something as basic as speed or power output, let's say I lifted 225 pounds today and 225 pounds next week and the week after. If I'm moving that 225 faster next week, faster the week after, that's a very clear indication of progress. Or just like power output, right? You couldn't imagine like getting on a bike without a power output number. So we offer that same type of metric uh when you're in the weight room.

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's interesting. And I think uh, you know, I I've been I haven't been in the weightlifting game my whole life. Like, you know, when I started in athletics, it was just like in high school, it was just bench press and some bodybuilding stuff. There was no science behind it, at least you know where I was. And then college, even it got a little bit more complex, but still, you know, not too much. And then, you know, over the last like 15 years, I've really gotten into it. And there's so many factors, uh, especially after getting to coach so many people, too, you know, between athletes and just, you know, uh weekend warriors and everyday folks, right? In in weight training, there's so many factors that go into a good or bad day. And I found that, you know, the worst thing you can do is let your ego drive the session, right? Because I am as guilty as anybody, like, you know, back squatting yesterday and I was like, oh, I should be lifting more, right? Compared to last week, I should be lifting more. And then, but you you can't. And it sounds like this kind of takes a lot of that out, the emotionality of it, and just gets very like, it's okay, you know, because uh, as you know, I mean, um, and this is actually a question I want to ask you as well, is when you look at like the insights into someone's readiness, um, you know, whether it be HRV or whatever kind of wearable data or just you know, even self-reporting of how they feel. How how do you guys do you guys connect with that data at all, or do you have insights to feedback? Is there like a feedback loop between those two things?

Yeah, that's actually a uh feature we're working on right now where some of the now body weight tracking that we're doing, we're gonna be turning that into uh jump assessments. And one of the main applications of jump assessments, rather than just like measuring jump height, things like that, is really readiness. So readiness is a great, if you're just tracking it over time, like really anything can be a metric of readiness. So one potential application of jump tracking would be before you're set, you walk up, you do a jump, three jumps, and you're able to measure um either jump height or peak velocity or something called like RSI mod, which is like another metric that usually need a force plate to capture. You can potentially capture that off just the camera. And then if you're tracking that over time, you can see how that's fluctuating and changing. And that's an amazing uh you can use that in a variety of ways. One to adjust the workout, or two, simply just have a conversation with the athlete or yourself, understand like what actions are leading to certain outcomes, um, whether it's sleep, nutrition, like partying, whatever it might be. Um so we are getting to that. But right now, the main thing, um I I can get super nerdy here, but like if you know what an athlete's baseline is, right? You know, like I have a based off all my historical data on perch, I know how fast I typically move 135 pounds. I know fat how fast I typically move 225 pounds. So you can clearly see if I'm squatting 225 today or squatting somewhere in between then, like am I at my baseline, above it, below it? So because you're capturing the data every day, you know what your baseline is, and you can you always know how you are relative to it. And that's something that in strength training, it's like you feel it, right? You feel like you're not moving the weight as you should. Like you feel weak, but you there's no way of really showing that or proving it and then making adjustments off of it. Um, like and kind of vice versa to what you said. Sometimes I feel bad and it's like, oh man, I should just give up today, like whatever. But then my data is like, no, you're actually performing well today. So it's kind of a mental thing too, and it helps you, it can help you get past that.

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Yeah, that's a really good question. We have not, like, be totally honest, gotten into the that deep on the data analytics, or we haven't tried to answer those questions yet. Um, so I can't speak to exactly like, can we do that? Because we haven't tried. But generally, just like with tracking over time, you should be able to see fluctuations like in performance based off of like, yeah, like a number of variety of factors, right?

Yeah. And how does it actually work? Like from, you know, if I walk into the weight room, where it where is it, right? Like, where is your technology? Um, you mentioned, you know, you need an iPad, but you know, how does it set up work?

Yeah, exactly. So if you think about um, again, we're primarily geared towards these like elite performance facilities. So if you think about um University of Georgia weight room or University of Florida's weight room, like they'll have uh like 30 weight racks in their facility. So they'll take our camera and they will put it on uh each one of their weight racks. So it's really kind of meant, it's like a station. So uh most of the lifts that people care about, or these coaches care about, are being performed at a weight rack. So the camera will be strapped to essentially the top of the weight rack, that top cross member, typically where the pull-up bar is. The product's small enough that you're really you're not going to interfere with somebody's pull-ups. We retrofit easily to that. And then there's just a tablet that gets put right on the weight rack right there. It's like magnetically adheres to the weight rack. Um, so it's there, it's up, out of the way, you don't really notice it, and people are just lifting as they as they normally do.

And I know you're working on uh partnerships and things like that now that'll really even integrate it more seamlessly. So maybe give us some insights into what that that looks like. Yeah.

So we have some early stage partnerships um coming out soon with um by the time this people listen to this, they'll come out. But um essentially we're we've modified our product to be built directly into weight racks themselves. Um our goal is to really democratize the access to this data. Um one way to do that is through education, it's through uh great product design and a great user experience. And two is by working and aligning ourselves with the best equipment manufacturers in the world. And just um making it like our goal has always been to like we always want to be an additive experience to the workout. We always want it to be not detract from the workout in any way, and we want our hardware and the implementation to be aligned with that. So it's really, really cool to partner and essentially integrate our technology into the equipment that people are using. Um our goal is we we want to make smart weight racks. We want to be on every weight rack in the world and we want to change the way like that people lift. We want to make the world a stronger place. I think by partnering with these weight rack manufacturers, it's um it's a potential, it's a great opportunity to do that.

Yeah, awesome, man. Um, I want to talk about your experience as an entrepreneur, right? Uh I love asking these questions for founders. You know, uh you kind of came right out of college and went right to it, right? Yeah. Um so I I don't know if you've ever had like a quote unquote real job, but you know, it's it sounds like uh, you know, you you take an entrepreneurship head on. You know, what what are some of the and you know, for people who don't know, also you were ranked in Forbes 30 under 30, which is awesome. Man, congratulations. That's that's huge. Uh but what has this ride been like for you over the last six years?

Yeah, it's tough. I don't really know anything else. I I had some internships in college, like worked at um Oculus VR when they were bought by Facebook or Meta, and then Apple. Um, and I realized that I didn't love the big company like vibes, and I wanted to try entrepreneurship. So yeah, since purchase, like the only thing I've done from a career standpoint, and it's been incredible. Um, I'd say I've I love to learn things, and like I'm really pissed off when I don't know how to do something. And I think entrepreneurship has been a like a great avenue, which maybe makes me pissed off a lot because I don't you realize that as you try to start a company and you do all these things, you you certainly don't know a lot. There's a lot of things you don't know. Um, but that's why I love entrepreneurship and love what I do, is because every day is a new challenge. Every day is an opportunity to learn something new and to challenge yourself and to grow. Um, so I'd say it's been a journey of a lot of ups and downs, but it's been, it's mostly just generally heading in the right direction, right? A ton of growth. I've learned a ton. I think I've grown a lot as a leader and a person. Um, because of, regardless of how perch turns out, right, and where we end up, um, it's just an incredible experience because yeah, like when I was at MIT, I was the biggest introvert and I still am. Um I still like would rather be doing engineering than sales calls, but I think I've become really good at sales, really good at fundraising. Like I now know finance and just how to run a company. Um, so yeah, it's been an incredible experience. I don't know if I directly answered your question, but that's kind of like the my general vibes of you know being an entrepreneur.

Yeah, yeah. Well, one of my friends said uh, and I I laugh at this every time I say it, but entrepreneur is just a funny French word for salesperson. And uh, you know, that's kind of what you are. Like you're developing tech, you got to sell it. Always gotta be selling. And and every great, you know, founder and entrepreneur is always at some point, you know, taking the sales process head on and and you know, spearheaded it because who else is gonna do it, right? And it's like another thing. If you look across your organization or in your team, like if you don't know who the salesperson is, then guess what? You are the salesperson, right? Exactly. What about your what go ahead?

You just realize that every everything is uh there's a book called The To Sell as Human, everything is sales, right? Like even just managing somebody or trying to convince you know my co-founder to do something, um, everything is uh a practice in sales. So it's I think as an an engineer coming from MIT, you have absolutely no respect for sales, but I quickly gained a ton of respect for it, like very quickly. It's it's it's hard and it's really important.

Yeah, and it's one of the most marketable skills you could ever have. I mean, if you can, if you can sell stuff, and really it's it's like finding mutual mutual benefit, right, for both parties. And and that's if you kind of look at it that way, you're just trying to strike a good deal. And uh that's everything in life. I mean, gosh, I'm even training an eight-month-old Australian shepherd right now that we just got. And I feel like I'm constantly trying to sell my dog. I still want to do something, yeah, without feet. Yeah, yeah. Uh she probably learns faster than me though. Um, what about failure? You know, in your relationship with failure along the way. I mean, it's it's just failure in startups is ubiquitous, you know, whether how big or how small the failures are, they're gonna happen, right? So, how have you kind of taken that process and digested them and made them positive? Like what's what's that what's that been like for you?

Yeah, failure will always be tough. Um, and generally, I don't know if we've like, we haven't generally failed because we we've like still growing, right? But there's been some too many failures to count or even remember along the way. Um, like countless lost deals, right? Countless like bugs introduced in code, countless um, yeah, just like things that I've mismanaged through throughout the times. Um I think it's it's hard, but it's expected. And I think it's um, yeah, like it's it's just part of the process. And I think you have to tell that to yourself, you have to tell that to the people that are working for you or part of your organization. Um, and it has to be something that's okay because if you're not failing, you're not growing. Um, you're not challenging yourself, you're not challenging your people. Um, like what we're doing and what most entrepreneurs are doing, or every entrepreneur is like very, very difficult, and there will be failures along the way. And I think if you are not expecting that, you're setting yourself up for a bad time or for failure. And then the most important thing is to just always try to take away something from it and to learn something from that failure. Um, and I think as a leader, too, it's really important to try to fail, I wouldn't say publicly, but fail like um to try to try to create that vulnerability, right? To try to say that it's okay to fail because you want your people to challenge themselves and um to also just not hide things, right? To be public about their failures and to ask for help when they need it too. So I don't know, it yeah, a lot of emotions about failure, right? And you're always trying to avoid it, but I think you need to have a positive relationship with it.

Yeah. You know, and anytime I've I've worked with uh a startup and you know, working with uh workout now is is you know a lot of fun. It's just I always think when I'm doing that type of work, or even when I was a business owner, um, I'm always like I always dream of like the nine to five. You're like, God, it'd be so nice to just sit here and collect a paycheck, right? And just kind of do whatever for eight hours a day and then know that you're gonna get paid at the end of the day. But then I then I think about actually doing that type of work. I'm like, oh, I don't think I forget that I'm not really hireable in that way. Like I'm just not in a good employee because I'm gonna be like, well, let's can we just refine this? Can we fix this? Let's try this over here. Has anyone thought about this? Um so anyway, uh, where where is the company now? Like how many employees you guys have? I mean, I know you're you're private, right? Um, so share what you can, but you know, give us some ideas of where where you're at.

Absolutely. Um, so we are about 25 employees now, uh, primarily based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, right out off of MIT's campus. Um, but we have we're about split half remote, half in Cambridge. Um, like customer-wise, we're I mean again, still focused on performance, but we have about 50% of the NFL's clients, every professional sports league, um, like half the SEC, half the ACC. Like we 3X'd like our revenue last year. We're on pace to do that again this year. So um overall, like we are um we've raised uh like a decent amount of money at this point, close to $7 million. So it's like overall, we've grown like a lot as a business and still a lot of growth to be had. But um, yeah, it's kind of crazy how far we've come just in in the last year.

Yeah, congratulations. Well, where do you see that growth coming? I mean, obviously you're you know, you you have your core group, right? Athletic performance. Uh, and you and I have talked about this in the past, but when you look at, you know, where do you see the expansion happening? Is it in consumer markets? It is in markets that I can't even think of right now. Like, what's your thoughts?

Yeah, we are exploring a variety of different markets right now. So it's kind of like two parts of our business. Um, one is really focused on how can we continue to, there's still so much untapped market in the performance space. Like we count 50% of the NFL's clients, but there's a ton of other professional sports leagues, a ton of colleges, like down at D2, D3, high schools, military, um, all pretty untapped for us. So there's a lot of potential growth opportunity in just the elite in the performance space. Um, but the big challenge is, you know, again, our mission as a company is we want to make the world a stronger place. We want to democratize access to this data, we want to change the way that people lift weights. So to do that and accomplish that mission, there's much bigger markets out there, like many more people that lift weights that we want to impact. So the big challenge is how do you align what the New England Patriots need with what um like Eric needs in his home gym, right? Or at uh a lifetime fitness in his health club. So we think that a lot of the growth is gonna come from those future segments long term. So D2C is something that we're exploring. Um, so people lifting at homes, I think that's like a very untapped market, specifically for um, you know, there's tonals, there's tempos, uh, there's a lot of connected strength out there. But for the people that lift in their garage gym, right? The people that are the crossfitters, the weightlifters, the power lifters that love to use barbells and kettlebells and dumbbells, there isn't a lot of experiences or technology built for them. Technology that allows them to get the get the feedback they need, but then also track their progress and then also connect with the community and compete with other people. So there's a ton of opportunity to really connect that community and provide value there. We're also looking at the health club space as well. Um, we've just seen um a ton of growth there from the conversation we've had. People are buying weight racks left and right. So it seems like weightlifting is really growing in the health club setting. So there's an opportunity for us to allow personal trainers to potentially uh like quantify the value for gyms to quantify their value to create community around the data that's being collected. Um, and then the third one would be on the healthcare side. Uh, so we've seen just through the the data that we have, um, and just all of our technology is completely proprietary. Like we've all built it from the ground up. There's an opportunity to provide really good quality data around uh functional movement assessments, like programming. And we think there's a great opportunity to enter that space through our existing customer base, so through like athletic training departments within performance or elite settings. Um, so that that space is huge. And uh I think there's a ton of value that we can provide there.

Yeah. It it is exciting how strength training is making this huge push right now. I mean, I I see in my gym here, you know, we went from two strength racks to three. They they just put in another platform. And I I come in in the afternoon. If I don't come in, if I come in in like kind of a busier time, I can't find it. And it's frustrating at first, but then I kind of smile. I'm like, oh, this is great. People are doing real legitimate strength training, and a lot of it's female, you know, which is which is even you know, even better. So I'm I think it's a great movement, it's a great timing and everything. Um I want to talk about uh because you probably look at these things at a high level. There's so much data now that we have that we're you know taking in, whether it just be in the performance area or just you know, wearable data and all that. Of course, you know, you and I are recording this in Q, what are we in Q2 right now, 2023? Um AI has hit the world really hard. You know, it's crazy. I mean, the uh ChatGPT is like the most utilized app ever, um, you know, if you can call it that. So it's it's just really interesting, almost surreal times that we're in right now. When you look at AI and its applications for fitness and health and performance, like what gets you excited? Is there anything that scares you a little bit? Like, where are you at with AI?

Interesting. So we we use a lot of AI like in our product today, um, not in like the chat GPT sense, like not a large language model, but it's like all of our computer vision algorithms are all um, it's all machine learning based. So we essentially have like built our own infrastructure to ingest the data that we've captured, train neural networks, um, and then deploy those, and then kind of have this closed loop feedback of if our neural network is not performing well, capture more data, retrain it, like teach it, and then redeploy to our customer base. So that's kind of the way how like ChatGPT works, where it's just kind of trained on a ton of data and just spitting out the answer that it thinks it's is right. Um and then our next big thing will be leveraging. It probably will continue to be proprietary, just so specific, but leveraging a lot of that same technology to um give people insights, feedback, recommendations based off of the data. Um I've chatted with our I I'm not an expert here. I've chatted with my uh co-founder who's uh study computer science at MIT um in through grad school there about how we could, as you know, CEO should, how can we leverage chat GPT in our product? I'm sure every everybody's trying to figure that out right now so they don't get left behind. Um and it's interesting. I don't think there is for us a super easy use case just because like um chat GPT has to be like, and I could be misspeaking here, but it's like we have our own data structure and all this data that's kind of like structured in a certain way. And ChatGPT is this large language model that's trained on a bunch of this data and statistically trying to figure out what's the next best thing to say. Um, and there's probably some things that we can do, but from my conversations with us internally, is there's not a quick and easy application to say like incorporate ChatGPT and ask it a question about perch data and then to just spit out like the right answer, right? It's not gonna have the context needed. Um, but there's potentially awesome applications that like you know, you see um kind of rambling here, but you've seen how uh like Kanye and the weekend and Drake, you can like train people's like voices and stuff. There's like really cool things that you could potentially integrate into products to um like we think we've thought about things. If somebody doesn't hit their power output number, right, how can you motivate that person? It's like you have like you type in some language like uh text and it just is trained on the coach's voice, and now you have the coach like yelling at you, right? Like on the weight rack. So there's like that's using AI and a lot of the stuff that's come out, this generative AI, to provide a more engaging like customer experience. Um, so there's uh yeah, none of it really scares me too much. I think it's well, yeah, I don't want to go too deep, but like for the fitness space, I think there's a lot of really exciting opportunity here. Um, I think it's I'm on the train of like it'll make the really good people more productive. And I think it will provide like, yeah, it's just a it's a really exciting time, I think, with a lot of change happening.

Yeah. Yeah, I I think uh I think with every technological advancement, and I'm just speaking in context of our industry, is you know, people when it first comes out, like wearable data, right? When the Fitbit came out, and then um, gosh, I don't even know what that was, like you know, circa 2013, 2014, when you know, where more people start wearing wearables and you're like, oh my God, what do we do with the data? And I it's like, well, just hold on, just pause for a second and breathe and just use it, like just be a user of it. And then it'll start to become clearer as you do it. And I think that's everyone's like rushing, like, well, how do I use Chat TDT? Well, first of all, you just use it. Like I have it open all the time, right? And I'm using it for constantly, you know, helping with my newsletters. Um, it's helping me learn Portuguese because my wife's Brazilian. Like, you know, there's just little things, you're just like using little prompts like daily, and you start to be like, oh, and then you start to get better with it, and then you start to use, and then you start to see the applications and maybe bigger scenarios, but at least you're an educated way that you can talk about it. And I think that's the same. Like, wearables are the same thing as like, well, well, what do I do with wearable? Well, just first of all, get one. You know, spend a hundred bucks and get a Fitbit, whatever it may be. See how it's used, and then you'll get insights for your clients. Because number one, you're gonna want to be able to answer some basic questions about it, right? Because and then you're gonna find all kinds of uses once you start to get into it. So anyway, no, that's that's kind of my my big takeaways. You know, um go ahead.

I was just saying I agree with you. Yeah, it's we we've been trying to figure out, I think about it a lot, right? And it's um like we had our sales leader within the purge, just like we had we trained our sales team on how to use Chat GPT and potential best practices, right? Something as simple as write up an email to a client, like plug into chat GPT, and say, like, edit this for grammar, right? And then just like um you have people that maybe struggle with grammar or how to properly word something, and it it just makes you more productive. Um, so it's there's yeah, it's just really cool. It's just you just got to use it and see like how it could work for you.

Yeah. Yeah. And in you know, in the sphere of workout too, like we're we're fully integrated. We have four AI engineers and you know working towards the protocol platform, which will make coaches' lives a lot easier. And you know, I don't I don't care what you think about program design and you know, if it's you making the special sauce or if it's just you know it's not as important as you think it may be, but program design is very time consuming, you know, so is nutrition planning. And there's a lot of that can at least be, you know, rough templates can be built out for the industry. And I think that's pretty exciting. Um so taking your your kind of CEO hat and put on your technologist hat, like when you look at the industry overall, and I I say fitness, health, and wellness, and I kind of encapsulate it all in once. Like, what technology gets you really fired up? What are you excited about right now? Is there anything out there that you you have your eye on? Yeah, it's interesting.

From I don't know if there's anything one specific thing that I have my eye on. I I'm sure everybody has their eye on what we just talked about, which is like AI and how it's potentially leveraged in fitness or just general applications. Like in the sports space, what we're seeing is like this demand for uh just like aggregated data. So bringing all your data into one spot. And even in the most elite settings, people haven't really been able to figure it out. Um, there's been a lot of companies that have popped up trying to do it. But if you think about the elite sports space, um you have some are collecting sleep data um from like an aura ring or whoop, uh, there's nutrition data, there's on-field data, so like GPS or through like cameras in stadiums, there's weight room data, um, and there's probably like there's weigh-in data, there's probably a bunch of data I'm missing. Um that's like C yeah, yeah. There's uh a ton of stuff. So it's like how do you aggregate and collect that and put it all in one place? Um on the consumer side, I know there's a bunch of companies trying to work on it. On the elite side, there's been a lot of companies that exist today. Um, and some do a pretty good job at it. And from what we're seeing, we're seeing uh, and I think people have been talking about this for a long time, but how do we bring it all together collectively? And then um, there's been some other companies popping up recently in the sports space as well about just machine learning data analytics. Um, how do you ingest this data and create really good machine learning models about um to just pull out insights, whether it be for a front office like a GM or for a strength mutation coach. So that's something that I'm super curious about and how we can be part of that to at the end of the day, at least in the sports space or even for consumers, just help people make better decisions about their life, right? Um, and I think you're capturing all this data, but a lot of people don't really know what to do with it. Um and we don't want to be part of that problem, we want to be part of that solution. Um so that's both through good design on our part, but also working and being open and trying to um provide like aggregated solutions.

Yeah, yeah, that's great. What do you need right now? Uh, Jacob, like what's important to you if people are listening, um, you know, who would you like to hear from? Um, how can we help you?

Well, yeah. I don't know what I am and am not allowed to say. If you are a consumer interested in testing our product or buying it, let will like please reach out um via our website. Um, we are currently like have a long wait list but are looking for specific people to test the product. Same if you're a health club owner, um, and then I think if you are an engineer um or project manager, we're also hiring on that side. So um please reach out. And if you're just passionate about what we do, uh reach out, would love to hear about hear from you.

Awesome. And Jacob, I know you're pretty active on LinkedIn. Um I see you know constantly posting. And I'm trying to do that. Yeah, yeah, it's really good. I like your stuff. Um so I urge people to go there. Is there anything else that that you'd want them to go?

Um just check out our website. Um, I LinkedIn is like the only social media um that I use. Uh so you can follow me on follow along our journey on LinkedIn. Um, check out our website, check out um our perch underscore fit or perch.fit social channels. Um, we post some pretty good content there.

Awesome. Well, Jacob, thank you for uh spending your Friday morning, afternoon with me. Uh it's always a pleasure. I really enjoy our conversations. I always learn something cool. So um yeah, it's it's been awesome. And ladies and gentlemen, Jacob Rothman.

Yeah, I appreciate it, Eric, but it was a great time.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This is your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minutes. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, iTunes, Spotify, Catbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because I put a lot of work into it and want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the feature of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Feature of Fitness. Have a great day.