Royi Metser - Smart Shoes That Coach: Avelo's Biomechanical Revolution

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Sorry, we are live. Roe Metzer, welcome back to the future of fitness, my friend.

It's been a minute. Good to see you again in a different role with a different product and uh company, but excited to be here again.

Oh yeah. It's different. Uh it is different. You've uh you have had your head down doing work for I mean years now, you know, but obviously you and I have connected, you know, periodically and you've been provided me really good updates on what's going on what you're doing, Abello. And this is a little early, like you know, for for most of the time, like for the stage of the company you're at, it's it's a little bit early when I would normally have on this podcast. But having known you for a long time and knowing like the product market fit, the size of the market that you're going after in the innovation, it's like when people start listening to us talk today, they're gonna be like, why doesn't this exist? Exactly. Why hasn't anyone done this? So um I had the same thought. Yeah, well, you're doing it. So uh let's start with this, Roy. Like for people maybe who who don't know who you are, maybe uh haven't heard from you too much since the inside tracker days. Let's uh let's start with your little bit of your background and then we'll get into what you're doing in Velo running.

Let's do it, yeah. So I'm the founder and CEO of Velo, and I've been working on this company for about two and a half years, but it was a few years before that where and when my running journey began, and that's what ultimately led me here. So I've always been into fitness and grew up playing sports and grew up, you know, even in my adult life, very fit and active. It was around 2021 when for the first time I was not fit and honestly unhealthy for the first time in my life, and it's an experience that I think a lot of people had at that time. It was in the middle of the COVID pandemic. I was living in in Boston and I hadn't been to the gym for a year, year and a half. Obviously, gyms had shut down for a long period of time, and I was not eating as healthy as I used to, and all of that led me to gain a significant amount of weight and not feel good. And it was actually a blood test that was the catalyst to get me back on track, and so I was working at Insight Tracker, a company that provides information to individuals about their health using blood biomarkers and other data. And so I I did a blood test and I got results that were eye-opening, were a pretty amazing wake-up call for me. I had, among other things, really high cholesterol, like the bad kind and scarily high. And I had an inner age, in other words, a biological age that was 10 years older than my chronological age. And that was the catalyst again that I needed to do something, and that something was a few days later, I went all in and I was like, I I this can't go on, and I signed up for my first marathon. I had run half marathons before then, but I needed a a really big and ambitious goal to train for uh to get me off the couch, so to speak. And so I started training that week, and six months later I ran it, finished the race. I the wheels came off around mile 20 or 21, um, which is pretty common, especially for your first marathon. But I was able to cross the finish line. I snuck in just under four hours, uh, a little bit slower than my goal, but I was pretty excited to finish, and I fell in love with running and with racing during that process. That's what kicked off my running journey. And eventually I started thinking about how I could get better at running, and therefore what products I could use to get better at running, and when the specific product that I felt like should exist to help me didn't, that's when I eventually decided to actually go and and build it.

Did did you do did you have an endurance background at all? Or was this just like I'm I'm going for I got six weeks and I'm gonna train for a freaking marathon?

Luckily it wasn't six weeks, that would have been six weeks. Couch the marathon in six weeks. Yeah, that's uh I don't recommend that. But no. I I had run a couple half marathons, so I I had raced before um and followed a training plan. I loved to run though, always, but it was usually, you know, it was part of my overall fitness routine. It was the cardio part of my fitness usually, so it was not something I did more than once a week, typically. And but but I always loved it, so it was it was exciting for me to kind of pursue it more seriously. I trained for probably six months.

Okay, okay. All right, that that sounds yeah, that sounds more appropriate. Yeah. Um you know, I mean a little bit of my background, Ryan. This will set the tape set the table for for what we're gonna talk about. I mean, I um I'd never really been a runner, I'd done a lot of endurance stuff, a swimmer and Laura Pole player and uh a lot of different ventures. I took a lot of cardio, but like I I I injured my back in CrossFit and herniated two discs right around circa, let's say 2011. Right. So I had no choice. I was I was on timeout, couldn't do a lot of weights, so I started running. I took uh the CrossFit um running certification, which is a lot like pose running, I'll just say. Um the pose method, and I that changed everything. I was like, oh my god, like after that, running was so much easier. Like I used to get side stitches, right, all the time, and you know, a lot of obviously like knee pain and stuff like that. And then you you you know, and then we did all the analysis there, and it was really cool, like this slowing it down, looking at your gate, all the joke and drills, running barefoot, like all that stuff completely transformed the way I ran, and I became a much better runner. I got so excited about it that I started doing those workshops, you know, twice a year at my gym, um, really getting people into it. I got into racing and a lot of a lot of stuff happened now. It was just so and then I read the book Born to Run, right? Um, which I don't know if people it is, it's it's excellent. Very a lot of people have strong opinions about the writings in that book. Polarizing. It's polarizing polarizing, right? And I think there's a lot of polarization, good word, within the running community about the proper way to run, right? Whether it's heels, you know, obviously I don't think anyone argues heel striking is right, but like midfoot, forefoot striking, you know, cadence and all these different things, right? But the point being is that there's a lot of different ways to learn how to run better. Most people never take the opportunity to learn how to run correctly. Like they just go and run, they just think it's you know, innate in who we are. But if you'll tell us the numbers in a second, I'm sure. The number of injuries, like it's almost I think it's almost a hundred percent that you're gonna injure yourself if you train for a marathon, right? That's that's unfortunate. So talk to me about the problem, man. What is the market opportunity here? What have you identified? Because you seem like a guy who's not gonna dive headed first into something without doing a little bit of research.

Yeah, I definitely did my research, and it's a fascinating industry, it's a fascinating area of fitness. It's it's arguably the the most popular form of exercise in the world, maybe second most behind walking. So there's hundreds of millions of people who participate in the sport of running across the globe, and because it's so relatively accessible, you don't need a lot of expensive equipment to do it. It does feel very natural to us as humans to run. That's kind of what Born to Run part of that book was uh touched on on that. And actually, if you go back and you look at you know, go back and go back in time, there there's actually forms of running, you know, we've been running for for a long, a long time, and even you know, there's examples of humans using running to hunt. It's called endurance hunting, where we would just basically outlast our prey because while we weren't the fastest, we we could um run for longer distances and longer periods of time. So there is some sort of innate ability that we as humans have to um to run over long long distances. So yeah, for that reason, I think there's a lot of people who participate, but it's very very popular, but very unique in that, as you said, it's not something that the vast majority of people get any sort of instruction or coaching on when they begin. But because it's so accessible, it's also something that most people just start doing on their own. And the result is that for a lot of us, I was one of these people, the process of learning how to train properly and how to run properly is one of tremendous trial and error and a lot of guesswork and figuring things out by making mistakes. And very frequently that mistake is that you end up injuring yourself. And so you hit on the rate of injury, and this is something that was eye-opening for me that actually got me interested in and more curious about the opportunity. The rate of running related injury, when when I found out how high it is, it blew my mind. And uh it's over 50% of runners. Some studies report that up to 79% of runners are injured every year. If if you train for 79% of runners, it's mind blowing every yeah. But if you talk to any runner who runs a few times a week and has been for a long time and and even races, 100% of them have been injured at some point in their running journey. So it's basically inevitable. But the worst part for me and the the most eye-opening was that this rate of injury hasn't improved in decades. So running became a popular recreational sport in the 1970s, where the first running boom happened. It was actually a coach out of Arthur Lidyard was his name who popularized the the concept of long distance running and then uh for fitness, and then Bill Bowerman kind of brought that to the US, uh, one of the founder co-founders of Nike and uh uh amazing and legendary coach who wrote a book called Jogging, and it kicked off this boom of uh running for fitness. And that was in the 70s, and that that was 50 years ago. And since then the sport has grown tremendously. But the rate of injury today is pretty much the same as it was back. And that doesn't make any sense to me. It didn't when I found it out, because obviously our equipment's better, the science has evolved, we know so much more about physiology and biomechanics, and so that was mind mind-blowing. Um and so the status quo was not working to keep runners healthy, to keep runners training smart, to help them accomplish their goals, and to do so healthy over be healthy over long periods of time. And so something wasn't working, and so I got really passionate about figuring out why that was the case and how we could create a a product that might finally make a dent in that, uh, among other opportunities to help runners.

Awesome, man. Well, well, tell us about the product. So maybe when you decided going back to this point, like was it something you drew on a napkin? You're like, well, if we could just do this, right? And then get an XY axis somewhere. And then, you know, what how did it all start? How did the design start? Who did you pull in? Where did you acquire talent and kind of fill the gaps of what you didn't have personally for for the skill sets necessary to take this thing to market?

It started out of a personal passion for it. So it really started from and with me trying to gain knowledge about how to improve as a runner myself. And so I was working at Insight Tracker where we it's a very science-based company, Insight Tracker, which I really respect about them. I respected it then and I still do. I think it's one of their superpowers. And so I went to research. I I tried to read as best as I could physiology and biomechanics research to understand better how I might improve at running. Um, it also led to, I would say, borderline obsession with footwear, because that's one of, as a runner, the most exciting piece of gear that you have. Um, and so I was trying all the latest and greatest shoes. And so I started thinking about measuring data and thinking about shoes. And obviously, I was in the kind of quantified self-space at Insight Tracker, and so thinking about how we might better quantify our movement and forces that are acting on our body, and and is there an opportunity to use that data, which really is not accessible to most of us, to most runners, to use that data to help us reduce our risk of injury, improve our performance. And eventually, as I got deeper and deeper and not just read research, but also I started by speaking with coaches and scientists, physiologists and biomecchists in the space to understand if there really was an opportunity here. And the answer was a resounding yes. And so that that was really the conviction that I needed to build over the course of it, probably took me six months. You know, it started with you know writing a very ugly pitch deck, just outlining again the the opportunity, the the potential solution, and running it by enough people who I felt knew enough about the space and and the product and the problem to gain the conviction that I needed to say, okay, like there is something here, or there's good reasons why it doesn't exist. In other words, the reasons why it doesn't exist, I believe can be overcome. It's not because it's impossible, it's not because there isn't an opportunity, it's not because there isn't enough demand, it's technologically feasible, it's very challenging, but that's not reason enough to not pursue it. And so, yeah, eventually after about six months of working on it nights and weekends, building a lot of conviction, I decided to work on it full time. And pretty quickly I was able to assemble a team of scientists around us. So it really started with a science team, and I started with the science that was really important to me to build a science-based company. So I was lucky to get a couple of advisors on board pretty quickly, PhDs in biomechanics and exercise physiology who were experts in this space, experts on running-related injury, on biomechanics, on performance. And then one of the big catalysts was getting introduced to my co-founder, Peter, who, you know, my background is not in footwear, and his is in footwear and in spades. So he spent three almost three decades at Nike, led footwear for Under Armour, led footwear for Columbia Sportswear. And when he joined a couple months pretty much after I started working on this full time, I'd say that things became a lot more real. So you've been and at what point was that when you got him on board?

How long has it been since that happened?

It's been over two years. So it was pretty much uh a couple months after I started working on this, which was maybe January 2023. You know, by March or April he was on board.

So tell me about the iterations of the product. How has it evolved to what you have now? Um I don't know if we mentioned earlier, but you have an act active Kickstarter campaign right now. And it's going really well. Wow. It's going really well. So yeah. Between that, you know, the the first kind of right in design to what you have now, walk us through that whole product iteration.

It's been a two and a half year journey. I mean, what what we're creating is it's ambitious and it requires us to do a few things really well, each of which, you know, in theory could be their own product or standalone product. So at the beginning, again, it was really just pulling in the right, the right talent, you know, that that was the most important thing. And so it started with the scientists to outline, you know, what is the opportunity, what data could we measure, how how might we measure it? And then there's there was a decision and a lot of discussion around, okay, what's the best way to attack this problem? Do we create, can we do it just with software? You know, can you create an app that can provide something that's uh significantly better than what's out there to coach runners and help them reduce their injury risk, improve their performance? Can we do it just with hardware and software? So create some sort of attachment where you put it on your shoelaces or even an insole or you insert it into uh an existing running shoe and you know do it that way. Or you know, do we go all the way and and really try to build something that's completely and totally vertically integrated? So, in other words, build the whole thing which includes the shoe and make it all work seamlessly together. And after a lot of uh discussion and debate, we decided that while it's the hardest approach, the best one for the customer and the one with the most opportunity and upside is to build it all. You know, there's advantages and disadvantages. You know, I would say I would compare our approach to more of like um, you know, an Apple approach where you know they control the entire stack, right? They build the hardware, but they also control the operating system and the software that runs on the hardware, and that's challenging, but it allows you to create a much, in certain cases, frictionless, better, better and more frictionless and seamless experience for the customer. Whereas the Microsoft approach is a little different, right? They control more of the software, less of the hardware, and so it's more of a partnership model. So we went with the fully vertically integrated approach, and and the reason for that was we wanted to create an experience that was frictionless. So we I believe and we believe that in the wearable device market, like form factor is critical. If you're gonna get someone to put something on their body and to do that continuously over a long period of time, it better be really easy. And the only way, in our opinion, to make it frictionless in in this case was to embed it in a product that people were already using every single day, knew how to use, it required as little behavior change as possible.

Yeah. So it's like a ring doorbell. Right? I always use that example. Like it's it's seamless. People don't have a doorbell. Exactly.

And the analogy that my co-founder uses all the time, Peter, you compare it to a smartwatch, which almost every runner is using today, or many non-runners, or a band or a ring, right, where it's in a form factor that you're kind of used to and it's it's relatively low friction. Compare the amount of people who are using a wrist-based device or a ring to get heart rate and HRV data to the number of people who are going through the trouble of wearing a strap on their chest or wearing a band on their arm, right? There are some people who go through the trouble, but the number is significantly less than the people who just slap a watch on or put a ring on, because although the chest strap might be more accurate, it's a lot uh there's a lot more friction there. And so it was a very similar philosophy here. And so the second that became the product, like, okay, well, now we got to assemble an exceptional team of footwear developers and designers, in addition to engineers that can build the hardware and you know, software engineers who can build an and designers who can build an exceptional app experience. And so doing all of that is not not easy.

Yeah, I'm I'm putting myself in your shoes as you're telling this, and you're probably like, oh, this is gonna be really easy. Maybe we'll just do a little insert right into a shoe or something along, you know, we just put it on your your tight on your shoelace. And then you're like, we want to do this right. This is way bigger. Having to build this whole team and go weight, like this is just pushing out the goalpost even farther. But I think it's the right thing to do, man. I really do. I think having something, I mean, I think about you and I talked about this, I think it's carve, uh, which is in the skiing, right? I think it's just an insert. It's a great product, right? But everyone kind of knows, like, and I'm I'm like any insert never fits perfectly into a ski boot. Right? There's always got to be some kind of cutting or customization, or just it affects everything. So if it's all like you said, vertically integrated into the shoe itself, you know, they don't even know it's there. Like a smartwatch, right? Like, you know, the sensors on my smartwatch, I have no idea they're even there. They're just constantly surveying my watch.

You are wearing you are already wearing a watch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the software. So, I mean, that's I don't know what's harder, the hardware or the software, you tell me.

Oh man, I don't think I can answer that because both are hard, but for different reasons, right? So the the hardware is notoriously challenging. Hard there's the cliche hardware is hard. Of course it's true. Hardware is also So I would argue maybe easier is not the right word, but but it's more you can monetize it better because it's there's a higher barrier to barrier to entry. But I think it it's potentially easier to monetize. But then if you do it and you make it happen, it's much more defensible, it's much more differentiated. So that's the advantage of doing hardware. Of course, it requires more time, it requires more capital, so uh it's much more difficult, of course. So so that's the the drawback. Now with software, it's much faster, much cheaper to build, especially today. You know, apps are a dime a dozen. You know, you put an app on the app store, iOS app store, like you get lost in a sea of fitness and wellness apps. It's insane. And then creating great software that's really, really hard. Really hard. Software that can, especially in this space where you're taking and you're measuring data and you need to make that data intuitive, easy to understand for people, actionable, which is arguably the hardest part, which I think even today many wearables still are searching for the way to make it like really actionable. They've obviously gotten better. And also like have some emotion. Like I think we've reached a point where unfortunately you kind of squint and you look at all the fitness and wellness apps, and they all kind of look similar if you kind of squint and look at them. And and that's because it's challenging to make something that takes this data about your body and and make it beautiful and create this emotional reaction and connection and entertain you. And so I think they're both really hard for different reasons. Yeah, and we're we're obviously um we're striving to make exceptional hardware and software at the same time.

Yeah. We're we're gonna dive into the hardware here for a second, or the software here for a second. But if you want, I mean, for people watching on YouTube, you can show us the shoe, right? What it looks like right now. It's beautiful. I'll try to describe it for people listening. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. So as I was telling you before we jumped on uh the recording, so I actually just got the latest uh uh sample of our one of our colorways. So this is the Avello, uh, we call it the Avello Super Trainer. So it's a hyper versatile and high performance running shoe. So a super trainer is one of the most popular uh and exciting categories of the running shoe market today. So if you follow the running shoe market at all, you you may be familiar with what happened about 10 years ago where the Nike Vaporfly shoe came out, which was a racing shoe that combined incredibly lightweight and responsive foam with a carbon fiber plate that was sandwiched in the foam. And the groundbreaking finding was that this could improve running performance, technically running economy, it was called by 4%. A little more or a little less, depending on the athlete. And since then, you know, records have been shattered pretty much every year in running, and the technology has improved. But based on that core thesis of having these very light but also very bouncy foams, which store and release a lot of the energy and force that you're driving into the shoe. So there's not a lot of force that's dissipated, it's stored and then it's it's given back to you. And so you're able to, it's returning a lot of that energy, and so you're able to run more efficiently and much faster. But that technology has made it from the top end of the market, which is the racing shoes, into everyday running shoes. So shoes that people are using for just regular training. And so shoes are getting lighter, they're getting bouncier, they're getting faster, they're getting thicker, uh, kind of going in the other direction of the book that Born to Run was suggesting that the running shoe market should go. So, yeah, so we've we've created a really versatile premium and high performance super trainer, which is designed to be used on every run, basically. So you can you can use it on easy runs. It should be really comfortable for easy runs, um, but also responsive enough to go really fast and even race in it. So I'm pretty excited about about how far we've come on the shoe.

It's it's a beautiful, clean design. And uh that is something I've noticed over the years. I don't run anymore due to some recurring injuries, ironically, as we talk. But it they've gotten thicker, right? Like I when I was running my races, I was in oh, what is it? I can't remember that specific brand now, but it was very thin, right? And that's how I learned to run because I thought it would teach me how to run better, but now they're getting thicker. I mean, look at Hokus, Jesus. Like that thing is like it's a monster, right? And most people don't wear them to run, they just wear them around the house or to walk and stuff like that, right? Um, but yeah, it's definitely it's definitely expanded. I mean, how do you feel about that? I mean, being like actually, let me take this back because this is more of like a question. Like, are you a a minimalist believer? Are you a zero drop? Like, do you believe in forefoot versus midfoot striking? Like, where do you sit in the the the belief system of running?

So I spent a lot of time reading about this when I was first starting out, mostly because I was interested. And the reality is that we don't really have a definitive answer, like we don't have evidence, studies that support one over the other. We've tried, like there's been tons of research on running shoes, but none of them have conclusively shown that minimalist is better than maximalist, or vice versa for injury prevention. So the general conclusion these days from people who I really respect is that at the end of the day, it's probably not the shoe that's gonna stop you from getting hurt. In other words, the the materials itself, the shoe, the shock absorption. Like the most important thing is probably that the shoe is really high quality and comfortable, which is subjective. Like it needs to fit your foot, it needs to have enough cushioning, it needs to meet your preferences for drop. Like there is no better heel-to-toe drop, zero drop versus high drop. Again, like it's not better or worse. It just changes how you run, it changes how force is distributed on your body. So I'll give you a very simple example. A zero drop shoe where there's basically no difference between the height of the heel and the height of the forefoot, that's gonna apply more of the force that your body's experiencing. More of that force is gonna be distributed to the lower part of your body. In other words, your lower leg, so your Achilles tendon, your calf muscles, your your foot muscles, your foot muscles and tendons and ligaments, like that that's what a zero drop shoe is gonna do. Whereas if if you raise your heel a little bit, even by a few millimeters, that's gonna send more of that force further up the kinetic chain, so more towards the knee, above the knee, to the hip, to the glute. It's not necessarily better or worse. That's basically what we know today. There's not a better, clear winner. So really it comes down to, in large part, personal preference and comfort. And that that's kind of where I sit. Obviously, we want to create a product that runners want. And a lot of runners love high stack, high cushion shoes today. Um so I would say we're not like maximalist, but we're definitely in the kind of sweet spot of where the high performance premium trainers are, which is higher stack than they were a few years ago, no question about that.

It's always been funny to me how hardcore the debate is between people. You get people get very passionate about this topic, yeah.

And by the way, I can see, I can understand where the minimalist movement comes from, right? Like your body, our body is amazing. The human body was designed in many ways to absorb force, to use force, and to use that to propel yourself forward. Like it's a beautiful machine. Like, let's let's let's use it. When you start wrapping your foot up in all this cushion, like you're also losing some of that proprioception, some of that sensory feedback that your body's getting every time your foot hits the ground. Like you're changing the way that your body was designed to operate. And so I I completely understand that side of the argument.

It makes a lot of sense. I mean, we we didn't we haven't had shoes that long, and we've been running since the inception of our species. And uh, you know, marketers are very good at their job, right? For sure. Um, and that that's that's a fact that you have to play in that. So I want to talk about the software. I want to talk about it through the lens of the consumer experience. So I strap on some shoes, right? Some vello shoes. What happens?

Yeah, so it's designed to be frictionless. So we worked really hard to make it super, super simple. So you pair them, first of all, which we're all very familiar with that uh process. So over Bluetooth. So they wake up do that. Yep. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, less than 30 seconds, they're paired to your phone. There's an onboarding experience that you go through where the app is collecting information about you, of course, basics like your height, weight, gender, running ability, recent running performances, running goals. And then there's a uh process of a few weeks where the system gets to know you and it's collecting information about you. And so the information that we're able to measure with a very small sensor that's in the midfoot. So I'm holding it up here, it's embedded right under the arch of the foot in the phone. We're able to measure things like, of course, distance, uh, the amount of time you're running, so duration, uh, your pace, but much more interesting things like the number of steps you take per minute, your cadence, stride length, the amount of milliseconds you're spending on the ground, contact time, flight time, the amount of milliseconds you're spending in the air, ground reaction force, which the only other way to get a ground reaction force measurement is to go into a lab and run on a force plate or a treadmill that's instrumented with a force plate. So we're able to calculate that with a very high degree of accuracy. We have a sensor in each foot, so we're able to understand your asymmetries, differences between your left and your right side. We can look at your foot strike pattern. Are you a forefoot striker, midfoot, or rear foot striker? We can look at how much you're pronating or supinating. And so this is these are all of the core metrics that are analyzed. Vertical oscillation is another one. And then that leads to kind of a layer above all of those core metrics, which are the insights, the scores. So we've got what we call the impact score, which is a measure of the biomechanical load of every run. So this is a key innovation. This is an area that we believe has a lot of promise for athletes in any sport and in a particular runner. So what we we can do today is we can really effectively measure our physiological load. In other words, how much physiological stress are we taking on every day through the activity that we do, right? And HRV has been a tremendous innovation there and just heart rate tracking in general, and of course, measuring our sleep, and therefore we can get all these recovery estimates and scores, and it can give us a good understanding of how physiologically stressed are we and how ready are we to take on physiological stress every day. We're still missing a giant piece of the overall training load bucket, and that's the biomechanical load. So every time you hit the ground, whether you're walking, whether you're running, whether you're jumping, there is a force that you're applying to the ground to propel your body up and forward or sideways. And the ground hits back. It's called the ground reaction force. And the magnitude of that force, in distance running in particular, your body experiences up to five times your body weight of force. So you weigh, let's say, I don't know, 150, 200 pounds, that's 750 to 1,000 pounds of force on every step. You're taking thousands of steps on a run. That's a lot of stress. To date, we've had no way to quantify that. And therefore, how are you gonna manage it and make decisions that are as smart as possible regarding how hard and how far you should run every single day and every week? And so by illuminating, by shining a light on that and finally being able to quantify that, not in a lab in a controlled environment on a treadmill for a few minutes, but on every single step and continuously over weeks and months and years, all of a sudden, we can help runners make much smarter decisions about their training.

There's uh and do you do anything like a comprehensive movement assessment? Like I'm thinking about like I've had you know people on this show, you know, Andrew from Fismoto being one of them, or a Sensei, like these companies who are really into the motion capture, movement, recognition, just really simplifying the movement assessment itself.

Yeah, so we do what we can, right? So we have a sensor under the foot. So we don't have we don't have a camera, we're not, we're not videotaping someone moving, we don't have, we don't know all of their joint angles, we don't know the all of the details of exactly how their body is moving. So we can't get as detailed as let's say, you know, you go into a lab and you have a gate analysis done and there's six cameras all around you running on the treadmill, and you get every joint angle and you know everything about how your body's moving, but we can infer and understand a lot. So as part of that onboarding process, we create what we call, we didn't coin this term, but this is what we're calling it, you're running signature. And the idea there is that each of us has a way that we move which is very similar to our signature. It's unique to us. And this going back to what you said earlier, there is not one correct or one single optimal way to move or to run. We've kind of learned that over the last 10 to 20 years, and a lot of research has come up and come out about there not being one, only one way to run most efficiently or economically. But each of us moves in ways that are unique to us, and it is tremendously valuable to understand your unique running signature because there are implications on your performance, on your risk of injury that the way you move has. So, for example, you know, if you're a four-foot striker, I'll go back to the example of how and how and where that force is distributed on your body. If you're if you're hitting the ground with the front of your foot every time you land, you're sending a lot more of that force again to your calf, to your Achilles tendon, to your foot muscles. Like that's where the force is being distributed. Of course, there's force that's being globally distributed, but more of it is is being sent there. And so that, for example, one simple example, puts you at greater risk for things like Achilles tendinopathy and tendonitis, one of the most common running-related injuries, plant or fasciaitis.

Yeah.

Yeah. Now couple that with other things that we can learn about you. Hey, do you have a history of this injury? Are you a male that's over the age of 35? Do you frequently run up and downhill, right? Like these are all things that can increase your risk for these particular injuries in addition to your running form. But if we can make you aware of that, hey, this is how you move and this is the implications on your performance and also your risk of particular injuries, all of a sudden you can be much smarter. You can even be more proactive about it, right? So like there's ways to be proactive about things like Achilles tendinopathy and make sure that you're really strong and really loading that tendon frequently to get ahead of the fact that you might be at an increased risk for that injury, right? So we we create your running signature and we educate you about what that means. That's part of the initial assessment.

Awesome. And then do you pull in wearable data, sleep data? Like how what where, yeah, what other sources of data are you guys getting?

Yeah, we connect with other wearables. So the core ones are the Apple Watch, Garmin, and uh Koros, those in our and Strava. Those were in our surveys by far the most popular in the running market. And so we're primarily interested in a few things. So, first of all, heart rate. We don't need to measure that with our sensor. So we can pull in resting heart rate, we can pull in HRV to also understand and pair with our measurement of biomechanical load, we can understand physiological load as well. So that's really important. And then we want to build an ecosystem of insights over time that leverages other data points, right? So, like one of the reasons why this problem of running related injury has remained so elusive is because it's a really complicated one. Like we're really complex beings. Like the human body is not simple. There's so many variables that affect your risk of injury. It's not just training load is the number one, but it's not just that, right? Your nutrition, your just overall life stress, how much are you sleeping, your hydration, right? Like there's a lot of other variables. And so we want to have as much of a holistic picture of you as we can. And so we do plan to tap into and pull in as much data as we can about you to give you a more holistic understanding.

So I think a lot of the consumer opportunity, I'll say frustrations from the consumer standpoint, but opportunities for for the product category is that we get fed a lot of data, but we don't get a lot of instruction on what to do with it. So I call it the what now problem. It's like, okay, cool. I'm, you know, my bio, my physiological information says I'm screwed. So what do I do now? And uh so it's the what now. So what do you guys do with that? Is there once you you recognize these things, are you providing content, instructions, coaching, like to fix the problems and improve the actual runner's experience?

Yeah, and there's a few categories of that. And I think one of the advantages that we have here is that because we're focused on a particular modality running, it's that's a that's a relatively narrow focus. Whereas if you're just trying to help every health conscious or wellness or fitness conscious consumer, like you really have to be good at at providing recommendations across a range of modalities. And so we know how to coach runners. We're never gonna be or replace, be as good as or replace a human coach, but we can we can do a pretty damn good job. One of the things that we do is we we turn this measure of impact. So we measure the impact of every single run, and we do that over you know weeks. Every day you get a resiliency score, which is imagine a whoop recovery or a readiness score, but hyper-personalized for runners that also takes into account this biomechanical stress. And from that resiliency score, which you get every day, we can drive actionable recommendations about exactly how much stress you're ready for every single day and every week. And we go a step further and also turn that into specific plans. So every week, what's the right plan for you? How many days should you be running that week? On each day, what exactly should you be doing? And that can also be flexible, right? It's gonna take us time to get that flexibility and adaptability right, but we'll be able to adjust that. Our software adjusts that on the fly, right? So if you ran a little bit faster today than you should have, maybe tomorrow you shouldn't do that really tough workout you had planned. Maybe you should actually take an easier rest. So the goal is to create a coach on your feet where every day and every week you're being told exactly what to do and you're coached through it. And it's much more personalized than any other product because we have this data about you that no other product does have. Now, that also leads to real-time coaching. So that's an exciting opportunity using audio coaching while you're running. There are some things that you can do to improve your running form, but increasing your cadence is one really basic one. Um that's been shown in some studies to reduce the amount of mechanical, biomechanical stress that your body's experiencing. And especially if your cadence is low, like below 160 steps per minute, that's like pretty, pretty low. Below 165, you probably still want to increase it 5 to 10%. So there's ways to coach you in real time on your run to help you improve some of these form-related metrics. We can look at whether your form is breaking down over the course of a run, especially a hard effort, 5, 10, 15, 20 mile run. It's natural for you to fatigue and for your form to break down and change over the course of that run. So there's ways to cue runners in real time to help them keep their form stronger, maybe even suggest that they cut the run short because they've broken down too far, and if they keep going, they'll do more damage than good. So all of these are recommendations that our system is going to provide. Yeah, incredible.

I want to ask you about your entrepreneurial journey here a little bit. So you mentioned the beginning of the interview that you found the conviction to start, right? So I think, having talked to a lot of entrepreneurs and founders and you know, occasionally dabbling myself, that the conviction in the motivation that very early on is super high. You're excited, right? You're thrilled, the opportunities are everywhere, and then you kind of get past that, you get into the grind of it. So, how has this journey been for you? How have you kept has it been hard to keep the motivation day to day to wake up and push? Um, I mean, you're talking to, I'm sure, you know, your your team, your potential investors, any people are already invested in it. You know, there's a lot going on in your world right now. So how's it feel waking up every day? How do you describe it to people?

I think this has been said I know many times before by others, and I found it to be true in my case, which is I'm doing something that I'm genuinely like really interested in personally. Like I'm genuinely passionate about running. I love reading research about running, I love thinking about how to coach runners. I love running shoes. I love technology and better understanding the human body. Like these are all of my natural interests and passions. I care about this problem. So I don't think I've had an issue with being excited and motivated necessarily because because I'm I'm fascinated by this problem and this product. I I love what I'm doing, but it's really hard. Certain times more than others. I'd be lying if I said you don't get really down on yourself at times when there's rejection or f or things don't go the way that you planned. That that happens I I know for sure more than entrepreneurs say or reveal publicly, like it happens every week, maybe even every day, especially at the early stage. And so I think just naturally, like some of the things I'm gonna say might sound cliche, but it's just like this grit and resilience that you either have to have or you kind of just build over time to know that no matter what happens, like you're gonna run into a lot of problems and you just gotta have to find a way to keep going. And that's what we've done, that's what I've done, that's what we'll continue to do, and that's really the only way.

Yeah, I always found it if if you're waiting for or fueled by inspiration, motivation, right? Like these things that people use all the time, passion. Like good luck. Because you know what? Like that wears off all the time. And sometimes you're in dark moments, there's no motivation, there's a little bit of inspiration, but you need to take some action and you got to get up every morning and and push through it, right? And I think that's something that you know I talk about all the time. Like, probably on a daily basis, I think I should just go get a job. And there's nothing wrong with jobs. Like, I mean, I know a lot of very successful, happy people. I Just seem to disqualify myself from being an exemptional employee in most settings. Like it would have to be the perfect job, right? For me. And so, and I know that's that's completely normal. Like everybody who does anything and they start their own business, so you know, you don't have to be, I don't know, the difference between a business owner and entrepreneur is very, you know, can be ambiguous, but someone who's going out and on their own, right? Like no one's you got no boss. No one's telling you be there at 8 a.m. Be there at 7 a.m. You gotta have it in yourself. And uh, you know, I think a lot of people are listening right now. Yeah, man, sometimes I think about getting a job every day. So, like, what would have you ever had what's been the biggest second thought you've had about this? Like, where like, okay, maybe this is the wrong direction. Have you had one? I'm sure you've had a couple.

Yeah, I mean, when it's been hard, obviously, like sometimes I I think your mind naturally creeps into like, oh my god, it would be so much easier if I if I was still working for or at a company, and you know, paycheck delivers every month. It's amazing. You got a paycheck, you're playing a role. But then I think back to, hey, when I was in that position, like I really wanted to build something. Like I was craving this process of this creative process of just building something new and valuable. And so ultimately, like, that's what I come back to. And action does create motivation. That's a hundred percent true. So I think I've just always tried to keep going, like one foot in front of the other, and very frequently, like, I don't necessarily know that you can't know every time that you're making the right decision. I think there's a lot of value in making decisions quickly, um, even if you don't know with 100% certainty, you don't have all the information that you want to have to know that it's the right decision. Um, but I think as things build, like also, I mean, for better or worse, like you just have a lot more responsibility, a lot more people are relying on you, and there's kind of also that forcing function too. Like, you don't want to let your team down, you don't want to let your investors down. Like, so you know, you you you feel like you really need to step up to the plate. You kind of don't have a choice to keep going. Um, so I mean, sometimes honestly, that's what like drags you out of bed and says, like, all right, well, you gotta get up and keep going. Yeah, you just gotta show up, right? Sometimes that's what it is, yeah. Physically it's the same as the gym, though. I mean, it's the same as the fitness, it's like that you're not gonna want to work out every day. It's like just get there. Sometimes just doing it, even if it's crappy, like just doing it is a win.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome, man. Well, you know, kind of the final topic I was covering here is what what's important to you and a bello as a company right now? Like what do you need? Are you looking for I'm guessing investment because you're up on Kickstarter? Do you need are you gonna be eventually looking to hire? Do you need partnerships of so what type of partnerships? Maybe all of the above. So tell me, like, what if people are gonna reach out to you at this point, really? Like, what would you like to hear from them about?

Yeah, I appreciate you asking. So, first of all, we do have a Kickstarter that just went live this week. It's been pretty amazing that, you know, again, we were working on this for two and a half years and doing a lot of testing with runners, but it's the first time that we've exposed the product to the market and made it available for pre-order. And the reaction has been amazing so far. If you're a runner and this sounds appealing and exciting to you, check out our our Kickstarter. Obviously, that would be amazing. You can go to our website, Avelorunning.com, or just search for Avello Running on Kickstarter and find it there. Uh so that's one thing. Yeah, raising capital. Obviously, if there's if there's investors that are excited about what we're doing, you know, we're we're working on closing out a round right now. So yeah, if there's people listening that are excited, investors listening that are excited about what we're building and want to be a part of it, now would be the time to chat about that as well. Awesome.

And there's gonna be naturally a little bit of lag between our recording date and when this thing actually publishes. How the Kickstarter, I'm familiar, was that uh how long is that stay up for? Till mid-August. So August 26th. We'll have it out before that. Okay. Yeah. Awesome, man. Bro, if people want to get a hold of you, or where do you want where do you want them to go right now?

So I'm on Instagram, I'm not super active there, but uh the best the best way is uh probably just to email me. So Rowie at avelarunning.com.

Awesome, man. Well uh I've known you for a hot minute. You know, we've had some good conversations. I think we first met in person at the first HFA conference post-pandemic in Miami.

Yeah.

And uh it's it's been really cool to watch your journey. And you know, I I think I credit you guys. Insight tracker was the first paid sponsor I had for the show. I don't know if I told you guys that when I was doing it, but uh I was. You were, and uh that was that was great. So eternally thank grateful for that. And um, yeah, man, it's it's really cool what you're doing. I'm very excited, I'm very optimistic about where you guys are gonna go.

And uh let us know how you can help how we're gonna thank you for having me on, and thanks for all the good questions. I I really appreciate it.

Yeah, my pleasure. Ladies and gentlemen, Roy Metzer.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Minute. 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, Castbox, 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 we put a lot of work into it. We 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 futurofitness.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 future of fitness. Have a great day.