Measure It at the Source

Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos, tacos and tech? You know we got tacos and tech is on smash. Fold a green guacamole, keep accountants counting beans. Contador cuentan frijoles, founders trying to raise some queso. La vida San Diego, school of rapping, rapping fire. Tortillas around jalapeños in these modern times. A craft beer and coffee, my coding yoga posse. Fold a Body origami, we be surfing Coronado, eating tacos El Gordo, the tacos staying in puesto, lucha libre and sombrero. Gotta shout out Tech Coast Angels by the ocean, watch the sunset. La Jolla shores, entrepreneurs trying to get funded. When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer, Oceanside to Tijuana, SD be full of hustlers. From couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach, tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interviewing founders who be shooting for the moon. Tech SD Tacos with your host, Neal Bloom. Come on! Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey! Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey!

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech podcast. I'm your host, Neal Bloom. I'm stoked to have on homie Max Darsinval, founder and CEO of Velocity AI. Hey Max, thanks for beaming in from New York.

Neal, thanks so much for having me, man.

Of course. I've been stoked all week to have this time with you. Uh, we've been fortunate enough to get to know each other in fast fashion through our friend James Heller. Over this summer. So glad he introduced us. Glad you've been stopping by the office so much. It's the best. So thanks.

Yeah, man.

I feel like we're just getting started here.

Yeah, you're building something really special over there. The whole ecosystem, all the people that you're bringing together, I see it. And I think you have such like a synergistic thing that you're starting to build towards. It's super cool. So thanks for having me be any part of it whatsoever.

And likewise, and thanks for us letting me be a part of what you're building. And why don't you give us a high level? What is Velocity AI? Yeah.

So Velocity AI is a first of its kind closed loop strength training platform. What we do is we take data from velocity measurements, which is a fantastic way of knowing what a human being's total power potential is. Essentially, we determine what they should be doing for their volume and intensity based on what they're physiologically ready for. So think about heart rate or pace-based training and cardio that we've had for many, many years. We do that in, in the weight room and we have a software that's actually able to take those measurements and compute and determine what happens next.

Hmm. Okay.

I'm stoked to hear the backstory on this. Obviously this, this is like top of mind for so many people. The wearable movement continues to get louder and louder of just where, what people want to measure and what they will pay out of pocket to get the data about themselves. Obviously.

Yeah.

So I'm stoked to dive into that, but we gotta know, how'd you end up down this path? 'Cause I would imagine it wasn't, wasn't born building tech, or maybe you were, you come from a tech family?

No, no. I mean, I come from a family of aviators and sort of adventurers, but tech, tech is, you know what I just said is a total lie. My, my great-grandfather, his name is Jack, Jack Darsenvall, and he invented the predecessor for the voltmeter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't want to— I realized as I was saying that, yeah, I never, I never knew him, but it is in the family somewhere. So maybe it skipped a couple of generations and got to me.

Cool. Do you have a patent? I feel like you should go get like frame that patent from great-granddad somewhere.

I do. I do have it. I do have his, his patent framed. Yeah, he's a, he's a, he's a French guy. Anybody that's done electrical engineering or anything like that would definitely know about—

yeah, Professor Darcy. Wow, that's really cool.

Yeah. Wow.

So it was in your—it's in your DNA that you should be connecting, connecting electrons and using that for good, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, man. Cool.

Well, so you—so you grew up in a family though of aviators. Yeah. Private pilots, military, all the above. Yeah.

My dad was a private aviator. You know, he came to the U.S. from France when he was 17. He was a professional skier at the time, so he was skiing, doing Doing moguls, competing on the circuit. And then he started selling, you know, a mono ski, which I don't know how many people know what a mono ski is, but it's basically a horrible contraption. When you— it's like it's an orthopedic surgeon's dream because if you ski on a mono ski for a while, you're almost guaranteed to have some sort of horrible knee injury. So you're on 2 bindings facing forward, going down the mountain on a fixed plank, much like a snowboard. So it's a cross between a snowboard and ski. They were super popular for about 5 years. I think people caught on really quickly to the fact that, holy crap, this is an MCL and ACL's, you know, executioner.

Wow.

And so, that business didn't do very well. And I think he was like, man, what do I do? And that was his first taste of, you know, American opportunity. In France, you can't just decide randomly to go to flight school and become a pilot, but you can in the US. So, that's what he did. And, you know, he's still flying right now. He flies emergency rescue helicopters out of Alaska. the Kenai Peninsula.

Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. That's— yeah, so that's in your DNA as well too. Uh, yeah, we're almost happy he didn't put on a second ski, otherwise he would have just been a regular ski bum and not exactly, you know, go out and, uh, saving lives out there. So have you— yeah, you spent all the time in Alaska as well? You met up with him?

Yeah, I'd love to go visit him out there. You know, I didn't grow up there. I grew up, um, in Colorado primarily, also spent some time in Bend, Oregon. But, you know, my dad's got a sweet little spot that he actually built by hand over there. So it's very, very much him. Super eclectic, very cool place. And so my wife and I love to go and just relax there. It's probably the most relaxing place on earth.

I bet. Yeah. Yeah. Building things with your hands is pretty empowering as well, too. Yeah. But at some point you got the bug to surf and surf you did. Take us through that. Yeah.

Yeah, man. So, my life, I had a couple of different passions as a youth. One of them was in martial arts. I was a national champion in sparring in taekwondo and ended up being second in the world in sparring as well. And so, I actually thought for a period of time, now this is very young, I was like 13 years old, I thought that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go compete ultimately in the UFC, was my aspiration.

Hmm.

And, I was in Bend, Oregon at the time, and my coach got into some trouble and the studio ended up shutting down. So, there was no other place for me to go to. And, at that point, I was a very hyperactive kid. And so, getting me to sit down in class and focus was next to impossible. So, all of my energy was in being outside and doing anything athletically that I could. And so, With my dad's background, you know, I grew up skiing, but it was never something I took super seriously. That ended up being the, the immediate channel that I funneled everything into. And so I started becoming a competitive skier. I went to a ski academy, which was pretty, pretty awesome in Colorado where I was originally from. Went to Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy, and I competed in big mountain skiing. So that's like, you know, hiking out in the backcountry. They have some judges at the bottom. Typically judge you based off your line difficulty, your speed, your control, the tricks that you do, so on and so forth. And loved that, was getting some sponsorships in that, and I think was on the path to making that a career. I got myself into some trouble, you know, youth silly stuff, but it was enough to make me lose my scholarship at the time for the ski academy that I was going to. And my parents couldn't afford to pay for me to go there. It was a very expensive program. And so, I ended up coming back home with my tail tucked between my legs and having my first real lesson in humility and had to pay my parents off essentially. So, I was working as a dishwasher there. And so, I went from being this sponsored skier, having a great time touring around the world to Working, uh, working at Perea Grill as a dishwasher.

Wow.

Yeah, it was, it was, it was humbling, you know. And that's where I learned, you know, all, all jobs are incredibly meaningful and all jobs can be really challenging and, uh, there are consequences to actions. And I had this, uh, you know, wake-up call that I needed to change some things about myself. I needed to shed the bad and work on the good. And so I found what felt like to me the most extreme path that I could take. And that was, you know, let me try to become a Navy SEAL. And so I had no military influence in the family whatsoever, which is funny because my sister is now a CH-47 pilot in the Army. So we've become a military family. But the SEAL Teams were something that I knew was going to be obviously incredibly challenging. It had this reputation of being the hardest training that you could do. And so that was really enticing to me. So against everyone's advice in my life, I started to commit what I had to getting ready for that. So it took me a couple years. I was 15 at the time that I started training. I started training like an absolute psycho, like an absolute madman. I knew that I wanted to do that. And a couple years into it when I was 17, I was old enough to, with my parents' consent, You know, sign up and see if I could qualify. And I ended up qualifying and going, you know, going to BUD/S. And it's one of those guys that was, you know, super, super committed to what, what I wanted to do. And so I ended up making it through. Being, being a SEAL was the greatest honor that I've had in my life. The friends and teammates that I had are, you know, truly, truly brothers for life and shaped me. As a human today and all of my experiences there definitely are the reason that I am the person that I am. When I was in this— when I was in the SEAL Teams, my main job was to be a medic. So, after we finished BUD/S, you go to SQT and they ask for volunteers for people that want to go and become the combat medics. So, SEALs don't bring in medics from other units.

True.

build their own medics essentially. So, it's a year-long course there in Stennis, Mississippi. You do some work with Tulane Medical School and a lot of work at University Medical Center and then New Orleans EMS, kind of just cycling between all of those things, doing military medicine, doing civilian medicine. And, that's where I learned a real appreciation for medicine in general and the human body. And also human performance. And that was the framework that I entered the military with, you know, truly starting my job as a SEAL. And yeah, man, I realized that there's, there's a lot of stuff that needed to be worked on. And that was kind of the birthplace of Velocity.

Wow.

Incredible. What a way to challenge yourself, though, you know, from being humbled And say, I'm gonna go push and find my limits and my boundaries, knowing you had to go train and build up to it, like not even ready to go do it now. It's just like, it's gonna go take, what'd you say, 2 years to prep to go do it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It took about 2 years. I mean, for some guys, you know, there was some, there was 2 Olympic swimmers in my class. There was, you know, various people from other professional sport and D1 athletics that, you know, maybe it didn't take as long. But for me, I was a, you know, I was a mountain athlete. a skier. And so just being proficient enough in the water, being, you know, fast enough of a runner, having durable enough of a body was probably the main thing. And also being that young does not really serve you well from a physical standpoint or a mental maturity standpoint. So it's generally not advised that you join those programs or go for them at that age. But Nobody was going to talk sense into me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I spent some time at Stennis, by the way, probably solid three four years every third week of every month for three four years. But we were doing very different things. I was testing.

You were a rocket scientist.

I was testing engines, but literally I could see the boats go down the the canals with with the guys, with the teams. Yeah, and we'd all meet up for for lunch. Honestly, we'd run into each other literally every which kind of person in a different. colored jumpsuit, right? Uh, in the mess, uh, at lunch. So, uh, yeah, I, I understand.

That's so cool, man.

The Stennis Park land.

Yeah. Yeah. What, what years were you there? I wonder if we had overlap.

Uh, 2008 to 2013.

Okay. Yeah. I was there just behind you. I got there in, uh, in 2015.

Ah, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Probably weren't testing many engines when you were there. Maybe. I don't know. Special already been retired, maybe. Anyway, Stennis is a whole world. The whole Gulf is a whole different kind of world. But, but this was probably your first taste of San Diego, right? Is doing BUD/S and getting to know SoCal?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, I fell in love with San Diego, you know, in BUD/S. And I think that for, for me being in my mind, really where I became You know, just the person I am today, I have a deeper connection to San Diego than I do any other place in the world.

I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, 100%. You grow up and you suddenly see, obviously, the resources and the— I mean, once you see San Diego, you can't unsee it. It's just how it is, you know? Yeah. So everyone's goal is to get back to San Diego and you were able to do it. But obviously you learned and felt some pains physically along the way and determined you want to go solve those. Do you think that's a typical SEAL thing that says, I'm going to go solve a big problem that afterwards, like, do a lot of people end up on the entrepreneurial path post-service?

So it's a good question. I tried to find like actual data to corroborate what I think there. And I would, I would say there's not, there's not a lot of like published studies out there to say, you know, what are the, what are the per capita rates of SEALs that go out and end up doing something entrepreneurial versus any other branch of the military? But my observation is that yes, just from the people that I know and the folks that I know of that are SEAL entrepreneurs, I think there's a tremendous amount of guys that end up doing stuff that, you know, some known, many known that are, you know, quite successful in different, different paths. I mean, if you look at Shield AI, Shield AI is probably one of the most prominent ones. You know, we've got some, some great VC, you know, founders and managers as well. You know, Harpoon, you've got TRX, Jocko with his numerous, you know, companies that he's built in his ecosystem, all, you know, so there's a number of pretty admirable companies that have been built by SEALs. Absolutely. So I hope I can contribute to that legacy that's been built.

You already are. I bet we could get official numbers from the Honor Foundation if we asked them. They're around the corner from us here. But I wonder if we should pull a thread on a SEAL transition into incubator kind of thing in San Diego to just help them jumpstart that. Hey, we know you're going to start one anyway because 1 in 3 do. Let's get it going, you know? So anyway, I'll think about it.

I'll tell you what, man, that's like, it's like such a, such a goal for me, you know, one, to be able to build something to where I can actually give that level of guidance for the guys. But I would, I would love to, I would love to be a part of something like that or to create something like that where, you know, we choose a limited number of guys that have a truly good idea but don't have the, don't have the resources or the knowledge yet on how to build it. And instead of having to go to an MBA program to learn some of what they'll need to know, you know, we can just put together some of the best minds in the sort of sector that they're going to go into and help them. Yeah. With an incubator, that'd be such a cool thing. Let's do that. Let's do it. Let's do that. Yeah.

I think we're finding— and I'm meeting enough now— transition, you know, teams, guys, even from team, they've been 10 years out, you know, that obviously stay here, that you see the talent. It's a cut above, you know, everything else, which is exactly what venture funds are looking for is unique talent, obviously. I mean, look at Nico at Reach, right?

Right.

Or Jeff Everidge, who, you know, 20 years out, but doing a proposal business because he knows defense industry. So it's, you can't say what they're gonna build. You just know that they're gonna go build something because they solve hard problems. And that's what entrepreneurship is, right? So yeah, I think there's something to pull a thread on that. We won't— you got a business to build, so not yet, but we'll ask you to contribute. But I think the biggest thing you can be doing is showing what life is like after, right? I mean, learn by doing is most important. And then being visible in the community, which is— you are, you are showing up just like all the others you mentioned are as well. So I don't know, I think just being a leader Is step one, is showing like, hey, there is a path after, and this is what model leadership looks like. Um, I think honestly the best of the best, they figure the rest out, right? They don't need a crutch. They want quite the opposite, right? They're just like, you know, just gimme a chance and I will prove myself. And I think that's more what you want is, is that, is just show people that, go that, try that way and they'll be like, absolutely got it. Right?

Yep.

So what pointed you in that direction? I mean, take us through that, because obviously I feel like when SEALs— when anyone active duty knows they're transitioning, you sit on it for a while, right? You know well in advance that there is something different changing in the future. So how did you approach that, knowing there is a life after service?

First thing I'll say, I wouldn't recommend that anyone listening to this would take— would take the path that I did on reaching this decision, because for me it was rather abrupt. I think that if you were to ask me literally 17 months ago now if I would ever get out of the SEAL Teams, I would have told you confidently that no. And that's funny because I had, you know, this, this idea and this technology that I was, you know, starting to build out well before then. But I had this delusion that I would be able to do both. And once I realized that it was a delusion, And that's when I had to make this decision. It really ended up being something that was a lot quicker than I think I would recommend anyone to do. So I made this decision literally in 30 days. I had 30 days to commit to a good friend of mine who was going to be a platoon chief. I was going to be his LPO. So basically the next step in leadership for me. And I knew that I had that period of time to make this call. And so I sat on it for a while. I did as much meditation and You know, reading as I possibly could, I literally could not make a decision. I felt paralyzed in it because it was very challenging for me. And so I was about, you know, 50.01% sold on one path, and that's what I ended up doing.

Wow. Do you remember, did you flip a coin? What you actually— what got you over to the majority side?

When I stopped thinking about myself. And what I wanted to do. And I started to take my wife into consideration. You know, we were engaged at the time, so not, not yet married. And I realized, okay, cool, if I, if I go a little bit more external and I think about the people that I'm going to be responsible for, that I am responsible for, what's going to be the best decision for them? Yeah. Where am I going to get the most time to spend with them? And so is my wife. And then the fact you know I'd seen my my my dad and my mom, who I'm still very close with, I think a total of six times. You know, in the twelve years that I was in the SEAL teams, I feel like then, you know, I've I haven't got to do everything that I wanted, but I got to do the job, and I met some of the best human beings. that, that, that I think exists, and they're going to be with me, whether I'm in the teams or not. And there's only so much life to live. And so I made that, made that call at 12 years to, to pivot out and go and pursue something, something new. And I couldn't be happier with my decision. While at the same time, you know, I do miss the teams every single day.

Oh, really? I'm sure the people. The job?

Yeah, all of it, man. I mean, you know, I'm 16 hours a day legitimately behind a computer right now, which is, you know, shocking because I used to essentially work outside, you know, fly around on helicopters and run around in the desert and dive and skydive and all of that sort of stuff. And the computer work that we did was super minimal, and I complained through every single second of it. And so it's really ironic in many ways that my life has revolved around, you know, tech now. And being behind a computer. And so, yeah, there are times where I'm like, man, I've been sitting for 16 hours. I would love to just be outside using my body and, you know, working in an orchestra with, with my best friends. But that's, that's pretty much it. Yeah. So I think a little bit of all of it, the lifestyle. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you obviously started to realize I could use some tech to get me back outside. Even while you were in the team. So take us through a little bit, like, what was the— we love to hear the version zero idea into coming to reality. Like, where did this all come together for you?

Yeah. So about after BUD/S, I started to get really into weightlifting. Before that, I was more of a cardio guy. And at the end of BUD/S, BUD/S has a magical way of getting SEALs who, or, you know, SEAL trainees who might have loved swimming and might have loved running to absolutely hate it because you do such a disturbing amount of it. I wanted to do essentially the polar opposite. So, I started to dive deeply into strength training and I love the science behind strength training. And, that was the passion that I had going into our medical training. And so, I started to really look into ways to optimize, really starting with my own programming, engineering programs and based on what specific goals I would want to, you know, create workouts. And I ended up getting very strong, and I became the de facto, you know, weight training specialist, sort of human performance specialist for the guys that I was around, regardless of what platoon I was in or class I was in. And with that mindset of just wanting to find a next— the next best way of doing it, I realized that there was a huge gap in the way that people are strength training right now. And what that gap was is that at the elite level of strength and conditioning, you have access to some pretty great tools. And one of the main ones that you have in strength training that most of your consumers have never heard of is called, you know, velocity-based training. Velocity-based training is typically measured, you know, you can measure velocity and weight training in a couple different ways. You can do it with a linear transducer, which is essentially a glorified cord that measures velocity with a flywheel, or you can use some of the more advanced systems now or computer vision. Perch and Catapult make great systems for that. And, if you go to a D1 facility or a professional facility that has a strength training component, they're all going to have some sort of velocity-based training tool. And so, why is it that most people don't know what velocity-based training is? And why is it that we can't bring these tools with us as we travel? Because here's this amazing thing that's been used for 30 years, but your average person doesn't know about it, and your average athlete, once they leave their facility, can't use it. And the great thing about velocity-based training is, and the thing that makes so much sense to, to me, and I think to everyone, every program that uses it, is that We don't have to design programs in a static sense. We can actually measure what your body's capable of doing that day, which means that regardless of all the different variables that contribute to your total power potential, you know, your sleep, your diet, your stress, like the altitude that you're at, there's so many that they're not even something that you can all factor in. If we can measure something at the source and I can determine This is how powerful an individual is on this movement at this time, then we don't have to do static training anymore. We can basically allow a human's power potential to decide what comes next. And, that's the equivalent that you see in conditioning where it's like, okay, cool, you can go run and it's absolutely fantastic to just go run and do it based on feel. But, if you're really training for something serious and you want to get to the next level where you're going to have specific distances and You know, you're going to use pace and heart rate-based information, and everyone's pretty familiar with that. But in the gym, everyone's using programs that have been designed for them maybe for 12 to 24 weeks in the future off of 2 or 3 static numbers. Why is that?

Hmm.

And in the SEAL Teams, that was a real problem because you would have a program that was designed 22 weeks out And sometime in that 22 weeks, you might run, you know, 20 miles with 80 pounds of kid on your back. And then the program is calling for going into the gym and doing, you know, 80% of your one rep max back squat for 3 or 4 reps. It's like, well, 80% of your one rep max back squat at the time that it was written might be Like, like, uh, 30 to 40% more than you can actually handle that day.

Hmm.

But people are still using these programs. And I started to see guys really like destroy themselves and I think end up doing more harm than good. And so that was the, that was the birthplace of, of what I wanted to do. I wanted to create a system that you could bring velocity-based training on the go. And a software that was able to read all of these measurements, build a unique athlete velocity profile, and then be able to determine what should this individual do next from a load perspective, or how much weight should they lift, how many repetitions should they lift, when have they actually fatigued, when do we call it off, when do we reduce weight, all these sorts of things in relationship to that unique person, what their goals are, how much time they have to commit to training, so on and so forth. Really bringing modern intelligence to, to the weight room that has been essentially void of it.

Incredible. I mean, I think the average person's not thinking about even a 20-week plan. They're just thinking incrementally, just make myself better, whatever yesterday was or whatever last week. Right. But right, this is on another level for people who obviously at, you know, maximum peak performance from a work perspective, right? Sales, like, you know, how does this flow down, right? Like, how does it— how does it individualize to literally everyone? Because that's what— that's what it is in the end, right, is helping everyone just focus on the better version of them, not from yesterday, but literally from 2 minutes ago, right? Last rep, right? How do you make the next rep even different?

Exactly.

Take us through the individualization aspect of it and what that means.

Exactly. So in, in velocity-based training, there are typical speed ranges for each sort of lift that you're gonna do. And these speed ranges roughly equal like a percentage. So if you're, for example, deadlifting and you're doing about 1 meter per second, that might be equivalent for your average person to an 80% equivalent of what they're totally capable of that day. What velocity-based training allows you to do is through the formula of power is equal to force times velocity, how that translates to lifting. If I know that an individual— if I know the load that an individual is moving and I know the speed that they're doing it, I can measure their power potential. And so now I can know with very good accuracy what they're totally capable of that day, and therefore a percentage of that is really easy. So they don't ever have to hit what, you know, their maximal effort, which is definitely not advisable for, for most people very frequently. But if we can project out what that maximum potential is accurately, now we can start to titrate. Okay, cool. So this plan was calling for more of a speed dynamic movement. We want to be in this range, which is going to be this speed, which, which equals this percent. You can see how it gets a little complicated, right?

Yeah.

That's why it's been very restrictive to the average person. That's why most people don't know what velocity-based training is. So what we do is we handle all of that calculation and we're able to guide a lifter, whether they are elite or novice, just trying to find out what do I actually do, what, what happens next. Our software and the V-Coach is what we've called it. is going to make that determination for you. So from your very first warm-up weight, we can tell based on how this individual moved their warm-up weight, which is going to be the same weight for that movement across all of their exercise. So you have a baseline. We can see essentially what their readiness is. Now, this isn't waking up in the morning and determining readiness based off your resting heart rate, heart rate variability. That's loosely correlated to performance, But honestly, some of the best performances that have ever happened have been athletes who barely slept the night before because they've been psyched out for, say, an Olympic event. So it's not a great— it's not a great way of projecting performance, but we can measure your performance potential literally at the source. So that's the whole point of this. It's like we want to show that to the world and we want to show people what they're really capable of and keep them training really intelligently and also more efficiently. So So if you're using velocity-based training, you might end up doing less exercise and less time than you would if you were doing a static program. Sometimes you'll do more, but it's totally based on what your body is capable of.

Amazing. And this, the, the measurement tool is a huge key component. You know, obviously you mentioned the transducer in high-end equipment. That meant you had to miniaturize that and do something around hardware, which obviously—

Yeah.

You don't, well, I guess back to grandpa or great-grandpa, here comes the electrons that you get to put on the wrist. So how did you get, how did you start tooling around the right hardware to wear a ring?

Yeah, man, that's a fun story. So I'm not a hardware engineer. You know, I'm an enthusiast. And so that was—

You're a hardware—

I mean, you are a big hardware customer and user. You're definitely on the end of many—

Exactly.

Much hardware, I'm sure.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. I love hardware. I've been, yeah, been a consumer of hardware for a long time. But yeah, being able to, you know, figure out how to create this was really the hardest challenge. And it did start with No pun intended, started with the hardware. That was the, that was the greatest challenge at first. And I knew that, you know, there was some successful implementation obviously of, of gyroscopes and, and, you know, IMUs and various platform— and various platforms, you know, your, your Apple Watches, your Whoops, anything that, that could count steps. But that is a nail clipper.

Real quick, explain an IMU just so for everyone. Yeah, yeah.

So an internal movement unit. What, what this is, is it's typically a gyroscope and an accelerometer. And there's like a small little— there's a small little needle, like a piece of, a piece of metal. And with movement, it moves one way or another. And that essentially changes a degree of current. And that current is what's actually being measured to be able to extract, say, acceleration. So acceleration is measured in Gs with IMUs. And so we can tell based on how that needle is moving and what the current is that's coming out of it, you know, what the, what the acceleration force is. So that's how these, you know, really small microelectronic IMU units work. And they come in all sorts of, you know, capabilities, capabilities of sensitivity. And also the frequency that they're transmitting signals. And so if you're using something to measure, let's say, steps, you don't need a very powerful IMU. You don't need it to communicate more than 50 times per second. You know, probably like 20, 20 times per second is good. Most of these are communicating around 50. So, you know, and they go all the way up to like 1,000 times. If you're talking about modern drones, the ones that people are flying at, you know, hundreds of miles an hour with first person, with first person view, these, these are typically like 600, 600 hertz. So 600 times per second it's communicating some sort of positional understanding or whatever that sensor is, is designed for. So I started to figure out, hey, what are the, what are the IMUs in your standard wearables? What's the IMU in your, in your iPhone? That can do the same thing. And would that be good enough for this? The flat answer is no. What we're talking about in these devices, they're, they're good for the, for the job that's intended, but they're a nail clipper. And what you need for really good kinematics and, and sensor fusion data to be able to calculate velocity, you need something that's like 200 Hz or better. And so, start off with, where can I get an IMU that's 200 Hz? And we use a lot of, we use a lot of drones in the, in the teams. And so some of these, some of these drone components would find their way to me. And I started to mess around with, hey, how can I, how can I create a PCB board, a Bluetooth antenna that's able to communicate this IMU data? And just being able to do that was really challenge for me at first. But luckily with AI, I was able to get some pretty good guidance on this. Just, you know, hey, how do we create our own custom PCB board? How do we put these IMUs in a way that makes sense? And let me just get this thing to transmit. And that's about where I got on my own, was creating this monstrosity of this hideous PCB board that looked like a quarterback's, you know, coach sleeve or whatever those things are called. Not nearly good enough for wearable configuration, but it was a proof of concept that I could actually do this and I could get the you know fusion data accurate enough. Now came the next challenge, which was how do we scrub the the noise out and just get pure signal? And how do we actually make calculations from this? And then once we get these calculations, how do we put this into a deterministic algorithm? Which was the next challenge. We didn't just want to send a bunch of, you know, IMU data to an AI cloud and have that type of delay that would happen if you were doing it on the cloud. We knew that this was supposed to be a portable thing. So taking it back to the first principles of what it is that we're trying to do, we wanted to create an affordable, portable, accurate velocity training device. device that didn't require prior understanding on, you know, the math and the science behind this and something that could be accessible and intuitive for anyone to use so that they could have adaptive strength training. So we needed to have the device basically be the endpoint for everything. So, you know, somebody's, somebody's iPhone or Android, the, they're really powerful computers at this point. And so how do we build out an algorithm that can be processed on device?

Yeah.

and be able to give a reading out that's like, you know, a fraction of a second in delay, essentially non-perceptible. And so that was the, that was the point where I realized if I'm going to do this, I need to do it with a team because AI can only get me so far. I need to get world-class engineers on this. And so that was, that was that inflection point that I referred to earlier. I knew that this was something that the world needed. not just the SEAL Teams. And I knew that if I was going to build it, I needed to be out of the teams. I needed to figure out how to raise money and how to build a really good team to start on it.

What a realization, but what a focusing point to know already. I mean, obviously, it's in hindsight a little bit knowing what you need to know about every aspect of it now, but that also helps fill in with With complementary talent like your, like, founder, co-founders and first team members? Like, who'd you, who'd you know to go look for first? What'd you even do to find someone on the technical side? Yeah, that helped. And at what point, you know, did you start looking for that?

Yeah. So I have a good friend who's been a pretty successful entrepreneur that I knew when I was in the SEAL Teams. And, you know, I would phone him, ask him questions about what it is that I need. And so he was, he was able to guide me a bit. bit on what this process would look like. So I've had a lot of help along the way, and I wouldn't be able to, wouldn't be able to be to the stage that we're at right now if it weren't for all of the individual contributors that, that have helped us get here. And so just starting from the beginning, you know, I realized, okay, cool, before I can even recruit someone, I need to be able to put this vision in a way that's presentable. And so my first investment was actually into a UI designer because being that this is a software-based platform and it was going to be app-based, I needed to be able to show this potential CTO or, you know, chief developer what it is that I was really talking about because otherwise it was going to be very nebulous. So I spent about half of my life savings on a really good UI designer. This guy's, you know, worked for for Nike, he's worked for Strava, for various companies as an independent contractor. And he was able to understand after many hours what it was that I was talking about. And so we just built it out, wireframed it out, and eventually got it to something that looked like a product. And then from there, I started just phoning people. You know, I started in San Francisco, I made a LinkedIn. I started hitting people up, and I got a couple people that actually responded. I got on calls with them, and they led me to other people. And it was, you know, me being incessant about about it. I just knew that I needed to find someone, and it was harder than I harder than I thought. But eventually, I found my found my CTO. His name is Devin James. He's our chief chief. Yeah, Chief Technical Officer, and he's also a technical co-founder. And I found him about six months into this project, and he's somebody that's been working on on tech as a full stack developer for like fifteen years. He's been a CTO for a lot of different projects, startups, big companies, so on and so forth. And he understood the product. He understood the vision, and he understood me. And he was able to say, hey, man, this is going to be a real challenge, but it's possible. We can do this. And so with the budget that we had and the time that we wanted to do it, we were able to get enough of a proof of concept made. We started to raise our pre-seed round. So we raised $500K, which is what we needed to contract now a development team. We needed an army of coders. So we, another great partner, I'll use their name here, Agility.io is who we used. We had 20 developers build this out, you know, an AI-native program designed for iOS first, starting with the deterministic algorithm. So I won't name this person, but the lead sports scientist for Naval Special Warfare helped us out a lot with this, kind of with the meta-analysis, with all of the information that we wanted to build this brain off of. And we just went cell by cell building out this algorithm and, and, you know, feeding it to the development team and just going step by step on that. Took us about 7 months and 20 people, $500,000, and, you know, a lot of 100-hour weeks to get to the point where we had a minimum viable product. And that's about the time that I met you.

Hmm. Wow. But I mean, what a commitment, obviously going all in, you know, making it within 30 days of deciding like, this has got to be it and doing it. Do you still have, by the way, the first IMUs from the drone? Are those still around?

I do. I do. And I like your idea, by the way, of it going in your office.

We'll just take one. We want— we love the first. We want the V0, you know, for the Portfolio company museum. But you should also have your own little museum to show here's where we've gone as well. 100%. It's also humbling.

We'll get you one of our first versions there. Yeah.

That's pretty cool. So suddenly now you're building a hardware and software company, AI hardware, all the things. And you also have started thinking through kind of a decision, not a decision point, but a go-to-market Like, who, who are the first users? Obviously it's you. You're the first tester. That's 100% sure. But you're both a, you know, using it in the gym and thinking about using it professionally as well too. So how do you start thinking through who, who's my customer? Like, who did you first envision this, this for? And where is it kind of take us through where that is to today?

One of the most serendipitous moments of this entire journey Has, has been the moment that we received inbound when we were good enough from our IP attorneys that they said, hey, you guys can go out of stealth. Pretty much the moment that we did and we launched our first pretty crappy landing page that we had, the SEAL Future Foundation reached out to us.

Hmm.

And somebody that I didn't know over there too. And they're like, hey, I see what you're building. I think it's really cool. Let's get on a call and talk about it. And again, a lot of this has been about the contributors in this journey and the people that believed in me and what we've been building. And to that, I owe everything. We owe everything as a company. But the SEAL Future Foundation saw the potential in this product and they're like, hey, if you guys get it to a certain point, we would love to consider a contract with you guys. And we got it to that point, and the SEAL Future Foundation ended up being our first contract. And I don't want to name the company that they had the contract with before, but I'll just say it's an, you know, an $11 billion company that everyone knows. It's a household name. And they opted to not renew that contract and to go with us. And that was still the greatest honor that we've had because, you know, in my, in my heart of hearts, My, my dream was to get this out to, to the special warfare community, knowing exactly what the problem was as being one of the, you know, being, being one of those operators and, you know, end users. I know that it's going to have a tremendous impact for, for the guys and gals and the DOW at large. And so to have inbound Right from the community that supplies it to the SEALs was such a cool thing. So, that was our first customer.

Wow!

Now, with that being said, our go-to-market strategy is not purely to get our units out to special warfare operators. We want this to be a tool for consumers. We're living in an incredible era right now where people are starting to recognize that Strength is not just important for athletic prowess. Strength may be the most important, the most important contributor to your healthspan longevity, both cognitively and physically. And so that's really changing what people have been focusing on. People that are more, you know, your biohackers or lifespan optimizing folks or people that are just very health conscious in general that have been really focusing on, okay, it's VO2 max and it's, you know, cardio Yeah. Cardiothoracic health. And those things are really important, but strength may be— it's certainly just as important, might be even more important. So, you have this huge wave of new lifters that are also very intelligent and want to do so in a way that's safe and that's also fitting for them in their life, the stage of life that they're that it's never too late to start lifting, truly, as long as you have decent range of motion. How do we start? How do we actually build a program that's built around my goals, the time that I have to commit to it, and what I really have physically right now? Who's going to assess me? Who's going to tell me what I can do and what I can do next? And that's a really, really exciting use case and application for our Tech, and so we are starting off with a beachhead. There always needs to be your early adopters, and these are going to be people that are going to have the least barrier to understanding what the product is and the value that it's given. Right? We're not going after everyone at once, but we're going after folks that maybe have used velocity-based training when they were when they were athletes or have heard about. People that are already using, you know, other forms of wearables for, for other sorts of training that they're doing, and folks that are already trying to use data to optimize themselves. So that's the first, you know, given. Where we want to go and where I think this, this will go is in connecting, you know, the, the broader, broader market of people that are actually going into strength training and giving them a way to do so intelligently and data-driven.

Yeah.

I mean, and that pool of early adopters is growing and growing right now.

Right, right.

Or maybe we've gone already from super early, uh, early adopters already into early majority on the amount of how much people want to own, have the sovereignty of their data there, and the agency to do something with that now, right? Like, what a wave to be riding, not only from the device and the AI algorithm part, but then to people to finally have the freedom to be like, oh, the tools are there and I want to embrace them. And no, it'd be very easy to be like, ignorance is bliss right now, right? And be like, ah, it's too much info, right? I think people are embracing the give it to me all and let me decide, not let a trainer or a doctor decide for me, right?

Totally. I mean, yeah, there's such, there's such power to, as you said it, you know, data sovereignty. And I think that one of the things that we're at risk of, and you're starting to see it right now, there is a degree of data fatigue. And it's very understandable because having a lot of data without the knowledge of what to really make of it and, you know, what actions to take from it, you know, becomes kind of pointless. It becomes an expensive hobby that, that, that people are going to trip from very quickly. I think that while the wearable industry is growing very rapidly and projected to, you know, double within the next 5 or 6 years, it's still, it's still an industry where you have pretty high attrition and, you know, lifetime members are like 6 to 8 months for a lot of these devices. And the, the reasons that contribute to that, one of, one of them is, is that people feel like, okay, cool, well, if I'm being— if I'm, if I'm waking up and I already know that I didn't sleep well, And I'm just being told that I didn't sleep well. Like, what is the real value here? There's this learning period where eventually, rather quickly, you start to identify, hey, these habits contribute to poor sleep, and that's genuinely valuable. But after you know them, you're either going to make real habit changes from that or not. At a certain point, these devices are just reaffirming what you already know, or worse That you wake up, you think that you slept well, and it tells you that you didn't. Is that providing value to people? I think that these, that these devices are very valuable, but the next step is really in coaching. Hey, how— what do we do with this? How do we make you better with the situation that you have? And when I think of training and people that are trying to take training seriously, what they don't need is to be told that they're not ready to train today.

Yeah.

They need to be told, this is how you're going to train today with what you've got. Maybe you didn't sleep very well. That's great. Let's see how you're actually moving. Okay, you're moving great. You're not fatiguing. We can, we can go as planned. Or yeah, you actually are very smoked physiologically. You're not ready to perform today. Let's make adjustments on your intensity and your volume and let's keep you, let's keep you committed to your goal. We're not going to tell you to take the, take the day off unless absolutely necessary, but let's figure out exactly what you're capable of. And that's where we want to come in. It's the, the action end of the data. It's the real-time coaching mechanism. And that's what I— that's, that's what we believe as a company is going to be the, the next frontier of, of wearable data.

And I mean, it still takes some buy-in from people. They're going to have to still rely on their own discipline, if you will, right?

Absolutely.

Which I think though, you're enabling people to opt into that discipline better as well too, right? Like—

Absolutely.

Because right now you have a bad night of sleep, you think, well, I still got to do that training plan, uh, which you have a bad workout, or even worse, you just slog through it and feel defeated that you didn't do the workout or something, and that just starts a snowball effect. effect of, right, you know, of building both a bad habit because it probably will spiral into bad sleep again, which then there— so I think in a sense the data gives you freedom to opt in to start making healthy habits for yourself, right? Is that what eventually happens with repeated, you know, data around this?

100%. I mean, my, my belief is that the way that you help people build discipline is not by providing more excuses for them to do what requires discipline to begin with. And so, that's where coaching is particularly important. And this isn't a revolutionary idea. There's an entire massive industry built around essentially coaching through accountability less than the actual value of the coaching itself.

Yeah.

And if we can give that level of accountability through something that is incredibly intelligent and powerful, that does not judge but is also going to give really, really meaningful recommendations as to how to train, what to train, and when to train, then I think that you have something really special. And so we want to teach people, um, we want to teach people discipline through showing that that you don't always have to be optimized from a data sense to go and, to go and train. And every time that you train, as long as you're doing so intelligently, which is what we are, which is what we are, you know, striving to do, then there was a positive result from it, not just from building discipline, but, you know, physiologically as well. You're, you're getting something from it. So it's just all about getting the right amount of stimulus, not too much and not too little. And that's an incredibly challenging thing to do unless you have a way of measuring. And that's what we're providing, a way of measuring and a way of deciding.

Incredible and empowering. And like you said, not necessarily like revolutionary technology per se, but just putting the pieces together in the right way for the end user, which is— Exactly.

Which is Awesome.

You right now, so then you're, you've got, got 2 different go-to-markets happening simultaneously. You've got, right, you've got, uh, this B2B or selling direct to, you know, government, if you will.

Yeah.

Um, and then you're starting your pre-order right now and getting some interesting around that. So take us through, right? Someone try one of these kind of soon or, or get on the list?

Yeah, absolutely. So we just, we just started, as you said, we opened up pre-orders for our Founding 300 about 8 weeks ago. They're selling a lot faster than we had anticipated, particularly because we're not putting any sort of marketing behind it for customer acquisition. So somehow people have been finding out about this and, you know, the results are really promising. And so we want to keep it to 300 people people that really want to optimize their training and be part of the next generation of wearable training and real-time coaching. And so right now you can sign up. We've discounted the hardware from $249 to $149, and we've discounted the software fee, which is typically $14.99 per month to $9.99 month. And the founding 300, I think what's very important here is that we understand that this is going to be the first 300 people that, you know, in the true open consumer sense that we're going to have for us. And so it's really important that I personally, as well as Devin, have, you know, direct communication with them and they have a line to us because we're treating them as team and as, you know, in-market product developers. And so we really want people that are going to You know, give us some good feedback on the product, and we're going to take that feedback and we're going to iterate it really quickly. You know, we're building out a pretty amazing facility in Carlsbad right now where we have a full closed-loop system from our software development to the actual testing of the product in the gym in the back. Sort of a dream scenario there for us, but we're going to be, you know, obsessively looking at customer data and feedback. Certainly for the first month. Now we're outside of beta. This is going to be our first, you know, launch month here, which happens in December, and iterating on anything and everything that represents a trend for feedback from those founding 300. So we're looking for people that, you know, want to give it a try and want to have a direct line and part of the development and access to us as a company.

Well, look at you building a device that gives you instant feedback, and you wanting instant feedback from your customer sounds pretty right to, uh, the, the company's DNA, that's for sure. Uh, you're starting to get real customers now, whether it's pre-orders or not. How does it feel? It's another humbling, uh, level-up moment.

Yeah, I, I— it is, it is humbling. And there's also now just another element of responsibility. I mean, raising, raising capital adds a whole nother degree of responsibility, and And, you know, the next step, as I'm learning, is having, you know, paying customers. This is, you know, our beta, our beta users were Olympic athletes and Navy SEALs, and we had some Green Berets. These are people that, you know, I know or were one person removed. And they also really, they also really get— they've been a part of potentially product development before. For these customers, you know, customers are ruthless, as they should be, and they expect something to work perfectly the second that they bought And that's, you know, that's what they purchased. And so we have a real responsibility to them to make sure that we're adding genuine value to their lives. And so right out of the box, we need to be able to do that. And there's also a lot of newness for everyone involved. You know, people haven't trained this way before. And so how do we guide them to actually be able to set it up correctly? It's both incredibly exciting and rewarding that people are, you know, trusting us enough as a company and they see the value enough that they're pre-ordering a product that won't be available until December, and it's also terrifying.

Hmm, 100%. Of course it is. But that's the, that's the, the fear you want to keep pushing you forward, right? To face it and, uh, to conquer it. So yeah, uh, it's exciting time. We can't wait to fit all of our hikers with them, uh, at some point and get all our own unique data here There's, and by the way, the first hike 4 years ago, Founders Hike, San Diego Founders Hike that we put on, uh, we had a portfolio company at the time doing step counting, uh, using your phone or whatever tool you used. And if you hit 10,000 steps, they offered up a dollar off at a local, um, restaurant that, that gave healthy foods.

Yeah.

And so there's a kind of cool bookend.

Yeah.

This, uh, company was called Vizor. They have long ago pivoted multiple times away from the step counting part and just serve up brands in front of healthy people to get them interesting things. So there's a little bit of a continuity here, but I actually want to talk about even more continuity around San Diego's tech ecosystem on wearables that I think, uh, that you started to meet and started to know about. There's long ago a company named Lumodyne built optical sensors and accelerometers under one kit that was being worked on at SPAWAR, Naval Special Warfare's kind of tech lab.

Mm-hmm.

Google bought them, and that became Google's office in San Diego. And alongside that office, Google eventually bought bought Fitbit, and they moved their— the Fitbit Rancho Bernardo R&D team into that same office too. And so now Google's San Diego office, about a block from here, maybe, maybe a mile from here, uh, is both the original Lumodyne optical sensor team, the Fitbit R&D team, which did, you know, obviously that, and the new Air came out of, and Google Health. All right, under one box. And across the street is Dexcom, which is doing sensing, real-time sensing of glucose. And then around the corner from them is Oura, which is now having an engineering team in San Diego. So obviously, there's something unique here, right? There's both the technical talent to do it here. But I think there's also the customer base that leans in and leans forward that says, we want to test this on ourselves, want to be outdoors and be better versions of ourselves. Does that feel like that? I mean, is that sound similar to what you're finding? Absolutely.

I could not agree more. I think that San Diego is legitimately the best place in the country for any sort of lifestyle or consumer tech brand. And the reason, it's really just built into the culture. It's an incredibly healthy community. People are generally very active and also tech-forward. And so you have this great combination of a powerful life science hub in general that's in San Diego, and then the built-in customer base that is out there, you know, trying to, trying to be healthy and better themselves. And so I think from, like you said, from a talent perspective and then from access to community, it is the best place in the country to be building a company like, you know, anything in the wearable space.

Well, we're certainly honored to have you here building in town. What else have you kind of learned and gained from the community a little bit as you're going forward? What do you need? I mean, this is a great way to ask the community, what do you need help with that we can help from a community perspective as well too?

I'll tell you what we're really excited about, the vision with the VLAB, which is our facility, our testbed, and also a genuine world-class gym that we're building out. It is going to be a private facility, but we do have insurance to have different people come through. And so, we want We want everyone from professional athletes to people that are just curious of the product to come in and to meet the team and to train with us and to see the tech firsthand. I think that's going to be a unique advantage that people in San Diego have. We want people to come by. We want people to see us and to be able to go and test out the product and facility before they make a decision to purchase it or not. And then, the other end of that is when we have consumers here in San Diego, We want them to come by, we want them to interface with us, we wanna have, you know, in-person conversations and roundtables about what they think could be better about the whole thing. You know, the entire thing that we're doing, for a little company to be successful in such a competitive market, we need to be the absolute best with taking customer feedback and actually iterating it and perfecting it and launching it. And we need to do that faster than anyone else will. And so that's why we've built this closed-loop facility that we can do exactly that. We want to iterate and implement feedback faster than any company in the space on Earth. And so that's going to start with the community. And so we want to, we want to have the community by the facility. I want to meet folks and I want to get people the devices, and I want people to be proud of the fact that we're a San Diego-born company. So anyone in the community that wants to talk to me, feel free to reach out to me, um, and certainly come by the V-Lab at any My contact is on the website. You guys can sign up for information about the products, about sort of our manufacturing stages. We're sending out updates to folks. And of course, for those that are feeling bullish about it and already know that this is going to be something that's valuable to them, you guys can sign up and be a founding 300 member. And I get in contact with each individual member that signs up, so we have a constant line of communication. Yeah.

Amazing. Well, thanks for being so open to that. Can't wait to throw some Rising Tide Partners events there for sure. And I can't wait to bring my shield for the Founding 300 and yell, this is Sparta, as we test the first grouping here.

You got the reference. You got the reference. Awesome, man. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, man. Man, thank you, Neal. Yeah, appreciate it.

Of course. No, we're stoked. Uh, but what else we're gonna be doing in Carlsbad, and probably we're probably gonna go grab some tacos after a hard lift, after getting some great data. By the way, some food data too. Uh, you know, what we eat ahead of time so that we know we can have the tacos afterwards, right? Instant feedback is, uh, where we going to get tacos first? What's the first spot, Max?

Well, it's, uh, about the other side of the county from, from Carlsbad, man, but my, my favorite taco place, and it's, it's It's about nostalgia more than anything else is going to be Don Ponchos. That's a place that's open late night. I think everybody that's been been to Bud's, whether successful or not, has had several meals at Don Ponchos down there in Imperial Beach, right when you start to get on the strand. And so that's got to be my choice, man.

It is a is classic. It's part of the Ponchos family, I believe. Like I think there's multiple different. Right? There's Senior Poncho's, Don Poncho's, a few others, much like—

I didn't know.

Yeah, there's been spin-offs, just like Roberto's has Aliberto's, uh, and Roberto's Jr. Like, there's these spin-off series, and Don Poncho's has, I think, a whole little family tree of other taco spots throughout the county that are Poncho's related.

Man, I'm gonna have to visit them. What's your Okay.

For my nostalgic pick, just like you, it's Sombreros for their California Burrito. Whoever, you know, brought the technology together to decide to put fries inside a burrito, obviously, I hope they got the patent for that because it's next level.

Yeah.

And so it's Sombreros for me. It's a little bit of a throwback to growing up listening to Blink-182. Pretty much incessantly. And, uh, that's Sombreros, but that's for the burrito. For the tacos, I honestly had to listen into my listener base here. Like, I, we document every person's pick. So Don Ponchos, I think it's the first time it's been mentioned, by the way, going into the database.

Yeah.

Uh, and I look at the numbers and I look at what's been the most named spot. And, uh, it's been for a while, it's been the taco stand at number 1. Then Tacos El Gordo number two. Yeah. And then City Tacos number three pretty consistently. And I had I hadn't done City Tacos until you know two three years ago, and now it is a constant for me. Yeah. Yeah. For tacos, City Tacos more from the breath, I would say at first, right? You see the menu. Yeah. I want to try them all. And so I did. You'd always order a Mexicali and something new every time. Until you work your way through the menu. And now that I have, it's just 2 Mexicali tacos every time. That's it. It's the only— that's the only order for me.

I have— I, I agree with those top 3. I personally would put, uh, Tacos El Gordo, uh, as number 1. Um, I, I, I, I think it's really hard to beat the authenticity of that place. I just don't love the lines because they're so good. The line is serious. The El Pastor line.

Yeah. Well, I mean, if you get anything else, there's no line, but obviously you gotta get the El Pastor Exactly, exactly.

Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to grabbing some City Tacos and Don Ponchos with you.

100%. We'll do a little, uh, county tour with our Velocity devices and see, see, see our, uh, our numbers go down the more tacos that we eat. Unless we do taco training ahead of time, and then we're, you know, set. So we'll see.

Yeah, I think, I think there's, there's something there.

There's some great spots in Carlsbad, so we're gonna have to come back and find out once the office is open what's And yeah, what are the 2 to 3 spots you end up going to a lot, right, near you? Because there's a bunch of good ones there too.

Yeah, man, looking forward to it.

Well, Max, this has been awesome. Keep up the great work, and we're excited to continue to participate and help you do everything that will help us be better versions of ourselves. So thanks again.

I just want to thank James Heller for introducing us, and thank you, Neal. Yeah, appreciate you. Thank you for having Thank you for having me on here.

You're right. Great shout out to James.

Yeah. Thanks, sir. All right, man. Talk soon.

Jalapeños. In these modern times, a craft beer and coffee. My coding yoga posse fold the body origami. We be surfing Coronado, eating tacos El Gordo. The tacos standing puesto, lucha libre and sombrero. Gotta shout out to Coast Angels by the ocean, watch the sunset. La Jolla shores, entrepreneurs trying to get funded when San Diego Startup Week is popping. Dropping in the summer, Oceanside to Tijuana. SD be full of hustlers, from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach. Tech leaders who believe stars are within reach. We interviewing founders who be shooting for the moon. #SDTechos with your host, Neal Bloom. Come on! Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party, startups get the party started. Startups get the party started. Startups get the party— startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey! Startups get the party— startups get the party started. Startups get the party— startups get the party started. Startups get the party— startups get the party started. You want tech in tacos, tacos in tech, you know we got it, hey!