In this presentation, Holly, CTO and co‑founder of Formalitics, introduces MyPix (later branded MyKicks), a smartphone‑only sports analytics platform that uses client‑side machine‑learning and augmented‑reality to reconstruct a 3D environment from 2D video and measure football kick metrics such as speed, spin, curve and placement. The pitch outlines the founding team’s high‑profile backgrounds (Google internships, DeepMind research, world‑class freestyle footballer), $2 M seed funding, early traction (10 k active beta users in the UK and Australia, 10 k pre‑sign‑ups across 55 countries), and key performance indicators (NPS > 55, average session >20 min, >50 kicks per tournament). Holly details the product’s technical novelty (client‑side processing, two pending patents, no external hardware), the upcoming tournament app timed for the World Cup, and a monetisation plan that combines in‑app challenges, advertising, master‑class modules, and future sport‑specific expansions. The Q&A covers influencer‑driven growth, the balance between entertainment and skill development, roadmap extensions (longer‑range kicks, potential drone tracking), IP defensibility, the possibility of opening the platform later, and how a Series A round will fund user‑acquisition, sponsor partnerships, and expansion into other ball sports and NFT initiatives. The presentation ends with a partnership/branding ask and an invitation for further questions.
Chapters
I am the CTO and co-founder of Formalitics, and we are creating our first application, MyPix, to enable the next generation of grassroots sporting challenges. We were founded in 2016, and it was around the idea that there isn't anything today that enables the everyday athlete to measure their performance and see how they're improving over time and seeing how they compare against the professionals. So we wanted to make that professional-grade sporting performance technology accessible and engaging to the everyday athlete. We released our first beta product at the end of last year in September, and we have over 10,000 active beta users in both the UK and Australia, and 10,000 pre-signups in 55 countries. So it is a very exciting opportunity, and I'm really excited to tell to tell you about it. To manage through the 18 months of grueling product development and technology development, we had to have a very strong team. I am a two-time Google intern and turned down my third for this opportunity. Andrew Hall, the CEO and co-founder, is an ex-Stone Ridge Ventures. He's actually a Founders Institute director and has $200 million of capital raised under about. Our other co-founder David Budden is currently at Google's DeepMind and released 20 AI papers by the age of 25. And Andrew Henderson is our product ambassador. He's actually a 5-time world freestyle footballer, which is juggling and flips and tricks with a football. So we have a very incredible team. And with $2 million of seed investment, we've done some incredible things. So the application itself is used to allow the everyday footballer to measure their kicks at goal and get statistics back. So all they need is their everyday smartphone, no extra hardware, place it on the ground against a water bottle or on a tripod, get the ball and the goal in frame, and kick away. The exciting thing about this algorithm is that it does use augmented reality. So you set up your 3D environment, take your 2D video, so your flat video, and it will use machine learning and computer vision to recreate a 3D world. That's super exciting because it not only allows us to get metrics on speed, spin, curve, placement, but it also allows us to put things into the 3D world. So we can put in free kick wall, we can put in a world-class goalie, on the goal line. Leaning into that idea of challenges, we're going to be releasing a tournament app in about 2 months' time, just in time for the World Cup. So this tournament app will work by you take your 5 best free kicks, take 5 save zones, so where you want to save against your opponent's kicks, and depending on their placement and their speed and your placement and your speed of your kicks, who will either go through into the tournament or not. So with such a global opportunity of over 1 billion players worldwide, we don't want to stifle the growth. So we're going to be monetizing through challenges, in-app advertising, masterclasses, modules for the more serious players. And we also want to utilize that natural viral loop, which is, I want to beat my neighbor down the road, Billy. Or I want to showcase how awesome my kick was and share it online. So, our milestones for this year is release the tournament app, obviously, get 1 million downloads, expand the platform, which is really exciting. It isn't specific to football. We're just leaning into that opportunity first. Commence our direct and indirect monetization, continue our proof of concept in other sports sports and lean into a Series A investment in July. So how we can partner with you guys is branding. So do you want to be associated with us and really influencing this grassroots technology? So allowing everyday players that professional-grade technology. Do you, do you have a love of a sport you want to co-develop with us? Do you want to get that next sport to market faster, or do you want a specific aspect or challenge in the app today to come to market faster? Or do you want to take an option on us on the future, which is a very exciting opportunity with our early tournament stats looking at NPS of greater than 55, average session times over 20 minutes a day, over 50 kicks per tournament per player, with early evidence of a viral coefficient. It's definitely exciting times times for us. So thank you very much, guys, and I'd love to hear any of your questions.
Cool. All right. Thank you, Holly. That went very smoothly. Thank you for starting us off nice on a good note here. So I have a couple first questions, and this is usually how it works. Unfortunately, people are a little bit shy, so to everybody in the audience, please So don't hesitate, throw your questions into the chat there and we'll get to them. And I love how you guys, just as a side note, I'm a big, well, we call it soccer, football fan here as well. And my country will not be in the World Cup this year, so maybe I'll get up on this app and start playing that stuff.
I'm a New Zealander, so my country's not there either.
Okay, all right. So let's see, one thing that I really did love about this presentation, and I'll get into some of the questions too, to you is just that there was a great ask, right? I think, um, with just as a learning moment, if there are some other entrepreneurs out there, um, you know, making sure that you know what you're asking for is really appropriate. In this case, it was, you know, you can invest, um, or you can partner, right? On the partner side, you mentioned that, you know, you have like an ambassador, um, you know, freestyle footballer. So are you guys sort of— was that like a path for you guys to launch, you know, in the football market? Are you looking for similar things in other markets? Because I'm sure you can use the using, you know, ball tracking, 3D modeling technology across a lot of different things, right?
Yes, so Andrew Henderson has been an incredible, incredible ambassador for us. So not only does he have his own social influences, but he also knows a lot of the other influencers. So actually, the CEO can't be on this call at the moment because he's flying to the UK to meet those other influencers. And that is The great thing is that there is this unique opportunity in this market where the YouTubers and social media people are bigger than the players themselves. So kids watch these, like there is a product placement with Adidas Smartball which got over 15 million views. And they didn't specify it was a ball itself. They thought it was an app and all these kids realized you needed the ball and there was just so much disappointment. Appointment, knowing that you needed to buy this expensive ball. So yeah, we're definitely looking to expand those influencers, utilize them more, utilize them in other sports because it is a platform. The algorithm isn't specific to football, it is any circular ball sport.
Oh, and if you're going to pick one, football is a good place to start. So let's see, I see some questions coming in, so that's great. So let's see. So Richard asks, is this just for entertainment? Do you think it'll be used for advanced skills too? Right. So I guess that's sort of a question on top on where, you know, you see the, you know, the product pipeline, the product roadmap going, at least in the near future.
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So it's definitely a mixture of both. Obviously, entertainment's a lot. A lot larger, and it's definitely more intergenerational. So you have the youngest kids and their grandfathers both love football, they all want to get involved. But there is a masterclass aspect. So one of our team members is actually an ex-footballer, an ex-pro, and he has done a masterclass module that has increased kids' kicking power by 10% to 15% and their speed. So there is that area that we're looking into to as to very serious players and how to make them better. And the great thing about that 3D technological environment is that we can place David Beckham's kick, his Bend It Like Beckham kick, say, into that 3D world and compare mine directly to his, which will— they'll look very different, but obviously kids nowadays will be— they can learn how to match that a bit better. So there is definitely that. Improvement aspect as well.
Right. And I guess from that perspective too, it's really just adding on content, right? Because the technology is there that you're tracking it. So if there's just content sort of in between the different kicks and, you know, then it's a matter of just improving and improving on your last kick and that kind of stuff, right? So as a CTO, I'm sure for you that that's like the easy stuff, right?
Exactly. It's the most exciting bit.
I love it so much. For sure. So let's see, Aye has a question, A-Y-E. I might be mispronouncing that, so I apologize if that is the case. What else are you analyzing other than the kicks? Because there's so much more variables than that. So I think, yeah, so this is more of a question on, you know, exactly when you're creating this 3D world, you know, which is the phrase that you used, are there other things that you're analyzing, at least in this version, or that you're planning to analyze in the future?
Yeah, so currently we are specific to penalty kicks. We've got other developers currently working on expanding that to longer range from wherever, you know, corner kicks, free kicks. And the things that we're looking to measure in that is whether you can get around a free kick ball and whatnot. But our current focus, yes, is specifically on the kicks. We have We always have internal discussions as to whether having a drone above the field and tracking players and whatnot is something that we will lean into. So that's definitely a future discussion as to whether we go really deep on football, measure more aspects of football and different aspects of the play itself, or whether we spread out into different sports. So it's definitely in our, in the back of our mind, but we're leaning very deeply into football.
Sure. So Tim asked a question here too on the technology, and yeah, I mean, it is pretty impressive. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not a very unbiased source here, but, you know, there's a lot of smart soccer balls, there's a lot of, you know, smart balls and things like that, and this is literally like you could do it with a smartphone, right? So this unlocks a much larger market than, than just some of these other, you know, smart sporting things. Um, Tim asked, how proprietary is the technology at this level? Would it be easy for another company anybody to replicate it?
Yeah, so the, the technology currently has two patents pending, so it is going through that, um, that stage. It did take us 18 months of extremely difficult technology development, especially getting it on to the client. So none of it runs on the cloud, it's all client-side, which is definitely working the phones a lot harder than Apple may be told, may be expected. But it is, I would say, it is extremely difficult to replicate because not only did we definitely use some odd techniques that aren't necessarily for ball tracking, but we did have the absolute godfather of sports computer vision as an advisor. So he definitely helped us jump through a lot of loops. And those patterns really do secure us as well. But yeah, previous technology definitely more leans into having the physical device and it can't see the calls and it has to be kicked over a certain distance. So this definitely is a game changer, really. Sure.
Okay. Emmanuel had a question here too, and I think I know what the answer is, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Emmanuel's question is, you know, why not make it a platform where ideas can be added? You know, he's basically saying why not open up the technology as a platform, right? Um, obviously this type of, you know, being able to use a smartphone to track things that are happening in the real world, break those down into models, uh, for improvement, right? This could become a platform/marketplace type of thing. Um, you know, I'm sure those are the types of questions that investors like to ask, right? Um, thinking like, what could this be 5 years down the line, that sort of thing. But is that something, um, that you guys are thinking about?
It may come in the future. We are definitely, we're definitely locking it off at this stage. It is definitely our babies and we want to see where the product grows ourselves first before we open it up. With machine learning becoming a lot better, maybe one day we will open up the computer vision side because we'll utilize machine learning a different way. It's definitely a possibility, but it is something that we're looking to grow our own and see where it goes first at this stage.
Sure. And as a kind of a corollary question to that, so I know you guys raised a seed round in the past. You're growing. You're looking to possibly do a Series A round this coming summer around the World Cup. Sure, that's not a coincidence. But the, um, what's, you know, with another round of funding, I would think that it might be sales staff, right, to create other relationships. But what are, what are some of, you know, and I'm sure that this can all change, right, but what are some of the high-level things where you guys could imagine spending, um, at least, you know, the ones that are sort of obvious, right, with the new injection of funding to really get you to the next level?
Yeah, so we're definitely looking in different areas. So, first being, you know, getting some of this large— getting some of this large— oh, and especially pull the handle, really. Pull the handle and really get a lot of— get a lot of— um, we don't just need a leap, we don't first— a leap first. Other areas— other areas— expanding the technology, obviously, taking it into different areas, different areas with different sponsors, so we're talking basketball brands at the moment, and NFTs specifically as well. We know baseball and we know baseball and its character, so we're looking at that too. So there is, uh, so there is a few— especially, especially the YouTubers are the YouTubers of the podcast, so we do have our user acquisition, Instagram and Facebook at the moment extremely cheap, so We've got it in 25 cents. That is cents. But the YouTubers could be a wild card and be even better than that. So that is definitely things we're looking into.
OK, cool. All right, so we did have some extra questions in here. So Holly, if you don't mind, I would recommend some additional questions have been piling up. If you want to stick around in the chat and maybe answer some of those questions. But in addition to that, a member of my team will put in her contact information, the company information, and we'll have a video afterwards where you'll get all that as well. But thank you, Holly, for joining. Appreciate it. Great job.
