We were lucky enough to have a first product that was been in market now for almost five years that people loved and wanted to use and still want to use to this day.

Believing in yourself, of course saying humble and open to input and feedback, but you know, nothing gets done unless you sort of act with conviction. You could just keep overthinking stuff and the best thing to test whether you have a good idea or not is to actually go and do it. Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford.

Dan Eisenhardt is the CEO and founder of Form Swim. As a distance swimmer, one of Dan’s biggest challenges was knowing his times and his pace when he was training. So in 2006, he had the idea of creating a pair of goggles that could show your splits while you were swimming. But it wasn’t until 2018 that he had the right team, the experience and the technology that allowed him to create the world’s first augmented reality swim goggles. This is when Form was born. On this episode, we dive into how you can get more out of your sessions by using real time data. What features does Dan use the most in his own swimming? What was the hardest feature to develop in the goggles with the new swim straight feature with the heart rate monitor? Or if you’ve ever wanted to tread your own path in your professional life, what’s the best way to get started? And what three things would you need to consider if you’re going to go out on your own in

business? All that and more in today’s episode. Now if you’re not following our Instagram page yet, head over to Instagram at Effortless Swimming. We’re currently doing a giveaway for a pair of Gen 2 Form Smart Swim goggles. That ends on the 30th of April, so Tuesday, 12 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time. So head to our Instagram page to win yourself a pair of Form Smart Swim goggles, the Gen 2 version. Welcome to this week’s episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. My guest today is the founder and CEO of Form Swim, Dan Eisenhart. Welcome to the podcast, Dan. Thanks a lot, Brent. Thanks for having me. It’s a great to be here. Dan, take me back to when you first had the idea of having some sort of augmented reality for swimming where you can see the data in front of you. When was that first idea born? Yeah, the light bulb moment was really doing my MBA, which was in 2006. And I was doing an exchange program.

I was actually living in Melbourne at that time. And then I did an exchange program to Vancouver, Canada. And I picked an entrepreneurship course. And I was asked, we were all asked to come up with an idea and pitch it to class. And we had to be passionate about the idea. And I was like, lifelong swimmer, come from a family of swimmers and engineers. And I thought, okay, well, what’s the biggest pain point in my life as a swimmer where it was really to have real time access to metrics, because I was a 450 hundred meter swimmer. So I would only get updates, you know, when you’re resting at pool and you can’t really see the pool clock and you have to do all this mental math. So I pitched this in class and some people came over, they became my co founders. And we thought we’re going to create this company in 2006. It was too early. We couldn’t pull it off when we ended up pivoting, so to speak, to ski golf. So we ended up creating Recon, which became basically

a company that does the same thing as form. But back then it was for for skiing and later on cycling. And so that’s kind of how the whole thing started. And you say it was too early, was it too early for the technology too early for you with your business acumen, but what was too early about it? Do you know what it seemed too hard at the time to get into such a small form factor inside a pair of swimming goggles that were sold for 20 bucks to get the price point down to get the form factor down and make it waterproof. And then, you know, tackle this opportunity in a market like swimming, it was just we thought it was too hard and we ended up pivoting to skiing because ski goggles were 200 bucks, 250 bucks, lift tickets were 100 bucks a day. So we thought, okay, maybe it’s a better idea to stop there. So yeah, it was a bunch of challenges and many of them are technical challenges.

When I look back at the look back at the clinics that we do, so we started pretty early out using go pros and iPads for analysis at clinics. But in the early days, we had GoPro Hero Threes, and it took 15 minutes to download a video, one video to the iPad, to then be able to look at it. And even with the software, it was very cumbersome to be able to analyze it, record it, and then to send it to people. I used to employ someone for one to two days a week, just to export all of the footage and the analysis that we do at clinics to them to be able to send it out. And now it’s just very simple with the right apps and technology. So it’s now it’s possible to run them the way that we do, but before that we couldn’t. So in terms of the goggles, has the technology evolved quite rapidly in the last couple of years to allay to do some of the things that the goggles are capable of doing or has it always been there? And it’s just now that you’re

figuring out how to use it.

Yeah, I think I mean, the biggest challenge for us to overcome was really making these waveguides, which is how we show the information underwater. So you can just like have these numbers and information float in front of you to have those work underwater. That was a very difficult thing to do, because it’s not the same when you put a waveguide into water. Everything gets distorted. It’s kind of like the raindrop on your iPhone, you know, in the rain, you’re trying to read email. And so that that was a big challenge for us to solve. So I think it just that just required the right team to look at this and have the right vision and work towards it. So that could have been done earlier. I think the machine learning that was required to enable the really accurate tracking that we have, which is the foundation for the entire product without actually tracking off your splits and so forth. It doesn’t really matter. You can’t

build experiences on top of that. So that those things I think for machine learning to really sort of enter the stage that that didn’t happen until the mid 2010s and you had enough people that knew how to how to do this at least at scale and for consumer products. So I think it also came together around 2015 was sort of when that was also when I got the team together and we originally started looking at this. That’s so that that’s where I think that the form factors and the price points for the components and the expertise sort of all came together to enable this this category to finally take off. Was there a moment where you tested the prototype of the goggles like a working prototype where it was giving you your splits coming off the walls that was giving you your times and that sort of thing. Was there a moment there where you had it working and you’re using them and you went, oh, yes, like this is what I’ve wanted for for so

many years. Yes, I remember almost the day of 2018 because I was the guinea pig, you know, going to the pool, not every day, then at least many times a week to to swim with the latest firmware and it took, you know, it took a while to train those machine learning algorithms to deliver a reliable accurate output and it’s just a constant iteration in the pool and and I really wanted to work seamlessly so that it could detect automatically when I was resting, when I was starting, there’s not a big lag. I couldn’t have like sort of force it to create errors and and and that took, you know, a long time to do. But yes, the first time I jumped in the pool, first off, you know, I was like, it’s hard to get used to a new pair of goggles, right? If you swam with the same, I must, I was a Swedish goggles, you know, the ones without, you know, very minimalistic, right? And so I never changed goggles and just to change goggles, right?

It’s a big thing. But as soon as you saw, as I saw the display there, I was like, okay, it doesn’t matter. I can get used to these goggles, but quickly they are two and then I was, I was used to them because the benefits were so huge. Is there anything that said that like looking back, like at the time you thought, man, this is such a challenge. This is so hard. I cannot figure out how we can get this certain thing to work and you look back and go, well, now, now it seems kind of simple and basic, but at the time was a real challenge. Yeah. Well, I guess it was a real channel challenge to make the heart rate work in our newest model smarts from two. So that’s pretty recent. And it’s actually the opposite thing. Yeah. At the time, we thought it was easy to pull off heart rate. How hard could it be? We just, you know, lost the product and we could provide a see-through information on the water. But they turned out

it’s actually very complicated to deliver a sort of low latency heart rate sensing on the water. And then so that, so that’s something that we sort of learned through there’s many years of swimming with the heart rate sensor and going back to the lab and tweaking the algorithms so that the heart rate sensor could fit multiple different face shapes and skin tones and not have too much of a lag because swimming is an interval sport. So you have to be able to immediately see your heart rate as you change your heart rate. And that was a big challenge. So that was sort of the opposite. I mean, I think most things that we did in the early days there where it’s, you know, making just the basics work when you look back, you like, okay, maybe we could have done that faster with current knowledge and the current team. But back then we’re going from zero to one, so to speak, is actually really, really hard because you don’t have any frame of reference. You

don’t have really the resources yet. You know, everything is maybe there’s four or five people. So trying to do a lot with with few people is always very difficult. And that’s much easier later on when you’re a full team is like, oh, we could have done this in two months. But it’s those in two different contexts. But I always say it’s hard to steer a parked car. And when you haven’t got that initial, you know, product there, you don’t have any momentum behind you. It’s just, it’s really hard work and a lot of effort to get things going. But then as it starts rolling, you build that momentum and it’s just, it’s snowballs and then you can just start to change things a lot, a lot quicker, can’t you? And I mean, with the, so with the heart rate, it was, was an issue with like having it to be able to read the heart rate well for all facial shapes, as well as just being able to give that data quick enough for like, what was the, was that the

issue, the connection with? Yeah, that’s good. The biggest issue was actually that in a control setting, because in the lab, go to pool, we got like five people in the pool and we told them exactly what to do and we could put the heart rate, you know, the goggles on them with the right strap tension and placement and and the swim cap over their strap and all that stuff. Worked perfectly, right? And then what you realize when you release it into the field and you have people that haven’t gotten that kind of in-person guidance then, and you may not be able to like just perfectly position the sensor or the goggles so that, you know, you’re reading from, you have family order with here, which is running from your eyeballs here back, back up there, the side of the tent. So really it was, it was then making it more forgiving the technology so that you could afford to not be perfect in the placement of position and strap tension

and still get a reliable signal. So that’s something that takes a long time because you’ll never get perfect, you’ll just get better and better and better. So I think that that was just acknowledging that when you’re on, when you’re wearable, you’re on the face, people’s face shapes and skin tones are very different and so it’s very difficult to get all of them in one go and then so you have to, you have to really constantly tweak both, you know, software but also some of the hardware aspects to get, you know, the just the right tension and the contact surface with the skin to get the best thing. Well using the goggles for the first time and then using the new version of the goggles for the first time with the heart rate, it is, it’s so amazing to have that data right there in front of you and I look back to when I was squad training as a teenager, we count 10 seconds on the clock, count our, count our beats per minute, which seems archaic now but

yeah, it still, you know, still works but it’s, it’s just very, it just seems very archaic now compared to what we’ve got there and it’s just, it’s another another world and the fact that you can actually get your splits in each 25 or 50 is something that as a kid I was like wouldn’t that be awesome to know what, what my time is, we only got it when the coach yelled it out or when we looked up at the stop clock but now it’s just right there in front of us which is, which is such a cool thing and to think it’s only been around, you know, a couple of years, it’s like kids they, kids these days won’t even sort of know how we used to, used to do it, right? Like I’m talking like an old man but like you just don’t know what it was like for us back in the day. Yeah, if you think about it, I’m so funny, right? Because swimming has been completely underserved by technology, I mean look at running and cycling with GPS and my computers and sensors

and all this stuff and so that’s sort of, that didn’t happen in swimming, you know, it’s all, still there’s paddles and pool boys and then of course you’ve got the smartwatches that were really designed for running and then oh by the way you can also use them in the pool by the way you can’t see any of that while you’re swimming. So it was really, it was always frustrating for me because I had this, I really always felt that this was possible and, and the fact that nobody really seemed to be bothered with it and then once you give it to them, to swimmers and they never go back, it’s just essential. I mean our customers are very, it’s a very sticky piece of equipment like whether you’re swimming once a week or twice a day, it just becomes something that’s very hard to live without when you’ve been, you know, when you suddenly can just offload like all that mental math and plus you can get much higher resolution on what you’re doing

and, and then try and focus on, on your weaknesses and, and how to improve them.

How much of what you learned in your previous business at Recon? Were you able to take into form?

A tremendous amount. I don’t think that

I could have, I would say even we, we could have pulled this off because I was fortunate enough to have a bunch of people, my colleagues, ex-colleagues there from Recon come over so, so a lot of that knowledge transferred over, not just my own and I would say just all the learning slash mistakes that we made to those, you know, what, eight years at Recon really helped us hit the ground running because it’s just, you know, it’s, it’s a different, it’s a different tech stack, we use different optics and everything is different, we don’t have GPS and all this stuff but the learnings of, of how you consume this, you know, live information and how to focus your roadmap and, and how to put together that very multidisciplinary team that you need in place because you’re on the face which is the most valued piece of real estate so you really are sort of a piece of, like a fashion item and you’re also a technology device and to merge those

worlds it means you’ve got to, you’ve got to have a really broad range of skills in your team so that, that was those are huge learnings that we couldn’t have been without. When I look at, when people, yeah people who start, start businesses or perhaps, yeah, maybe new careers and that kind of thing, quite often if I look at their, their history and, and the people that do well they’re often taking things that they’ve got experience in or interest in for you swimming, you’ve got that sort of business technology background, obviously eyewear with, with recon, they’re able to, you know, take these, these areas of experience, match them together and just sort of, yeah, do something slightly different, it’s not like it’s, you’re taking this blank slate and you’re going into, I don’t know, something, something completely different, you’re opening a bakery or something, it’s like, yeah, you take areas of interest and you’re able to

do something that’s, that’s different and, you know, when I look back at my, my coaching, I was, I was a swimmer, I really liked the business side of things, I, I was quite early with YouTube and the social media stuff and really enjoyed doing that and so I was able to, to build effortless swimming with what I was interested in and what I had, you know, got a lot of experience in now, looking back sort of 20, 20 years with, with that, so it’s, yeah, just making these slight adjustments to things you’ve, you’ve got experience in, so maybe like teenager or early 20s, what did you picture your life looking like now that you’re in your, in your late 40s? Yes, it’s funny, I don’t really come from a family of entrepreneurs, I don’t mean my family and the most of my engineers and working for big companies and so I always, it always fascinated me, I was always fascinated by people who went off on their own and, and, and but, you know, so it

wasn’t something that it was expected of me and I think I ended up doing consulting after I did engineering and then worked for PWC and IBM implementing SAP ERP systems, which I found, well, I eventually found extremely boring. It was a good learning experience to God, you know, these big companies and learn the how, how to optimize their processes and then so forth and it probably gave me some good tools, but it wasn’t really until I, I did my MBA, I got my eyes up for other things and, and I think just starting a business and, and going through all the different exercises that you have to go through before you’ve validated an idea and then be able to, you know, create the financial model and the strategy and put all that together that those were the tools I didn’t have and that, that opened my eyes and then of course serendipity and you’re in the right place at the right time and meet the right people, right? You can really

always bet on that, but, but so, so I think to answer your question is that, that I, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do to be honest when I was, for example, in my 20s I kind of ended up saying, okay, I can always do engineering. I thought that was, that was exciting, but it wasn’t my calling. So it was, it was, it was really just kind of following my, I guess, my passion for traveling. I ended up in Australia and then ended up going to Vancouver. It was really more trying to, you know, keep an open mind to meeting people and having experiences. I think was, was what ultimately drove me into this, you know, kind of entrepreneurship role. Yeah, fantastic. In terms of where we’re at now with the business, form goggles, I feel like is, it’s a term that’s used. It’s like, it’s like Kleenex for tissues. It’s like people associate form. It’s like, well, that’s, you know, swim goggles. Like that’s, that’s the, the main brand there. Why do you,

why do you think that is? Is it, I don’t know, were you first to market? Like, is that from memory you are? But like, maybe I’m wrong there. Like we, I know there, I saw an additional thing that you could add. This is a long time ago, but didn’t get much traction. So, yeah, were you first to market?

We were definitely first to market. And we were also, you know, we have the IP that protects this underwater see-through information. I realized after recon, which wasn’t see-through, it was more a little monitor at the bottom of the goggles. So you had to change focus to, to consume the information. And then through those years that recon I realized we really do need see-through information so that you don’t have to change your focus or plans. And in order to be able to get more, you know, rich information, you know, metrics are fine, but I always saw as having, you know, guided workouts and coaching as well, then you need to be see-through, right? So you can, you don’t, you don’t have to extend any effort to get the information. So that was, that, that, so we were first there and we now have, you know, have the IP to protect that, that, that space. And in terms of form, you know, that name of course came up with, you

know, through some great discussions with my co-founders and we couldn’t believe that it wasn’t trademarked for our category. And we ended up looking at that, oh, it’s not in the U.S. and we got the whole, most of the, most of the world trademarked with that brand name. So, so it’s a very memorable thing as well. If you talk about Clean Action or Xerox or whatever. So, so people who love our products, you know, they talk about them and this name seems to stick as well. Yeah, yeah, it’s a great one. Four letters, you know, one syllable rolls off, rolls off the tongue. It’s a really good one. And in terms of competition, how do you see your competition? Do you look much at what they’re doing? Do you think much about them or are you a person who likes to stay in their own lane and just do what you think is, is going to be best? Well, I always want to learn from competitors and I think, I think competition is always healthy,

right? So that, so for us, there are alternatives why we don’t have see-through information, apart from some, you know, unnamed Chinese companies that, you know, would always come in and try and copy what you’re doing. But apart from those, I always like to learn from competition or alternatives and see, well, could we do it better or have done it better and be inspired? So I don’t actually spend much time being threatened at all because I am very focused on what we can do and our experience and I have confidence in our team and our ability to create amazing products and experiences and you can do that in several ways and we’ve analyzed our customers and our market and we know what they want and who they are so we just continue, we just execute. So that’s, I think if we were in a space and we spend a lot of money of course getting this point, if we didn’t have the IP as well and what I think is that is the difference maker which is that the

see-through underwater display then I would probably look a little bit more over my shoulders because then suddenly it’s an open playing field but it is very difficult to enter this market with what we’ve built as the first mover which is not an automatic, a lot of markets the first mover doesn’t make it and it can be very difficult to be first mover because you get one shot and then if you can do it in one shot and then you end up getting crowded so we were lucky enough to have a first product that has been in market now for almost five years that people loved and wanted to use and still want to use to this day so that’s always great. Yeah I find myself like a similar sort of thing it’s like I don’t I’ll see what other whether it’s podcasts or swim coaches are doing and I’ll certainly learn from them and take a lot from them but I find if I focus too much on it I feel disempowered it’s like you know for whatever reason you know

like I can’t I kind of impact what they’re doing it’s like I try and just stay in my lane switch pretty much switch everything else off and just do what I think is going to work best and do it my way as well because one thing I’ve learned is that whenever I’ve tried to do something or for me it’s just more coaching right like coaching or delivering something in a way that someone else is doing it at full flat but if I just go you know put my style on things and theme on things and that tends to work out pretty well and it comes across as is more genuine and I enjoy doing it more and even if it’s a little bit different than the norm to me those those things have actually gone really well when an example of that we’ve we’ve got this five-day catch challenge it’s like a five-day course that a lot of people have been through and had good success with like that’s it’s something that I just sort of thought this would work

really well and this is something I want to teach people and so I just I put it together didn’t take me too long but it’s like this is something that’s just been in my mind for a long time so I put it out there and the results have been terrific and so many people have been through it and so many people have come up and said I did this and you know got a lot out of it so what I learned from that is that if you just sort of follow what you what you’ve been it’s been in your mind and you’ve been thinking I just go with that you know just trust your gut instinct there’s a lot to be said for going with your gut I could not agree more and I think it also comes back I mean from a sports background you couldn’t control what your competitors were doing or how they were training or how they were eating or what gifts they had you know genetically or whatever you know you you can only focus on when you control then try and be inspired by

something that you think you know was this training method that will that you can also adopt right maybe it’s weak but yeah I couldn’t agree more I think you know going forward believing in yourself of course staying humble and open to input and feedback but you know nothing gets done unless you sort of act with conviction right you could just keep overthinking stuff and and the best thing to test whether you have a good idea or not is to actually go and do it and then just start humble you know low low ambitions and then you can actually always add onto it with with customer feedback right and when it comes to products of course some some products are hard to get to that minimal viable product level right like our product took years and years to develop but we didn’t go out and launch a product that had all the features that we have today right even though back then we had envisioned most of them and because we knew okay let’s start

with something that we know is easy to communicate and measure and message around and and then we can go from there based on customer feedback

yeah start start simple and a minute it goes with with improving your swimming as well it’s like just keep things simple just start pick one thing pick maybe two things and just start working on on those as soon as you try and do it too much you’re just going to get overwhelmed and so when you start with a product you don’t you don’t want to have all the features where people just go well this is so great but then they just get lost in all the different things you want to start with the the most fundamental things that someone’s going to to want other what what features do you what do you look at when you’re swimming and using the goggles is there a certain thing that you like get most out of and for me it’s really just the splits like I just love seeing myself split and being able to adjust the effort for for that you know it’s especially for those longer sets where I’m maybe progressing in speed and you know to that to

me that’s like just such a fundamental thing and it makes a huge difference for those sessions yeah no it’s I mean the same for me coming from the competitive swimming background the splits are just it’s just a foundation for for a workout and then I think now I’d say my my favorite is actually the guided workouts because I can now instead of having to memorize these workouts I have my you know soggy piece of paper or whatever on the pool deck it’s just like served up right in front of me and keeps me accountable and I motivate by just like okay it the goggles will tell me what to do and you know I don’t have a coach on deck anymore so it’s a really that actually is even surprised me that I would be get so hooked on on swimming with guided workouts I think I think for open water I mean I know one thing as well for headcoast when we launched that one feature that I find using a lot is the the head pitch feature because

it turns out that I don’t know if it’s old school coaching but my my head pitch like I sort of look up a bit too much at higher speeds and that’s not that efficient because then your legs strike a little bit and and so forth so so that was something I didn’t know I was doing until I got the head pitch actual angle in my goggles and the goggles were telling me your average best on this so so that’s one thing that I’m obsessing about at the moment for open water like swim straight is just magic I have to say it’s just having that digital compass and you know if you’re doing triathlons you know it’s just not having to constantly swim with your head above water of course you’re siding for safety but just knowing that you can swim in a straight line is it’s just takes so much anxiety out of open water swimming and knowing you’re saving you know on let’s say an Ironman swim distance you’re probably saving two to three hundred meters just in not six

siding and that’s you know that’s hard to win back if you train that much more to get that back in speed right so that’s kind of a gift for you that’s what Scott from your team was saying he said we’ve had so many people use that feature now in races and just like you know ride in or message on instagram and just be like wow I can’t believe how well I I swam like how straight I swam for these these races so it’s it’s pretty cool to to get that feedback and we can see that right because we can see in the app that you know people that may that you know a bit of testers and I even friends of forums that would be sick sagging they go out and swim the exact same route you know every week or every day in open water and it’s kind of all over the place and then after swim straight it’s just like straight out in back and then so just graphically we already know that it’s making an impact like we are making our swimmers faster in open

water so that’s that’s a great feeling to have with such a you know relatively simple feature but hard to make accurate because of the noises from your head from breathing and calibration yeah so it’s quite difficult actually to get accurate so that that took some time but the team pulls through

I did a session an open water session this morning with a bunch of people here in in Torquay where I live and we did we’re out in the open water and we were probably 150 meters out and we’re facing the shore and I said because I was just teaching them open water skills and a lot of them are fairly new swimmers and we do this exercise where close our eyes we do 50 strokes and we try and swim towards the shore towards a marker and we then we open our eyes after 50 strokes and we just see where we’re at and we had people going

across each other swimming over the top of each other finishing you know a good sort of 30 meters way off to the side so naturally people just tend to view to one side just it’s just how we how we swim and if you’re breathing to one side often we we tend to view so being able to go straight can just save people so much so much time well I’ll tell you my Ironman and Kona in 19 that happened to me and I mean I was used to the black line in the bottom of the pool back in my competitive swim days but I always thought I was actually good at swimming straight to turn out I was horrible because I was picked up by the paddle board is twice on the way out on the way back I was I had no idea that I was constantly varying right and so I don’t know how much I lost on the four kilometers swim just in terms of swimming too much right but it’s a good example it doesn’t really matter if you really experience swimmer you know it’s just like open water

is a whole different game and very few people can just swim straight without any like it’s very difficult

yeah I mean if I switch off 20 or 30 strokes in an open water race I will be off to the side I will evade off to the usually to the left and it’s like it’s just it’s just what it is so you’ve got to pay attention you’ve always got to keep in in mind and it’s not a yeah it’s not an experience it’s not how good you are or how experienced you are it’s just that it’s just what happens so we’ve got to be aware of it and then we’ve got to adjust it but the yeah a lot of people who when these new goggles came out they saw the youtube review I did on them and they like nearly everyone they’re most interested in the swim straight feature and also that the heart rate as well but that’s that’s quite a it’s just a very unique thing and yeah I remember there was something probably I don’t know I’m guessing six years ago I saw where it was something that you know maybe you add to your goggles and this company was like just something that you could add to

your goggles for an open water swim to help you with the direction or maybe it beeped or something I can’t quite remember but it never really got off the ground do you remember that at all was it on course the led based yeah that’s right yeah yeah that’s right it’s hard to do it’s very hard to do it’s always tough with the retrofitters but I can’t believe remember if they were retrofitted where they was came with goggles but yeah it was it’s hard to pull off right yeah you need to spend a lot of time in development and and testing all right and that that feedback loop so it’s quite resource-heavy but is well worth it I think and and now that we’re race approved officially you know this is something I have confident we’ll see out there and in the triathlons around the world that it just doesn’t make sense to not use it in a race if you spend a year training for an event somebody didn’t train as much as you and they’re

faster than you just because they decided to get the phone goggles with the swim straight feature right so it it just seems like if you’re a serious triathlete or open water swimmer you know of course you’d want to get like the the guided between between the buoys right that it doesn’t so I think we’ll see that and and certainly I’ve had a lot of questions from triathlete asking that question so can I really use that in my competition as coming up my whatever is half distance or full distance so I’m like yep you can and I refer them to our website and they can see see the proof right there yeah yeah it’s gonna be interesting to see like people are people are already starting to use it obviously so it’s only going to get more common I think yeah in terms of looking forward to the next couple of years what are the what are the challenges that you face what are you most looking forwards to what what what excites you about

where the business is going what you can contribute to to swimming and triathlon what what really motivates you looking forward to the next couple of years yeah I’m really excited about our premium offering because we spent you know last several years putting value into that and a lot of resources behind building on top of the activity tracking and that was what we lost the goggles with and that comes with the goggles but we were seeing a lot of our customers really get excited about the premium offering and once they start using these premium features they stay in right and and then initially of course it’s always the pushback why should I you know pay extra when I just bought the goggles and we but but I think that’s that I mean it’s always going to be people for whom this is not a stretch for that for for for paying paying for those features but there’s so much so many resources that form go into that experience

and are those experiences that are building on top of activity tracking and so will we continue to invest in that and head coach a good example is there’s some straight feature we just talked about for open water our workouts and and additional features that will just help with the execution of the workout to guide you through it and also help and making you a faster swimmer a better swimmer through through coaching and holding your accountable and giving you metrics so you can objectively see okay my distance to stroke on my form score just went up well this is why or this is why not what’s my top priority keeping you honest so continuing down that path and I think there’s some education as well I think with our customers to show them well this is actually what you what you can get out of that offering so that that’s what I’m excited about we’ve just sort of started I think that part of our journey and and it can keep going

right we can we can we can keep building on top of the features that we have today through listening to our customers and finding out okay well what’s the next sort of swim straight feature for example that could completely revolutionize part of the sport so that’s what I’m excited about just launching firsts all the time and seeing our customers use our product and and enjoying our experiences out in the real world well because you can use the goggles like you can use the general features of the goggles without you know had the premium subscription right like so you still it’s not like the goal is not gonna they’re not gonna stop working if you if you’re not yeah paying the subscription so and when I think of it from a business point of view like there’s if you want to continue to develop the goggles you want to keep improving on them and having the support like you you need to have that sort of subscription background

and to be able to to help progress the goggles and and keep delivering for for customers so it’s yeah it’s the main thing is you can still use the goggles without the subscription so yeah that’s why you say all these new features because you know to support it and to keep having that that good experience you need to be able to find it yeah no and we’ve got a flexible model right so if you only want to use premium features for a couple months then you can off you can just use it for a couple months pay for those months and then stop what we see is most people that end up starting on premium they stay on premium but we did launch this new plan where we’re just charging with less than nine bucks a month right for if you lock in for a year and for that you get all these tools and all these workouts and so it’s a really good offering and I think you know thinking about this with coaches we were really working with coaches this is not in lieu of a coach

this actually makes it way better you know because your coach can focus on all the things that are important to you to improve your technique and get better and all the information you know there’s just a more nuanced information to analyze and then when the coach isn’t there you know then you can hold the swimmer accountable and that’s going to go in the app and the coach can see that afterwards so I think it’s it’s something we’re not realizing that it’s really sort of bringing the coach closer to the swimmer and also holding the swimmer accountable and that that’s sort of empowering I think that empowerment has not existed in the sport of swimming up until now it’s always been you always sort of have to rely on the the moments when your coach had to bandwidth to really give you that feedback or give you the the stop watch time splits right now that’s that’s changed which yeah yeah absolutely and

with that accountability like with knowing what your splits are it surprises me how many people especially if they’re in a squad they’ll be going through hundreds or two hundreds maybe they’re pushing off on feet and they’re just sort of you know touch and go and they’re just doing the session but they don’t know what their their pace paces are they don’t know their splits yeah it’s like you’ve you really need to want to have that idea of what pace you’re swimming so you can actually adjust your effort make sure you’re getting faster if you need to get faster and those sorts of things so this is a good way to do it in the moment get that feedback and adjust accordingly rather than maybe just looking back at your like you get your Garmin data at the end of the session go oh cool I was swimming at 145 paces like look no you really should be knowing what your what your pace is throughout a session if you want to be improving on

things yeah and even in a team environment you’ll remember I mean the first person who starts in the lane they’ll they’ll get accurate times from the coast you know when they’re doing the stopwatch then with two three four and so forth well most of them are starting five or ten seconds after then the previous swimmer so they’ll get times that are you know faster than what they actually did so I think now that that’s not mean our the goggles they just start automatically when you push off right it’s and and when you hit the wall again they stop so you get much more accurate accounting of your out of your splits in a set so even for team environment they know this is something that’s gold for a coach right because you know every single swimmer you know what they swam what their times were and it doesn’t matter when they started

yeah exactly right and to wrap it up here Dan so just sort of off the swimming topic a little bit but more just in terms of business and pursuing your own own path I know a lot of people who listen to this do run their own business or sort of do their own thing or they’re looking to do something different so what what advice would you have for someone who is maybe looking to pursue something that they’ve been thinking about for a while maybe something that lines up more with the things that they’re interested in are there any sort of key lessons that come to mind when you think about that yeah I mean obviously there’s sort of always three things that matter so the first is the customer second is the product and the third is the product market fit a product customer fit right so you’re always going to be negotiating between the customer and your product you know what’s possible and then what’s really important for the customer not just like nice to

have because you can’t do it all and then okay can we do that in the product and then and then think through that from a roadmap perspective but there’s not to be a physical product be a service it can be anything it’s the same thing you know know your customer know that how your product differentiates and delivers those essential things that customers are asking for and then product market fit as many things why it’s of course the features but it’s the price you’re charging for the features as well and customer service and support that you’re providing and the warranties and your brand promise and all those things go into product market fit and I think that’s important a lot of I’ve seen a lot of entrepreneurs maybe waste time in areas know that do not that pertain to these three areas you know they’ll go to conferences and do all the stuff that has really very little value right of course there’s some conferences that are

value about the right time but when you’re just starting out you have to be so focused on those three things and initially it’s you know you can get over focused on the product before understanding the customer that’s also bad of course if you just over focus on the customer not the product that’s also bad so it’s really looking at those things in tandem and then I think another thing if I look back to the last about 15, 16 years doing this that focus that you need to have and you cannot get distracted once you understand the customer and the product and how they relate to each other you cannot get distracted by shiny objects and they come in many forms they’re going to be thrown at you what if we could do this and what if we could partner over there or all these great opportunities but they don’t matter until you solve the fundamental problem of getting from zero to one you don’t have anything to sell you don’t have anything of value

until you’ve solved the problem and try it out with customers so that’s kind of my monologue on what I’ve learned at least from you know as a simple framework for I think any sort of maybe business is to think longer slides yeah that I think that’s great the way I heard a business sort of coach mentioned to me that like like number one if you’ve got a if you’ve got a good product that in itself is like number one a good product you can have poor marketing but an incredible product as long as it’s out there people are going to refer other people and it’s going to it’s going to start to spread if it’s a if it’s a great book people are reading it they’re going to tell their friends if it’s some swim technology they’re going to tell their friends so like that that it’s got to be a good product or service first of all or else you’re just going to be pushing uphill to try and continue with it and then you’ve got it you’ve got to think about

the customer the person that you’re serving because you know I find a lot of people are they’re too caught up in thinking about what what they would like what would I like as the as the business owner it’s like no you’ve got to think about the person that you you have in front of you and and for me I mean similar for form it’s like I have a lot of triathletes I work with they’re frustrated that they’re that they’re finding the swim uncomfortable it’s hard work they’re fit but they’re just getting tired really quickly and they just cannot get this swim thing figured out so that’s where I have sort of identified hey this is this is where I can really help I can help teach them what they need to do to be able to make it enjoyable it can be a lot of fun and it can be easy it can be something that that isn’t just this real slog and you get to the end of the swim and you’re exhausted and then you’ve got to do the bike and the run so it’s like yeah

just think about the person that you’re serving and what’s what’s their like number one problem that you’re that you’re trying to solve yeah amen I could not agree more so Dan thanks so much for jumping on the call I know form’s been a sponsor of our podcast for for several years and I I made a video a couple years back I don’t know it’s probably three years ago and I got sent a pair of the goggles and I was I was like I’m a low tech swimmer I don’t wear a garment I don’t do anything like that but I’ll give these things a shot and that’s what I said in the email when I can’t remember who it was reached out but they said look we’ll I’d like to you to try the goggles and I was like yeah right this is a situation but I’ll try them and see how I go and I was I was sold I was like okay this is pretty good and so that and I’ve worked with form ever since so thanks for it for sponsoring the podcast this wasn’t a like a paid podcast or anything

I just wanted to get you on to talk about the journey of form and for anyone who’s yeah maybe thinking about starting their own thing I think this has been hopefully really helpful but also just to see where where it all originated from where’s this where’s it all come from and where it’s heading so thank you so much for being on the podcast I’ve really enjoyed talking to you as someone who’s lived in Melbourne as I have recently so yeah thanks so much and I appreciate it thanks Ben and for having me and thanks for your support of form really appreciate it