s00;00;04;07 - 00;00;23;17
Unknown
I had for the first time the realization that I'm responsible for more than myself. And so looking back on my career, I was able to, you know, look at myself in the mirror and say, I didn't do everything that I wanted, but I got such value from this community. The first part of my 12 years in the steel Thames was really just humble.
00;00;23;18 - 00;00;45;11
Unknown
Pie learned how to create something from scratch essentially, which ended up translating into what I'm doing now.
00;00;45;14 - 00;01;07;19
Unknown
Some people wait for others fight for it. Welcome to Tactical Wealth, the show. We're disciplined service and real world experience become pathways to financial power. I'm your host. Kaj Larsen. On each episode, we bring you the stories and the wisdom of those who have gone from boots on the ground to successful careers, from military to wealth and how they've done it.
00;01;07;19 - 00;01;17;29
Unknown
So you can apply those insights to your own mission and your own life. This is tactical wealth, from military to money.
00;01;18;02 - 00;01;46;25
Unknown
Welcome back to another episode of Tactical Wealth. Today's guest I am super excited about Max Darsonval fellow Frog Man. He is the founder and CEO of velocity AI, which is essentially an OS for human performance optimization. He's building an AI powered platform that combines real time data, proprietary hardware, and adaptive coaching, optimizing human performance through technology based in large part on things he learned during his military service.
00;01;46;26 - 00;02;10;09
Unknown
He is also the co-founder of Momentum Studios. We'll get more and more into that. Really excited fellow frogman Max, welcome to Tactical Wealth. Thank you. It's an honor to be here. Awesome. So the first question we like to know how you got here sitting in this chair. Where did your US Navy Seal career start? Taking me back to the tadpole days.
00;02;10;13 - 00;02;32;03
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, it's probably a pretty typical story in the sense that there is no there's no common theme there. So for me, I had other ambitions. When I was when I was a kid, I had bounced around between martial arts. I was a, you know, internationally competitive taekwondo kid when I, when I was really young, so was a second degree black belt in taekwondo.
00;02;32;03 - 00;02;52;00
Unknown
And I really loved to compete and sparring. So I knew that I had some sort of aggression in me that I needed to temper a bit. And crazy enough, man, I thought that that was going to be my life. And my coach got in trouble, in big trouble, went to jail for 20 years. My taekwondo coach. Wow. Yeah, yeah.
00;02;52;01 - 00;02;57;15
Unknown
And in some sense, he's the perfect mentor to go into this.
00;02;57;17 - 00;03;17;01
Unknown
Who can fight. Yeah. I promise you, if I told you what he went to jail for, we wouldn't be saying that. But needless to say, my my martial arts dreams got shut down when I was like, 13, and I was fortunate enough to live in the most badass place in the country. I lived in bend, Oregon at the time, and one of the things that you haven't been to skiing and I loved skiing.
00;03;17;01 - 00;03;42;23
Unknown
My dad was a professional skier, and so I grew up from a young age skiing. I had never taken it really seriously, but that was immediately where I channeled my depression. And I started focusing and skiing a lot. And, you know, before I knew it, I was competing and skiing, doing freestyle skiing. So for those of you that don't know, like slopestyle, the jumps, the half pipe, stuff like that, and then also doing big mountain skiing, I ended up having a bit of a knack for that.
00;03;42;24 - 00;04;08;01
Unknown
My parents knew that I was not going to college based on my academic performance. And so they, you know, they were they were happy to spend whatever they had saved on putting me into a ski academy. So I moved out to Vail, Colorado. Tough life. We skied for half the day, seven days a week, did a little bit of schoolwork, and we competed on an international circuit doing free skiing.
00;04;08;01 - 00;04;28;09
Unknown
So slow of style, half pipe. And then my big thing over there that I really loved was big mountain skiing. So that's where people are hiking in the, in the, in the backcountry. And there's judges at the bottom, and they just judge you on your speed, your difficulty, align choice, your style, tricks, things like that. And I loved that man.
00;04;28;09 - 00;04;47;20
Unknown
That was my my second love affair in life. And then I got into trouble. Everything. Everything was going great. I had I had some some good sponsorships going on. Everything was looking for a ski career, like I was going to be able to have it, and I didn't lose my spot on the team, but I lost the scholarship that I ended up having.
00;04;47;20 - 00;05;11;18
Unknown
And at that time it was around 2008. I was 14 years old. Actually, I was I was 15 and my parents had, like many other Americans, lost. You know, they're they're they're standing essentially in a lot of ways. So crisis. Yeah. Financial crisis, you know, foreclose on the house. They lost all their assets. They ended up splitting up as a result of it.
00;05;11;18 - 00;05;29;26
Unknown
And I ended up coming home with my tail tuck between my legs, knowing that I ruined what was an incredible opportunity. And with skiing, it's not something that you can just, you know, persevere through. If you don't have the means to do it, you no longer have the sponsorships to pay for it. It is a cost prohibitive sport.
00;05;29;28 - 00;05;56;10
Unknown
I mean, so I spent the next year, you know, paying for my sins, paying, paying for attorney fees that that my parents had accumulated to keep me out of trouble, you know, any sort of big trouble. And that's when I had, you know, my first real life lesson of humility and what it meant to pay for your pay for your actions and face consequences.
00;05;56;10 - 00;06;25;16
Unknown
And that was probably the best thing that ever happened in my life. I realized in that in that whole situation, that I needed to channel every bit of energy that I had into reconstructing Max as a human being. And there was no more extreme example of that than what I knew of in the military in general. But specifically, the Seal teams had had this appeal to me.
00;06;25;18 - 00;06;45;04
Unknown
You know, I knew it was going to be incredibly difficult and that in order to make it to the other side, I would essentially have to channel the best parts of me, shed the bad, and hopefully end up on the other side with with a band of brothers. Yeah, I think that is so true. You know, we always say like buds exposes every weakness.
00;06;45;04 - 00;07;03;06
Unknown
But I think people always think about physical. But it's also true. Like emotionally it exposes character flaws. Like whatever you have, it will find it. Yeah. So you really do have to be like a whole person to get out of it anyway. So that's that's what I feel. Yeah, yeah. I couldn't agree more. That's wild. What an extraordinary story.
00;07;03;07 - 00;07;21;04
Unknown
And I can see with your like with such a hyper competitive background, you know we always make the joke like, what do you call two seals walking down the street next to each other, a race, you know, for you, a ski race. Yeah, right. It does. It translates well into the early stage of our careers. Awesome. So when you go through buds.
00;07;21;05 - 00;07;40;07
Unknown
Yeah, I went through buds in 2013. So I turned 18 on the first week of, of first phase actually. So I was able to join really early I think my parents were happy birthday. Yeah. Yeah it was a great it was a great birthday. I think my, my parents were both just happy that I had locked on to another path.
00;07;40;07 - 00;08;01;13
Unknown
And so they were willing to sign me up early, get me out of the house. And that was that was my, you know, growing up. And that happened in buds and the Seal teams. I'm still growing up, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. No that's amazing. So you really are one of those guys who grew up in the Seal teams, although it sounds like you had a really unorthodox pass and and tell me about your Seal career.
00;08;01;13 - 00;08;20;08
Unknown
You were at Seal team three, Seal team one. Yeah, I was a I was at Seal team three to start off with, you know, before that, right after I went to Sodom. So that's amazing. Existed when, when when you were around. But. Yeah. So I went there. We moved out to Louisiana for a while and that was the best.
00;08;20;09 - 00;08;40;06
Unknown
The honestly, like one of the best parts of my career was just run around getting my paramedic certification, getting to treat real human beings and seeing, you know, what medicine was all about. So, so that and real non-human beings. Right. Lab. Right. Yeah. You did the pig lab. We're still under NDA. Oh.
00;08;40;08 - 00;09;06;18
Unknown
Strike that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Though, you know, pigs, goats. And that's that's when I realized that I had this lie that I'd been telling myself my whole life about not being a good student and not being academically capable whatsoever. It was in that program where I really cared about what we were doing, that I found that I could be, you know, academically at the top of the class.
00;09;06;18 - 00;09;28;24
Unknown
And I really loved everything that we were doing. You had to find your groove. Yeah. Just had just had to find it right after Saddam. Then I checked into Seal team three. And you're a corpsman in the teams, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. Yeah. Amazing. And did you deploy? Because we were still pumping out my first deployment. I got to hop on an augment when we were in TJ it.
00;09;28;26 - 00;09;48;25
Unknown
So I did three months with team seven. That was cool. It was a great warm up for the Iraq deployment that we were about to go on. You know, not super eventful. We were in the UAE, did some time in Africa, but it was it was fun and it was cool to integrate with another platoon came home, had about 45 days back home.
00;09;48;25 - 00;10;08;28
Unknown
And then we deployed to my first real deployment, which was to Iraq. Yes, sir. 2014 2015 still cooking? Yeah. Wow. Wild. Awesome. And and what were some of the things that you took away from the Seal teams that you think were really seminal in your life at that moment? You're very reflective. You're reflective about the good and the bad.
00;10;08;28 - 00;10;44;27
Unknown
I'm a firm believer that people say this all the time, but that we learn more from our mistakes and our failures than from our successes. Yeah, yeah. What were some of those learning lessons for you, man, specifically from the Seal teams? The first part of my 12 years in the Seal teams was really just humble pie after humble pie, I think being being so young and also just not having that awareness of myself, man, it was a lot of guys, when I look back that were actually putting their time in, raising someone who was just not fully cooked.
00;10;44;27 - 00;11;08;02
Unknown
And so on one hand, I had, you know, the ability to do the job, but from a maturity standpoint, I needed I needed some handholding and I needed some really direct mentorship. And so, yeah, just the whole process of becoming, growing up, the pain that was associated with that, that is the most transformative, you know, for me, that I take out of my entire time in the military.
00;11;08;03 - 00;11;31;20
Unknown
Yeah, it's a phenomenal point. You know, in in life in general, I think we have a culture often of boys raising boys when we need a culture of men raising boys. Also true in the Seal teams, like anywhere else. There's good mentorship and there's bad mentorship, but I can't imagine I have a few friends, Tom Mara, a couple other guys that I served with, also 18 years old in the Seal teams.
00;11;31;20 - 00;11;54;05
Unknown
And like, it's a tough place to grow up, not just and I'm not talking just the combat, just the teams in general, because in some ways you are often you're in this very, very special, elite portion of society, but also very far removed from society. So that that is really fascinating. Posterior team three Iraq deployment. That's when you transferred over to one.
00;11;54;10 - 00;12;20;16
Unknown
Yeah, I did another deployment at team three there. We were in Southeast Asia, you know, all around Southeast Asia doing that mission set. Yeah. Came back and they needed a they needed a, you know, a good medic to stand up the medical pipeline for a new dive initiative that they had. That was an absolute nightmare to me. I wanted to stick with with the boys sticking the platoon, but that ended up being another, you know, great experience for me.
00;12;20;16 - 00;12;38;12
Unknown
I spent only like four months there, learned how to create something from scratch essentially, which ended up translating into what I'm doing now. And then I was able to call a couple of buddies that were at land warfare at trade ET, and I transferred over there, and I was right back home. You're pretty fresh out of the military.
00;12;38;12 - 00;12;56;20
Unknown
You've been out under two years. What made you tell me about your transition out? What was that like? Yeah, it's so funny, man. So I've been out for 14 months, I would say safely 20 months ago, if you asked me if I was ever going to get out, I would have said no. Like, I'm going to be the bullfrog.
00;12;56;20 - 00;13;28;10
Unknown
Yeah, not quite, but I, you know, I loved my time in the teams and I still miss it every day. But there was an inflection point for me personally, right on the heels of losing a good buddy and seeing how that had impacted his family and falling in love myself and, you know, proposing to my now wife, Morgan, I had for the first time the realization that I'm responsible for more than myself.
00;13;28;10 - 00;13;58;08
Unknown
And I figured I'm only going to be this age, able to take chances without the responsibility of children for so long. And so, looking back on my career, I was able to, you know, look at myself in the mirror and say, I didn't do everything that I wanted, but I got such value from this community. And I have lifelong friends, as is just looked at the next eight years to get to 20 and what the potential was for what I wanted to do on the outside.
00;13;58;08 - 00;14;20;07
Unknown
And that was the decision. And I'll tell you, I was about 51.1% sold, so it was still a tough one. You know, I didn't have tremendous conviction when I got out. Yeah. It's tough. Like it's it's like jumping out of the airplane with no reserve. Right, right. Like, I mean, I think that's the biggest structural difference between being in uniform and being an entrepreneur out of uniform.
00;14;20;07 - 00;14;43;21
Unknown
You don't have this extraordinary safety net. You don't have this structure underneath you. It's all on you. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah. And the seeds of what you wanted to do were planted while you're still in the service. Yeah. How did you conceive of that idea? What are you thinking? I've always had many times, to my detriment, but a annoyingly creative way of thinking.
00;14;43;21 - 00;15;20;00
Unknown
And so, since I was a kid, wanted to know why things worked. And then if there was any way to make things better. And in the Seal teams, one of the things that is so paradoxical, as you know, is the contrast between the incredible training that we get. I'm talking human performance, you know, professional coaches, some of the world's best gyms, some of the best technology to boot, and then leaving that facility that you're gone from 90% of the time, then working out how other other folks do and working out in like a desert gym, even.
00;15;20;01 - 00;15;48;10
Unknown
And I could not help but feel that with my responsibility to all of the guys watching them destroy their bodies time and time again, seeing some of my best friends there were just a few years older than me, you know, 30, 35 years old, that literally had spinal degeneration of 8085 year olds is something that I thought outside of acute trauma care, right?
00;15;48;11 - 00;16;15;10
Unknown
Which is definitely the focus of a of a combat medic. I wanted to apply my passion for human performance and strength training, and find how we could bridge the gap between some of the tools that we have at the Seal teams and that they use at every professional sporting organization the NFL, the NBA, the MLB, all of it, and figure out how we can bridge some of that technology and bring it to operators on the go.
00;16;15;11 - 00;16;44;19
Unknown
And then when I started to think about how it would apply to operators on the go, I realized the entire freaking world needs something like this. Yeah, these are my favorite entrepreneur journeys out of the military, because I have this thesis that the American people have invested a tremendous amount of resources and capital into the special operations community, and we have all of this interior knowledge in the special operations community, and it is incumbent upon us.
00;16;44;19 - 00;17;06;26
Unknown
It's partially our responsibility. Along with being the most lethal fighting force the world has ever seen, to repopulate some of that knowledge back into the population so that the American taxpayer gets ROI on the things that you and I learned in the teams. Yeah, I mean, that's a really elegant way of putting it. You can't say I thought about it in that exact framework, but I totally agree.
00;17;06;27 - 00;17;26;10
Unknown
Tell me how the the journey has been. You get out. You're like, damn it, I want to be an entrepreneur and I'm going to start a company. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. How's the company formation process going? Look, it has been trial by fire. Another analogy that that that I heard from a friend the other day was, you know, I'm building the airplane as I'm flying it.
00;17;26;11 - 00;18;05;02
Unknown
And there's something incredibly rewarding about that process, because in a way, there is no such thing as mundane, right? You're not coming into this structured environment where your roles and responsibilities are delegated to you and told to you, and you have metrics of which you can measure yourself against. And in many ways, that feels familiar. And I think it would and has felt familiar to a lot of folks in the military, you know, very proud of the fact that in general, the military has an incredible amount of entrepreneurs that leave and end up creating something of value in their own way.
00;18;05;05 - 00;18;35;08
Unknown
So for me, the stress of it all, the pressure of it all, and the drive to, you know, make this the right decision. And to ensure that at the end of the day, I know that it was is enough to keep me going and working harder than you would expect anyone else to. Yeah, I actually think often the delta between a good entrepreneur and a great entrepreneur is just grind and hustle, and that is one thing we have in spades coming from the special operations community that we know.
00;18;35;10 - 00;19;04;14
Unknown
Yeah, we know how to grind it out. And tell me about the the two initiatives that you're doing. Let's start with velocity, because that's right. On the human performance track, velocity is my 100% focus right now and for the foreseeable future until until this thing is reached, its maximum potential. So what velocity AI is, is we're bridging a few different technologies that have been available and proven in different ways, but we're putting them into a sense where now you have a new solution.
00;19;04;14 - 00;19;35;23
Unknown
And so think about having access to the mathematic principles and sports science that informs the highest degree of, you know, strength and conditioning coaches at professional levels. That knowledge that they have is, you know, kept somewhere, right? It's in literature. These are well documented things. And so one of the cool things about AI is the democratization of of information that would be kept at the laboratory, sort of sports science level, as the kids say, we're breaking down the gatekeeping.
00;19;35;24 - 00;20;01;13
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. So what we do with velocity AI as we we we measure velocity. If you guys couldn't pick that up. So we measure we measure velocity. And what velocity based training is, it is a incredibly powerful way of training. Because if you think about strength training, the way that the way that almost everyone knows it, you're doing some poundage or kilos or whatever.
00;20;01;14 - 00;20;24;04
Unknown
Yeah, yeah, you're going off pounds, you're going off some form of progressive overload. And these are, you know, scientific methods that are approved. But the thing is, your body and what you're totally capable of on a given day fluctuates tremendously. And that fluctuates based on so many variables that we literally cannot count. I mean, think of your hydration, of course, your sleep, all of these different things.
00;20;24;04 - 00;20;48;00
Unknown
But but your stress, just your total fuel level, all of this stuff. And the great thing about velocity measurement is you're not trying to make a comparison between how well did I sleep and how well am I going to perform. Right. There's loosely a correlation there, but when you're talking about measuring velocity, I can actually say if you move this weight this fast, this is how powerful you are in that movement on a given day.
00;20;48;00 - 00;21;16;24
Unknown
So now we don't have to train with percentages that were determined from 22 weeks ago. Based off my all time best numbers, we can have something that is self-determined by your body's performance on a given day, which means that you can continue to train despite, you know, degree of chronic fatigue or even slight injuries, or just regular ebb and flows of your energy through the day and have a perfectly optimized, self-regulated training regimen.
00;21;16;27 - 00;21;50;17
Unknown
So what we've done is we've brought velocity based training, which is typically 4 to $12,000, systems that are kept in, you know, the best gyms on earth that require a coach that understands the translation between speed to percentages and can contextualize an individual athletes plan and all of this other stuff. And we've brought that to a software that can process all of these things, and a piece of hardware that now you can get just as accurate as velocity measurements as these $12,000 systems for $200.
00;21;50;19 - 00;22;13;21
Unknown
And your business model is B2C, or are you going after trainers coaches? So we have, I would say a sort of try mode commercial commercial go to market. So one of them is right back to the door. So Department of War has been focusing a lot on, you know, basically autonomous weaponry for for a while for good reason.
00;22;13;22 - 00;22;41;29
Unknown
And while that's been happening, all of the capital has been flowing to that. And what has been neglected and coincidentally just identified this, I think, publicly about a week ago. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're talking about we're talking about hormone optimization, but we're talking about real initiatives with budgets attached to it, saying that the warfighter, regardless of what technological advancements we have, is absolutely the backbone, of course, of the Department of War.
00;22;42;03 - 00;23;10;13
Unknown
And so with that, there is real initiative to identify, procure and implement critical human performance technology that is going to increase the lethality of the warfighter. And so we're proud to stand up and serve that mission. And so we want to have our technology, you know, fielded not just with special operations. So that's the first probably fit that we have, but the entire military as a whole.
00;23;10;14 - 00;23;33;04
Unknown
Because gone are the days of analog training and not knowing how powerful you are in a given day, we want people to know from the time that they start boot camp till the end of their career, how their power to career relationship has progressed. We want people to have benchmarks that they can measure themselves against, and we have we want to have people that can train with the highest level of information out there, intuitively and affordably.
00;23;33;05 - 00;24;14;29
Unknown
I think it's incredibly disruptive, right? I, I don't know that I'm a paragon of fitness, but like I do. All right. You know, good man I do. All right. But you just made me feel like the traditional like schema when it comes to physical fitness and training is in the dark ages. Yeah, right. And there's so much empiricism and cognition around I'm not doing like a 1 to 1 correlation with velocity and sprinting, but against around this idea of doing, of understanding like speed and power and all of these explosive movements, whatever it is.
00;24;15;00 - 00;24;35;15
Unknown
I've even heard data that that suggests that there's a high correlation between sprinting. Right. Which I'm sure you can measure, you know, via your hardware and the concept of like how fast you're moving your body and, and cognitive processing. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, with, with speed, obviously you need to be able to generate a lot of force.
00;24;35;15 - 00;24;55;26
Unknown
So if you're somebody that's incredibly fast at sprinting, you are for, for all intents and purposes, very strong. Right. And just how you're translating that force is happening in speed. So it's a really cool time to be alive, where within the last three years, the general public is waking up to the fact that strength is not a vanity metric.
00;24;55;26 - 00;25;17;29
Unknown
It's not just applicable in sport. Strength may be the single most important measurable determinant of your health span and longevity that we have today, which is sort of flipping the script of strength versus cardio. And all of the people that have been thinking cardiovascular fitness is king. And the the real answer is that all of these things are really important.
00;25;17;29 - 00;25;42;20
Unknown
But strength has been totally unmeasured and neglected in so many ways for the general public. And so an analogy that I like to use because I'm pitching a lot these days. Could you imagine going to a gym and hopping on a treadmill and not having a screen, telling you the pace that you're going to, the cows that you're expending, or any of the other things that people want to know to be able to assess?
00;25;42;21 - 00;26;08;09
Unknown
Am I doing the right thing? Am I making progress from the last time? And honestly, just giving visibility into what the effort is that's happening because people know that how they feel is important, but it's not the entire equation yet. In strength, everyone is lifting based off how they feel, rate of perceived exertion, reps and reserve just. I think that this is a good weight for whatever reason, and that's fine.
00;26;08;09 - 00;26;29;19
Unknown
And for those people that are doing that good on you, you're doing something more than most people are, and it's still constructive, but there's no reason for it. We can bring that same level of insight and real time data with intelligence to be able to make decisions that professional coaches can make, but that you really can't perfectly every single time.
00;26;29;19 - 00;26;51;18
Unknown
And so this is meant to be an adjunct to your training, to bring visibility and to bring data driven intelligence to everything that you're doing. And what's been the hardest part of your entrepreneurial journey so far? Raising money. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. You know, it actually hasn't been hasn't been raising capital. Raising capital is tough. And I'm not a super expert at it.
00;26;51;18 - 00;27;15;05
Unknown
But I think that we've found our groove. I found the right people to to look for. And you know, that's that's half the equation. You know, it's a it's a match making thing. So the the challenge has been that we're operating in so many domains. And for what we're doing right now, as with any good invention or innovation, there is no framework of which to measure yourself off of.
00;27;15;08 - 00;27;40;02
Unknown
There is not a great application that I can look at that I could read and say, this is how you take a velocity measurement from a high powered IMU. And IMU is basically a gyroscope and an accelerometer and, you know, a few other things, you know, how do we do that? How do we measure it accurately? How do we measure it as accurately as these $12,000 computer vision systems?
00;27;40;03 - 00;28;01;24
Unknown
How do we measure it as accurately as the gold standard, which is a linear transducer, a hard tethered system that is reading velocity perfectly, because that's the standard that we need to build everything to. So the hardware standpoint is is one challenge. And then you have the, the software. And in our case, our software is not just a AI.
00;28;01;26 - 00;28;28;02
Unknown
AI is right. Right. Everything. Everything's AI, any intelligence I have is artificial. So so I've been in the AI game for a while. It is a combination of machine learning and AI. You know, a Rag system. It's all of these things that have to work synergistically and perfectly in order to be able to take this measurement, which is already hard to perfect and to make sense of it.
00;28;28;02 - 00;28;49;12
Unknown
And for our application, we also needed to create something that was able to respond instantaneously, which means that a lot of the inference, a lot of the computation that's happening needs to happen on your device, because we built it for people in mind that are working out where they can't be connected to cell service, or they're in the bowels of a ship somewhere.
00;28;49;12 - 00;29;13;00
Unknown
So how can you bring modern intelligence to a system that's not even connected to the cloud? And that's where machine learning comes in. And some of the algorithmic flow that we have here, and bringing the teams together to do all of that, having people from different organizations, our hardware engineers and our in our in our software developers be able to communicate and work synergistically.
00;29;13;01 - 00;29;35;11
Unknown
I mean, it can be a challenge. I think it's a testament to your entrepreneurial instinct, though, that you're keeping a front sight. Focus on the end user experience. One of the, you know, one of the gaps, one of the valleys of death in building a lot of technology is you build this, like, extraordinary thing in a lab, you know, and then it goes out into the real world.
00;29;35;11 - 00;29;55;27
Unknown
And like, people don't want to use it because it doesn't work. Like I said, you know, on the third deck of an aircraft carrier or whatever. So that's that's really fascinating. Good. And and what's what's next? What's your glide path look like. Where, where do you go from here with velocity. What's your velocity curve look like. Yeah. We're wrapping up our seed round right now.
00;29;55;27 - 00;30;16;10
Unknown
It appears that we're oversubscribed on it which is fantastic. So first selecting the right people for everyone that's been gracious enough to put their name in the hat that are going to come along the journey with us. And now the real work begins, right? So we have our product out to beta right now. And, you know, I'm fortunate from my connections that the people beating this product are seals.
00;30;16;10 - 00;30;35;19
Unknown
We have some Green Berets and we have some Olympic athletes. So we have some of the best people on earth for product validation or otherwise. Right. Because that's why we selected them. We wanted people that were going to be really, really tough on me, really tough on the product and be able to give us feedback at a level that we can make some real adaptations to before the launch.
00;30;35;19 - 00;30;59;21
Unknown
So we're, you know, iterating on small bugs, big bugs, everything like that. In advance of our November launch, we're getting, you know, real certifications, punching well above our weight class with NASA and DARPA funded labs to validate this technology as an invention, a working innovation, and a meaningful step forward in human performance. So that's a really exciting thing that we're working on.
00;30;59;22 - 00;31;29;16
Unknown
And then we're, you know, figuring out our exact go to market on all three of our channels. So we're going through manufacturing right now, the the tooling and the engineering of the specific equipment to make these things. Oh, I'll pull it out. I'll pull it out. Aid. Yeah, yeah. So this is this is the device here. This this device is not a wearable, but it is a sensor that can be worn.
00;31;29;16 - 00;32;10;13
Unknown
And that's really important to talk about because this is something that because you're sort of agnostic about we pull in biometrics, but the way that we sort of surreptitiously pull biometrics instead of having to choose a specific partner is we went straight to Apple, and Apple certified us as good enough to ingest data from Apple Health with the user's consent, and so we can pull all of the stuff that other wearables are starting to starting to pull so that we can understand people's recovery, state that relationship between their exercise and recovery, and adapt workouts based on based on those things.
00;32;10;13 - 00;32;32;05
Unknown
So what we have here is just a really great IMU. This is something that can be magnetized to your stack. If you're doing leg extensions, there's something that can go on your kettlebell, your dumbbell, all of these sorts of things. And so we really designed this for lifting and for lifting only. And so it's the you know, it's a perfect solution for that.
00;32;32;07 - 00;32;52;14
Unknown
That's very cool. So this this this thing right here cost me about $20,000. I'll hand it to you. Yeah, I love it. I'll try not to drop it. Although it feels. Yeah. And we're going. We're going down. You know, that's that's with engineering and everything built in. Once we're once we're done with this, we're going to make it for an absolute fraction of that.
00;32;52;14 - 00;33;16;19
Unknown
And so getting into mass manufacturing, having the right partners to do that is really important. So we've selected them and we're going through that process right now. Our first commercial batch of these is going to be done in October. So we'll have 1500 of those in October. 500 of them are going right back to the Seal community. So the Seal Future Foundation has selected us for a contract.
00;33;16;19 - 00;33;40;09
Unknown
They're really honored about that. And thank you to the Seal Future Foundation. I really I really hope that that's going to be a great value to the guys. I know that it will. So that'll go out to active duty seals. Once we've outfitted every active duty seal, we'll open it up to guys like us. And then simultaneously with our Seal Future Foundation launch, we're launching on gave.
00;33;40;11 - 00;34;05;09
Unknown
So perfect fit 12.9 million people. Big consumer market. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So that's sort of our DTC launch. And then we have some, you know, incredible Olympic athletes and professional athletes that can't reveal their names yet. But they're going to be, you know, our brand champions and their partners with us. You know, they like the product. They're going to be using the product and they're going to build it into their to their content.
00;34;05;09 - 00;34;29;02
Unknown
And you know, sort of sing, sing its praises and bring awareness to everyone else. And that's that's the part for our direct to consumer launch to the to the civilian populace. Yeah, I love it. Yeah V for velocity, V for valor. It's awesome. Yeah, yeah. If if you see me smiling, it's because it's nice to see this. This little tadpole all grows up.
00;34;29;03 - 00;34;56;06
Unknown
But you've entered a gigantic pond. Yeah, but it's amazing to be watching you swim, because I. Because we have such a shared experience and bond from the Seal teams. I know that nobody in the Seal teams teaches you about raising capital. There's no there's no section of buds that's about a fundraising round or a seed round or a series a round, all of that stuff you learned ex post facto.
00;34;56;06 - 00;35;15;25
Unknown
But it's my firm belief that the principles that we learned in the teams of of working hard, the concept of brotherhood, which it seems like not only are you reaching back, but you're giving back. Unbelievable. So impressive. We like to end the show with a section that we call rapid fire. You. More than many guests will get that.
00;35;15;25 - 00;35;41;20
Unknown
This is like shooting steel, right? Instant feedback. Okay, so so here we go. It's still slow to respond, by the way. So. Oh, is it like shooting paper with me? Right, right. All right. Ranch is hot. Best investment you ever made. My family. Nice. Yeah. Thomas. Financial mistake that taught you a lesson? Every car I've ever owned. So the lesson hasn't been totally learned, but it's a it's an ongoing process.
00;35;41;21 - 00;36;06;25
Unknown
This is, you know, a pretty modal answer. Just, you know, you're not alone. Yeah. Misery loves company. You're in good company. Of all of those cars. Is there one particular car? What's the most egregious example? I had to have a Raptor R. I had it for a period of time. I got rid of it. That's the boy from bend, Oregon, who wants to show his his hometown that he did.
00;36;06;27 - 00;36;31;05
Unknown
Yeah, exactly. Military skill that you think has been most helpful in your entrepreneurs journey? Being comfortable with being uncomfortable. Military habit that you still keep. I think more than I would like to admit, but planning contingencies for everything that matters. How about a book that informed your journey? I mean, the Lean Startup has been has been a great one.
00;36;31;05 - 00;36;49;23
Unknown
I love I love all the lessons from that book. A man named Don fall told me to read that, who's been an incredible entrepreneur. And yeah, so I'd say Lean Startup. And how about your morning routine? What's that look like? I went to sleep at 5 a.m. this morning working on some tech stuff. I woke up and I had about six cups of coffee and I drove over here.
00;36;49;23 - 00;37;14;17
Unknown
So which also could have been the answer to the military habit that you'll never drive. Yeah, yeah. All night. Yeah. Coffee fueled the boarding. Yeah. Keep going. Yeah. I wish it was like a 4 a.m. ice bath. And then I. And then I lived. It's not like that, man. I'm just burning the candle at all ends. Yeah, well, that's because the battle rhythm required for an early stage startup founder is exactly that.
00;37;14;19 - 00;37;45;10
Unknown
It's it's. You push all your chips in and you go, awesome. Well, Max, thank you so much for being here. I think you are a really extraordinary example of a confluence of values and experiences from your background coming together, both good and bad, that have informed your journey. It is so admirable to watch a fellow frogman take the principles that that we learned in the teams, and then apply them to this next phase of life.
00;37;45;12 - 00;38;06;06
Unknown
All right, thanks for walking in with us today. Shout out to Siebert Valor and Siebert Financial for supporting our journey. We'll be back next week with another powerhouse conversation. More founders, more builders and leaders who are playing offense in life and in business. Make sure you're subscribed to our YouTube channel for exclusive content and extended cuts of your favorite episodes.
00;38;06;06 - 00;38;15;10
Unknown
Until next week. Stay tactical. Stay driven.
00;38;15;13 - 00;38;34;12
Unknown
Tactical wealth is a Gebbia media production brought to you by valor, a military focused initiative from Siebert Financial. The Tactical Wealth Podcast is for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Siebert Financial. This podcast does not constitute investment advice and offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any securities.
00;38;34;12 - 00;38;44;07
Unknown
Past performance is not indicative of future results. Listeners should consult a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions. For more information and disclosures, please visit Siebert. Disclosures.
