Lead Smarter Podcast

All right, welcome to Leadership Lens.

Today with me, I've got Alec Parwer.

I messed that up again.

Let me start right over.

All right, welcome to Leadership Lens.

Today I've got with me Alec Parwer.

Alec is the CEO and co -founder of
Fieldhouse, a cutting -edge company

focused on aggregating and analyzing
athletic performance data from various

digital tools to provide actionable and
personalized insights.

He's accumulated extensive experience in
commercial real estate, private equity,

and sports vision technology.

That's it.

with us is he's the founder of Fieldhouse,
a company poised to release its

groundbreaking platform with partnerships
anticipated to onboard approximately 500

,000 users just in the beta phase.

He's also mentioned to me that he's
successfully raised $750 ,000 in capital

from friends, family, and angel investors,
as well as developed.

partnerships with various complementary
software companies and notable

organizations like Fusion Tech at
Fusionetics and Google.

He's also managed 20, more than 20 people
in a former role as president of sports

hail of sports at Hail Sports.

Alec, thanks for joining us today.

I know that I've just shared a little some
highlights, but what we're really hoping

to do is talk to you about your leadership
journey, the problem that you've been

working to solve in

sports, athletics, and basically health
tech.

Can you give us a little bit about your
background, maybe deeper about how you

came to found Fieldhouse from your
experience, your personal experience in

athletics and business that got you to
decide challenge or meet this challenge

and tackle this problem.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thanks for having me, David.

I'm excited to be on the podcast with you.

And in terms of where Fieldhouse came
from, it really started, let's see, I

guess, probably close to almost 20 years
ago.

I was training as a very competitive
junior tennis player.

traveling all over the world playing.

I lived in Argentina and was pretty much
traveling every weekend throughout the

United States.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I
started cramping a lot on the tennis

court.

And when I say cramping, I don't mean like
a stitch in the side.

I mean a full body cramp that starts in
your calves.

and works its way up.

And I got rushed to the hospital four
times.

And I then started getting injured a lot.

And nobody could tell me why.

I was meticulous about my health,
nutrition, fitness, everything.

But the injuries caused me to miss
significant time, training, competing,

etc.

And it really kind of derailed the path I
was on with my tennis.

I did want to go professional and the
cramping injuries definitely interfered

with that.

I ended up going to Middlebury College in
Vermont.

One NCAA is my freshman year, which is
never recommended.

It's always better to go out on top.

It was probably in college that I found
myself, you know,

It was the first time I realized how much
I love leadership and mentoring.

I was named captain of the tennis team my
junior and senior year, which most of the

time it's just seniors.

And I really enjoyed mentoring the younger
guys on the team and helping them

accomplish what they wanted to on the
tennis court.

But also out outside of the tennis court
as well going to college can be a big

change versus high school and so after
college I I went into commercial real

estate investments and finance and
eventually Found myself in commercial real

estate private equity with a focus on
retail opportunistic retail real estate

investments Really

taking grocery anchored shopping centers
that have a lot of vacancy and buying them

and then selling them within three years.

And I did, so I was doing that until about
really the start of COVID.

And with COVID, I was living in Denver, I
started,

playing tennis again.

You know, tennis actually at when COVID
started, the amount of people playing

tennis actually increased heavily because
you're one you're outside, but two you're

far away from each other.

And so I, I started playing tennis again.

And the same thing happened.

I was cramping and I started getting
injured.

I went to the doctor and the doctor
diagnosed me with a

thyroid.

And so what that means really is that any
nutrients, electrolytes that go into my

body, my body isn't fully absorbing them.

There's probably more scientific
explanation out there, especially now with

AI, but that's my explanation.

And she gave me a medicine and, you know,
it was pretty much problem pretty much

resolved with the cramping.

I was frustrated that this wasn't
something identified when I was a junior

tennis player.

It's not a new diagnosis and it should
have been.

And then what my doctor also told me was
that my hyperactive thyroid was actually

leading to my injuries and that surprised
me.

But what she explained to me was that when
you're chronically dehydrated,

the soft tissue in your body becomes very
brittle and it breaks and that leads to

injuries.

And that's not rocket science.

Like that made all the sense in the world.

And I thought back to my junior tennis
career and I had my primary coach, my

nutritionist, my physical therapist, my
surgeon, all these different people.

trying to help me perform at my best and
all telling me what to do.

Right.

One is one, you know, my physical
therapist might be telling me, I, you

know, I shouldn't lift weights.

I need to stretch more.

Meanwhile, my coach is saying to me, you
know, you need to be in the gym more.

Right.

And what I thought about was how they,
they were all silos.

None of them knew each other.

and

I got this, that kind of gave me this idea
for a field house about, you know, we are

right now, we live in a world where
technology has grown significantly and we

have different wearables, apps, virtual
training platforms like Peloton and E -gym

and Tonal.

And all of these different tools are
telling us what to do.

They're telling us, you know, hey, like
you didn't sleep well enough last night,

right?

You need to do X today.

Well, you know, we found based on all the
feedback we've gotten from, you know, from

users of these different technologies, we
found two things.

One is that the

The insights that they're getting from all
of these different tools are not really

actionable.

Right?

So they might, you know, my, my, a, my
wearable might say to me, you know, again,

going with the sleep, you didn't sleep
well last night.

Well, I know I didn't sleep well last
night because I feel terrible today.

They're not necessarily telling the users
what to do about it.

The other, the other,

issue we found is what among the market is
that people are frustrated that the device

they're getting insights from, it's not
holistic.

And the example I use is if you have a
Fitbit that you use for three years, and

then let's say you get a whoop

for as a present, right?

Well, that Fitbit probably goes into your
nightstand drawer as three years worth of

your data on it.

And it just sits there and whoops then
gives you insights and on like on how to,

you know, on your sleep and your heart
rate and all these other metrics.

based on only what they know about you.

And with, so with Fieldhouse, what we do
is we integrate data from 150 different,

we call them digital training tools onto
our software.

We store it with in Google cloud.

As you said, we have a partnership with
Google.

And what that allows us to do is provide
every athlete

with a centralized repository of his or
her data throughout their entire athletic

journey.

We then use that data to provide the
athletes with more personalized and

actionable insights than they would have
been able to get from just one single

device.

Gotcha.

Well, in that entire experience, one of
the things that we've talked about and

we've mentioned is that you've not only do
you have the background of your personal

experience, but building a business and
getting to the point where you're going to

be the founder of this business, you
actually also transitioned from being in

private equity, in real estate, and into
becoming the founder of a tech startup.

What were some of the primary challenges
you faced in that transition to be able to

position yourself to solve this problem in
tech?

So in terms of the primary challenges, I
think a big one has been raising capital.

It's tough to do.

And it's really tough to do if you are a
first time entrepreneur building something

that's innovative.

And so my focus in order to overcome that,
my focus has been on surrounding myself

with a team that brings validation and

that be expertise in a specific
discipline, such as sports performance or

AI and ML, or also building a team of
advisors that have experience building

companies.

So that has been raising capital has been
a challenge, but it's also been

challenging because of the market.

are seeing the goalposts on where you need
to be on the institutional side kind of

get pushed back.

And angel investors we've seen is that
they're not investing as much in early

stage startups because of really because
of macroeconomic trends.

Well, in your situation also, one of the
things I was going to ask you is,

obviously you can make the case, you've
got a background in health.

Lots of entrepreneurs get excited about, I
want to do something in tech, and they

themselves are engineers.

If you weren't like the one on the inside
developing the tech, what were some of the

ways that you were able to get people to
rally behind the idea that you were going

to lead a new tech startup?

without being the background, without your
background being in technology.

Did you have already like a specific
partner in mind, a developer that was

gonna be your lead CFO, or did you have
really like a specific advisor that was

really gonna help you get that foothold of
credibility to be able to raise that

capital?

yes and no.

so, in terms of a, like, you know, a, like
a strong CTO, we, I didn't have, I didn't

have one, until September of 2023.

when I brought on, our current CTO Steve,
Steve McKinnon, and we brought tech

internals.

and Steve was one was IBM working on
Watson when it first came out.

So he's been awesome.

You know, in terms of how I got people to
kind of rally behind me, one is the the

the vision of a solution, the vision for a
solution that a lot of people can relate

to.

That is, you know, and something
innovative.

you know, that, that is something that
people definitely rallied behind.

but the other thing too, I think is, you
know, yes, you know, as a founder, I dream

of, you know, making, you know, tons of
money exiting one day, and selling the

company.

but what also gets me out of bed is,
knowing a tool like this can have a

philanthropic impact.

And, so, you know,

My goal is for Fieldhouse to be a tool
that at risk and underprivileged youth

athletes can use to proactively monitor
their health and performance.

And so as founders, we've pledged that for
every five subscribers we get, we're going

to donate a subscription for free to an
athlete in need.

And that philanthropic impact is
definitely something that people rally

behind.

it's something that a lot of the, you
know, ambassadors, you know, some of our

investors who, who are athletes, right.

they love that idea.

and so those are, that's kind of, I say
those two things.

It's the innovation, it's the innovative
solution that people kind of think to

them, think to themselves like, well,
what, you know, why hasn't someone done

this before?

as well as the philanthropic impact,
certainly play the role in getting people

onto the team.

Well, and you also mentioned that one of
the biggest struggles that you've had

coming into this was raising capital, both
from macroeconomic standpoint and just

being in a place where capital is not as
available.

I was curious, what were some of the most
effective strategies that you or tactics

you used to try to raise capital in a
space that was this difficult?

Yeah, it's a really good question.

I think it's one being, it's being smart
about your race, right?

And it's part of being an entrepreneur is
managing your time.

And that's probably the hardest part.

You always have a million things to do.

And so what I've...

what I started off just contacting pretty
much every venture capital investor out

there and sending them cold email.

That's really hard to do.

I didn't get many responses.

And so for me, what I've been focused on,
as I said, is surrounding myself with the

right team that has relationships with
people that trust them, investors that

trust them.

And it takes a really long time to do.

But, you know, for me, that is that has
been the most effective way to to get

capital in the door.

For sure.

And that when you're saying you're
surrounding yourself, my guess is that

you'd probably be tapping into your own
network and developing relationships.

You mentioned this has been going on for
like 20 years, right?

So this has probably been something that
you've been working on that entire time

trying to develop that network.

Is that kind of your experience?

So we, I founded the company about two
years ago.

and building, building that network has
been a top priority for me.

knowing that I'm, I'm not a, I don't have
an engineering engineering background and

that ultimately investors are going to
invest in two things.

And this is my opinion.

They're going to.

they're going to invest in people and
they're going to invest in traction.

And when you're an early stage startup,
you don't have the traction yet.

And so what are they going to invest in?

People.

And so it's about bringing the right
people on, right?

And that have those, those relationships
and

and then the investors feel more
comfortable with what you're doing.

That's exactly what we've done.

Speaking of getting the traction, how does
Fieldhouse plan to utilize some of the

emerging technologies like machine
learning and AI to help build insights and

personalized insights into the technology
that you're developing?

What are some of the things you guys are
doing to leverage what's happening now to

get traction with emerging technologies?

Yeah, great question.

So one, first I want to point out that, so
what we do is we centralize all of this

data for our users.

as we centralize it, we're also
normalizing it.

And that's really, really important.

So what I mean by normalize is we've
developed proprietary algorithms that use,

you know, take it's a based on a
scientific approach that, you know, take

the data from all these different tools.

And, so that they're,

that users can look at that data across
devices.

So what I mean by that is, you know, if
you wear two different devices, I'm going

to exclude names.

If you were two different devices for a
two week period and you look at the stats,

right?

They're both devices provide sleep data,
heart rate data, activity.

Well, the numbers are actually, there's
huge variation in

what we as people would think would be
standard, like heart rate variability

seems like a standard number, right?

And they should be the same.

There's actually huge variation.

And so we're normalizing the data.

And that's a big part of what we're doing.

And then, we are, so in terms of how we're
using technology,

we have a freemium and a premium offering
our freemium, allows any athlete, to

connect their real time and historical,
you know, digital devices to field tests

and store that data on field tests and
then share that data with whoever they

want.

We, I've been since day one, I have been
adamant that that remains a freemium.

offering because I believe that all
athletes and eventually people, but for

now athletes should have the right to own
their data and share their data with

whoever they want.

So you can share it.

You can share and unshare it super easily
with coaches.

Now in college sports, NIL is the big
topic.

Athletes are transferring schools all the
time.

And so athletes can actually take their
data with them when they transfer Which is

something they they couldn't do before
field house Now that freemium Offering

actually helps our freemium our premium
offering as as well so the the premium

offering really takes all of that data and

allows users through our mobile app that
we're developing, have a conversation.

Our AI has a conversation with the user
and learns about the user's personality,

has different features like when the user
wakes up in the morning, our AI will ask

the user, hey, can you take a picture of
yourself?

because by taking a picture of themself,
we have technology that can actually

analyze the athletes facial expressions to
determine how ready they are to train or

perform that day.

And so we focused a lot in user
engagement, but the freemium, all the data

we're collecting in the freemium version
is ultimately helping us develop the

insights for the premium version.

which is the monetization strategy.

And so we're using the different LLMs out
there.

So we use Google Gemini, Chachi, BT,
Cloud, Meta, Llama.

We're using all of them, but the way we
use them is actually quite different.

than you would think, where they all
function a little bit differently in that

if you type a prompt into, let's say,
chat, GPT, Gemini, and cloud, right,

they're all going to give you different
answers.

And so we are actually, you know,
assessing an athlete's personality and

then using the response from all of the
different,

each LLM and filtering, okay, we know this
athlete is a rule follower.

They want all the detail that we can, that
they can have on, you know, their sleep,

their nutrition, et cetera.

So we're going to, you know, use Gemini
for the conversational component.

Somebody who doesn't want, who might just
want, hey, tell me what to do and I'll do

it.

Right?

We might use might use cloud.

So we're using the different LLMs out
there to get a better to collect data and

better understand the athletes
personalities so that we can better coach

them.

Okay, so it sounds like you're basically
kind of starting to fold in almost

qualitative insights in addition to
quantitative so that you can basically

match both personality and insights so
that they can interpret them, absorb them,

and have actionable information that they
can relate to.

It kind of sounds like it's almost like a
personalized...

to put it.

Our mobile application, which is our
premium offering, it's a coach in your

pocket.

It's an AI coach in your pocket.

And so that's, we're trying to learn as
much about the athlete's personality as we

can, just like a coach would if you were
to go to meet with the coach.

Athletes can spend, high performance
athletes can spend, you know,

you know, $300 per session with a high
performance coach, right?

And we're trying to mimic that experience
through our mobile conversation.

That's awesome.

I also, I know that you're also leading an
organization and one of the things I

wanted to touch on as you're talking about
personalities, one of the things you

mentioned is the importance of building
the network around you.

You've mentioned to me the importance of
building the right team.

Can you tell me a little bit about your
approach that you've taken to your

organization as you're building this
company from a startup to building the

right team members in the organization?

What kind of characteristics do you look
for in your team?

Yeah.

so number one, I look for athletes and I
don't necessarily, I don't necessarily

mean fit like, you know, athletes that
competed in sports, even though that, you

know, most of the people on our team have
given what we're doing.

I look for people who are agile, who are
nimble, who can wear multiple hats and

know that, you know, as a start, as a
startup, every day is different.

And so that's one, for sure.

Two is, I have a more collaborative
leadership style.

And if there's decisions that need to be
made, we are talking about it in our

executive leadership meeting.

And so if I'm bringing in leaders, new C
-suite members, I am usually making sure

that they fit with our existing C -suite.

And the way I do that is, one, they meet
with each founder alone.

And then I get each founder's feedback.

But also, and I have to credit my wife
with this, she's an executive leadership

coach.

And she has, through her, I have learned
about different assessments that you can

give people not to determine, you know, if
they're going to be a, if we want them to

have a place on our team.

but more just, you know, looking at,
assessing their leadership style.

And that, you know, the one we use the
most is called the disc assessment.

And I have to credit her because she then
goes and she reviews the disc assessments

and summarizes them for me.

So yeah, that's kind of how we make sure
that we have the right team.

It's really interesting.

Everything that you've described in this
entire experience, down to even your

wife's involvement and the personality
tests, all have a huge amount to do with

data, which is an interesting perspective
to come from having started this whole

position from an athlete.

Did you know when you were an athlete that
you were going to be a data nerd one day?

Is that something you were like, were you
super into stats or whatever from the

beginning?

I actually would avoid the data.

I was, most of the time, as a junior
tennis player, if you go and you

oftentimes watch the match that you may
play the winner of.

and you look at their stats, right?

Like, do they have a good serve?

Do they, you know, what are their weapons,
right?

How do, what's the best way to make, you
know, force them to make errors?

I mean, I wouldn't even watch.

And so I, I avoided, I avoided data,
ironically.

I think that where I started, where I
really started to see the value of data in

making, in

making decisions was probably when I was
in real estate and looking at market data.

And like I said, the last private equity
shop I was at in real estate was super,

super opportunistic investments.

And so I was looking at things like, okay,
where are millennials

you know, what cities are they moving are
moving to?

And what stores are they shopping at?

Right?

Like, I was looking at a ton of data.

And that's when I kind of realized, okay,
like, data can be really helpful in

making, you know, at the time investment
decisions.

But now, you know, health, you know, with
field health decisions and also personal

decisions.

Well, one of the things I wanted to also
touch on is you've got partnerships you'd

mentioned to me in the past that you're
looking at launching with probably coming

out of the gate with nearly half, let's
say 500 ,000 users.

Can you tell me a little bit about your
approach to launch and what are some of

the key metrics and milestones you're
looking to track as you're getting, as

you're launching, as well as what's the
launch date look like?

Yeah, so the launch date is right now we
are aiming for right around Thanksgiving,

maybe a little bit earlier, depending on
the capital race as well.

In terms of the partnerships, what we've
done is we have an innovative product and

the data we're collecting can

contextualize the data that a lot of other
companies have.

And so what we're doing with these 500
,000 users is we're actually onboarding

them to our web -based platform.

And so what they do is they simply go on
to our platform.

They create a profile, takes about

you know, 90 seconds, we've timed it.

We know how important that is to limit the
number of questions in the signup process.

And then they connect, then they connect
to any, any devices that they used to use,

as well as current devices to our
platform.

And you think of that, think of it kind of
like, if you're familiar with like mint

.com, right, where you connect your
different bank accounts,

Right, yep.

platforms.

And so let's say you, you know, one of our
partners is Fusionetics.

That's probably our biggest partnership
right now.

Well, Fusionetics has existing customers.

So on that customer's Fusionetics profile,
they're going to see something that says,

you know, my analytics powered by
Fieldhouse.

And so they'll be able to see their data
from Fieldhouse.

coming through to their Fusion Erics
profile.

By onboarding all of those users, what
we're really doing is we are building out

our data set and training our AI and
machine learning algorithms so that we can

provide the insights in our mobile
application when we release that.

you know, like I said, right around
Thanksgiving.

So, sorry, I misspoke earlier.

In terms of onboarding the users, we are
planning to onboard them, you know,

sometime in early to mid August.

Okay.

I also wanted to just touch a little bit
on your personal development.

Who would you say have been some of your
biggest influences, or the biggest

influences you've had, or some of the
mentors that you've really looked up to as

you've kind of tried to enter the
entrepreneurial journey?

I'm guessing some of your advisors and
things like that, but can you share who

some of those were and how they've helped
shape your approach?

Yeah, so first would be my wife.

I founded the company a week before
meeting her.

Failed to tell her that right away, that
it was only that I think I came, I told

her I was a sports tech data startup CEO.

And I think she definitely thought the
company was more mature than it was.

So she has been with me every step of the
way, giving me guidance, especially given

her background as an executive leadership
coach.

So that's one.

Two is some members of my family.

My uncle has been very successful with
building biotech and health tech startups.

And so he's constantly giving me informal
advice.

I mean constantly.

And then, you know, in terms of, you know,
people on my team, you know, there's, I

mean, there's, it's everybody.

But I would say a couple of them are, you
know, my, one of our board members, Dr.

Mike Clark has been, has been unbelievable
through all of this.

Dr.

Clark is he's also the founder and CEO of
Fusionetics.

But he is one of he is one of the if not
the most well known sports performance

slash physical therapists in the country
and around the world.

And then Mark Boff is another one of our
advisors.

He spent 20 years as a

in the MBA as most recently head of sports
medicine for the Milwaukee Bucks,

previously with the Celtics, the Pelicans,
the Bulls.

And then there's other advisors that we
have as well that have just been

fantastic.

Steve Novak, who works at Boston College,
has been helping me navigate.

the whole NIL landscape.

I mean, I can go on and on, but it just
goes to show the importance of having a

great team and also having those people
who don't necessarily have skin in the

game, such as family, friends, who can
advise you through some of the tough

decisions.

That's awesome.

For people that are just starting their
own entrepreneurial journey or aspiring to

be entrepreneurs themselves, what's some
advice that you would give somebody that's

just trying to enter this and maybe
they've got a problem they're trying to

solve that they're also passionate about
but aren't entering with the same level of

experience?

Send me an email And we can hop on the
phone because there's way too much advice

I can give No, I'm kidding.

yeah, actually you can but I would say You
know probably the biggest piece of advice

is to one is you know Don't I recommend
don't not doing it alone

Being an entrepreneur is an incredibly
lonely journey.

If you are a solo founder, I recommend
finding people and bringing them on early

on in your journey.

That can both help the company, but also
help you.

Because I think one thing I underestimated
is it is an emotional roller coaster.

And you have to be prepared for that.

And to have people that are with you in it
with you is huge.

It's night and day from me when I was a
solo founder to after I brought on my co

-founders.

And so that would be my biggest piece of
advice.

And then lastly,

you know, it's keep keep pushing.

Because it is extremely painful being an
entrepreneur, you you face a lot of

rejection.

And it's it's a lot of trying and failing.

But what you got to remember is that it
only takes one yes.

And you need to

prepare what I say to our team is, you
know, we need, we need to be prepared for

when lightning strikes, because when
lightning strikes, if lightning strikes,

and you're able to capitalize on it, and
you're prepared, then, then that's, that's

when real growth, that's when real growth,
real growth happens.

And so that, I guess that would be, those
would be my biggest pieces of advice.

Great.

Well, you know, now that we're kind of,
we're starting to get towards the end, I

wanted to see if there's, there's going to
be listeners out there that they're going

to be interested themselves in Fieldhouse.

They're going to want to know how to
access the tech.

They're going to be athletes that are
interested in this kind of personalized

insights that can be aggregated from
multiple devices.

How would you, what would you say is the
best way for them to learn about the

launch for them to be able to participate
in this access to technology?

Yeah, so we are actually in the middle of
changing our domain from fieldhouse .app

to fieldhouseai .com.

I would say you can always email me
directly.

My email, I think is, well, I know it's
still alec, a -l -e -c at fieldhouse .app,

or you can submit a inquiry on our
website.

And someone on our team will get back to
you in 24 hours Yeah, and I'm always happy

to talk with other either aspiring or You
know other other founders And help them

because I wouldn't be where I am today
without other people helping me and You

know every conversation is a learning
experience.

So

I love talking to other founders.

I always come away with learnings and my
goal, hopefully I can help others too.

Well, great.

Thank you so much for your time today.

It's been great talking to you and
learning about Fieldhouse.

We'll follow up more, but thanks for your
time.

All right, thank you.