Episode 8: Mustafa Abdul-Hamid

Pivoting and Prioritizing to make an Impact with Serial Entrepreneur Mustafa Abdul-Hamid

Today’s guest never set out to become an entrepreneur, he just wanted to make a really big impact. He followed his love of basketball and policy, as well as his unique ability to connect the dots, into the business world, and now Mustafa is the co-founder of My90 and the founder of Boost. Now serving as EVP of Sports and Media at Arria, he speaks candidly about life in multiple startups: ruthless prioritization, knowing when to pivot, and knowing when to sell.

In this episode, he shares multiple levels of insights from his life as a serial founder. He shares hard-won professional lessons — like how to know when to pivot — as well as personal stories — like the impact that having kids has had on his life — how he maintains his focus on the ‘North Star’, personally and professionally, through the practice of ruthless prioritization. He chats about the two companies he founded or co-founded, the different contexts of each, and how they both overlap and feed each other.

He explains how his unique skill set and perspective as a professional basketball player led him into the world of entrepreneurship, how Boost greatly evolved from its starting point, how Mustafa knew when to pivot the company’s direction, and what he will do differently the next time he starts a company. We’re sure you'll enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with an incredible entrepreneur, so tune in today!

Episode 8: Show Notes

Key Points From This Episode:

•    The impact of having kids on Mustafa’s life as a founder.

•    The value of ruthless prioritization and how this plays out in his business.

•    How choosing a co-founder is very similar to choosing a life partner.  

•    How ruthless prioritization plays into consensus-building and the importance of clear direction. 

•    An example of a recent output Mustafa and his wife/co-founder Kona achieved as a result of having a clear direction.  

•    Insight into the two different contexts Mustafa draws upon and is responsible for as a founder of two companies and how they feed each other.

•    How Mustafa came to see this common thread in these two contexts.

•    Mustafa’s love of policy, his ability to connect dots, and his desire to make a big impact.

•    How he came to use his unique skill set and perspective in entrepreneurship.

•    How Boost has evolved into data-driven story-telling.

•    How Mustafa knew when to pivot in the evolution of Boost.

•    How to reduce the risk when founding a company and what Mustafa will do differently next time.

•    The magic that happens when you do enough to inspire a potential customer to see your potential and ask you to do something.

Tweetables:

“What is the minimum viable product? What is the thing that is going to make a material difference? I think that's where the prioritization and triaging really gets done.” — Mustafa Abdul-Hamid [0:06:51]

“What you need more than anything when you're working on multiple things, is you need some serious guardrails, you need people that force you into clarity, force your organization to have clarity, and challenge all of those assumptions.” — Mustafa Abdul-Hamid [0:17:39]

“Entrepreneurship is not something that I've ever thought about. I never thought about being the CEO of this big company, and all of that. I always wanted to make a big impact. For better or for worse, I always wanted to play at a really, really high level.” — Mustafa Abdul-Hamid [0:25:17]

“Anybody who’s interested in entrepreneurship, I think that's the thing that matters is that zero to one time, and outlining and establishing the fundamentals.” — Mustafa Abdul-Hamid [0:45:05]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Mustafa Abdul-Hamid

My90

Boost

Jeremy Utley

Marcus Hollinger

[TRANSCRIPT]

EPISODE 08

“MAH: I don't know that you really know, but you want to de-risk it as much as possible. If you don't have money and don't have a big tech team, or you're a little bit smaller and earlier, you do that by running these school-style prototypes. Then if you do, and you're starting again, you run the d.school style prototypes, and you control your whole stack and you build a real moat around what you've got, so you can take these risks without risking – de-risk all of the pivots, or things that you're learning and exploring, and the innovation will create.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:34] JU: Welcome to The Paint & Pipette Podcast. My name is Jeremy Utley. It's my job to illuminate the tactics of world-class performers across domains. As a day job, I teach at the Stanford d.school helping students learn what it takes to come up with ideas. I've realized, I need to stay in the classroom learning myself, and this podcast is my classroom.

[00:00:58] MH: Hey, hey. I'm Marcus Hollinger. I lead Marketing and Creative at Reach Records, an Atlanta-based independent record label. I'm also co-founder for Portrait Coffee, where we are seeking to reimagine the picture that comes to mind for folks in specialty coffee. I'm so excited to pull up my desk alongside my good friend and fellow learner, Jeremy. I think, y'all are going to love what we have for you this season.

[00:01:29] JU: We've got some amazing stories on deck, and we can't wait to dive in and learn alongside you.

[00:01:33] MH: Grab your pipette and your paintbrush, and let's make something beautiful together.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:01:42] JU: Today, we talk with Mustafa Abdul-Hamid, a serial entrepreneur. He's the Co-Founder of My90 and the Founder of Boost Technologies. We had an amazingly inspiring and wide-ranging conversation with Mustafa, that touched on his D1 college basketball career, as well as his pro basketball career in Europe. In this conversation, Mustafa talks with us about how he determines how to make material differences versus marginal differences in his businesses, how to balance being involved with multiple startups. He also talks to us about how to assess traction and how to know when to pivot, versus when to be stubborn as a founder, and shares with us his thoughts on choosing a co-founder. Lastly, he talks about how life as a founder changes once you've got kids in the mix. We hope you'll enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with a incredible entrepreneur.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:02:40] JU: Mustafa, I haven't seen you in at least three years, I guess. I saw this announcement –

[00:02:49] MAH: The gray hairs, man. Definitely before the kids and the gray hairs.

[00:02:54] JU: Okay, so let's just start there. What is the impact on your life as a founder, now that you have kids?

[00:03:01] MAH: I mean, it's been really interesting. I know you're in the same boat. I think, you become more efficient. I think, you balance and have to balance your time differently. I think, that even in grad school, and before when you don't have those types of responsibilities, or they're different, in this case, I didn't have kids, you can grind away something all night and all day and actually find out that you don't need to do that. I don't think you're as effective that way. I think, it becomes a matter of pretty ruthless prioritization, which is something that should be done anyways, and something that I don't do particularly well.

[00:03:42] JU: What's an example of ruthless prioritization, say in the last week, just to give me a more tangible 

[00:03:50] MAH: That's an interesting one. Give me a moment to think here.

[00:03:53] JU: It's got to be ruthless.

[00:03:55] MAH: Yeah, it does. I'll give you an example. We have, with Boost, and I'm sure we'll talk more about this, but there are three primary partners and accounts that we're chasing. Right now, people are coming back from vacation. We had to make clear decisions about which one we're going to prioritize in terms of one, the pitch, and then two, how we're going to allocate resources to those things? I think, that's an example of ruthless prioritization from a business perspective. When you think about that, for me individually, I had to make that choice to, I think that is connecting that lesson learned from my personal life into the business.

Now, and I think about that in the personal life of how I choose to spend time, I think I had to choose a couple of times this week of I could go and tinker with something a little bit more, to make it a little bit better and a little bit nicer, but there were a couple of conversations I needed to have with people. I chose to spend that time talking.

I have an hour before preschool, or daycare pickup, or something like that. I chose to make a point like, I'm not going to tinker. I'm not going to be on my computer, isolated doing this work and that deep work. I'm going to take a step back. I need to talk to a couple of employees, because we haven't been able to talk as much lately. That was something like, man, I can make this deck a little bit better. I can reach out to a few more people. I can do things like that, but I've got an hour here, and what's going to be the highest impact? That was calling, in this case, calling Christian to talk a little bit. When you have a remote, or distributed team, those things become really, really important. I don't know if that's a great example, but that's what comes to mind.

[00:05:37] JU: How did it cross the threshold to become a reprioritization? Or a ruthless prioritization? One where like, I’m sure, other times, you probably make the decision to make the deck better, right? What gave you the instincts to use the time in a different way?

[00:05:55] MAH: Yeah. It’s just, think something that again, I have not traditionally been good at is evaluating what is going to have – what's going to have real value and what's going to have marginal value, and how much marginal value is worth doing that thing for? I think Kona, actually, my wife, Kona, and co-founder, My90 Kona is very, very good at that. An additional 2% here is not going to actually make a material difference in things for thing A, but for thing B, spending that hour doing something, or making that phone call will have a material difference in how this person can do their work. Spending a little time building that relationship, in this case, or giving some support, or guidance just had a much, much higher impact.

I am a person who – I like the pixels. I like the design. It’s the whole principle of a prototype. What is the minimum viable product? What is the thing that is going to make a material difference? I think, that's where the prioritization and triaging really gets done. It becomes easier when you got a family member who's looking at you like, “Yo, you got to pick up the kiddo,” and you want to go. When you come back, it's time to play soccer in the backyard. That's just a choice you have to – that you get forced into that choice, which I think is actually healthy.

[00:07:20] MH: There's a there's a principle at work there, that sounds very useful for navigating ambiguity and choice. I'm curious, because you brought up your wife, who's also a co-founder. How does that work when there has to be consensus building at play? Or how has that worked?

[00:07:37] MAH: Right, right. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't even know that I have a good answer for that. I think that choosing a co-founder is very similar to choosing a partner, right? A life partner, a wife, or whatever partner that you have. I am a person. I'm going to walk into this, as I think about it. These are challenging questions. I like them.

I think, it is how you communicate things with each other. You always need a north star. What are we trying to do? Where are we trying to go? When it comes to consensus building, I think as long as the core values are the same, the north star is very clear, and there's clarity around it. Then just walking through the muddy, mucky stuff becomes easier, because you become a little bit less detached to every step, left or right. She may get one wrong, or he may get one wrong, and you may get one wrong, but that's okay. Because there's a very clear commitment, and the ground that you're standing on is very firm, and the direction that you're going is very clear. Even if you have a pivot, in terms of a business situation, the north star, I think, is still very – should be very clear. If you have to make that big pivot, then if the north star has to move, then it just needs to be very well-defined.

I'll give you an example. My90’s mission was to really make things a little bit safer and a lot better for our communities. How you accomplish that, whether it's through an app, or a dashboard, or whatever, to me, doesn't really matter. The principle that you need to focus on, or that we focused on was one, making it equitable in terms of access to giving information and then returning value back to the people that provide information. An old analogy that we use is that if I have a piece of gold, and I'm a community member, my opinion, my time, my resources, my safety, my health, that is my gold. If I give or share that with you, and I throw that into the ocean and I never see it again, because you say, “Hey, we need as much of this as possible to be able to make good decisions.” If I throw them into the ocean and never see it again, I feel like I've lost something.

How, if we now are talking about facilitating communication and make people feel safer and make them actually safer, if the one thing they have to give to me is that important, how do I give something back to them? That became a principle that we focused on. I had very strong opinions about how to do that. Kona had different opinions about how to do that. If that's the thing that we really agree upon fundamentally, then all of the little methods and the ways that we go about it, the mechanics of that, the blocking and tackling of it, you can come become very detached from that, and detached from like, oh, this was my idea. Because you're going in the same way, and you have the same principles, and you know you're doing this together, so the rest of it becomes – the consensus becomes more easy.

[00:10:47] MH: Is there a recent output you guys have achieved, through that process of pursuing the north star like that?

[00:10:56] MAH: I mean, choosing to sell the company is the perfect example. There were multiple opportunities and multiple buyers, or acquires, potential buyers for My90. Those potential acquirers were very different in the services that they offered. For us, it was, there are pros and cons to everything. How can we make the most impact for the individual community members, and the officers, or public safety officials, whether it is civilianized, or these are police officers— how does everyone in this scenario, how do we help them be a little bit safer? How do we help manage decision-making? How do we remove potential risk from the situation? We played in that middle ground, but that's what it was fundamentally about.

When we were choosing to sell the company, it became very clear to us which one would help us make the most impact, the access to the most data, the access to the most important data, the company that was going to empower, in this case, Kona to continue on and lead that division, give resources. Who have the ability to help us get into the most public safety agencies as possible, but who would also display commitment to community?

I think, that's a very real example. I hesitate in getting a little deeper, because some of that – I don't want to talk about different companies, but they were the best one for us. The north star, how can we make the most impact? It doesn't really matter about for us in this case about money, or about this, or about that. It was like, how can we make the most impact is really, really clear.

Because who starts and says like, “Yo, we got this police reform tech play.” You know what I mean? If you're just thinking about financial and material return. It was about like, who's going to scale that impact? It's got a chance now. It’s like at the beginning of the road. It's like, it almost starts all over again, but it's got a chance to make, to really move the needle in a whole another level. That was a clear choice for us.

[00:13:08] JU: I'd be curious to know, Mustafa, because, as you mentioned at the beginning, you were deeply involved with the inception of My90. Obviously, you're married to Kona, but then you've got Boost. Can you talk about what it's like? Is it like Steve Jobs, Pixar and Apple? How does one context inform the other? Because it could be a distraction, but I don't think it is. Can you talk about the impact of having those two different contexts to draw upon and be responsible for as a founder?

[00:13:42] MAH: Yeah, they totally feed each other in a positive way. In fact, I think they're doing the same thing. The one thing that I think about, maybe this is a little out there, but I do a lot of Tai Chi now. I've done a lot of Tai Chi for a long time now, when I stopped playing basketball. It was like, okay, so I'm not playing basketball anymore, but I really want this pursuit of mastery. I really want to think about balance and neutrality, and all of that.

Where do you put this effort and energy? So I started doing Tai Chi. It was awesome for me. Then, the thing that I realized, and it's not something that I just realized, but people realize, I think, is it's all the same thing. If you are talking about, if you doing Tai Chi, it's the very same thing in basketball. How do you move? How do you stay balanced? How do you stay unattached? How do you read and feel your opponent, or your partner if you're doing some pushing, if you're sparring, or anything like that?

When I think about My90, My90 was about getting, or collecting data, and then explaining complex data. Then making sure that explanation really was a story, so that people could understand it, understand each other, understand how to make better decisions, and then the outcome of choices was, if you make better decisions, then there's less bias, there's less risk, officers are deployed in situations where they're less likely to have, with create a risk. Community members. Now, you can be in situations where procedures are really, really followed, and you don't have that risk, or they shouldn't even be interacting in these situations at all, and you remove that risk.

When it comes to Boost, it's very similar. A police chief, a community leader, and a head basketball coach are very similar. There's a whole bunch of stuff out there, a whole bunch of data on the basketball court. Every moment, every step is a data point. Every interaction with a police officer, or every non-interaction, almost interaction with a police officer is a data point. We got all this data. Now, the first thing you do is you start to arrange it. This is your data wrangling. You got to get the data first, then you got to arrange it.

Then you start to visualize it. You can start to see things that come out a little bit. That's really interesting, you know what I mean? In crunch time with these three players on a court in close games like, “Whoa, there's a potential threat or vulnerability here.” Well, when in these types of calls, with these types of community members, community members feel threatened, or vulnerable, and don't actually want a police officer to be responding to this call. Or they do. You're starting to see things. Now, if you can take that after you get the data, arrange the data, source the data, visualize the data, now you got to tell the story.

For us and for me, I think about that storytelling is key. There is nothing that tells a story better than words. Pictures tell an incredible story, but there are so many aspects of a single picture that can only be captured when you understand the other pictures that surround it. Context. This is one thing that words and stories can do is you can take a chart, and then you can take the other 10 charts and pull something out and say like, “Hey, here's the thing that you need to focus on here. I can communicate it very clearly to you.” That’s one where those things are connected.

I'll say one more thing is that, so when it comes to Boost and My90, that's how I see the world. Boost, I always thought about – I can tell you the whole story and the pathway. Every industry is like this. Every space is like that. Every human interaction, I think needs a story, if we're organizing those human interactions to make policy decisions, or organizational decisions. What you need more than anything when you're working on multiple things, is you need some serious guardrails, you need people that force you into clarity, force your organization to have clarity, and challenge all of those assumptions. Because you can really get inside of your own head in making this awesome connection. One that I think is awesome that I just explained.

Kona will say, “Well, let's take a moment and step back.” Or Inga, my co-founder will say, “Let's take a moment and step back.” They are pretty, again, they use the word – they are lovely people, but they're also very ruthless in how they challenge any assumptions. I'm very detached to people, but they can be very objective and very detached. They don't get attached to individual ideas.

I'm a little bit more, even you see, I'm talking like, I get wrapped up in things. I get energized by it. In this situation, it is working with and surrounding yourself with a team, or teams that balance the risks that you inherently have, that are magnified by bringing these two things together.

[00:18:50] MH: Yeah. Hearing what you just explained there, one of the things that I'm gravitating toward is the common thread that's connecting these two different contexts. I think, you've described how – you've described the common thread that you'd see. I want to step back a little bit. You're actually the physical thread that's connecting these two contexts. I'd love to hear your story. How did this person, who can see this common thread in these two contexts come to be? Under what was that lens refined?

[00:19:28] MAH: Yeah. I don't know. It's interesting. I grew up in St. Louis, in Florissant, just right next to Ferguson. Even in that blog post, I shared a couple of experiences, that was one experience. There are a lot of other experiences that really shaped my relationship with policing and public safety, positively and negatively. When we went to Stanford, it was interesting that there was a woman named LaDoris Cordell, who was an independent police auditor in San Jose. Looked at the data, they're collecting data and basically, saying like, there's a huge gap, because certain types of people, black and brown people don't communicate, or complain, or command, or anything, when it comes to law enforcement, public safety. It’s like, I don't want to deal with that at all, for a lot of reasons that I think have been uncovered and that people know. That's where that came from there.

At the same time, I played sports all of my life. I think, I was a point guard, or a playmaker. Understanding context and reading situations and collecting massive amounts of data, that we wouldn't even call it data. It's like, you're in the court, you look, you see, you feel things. Those two things, growing up, where I'm from, and then sport, having this role in my life very deeply were two very important things to me.

I think, from a personality standpoint, from the things that I did in school, my parents and my family, the thing that we do very well is connect dots. I think, that a really, really important skill. It can also be a real weakness. You say like, me as this person that was involved in these two things and helping to build these companies. Is that, yeah, I connect dots really well. I like to read and do things and engage people. I think, I do that very well.

Now, at the same time, the weakness that can happen is, well, sometimes the dot – should the dot be connected? What's the externality if you connect that dot? Is there clarity? Because something that you see in your head, and because we see these complex systems, and we think about systems thinking, and I can take this experience, because doing the thing is always the same, whether you're on the court, or doing tai chi, or leading a team in business, you make all these connections, you’re like, “Hold on. In the end is it solving someone's problem? Do they understand? Is there clarity around that?”

I just think, it is who I am and how I am? I think that's a very good trait. It's a trait that can create challenges, or weaknesses, if you're not surrounded by and willing to listen to other people who have other skill sets than you do.

[00:22:19] MH: Fantastic.

[00:22:21] JU: Mustafa, I'm curious. You see, you've got these data points from the court, you've got these data points from your life. The other piece of the puzzle for me is entrepreneurship, or company building. There's a lot of ways to bring that skill of dot connecting to the world, or into earn a living. Did you always know you wanted to start a company? Is that something that's in your family, or your community? Or how did entrepreneurship become a how for your unique skill set and your unique perspective?

[00:22:58] MAH: Yeah. I think, when you look back, I mean, there's this really cool thread that you can connect all these pieces with. There's an incredible story that you can tell around those things. I think, that's all mostly made up. I think, it's a lot of – for me, it's a lot of randomness. I think, whether it was a – the thing that I always wanted to do was, and hopefully, maybe we'll do in the future is just around policy.

Because it's something where you built this development in one part of the city and you make this law in the state, and then it affects the transportation system that then affects an individual person. Then, that affects how people move in and out of the state. It's like, well, there's all these connected things. That's how I think that I think about. I don't think about the world. I think that’s how the world is. We're all very, very connected.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, I think, I stumbled into a lot of that. Now, that's me saying, I stumbled into it. Maybe there were some things, some underlying conditions in life that led to it. One, I was playing basketball at the time. I played basketball at UCLA. I played internationally for a while and it was awesome experience. I played in Serbia, Slovenia, in Germany, and France. I even played in Lebanon for a bit.

One, there was time. I had enough time to be able to – I mean, it's hard work, but I'm sitting alone in my apartment, in this case in Germany. Two was, I had enough – I had a job and I had enough money with the job in time to be able to do something and be able to take a risk. I am a thoughtful, in some ways cautious, but I'm not afraid of risk. Okay, maybe that's another data point that we can look at. I crossed the threshold. I had enough time. Look, I didn't have to work three jobs, because there's a lot of creative and innovative people. If you have other pressures, you can't do that. I think that matter. I think personality matter.

Then, I think I'm pretty good at – I don't know if Kona would always agree, but I'm pretty good at listening and talking, and I connect with people. I can feel and see some of those different pain points, and I like problem solving. Entrepreneurship is not something that I've ever thought about. I never thought about being the CEO of this big company, and all of that. Always want to make a big impact. For better or worse, I always wanted to play at a really, really high level, whether that was in sport, or outside of sport. By high level, I mean like, big impact. Then, these other underlying conditions existed, so you just do the thing.

[00:25:44] JU: You said, “I never thought about entrepreneurship.” Can you think of the moment the idea came into your mind? “Maybe I should start something?”

[00:25:53] MAH: Yeah. I really think I just walked into it. It started with, Jeremy, you or I remember some of this. Let me tell you what Boost is now. Let me tell you what Boost was when it started. What Boost is now is we tell data-driven stories at scale, automate it, and we can personalize it to you. Jeremy, you're a fan of the Golden State Warriors. We can tell you and your – let's say, you’re a sports bettor. I don't know. You bet in player props, or something like that. Points scored, and everything. Or, there's lots of different examples.

We can tell you a story about the game in a way that you've never seen it, because we've taken a whole bunch of data. We've organized it, we've arranged it, we've cleaned it, we visualized it, and then we told you a story. That story can help you take an action, whether it is supporting your team, or it could be sports betting, or it could be media, it could be reading it on ESPN. That's what Boost does now. Where Boost started –

[00:26:55] JU: That's different, by the way. That's pretty different.

[00:26:58] MAH: Totally different. Well, totally different. I mean, and that's the – a half pivot away. Because if you look at the market forces, where the money is and sports is around media, and media and sports betting. I've never made a bet in my life. I don't care about sports betting. I hardly even understand it.

[00:27:13] JU: Yeah, me neither. Me neither.

[00:27:15] MAH: Storytelling, I do. We can tell these authentic stories. It's become really, really cool. Where that was a step before, was telling those stories for coaches, who are the most difficult audience to convince, or show, because they're very, very critical, and they understand things. We're telling stories, and still do tell stories for coaches.

As a basketball coach, I can understand things that I don't really quite see with my eyes all the time. It takes a lot of the emotion out of it. You can get a little bit better understanding of here's an opportunity, or a weakness. I'll get to 90% of the way there and you let the coach’s supercomputer of a brain take over. Storytelling is what we wind up at. The applications of those stories are for coaches. They're for the media to put out on websites. Therefore, all those different applications.

Boost started a long time ago was like, augmented reality, optical seeking training glasses. Because my kid brother was back home, and he was eight-years-old or something at the time, and I was in Europe, and I wanted to be involved in his development as a player. That's how it started. Then read a bunch of stuff. Started the company. Went and talked to some professor, just hacked a bunch of stuff together. Met my co-founder, Inga, which as a sidebar is a pretty cool story.

I met Inga, and she hate it when I tell it. She was a part of a accelerator in SF. It’s called Wearable World. I think they still exist. They change the name of it, but they've grown. Because she had started these AR companies before. I met with her and I was like, showing her all the stuff that I was doing. She’s like, “Wow, that's really cool. But you shouldn't do this. You shouldn't spend this money.” Like, “No. That's not going to work and everything.” Then I was like, “I don't need to talk to you, because you're negative.” I went away and then I spent some money, this and things. I was like, “I should’ve listened to that lady.” Then we started working together. You see where these things –

[00:29:10] MH: That's awesome.

[00:29:12] MAH: Yeah, you see those things start. It started from a problem that I lived and experienced with my brother, which you are now seeing grow and grow with these different types of platforms for fitness, for athletes engaging and connecting to community. That's what I wanted to do.

Then what we saw was okay, the strongest pain point for these athletes became recruiting. It was always training. We're doing all this training. We did it for glasses, then we said, “Okay, we need to simplify.” We don't have that much money. Let's do it on an app. Let's create these interactions in videos, with coaches. Then from training, it went to – the bane that most kids care about is like, how do I get to the next level? I want to be a college basketball player. I said, “All right. Well, let's see if we can collect and organize and structure all those data and help these kids get opportunities, finding –” and democratize this process. Buzzy word. Help them find ways to skills kill politics and connecting.

Well, all right. When we were doing that, okay, collecting the data, we needed to find a better and faster way to do it than what we were doing before. Then when you're sharing that to a coach, the coach had to understand it. You had to tell that coach a story, and every one of those individuals was a story that needed to be connected to a coach. Then, that keeps going. Well, now we found like, all right, well, where's the actual money? Because we got a bit stuck, because the amount of motivated athletes that were willing to take the next step and continue to do the training, and had an opportunity at recruiting, and the data environment was clean enough to do it was a bit too narrow.

The storytelling with coaches really landed and they started paying for stuff. Then, we started. Well, there's a ton of stories I can tell with a more robust data environment. We built a platform for them, not just for the kids that they're recruiting, but for their own players, for the teams that they're playing against. Now, you take a look at that and you say, “Okay, this is really good. We start in college basketball. There's not a lot of competition. It's a very clear market. There's a clear problem solved. We got a competitive advantage.” That's when we really locked in, and we started to raise some money.

That continued. The pandemic hit, sales and everything and basically flat. Now, it accelerates the thought of, well, we've gotten really good at this storytelling. We have 30 storytelling modules that we tell for every player and coach and men's and women's basketball in college. It was over a million words a day that are constantly getting updated, paired with video. Then you have all these media, because media company, and a sports book said like, “Whoa, can you do that for us for soccer?” That's how that whole thing just winds.

[00:32:01] JU: How did the sports book even find that? Or, how do they become aware? How did they see what you were doing?

[00:32:05] MAH: A partner that we work with that does natural language generation, they do data-driven storytelling for lots of different industries. They do it for Pfizer, in Bank of America. They do compliance report writing, and they do some new stories around elections when you have all these local elections happening and all that. We started, we were using piece of the technology, then it was like, whoa, sports is really big. We were thinking about that. A client came and said, “This is the problem that we have.”

We tackled it together. We're on the verge of waiting on a big phone call for that client going from level A, of nice-sized contract, to where this thing can really just take off. Now, we've got others that have started to –

[00:32:52] JU: Mustafa, I feel like a lot of people who might listen to this conversation are feeling the same thing, which is –

[00:33:00] MAH: What the heck is this dude talking about?

[00:33:01] JU: No, no, no. No, no. Not at all. I'm totally jiving with you. My question is, there's this delicate balance between founders being persistent and sticking to a vision, and being nimble and responsive and pivoting. I mean, because you just laid out a really amazing sequence of transition and pivot. How did you know whether to listen to the market? Whether it's a pivot, or whether to say, “No, no, no. This is about glasses. No, this is about helping athletes get better. Or no, this is about helping them find the next thing.” Because at any point, you could have just said, we're not going to pivot. What was the basis by which you made that determination?

[00:33:43] MAH: It's funny, because I had these two instructors in this course called Launchpad, and they made all sort of diagnoses that you’re like, do you have pivot neurosis, or you're just a stubborn person that never is willing to listen to change?

[00:34:01] JU: I remember that.

[00:34:01] MAH: The course is all about that. Every time we're like, “All right. Well, there's an opportunity here. Should we take the opportunity?” It's like, do I just have neurosis here? I'm just running around without direction. To think about your question, I think the skill – I probably would have – There's a time where this probably would have happened a little bit faster.

Let me take a step back. How do you know? I think, one, you can do your homework. You can do your homework, but you have to be willing to update priors. The difference in, I don't see the glasses and the training, I think, that does pivot – that is a pivot into this more analytics and storytelling space. That was a big one. That was just very clear like, where are we not getting traction? What are people not doing? I probably didn't do – I don't even know if I didn't do enough homework, but our timing was very bad. If I could do it again, probably would have attacked it slightly differently. We did pivot into this space.

Now, when it comes from the coaches, to the media and the storytelling and sports books and all that stuff, I started to have a vision around that, just seeing how big the market was, and these other places, and what were the threads, and the problem that I was solving, and that we were solving and are solving. I actually hesitated. I hesitated, one, because I don't – again, I don't have any relationship with sports betting. I think, I have the negative association with sports betting. I did never did. How I grew up with family. I grew up as a Muslim. I didn’t bet.

I've seen now how the relationship between media sports betting and participation is changing the way that people interact and engage with sport and community now, even small bets, like $5. I'm engaged in this, purchasing an NFT, or buying a jersey, watching the game and engaging with the game. I saw some of those things and actually waited, because there's another company that does amazing data-driven storytelling, and that was acquired. I watched and saw how they developed. I got a little scared of attacking the same market. Competition makes a market. I got a little scared of like, you know what? Maybe that niche is – not niche, but maybe that area is filled. I shouldn't do that.

It was listening to different pieces of advice, balancing that, looking and reading the market. I think, taking a shot is really important. It's like, how do you take this shot, like you say, pivot? How do you take the first step in it before you overcommit? That's running these little prototypes, proof of concepts, having conversations, making decks, all those things that are a lot lower touch. How do you now read the area, read the market, see the opportunity, get someone to ask you to do it? How do you do the, again, just talking classic. How do you run an experiment really quickly? How do you get feedback from experts and people that have gone through this before? Then, it's just consolidating all of that.

We were a small enough company, where a new influx of cash and revenue makes a material difference for us. If you are a startup and you get a $500,000 contract, that is a material difference for you, than it is for if you're some massive company. If somebody is going to pay for it, that’s a very, very clear signal. I think, that's really important. I think you have to balance that signal with looking at reading the – the market isn't just one opportunity, or is there something scalable and defensible.

I think, that as a – because I'm a two-time founder now, but they're basically in parallel. When I likely do this another time after all these exits and things happen, I think you can read a little bit differently. The lesson that I've learned is that if you can do some of that homework early, I think that's part of it. You want to create an environment where you can take these different shots and make these pivots and de-risk those things.

The only way that we were able to de-risk those things now was to run cheaper prototypes and proofs of concept. In the future, I think you can de-risk those things by controlling your stack, almost entirely. Vertical integration is really, really important. In this case, some of the data that we use with Boost, we purchase some of that data. What we tried to do, and we still do, but we haven't done it at scale for every sport, is we use computer vision to extract data from video directly. Now, I always have a data source.

Because what if somebody changes the prices of those data, or changes the rights around different types of data, or you have to change an API, a mistake that we had to change an API for a data provider, and it set us back almost half a year. If you control that, you've created an environment, in the tech environment, you've created an environment where you can now make little pivots and run experiments really fast. I think, that is something that I definitely have learned.

Yeah, so how do you know? I don't know that you really know, but you want to de-risk it as much as possible. If you don't have money, and don't have a big tech team, or you're a little bit smaller and earlier, you do that by running these school style prototypes. Then if you do, and you’re starting again, you run the d.school style prototypes and you control your whole stack and you build a real moat around what you got, so you can take these risks without risking – de-risk all of the pivots, or things that you're learning and exploring, and the innovation will create.

[00:40:07] MH: That's amazing. Mustafa, I would just say, just reading back to you something I heard, it's interesting. It's a different way of thinking about it. You said, how to read the market, see the opportunity. I’m just looking at my notes. Get someone to ask you to do it. I like that phrase. Get someone to ask you to do it. It struck me as you said that, a potential customer saying, “Could you do this? It's a function and part of what you already do. If you're not doing anything –” If somebody came to me and said, “Could you build a spaceship?” I'd be like, “What?”

If they came and said, “Hey, you do classes like that, could you do a class for high schoolers?” It's like, that would be a new thing, but it's built on what they've seen me do. To me, it speaks to momentum. It's like, you're doing something. It's, in a way, you have to do enough to inspire a potential customer to think of what you could do, that you wouldn't even know to offer maybe.

[00:41:01] MAH: That is spot on. That's what happened with in this case, with sports, but it also has happened with companies in logistics. I'll show them our platform for coaches, as like, oh, you know, there's a whole bunch of data, play by play data. Jeremy passes to Marcus and Marcus shoots the ball. Oh, we also use computer vision to extract data from video. Jeremy passes to Marcus. Well, Jeremy was standing near the free throw line, and Marcus was in the corner, and he passes the ball he shoots it. Oh, okay. That's really interesting.

Wait. Now, you can visualize, I can see it. I can see it on a quarter. Okay. Now there's, you pull it out and you've adjusted it for the strength of the opponent and the pace and the speed in which people are playing. Now, I've got a takeaway and alert, or something that I can, you know what? I got a bunch of vehicles that are running every single day that are pulling in video. I wonder if we could get that for safety alerts.

That is a sure, a pivot. When you show them that platform, and they look at it, and they're like, “Whoa. Hey, can you do this?” When you show the sports book, the platform and these different stories, the question that they asked was, can you do this for global football, for soccer? Can we launch a proof of concept that is going to cost this much money with these types of three story type modules that are going to get sent out via email and some other stuff for the European Championships in July?

Now, a customer's asked you to do something. You have the stack built. Then the thing that I'll say is, you better have enough money in the bank, and enough grit in the tank, to be able to now be like, okay, does this make sense? Can we get the team to do this? Because we can do it, but it is not easy. You described it perfectly.

[00:43:01] JU: That's cool.

[00:43:01] MH: Well, I'm hearing there's so much in how you process information, and just hearing your instincts come out, I'm just bursting at the seams with more questions. I think, we might have to do a part two for this, because I'd love to hear more. I'm very curious to hear where does this go? Where does this St. Louis native, with his experience in sports, and this personal story with policing, and how that how policing interacts with community and this skill and data? Where's he taking things. What new future is he envisioning? I'd love to see if we can get a part two and maybe answer some of those questions.

[00:43:44] MAH: Yeah. I totally be down. I appreciate you all taking the time. Where that goes, I think that's something that I'm learning and exploring. I got some ideas that they'll come out pretty soon. Yeah, it's been really cool. I do want to say, Jeremy, you mentioned this to Perry, too, man. I appreciate everything that you all did, and helping nurture support that.

I got a friend, who’s a founder, who's an awesome founder. He'll run through a brick wall, solve any problem and he's great. He really talks about zero to one. That's where everything is. Zero to one. Zero to one. That's where you build a muscle for things. I think, a lot of that discomfort in that zero to one was right around Launchpad time. We've done some other stuff before. You got Perry asking you all these questions and me telling you and digging. That's, I think, the time when that was really good for me. Like, okay, that is going to make me as a founder and a team leader stronger, is going to make the company stronger. It reminded me of a really good coach, how you all did things and creating that environment.

The only thing I would say is, you've got all these awesome founders. I've listened to the podcast a couple of times now. Anybody that's interested in entrepreneurship, I think that's the thing that matters is that zero to one time, and outlining and establishing the fundamentals of “Yo, what's this environment going to look like? How am I going to handle this gut-churning? Who are the people that are going to be around to help bring that out?

[00:45:28] JU: Beautiful. Thank you, Mustafa, for your time. It's incredible to get to catch up with you and to see what you're doing. Will you let us know whenever the big contract comes in, just drop us a note and tell us. (It happened days later!!).

[00:45:38] MH: Absolutely.

[00:45:39] MAH: I will. I will. Hopefully, soon. Fingers crossed.

[00:45:42] MH: Yeah. It was super nice to meet you. Definitely going to be checking in and following your story. Thanks, Mustafa.

[00:45:48] MAH: All right, Marcus. Good to meet y'all. Take care.

[00:45:49] MH: Bye.

[00:45:50] JU: Bye. See you.

[END]