Stephen Smith, Founder and CEO of Kitman Labs, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he explains how his company's intelligence platform is engineering change in how athletes and sports teams prepare for games.

Closing Bell

Knowledge is Power: Kitman Labs Harnessing New Data to Help Teams Win

Alright, well that's gonna do it for raising the bar but I do want to turn now to another startup that is shaking things up. Kidman Labs, helping teams win on the field but not by running drills or hitting the gym. The startup which raised 52 million in the series C round this past november, harnessing at millions of data points to give teams a competitive edge on the field. Well joining me now, Stephen smith, founder and Ceo of Hitman Labs, Stephen, thanks so much for coming on. I know anyone who's seen the movie Moneyball, even if you're not a sports fan knows that analytics are certainly changing sports. How is your company taking this to the next level? Yeah, thanks for having me, Kristen What's worth noting that there's been an explosion of data across our industry over the last you know, 10, 15 years and that's created a highly fragmented data landscape which has meant that you know, members of the high performance team in elite sport can not only not bring all their data together and see all of their information on their athletes in one place, but they can't turn that into actionable insights that are really driving the things that they care about within their organizations. You know, the sports industry today is is almost like the sales industry prior to sales force and our intelligence platform is changing that forever through a combination of data centralization and analytics? Well, here's the question Stephen, how is the data being gathered and what are some of the examples of data points that teams can use across different sports and different leagues to really inform their decision on how to prepare these athletes? You know, athletes today are like super computers, you know, 10 years ago, when when you mentioned the Moneyball reference, you know, we were collecting very simple game statistics and performance metrics. Today we are capturing an enormous number of highly sophisticated, technical technical strategic performance metrics and we're coupling that with decision making information and physical performance metrics, every step, every acceleration, every deceleration, every impact, every collision is now quantified. And that creates a huge opportunity for competitive advantage, whether it comes to, you know, scouting and recruiting of athletes and talent economics, whether it comes to talent development, you know, and even down to performance optimization for games week in, week out and health optimizations and keeping their athletes on the field. And you know, we're we're incredibly excited about helping our partners to exploit that opportunity. Let me ask you this, are you partnering with any of these connected fitness devices like the ring or some of these wearables that do allow individuals and of course teams to gather data as well. Yeah, today we integrate with over 160 different data providers and you know, there and there's numerous different first generation companies that, you know, whilst they're procuring large amounts of valuable information, they've been forcing teams to essentially try to leverage that information within a one size fits all approach and, you know, developing off the shelf solutions. We're creating the most configurable platform on the planet. That creates a tailored intelligence driven approach to how organizations are driving their their their team's forward for performance. So give me an idea, asked even if some of the organizations tapping your data, your services to improve the performance of their teams. Well, today we work with over 700 organizations globally in in in I think over 45 different leagues. So, you know, you namely globally and were involved but we have customers from high schools through to over 180 double a schools and we were present in in every professional league in the US and and and and probably most of the largest organizations in the world globally. Okay, 52 million in a seriously round raised this past November. How are you using that money to expand the company? Yeah, well, I think we're we're we're very focused on bringing together the brightest minds in sports performance, medicine analytics and technology and and you know, we're we're right now adding another 90 people to that group and that's allowing us to invest in groundbreaking technology and and continuing to acquire synergistic capabilities through other organizations as well. And, you know, our journey is just beginning is it's incredibly exciting time for us because we're seeing that, you know, there's an arms race and, you know, coming into the industry with regards to team ownership and, you know, performance today matters more than it ever has before For teams that are embracing innovation and translating that into on field performance, it's changing their profile forever. And we only have to look at organizations like Chelsea Football Club today Who have invested significantly since the Abramovich, you know, ownership transition almost 20 years ago in talent development in on field performance and from what their first team and their women's team. And that organization is likely to sell for $4 billion 150 million. Alright, Steven, we got to leave it there, fascinating stuff. I know data and analytics continuing to drive nearly every decision, especially in the sports world, among others. That Stephen smith, founder and Ceo of Kidman Labs.