Omer Brand: Shaping the Future of Sailing (Full Transcript)
Listen on Apple | Spotify | Google
Full Transcript:
Ronen Ainbinder 0:31
Joining us today for the Halftime Snacks is a professional sailor and coach, experienced executive, and leader in the sport of sailing by winning multiple national and international championships.
Originally from Israel, this sports enthusiast has over 10 years of business development experience in diverse tech companies.
Today, he's the CEO and co-founder of Sea-Analytics. This video-based platform analyses the performance of sailing athletes and helps them improve through personalized insights.
It is an honor and a pleasure to host him in today's snack;
Ladies and gentlemen, Omer Brand!
Omer Brand 1:10
Oh, yeah. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Ronen Ainbinder 1:13
Welcome to the Halftime Snacks. I want to kick off a conversation with an icebreaker. And I want to ask you, let's say that if you could have a time machine day, you could choose to go to the future, or you can only go to the past. What would you choose?
Omer Brand 1:35
Then I will probably go up to the future for sure. Absolutely. I can't wait to see what's going on, especially in my world of sports and sailing. There's so much development going on. I just can't wait to see what's going. What's coming up next.
Ronen Ainbinder 1:56
They say that entrepreneurs are founders who come from the future, and they're trying to build what they saw. So probably that's the reason why you're planning on going to the future because you're building it. Oh, man, that's an amazing answer. Let's start straight away with sailing. And the sport which I find super fascinating because of its uniqueness. Let's talk about, first of all, what are some of the two or three life lessons that you've learned so far in your lifetime? Through sailing, you've been a professional sailing, Olympic level, so how about you share with us a couple of life lessons that you've learned from it?
Omer Brand 2:37
So that's interesting. So sailing is a complicated sport, right? And, obviously, I think it's fascinating. And I'm a bit biased, probably. But it is a fascinating sport because it teaches you physics, mathematics, and mechanics, and you have to learn the weather patterns and how to work both in how to work in a team. And take tactical decisions in an always-changing environment, right? This is always changing. And so that's, so that's interesting. And you have to be taught to adapt to all of that. So one of them is you learn quickly that going from A to B is never linear. Right? It's not, it's not, it's not a straight line. Trying to go against the wind, or what we call upwind, in sailing, you just can't do that on a sailboat. Right? You always have to talk and jive and change your course and adjust your sails and whatnot. So this is one thing, and this is sort of similar to what's happening in life, right? Like to think you're going to go one way and plan everything. Then something throws you off course, and you have to think on your feet and, and change directions and take the best shift or the best breezes, as we say in in in setting. I think this is one thing that I learned quite good, I think. And second is teamwork. Right? To make a sailboat work, it's quite a complex, quite a complex thing. So when everything is going great, and everybody in the team knows what they're doing, and everything is going according to plan, that's amazing. And even that, it takes time to master. But then, when everything is going pear-shaped, you need to have good teamwork and good communication between the team and again, this is You can take it to anything else and everything else in life. So communication and trusting each other and having each other bags and preparation. That is, those traits are the key to success.
Ronen Ainbinder 5:15
You've been sailing for a couple of years now; maybe you want to share with us a little bit of how it was before? And how exactly have you seen that technology has transformed sail sailing in many ways? So if you want to share maybe the things that have impressed you the most from how it started and how it's going, or just share with us how that transition has been, has been happening throughout the use.
Omer Brand 5:43
Yes, so I'm setting a bit more than a couple of years, I'm setting for, I don't know, 30 years, almost, if not more. So it's a long time and the development during those years was, I know, it sounds like a long time, 30 years, but the development was absolutely amazing. And especially in the past 10 years when, when the sailing industry, and I'm not talking about the analytics, or for myself, just the setting industry, decided to take a much more technological approach to sail. And it's in the way they build boats and design boats and how they control them. So there is a lot more use in advanced materials like carbon fiber, titanium, and whatnot. So, strong and like materials allow us to build lighter and faster boats. And that comes with a better design. The better design comes with better software and better predictions and all that kind of things, which now we see many hydro foiling boats. So basically, both the flying above the water and they do two to three times this the speed of the wind, which propelled them. So that is what, when people see that this is just blowing their mind, right? Because how can you go faster than the wind prepares you? That? doesn't make any sense? Almost right? Unless you know physics. Yeah, so they don't. Those are massive, massive advances in especially in the past 10 or 15 years or so. And with those boats that we see going a lot faster and a lot more complex, we see better control systems and control systems can be required mechanically and better software and better electronics on the boats. And that has just been making huge, huge leaps forward in the past 10 or 15 years. That's just amazing.
Ronen Ainbinder 7:53
Yeah, I guess that I mean, I want to hear the story of Sea-Analytics because that is just an example of how new and different technologies are being implemented. But how about you start with this story? How did you get the idea to create this technology? What was the process of building this technology? Like what types of texts? Are you layering together to make this happen? What sort of changes have you been doing along the way? Sure, just share with us the quick story of Sea-Analytics.
Omer Brand 8:24
The idea started when I was doing my last Olympic campaign, and we didn't have a coach for a lot of the time. So and, my sailing partner, I did a lot of the analytics ourselves. So we put all sorts of sensors on the boat and GoPros and whatever. And after the sailing session, we sat for hours and hours trying to sync everything, take all this data and footage and video, and try to make sense of it. And that's time-consuming, right. And when I looked at it, and when I looked at it, I tried to see what we were doing along the way. So for the past 30 years, despite the technology in boats that advanced, how you analyze your sailing is not advanced. And it definitely didn't trickle down to say the club level or grassroots level. And so that was one thing. And then second thing when you sit down with so much data, have it be let it be sensors ready to be video, it doesn't matter if most people are not, are not analysts. And then when they can, you can give them as much data as you want. They don't make sense out of it, right? And then it's, it's useless. So for me, it was a better way to do it. I just had to find a better way to do it. Try to help the sport I love. If I can make a business out of it even better, I had the idea of creating this platform where anyone can upload their videos from their phones, or GoPros, or whatnot, and the data from the sensors. And magically, everything will sync. And magically, something will happen. And we'll extract only the points of interest in some highlights of the day that will tell you. Okay, you should look at 1, 2, 3 points. And that's it, and make you make sense out of the day and come up with an actionable item. And that's it, if you come in from every string session, you come with one actionable item, then then you're winning, right, you're making progress. And that was the idea that I had. My co-founder, his name is Ronnie, he's a very, very good tech guy. And a very enthusiastic sailor for the past 20 years. In trying to talk to him and run him through my idea that I had in my head, he drafted some sort of a tech solution, we can go, we can go into it if you want, but some sort of a tech solution of how we can extract all this data and come up with some sort of insight based on our algorithms that we develop in house. And we did it, and we are still in the early stages and whatnot. But the platform is working. We have a user base of sailors from our level, from club sailors in Israel to Olympic sailors in Europe and pro sailors and professional teams in France and in Australia, right? So we are testing this method on a different level. The feedback that we get is a lot better than expected, especially for an early-stage startup.
Ronen Ainbinder 12:08
Yeah. And what I like about the analytics is that first of all, it came from a passion of yours as you've said, You've been doing it for 30 years, so kind of like you love it. And you've always I'm sure that you've always been thinking about how you can improve things? How can you make things better? And so that's why kind of like, you've seen the future, and you see, like, what's happening around there and trying to improve the way athletes do it. And athletes perform. So I guess that I think it's fascinating. What exactly is your go-to-market strategy for C analytics? What is your thinking about delivering more value than any other people or any other company in the world? What is your mindset towards getting a competitive advantage? Is it that the quality of the insights is more in the quality of the technology? Or is it a combination of both? Like what are you thinking about, about how do you conquer the whole sailing market around the world?
Omer Brand 13:12
Yeah, so that's, that's interesting. You remember, I said that most people are not analysts, right? So big-budget teams, like Olympic teams, or whatnot. First of all, they might have the knowledge of analyzing their own selling because they've been doing it for four years. And that's, that's their job. But they also have the budget to hire analysts. And they have their ways to somehow keep and log this data doesn't matter if it's high tech or not. But they do have those systems. Where once you go, say even one level below that. It can be club racers, someone aspiring to be an Olympian, or even the local guy at your Yacht Club who wants to win the club racing, right? Today, they don't have a way to log all of their data easily, especially not the video footage in an easy way. If they want to keep going back to it and compare it to previous sessions and whatnot. Our system allows it, so not only that, it sorts everything out and extracts meaningful events, but it also stores everything in the cloud in your own personal profile. You get your own personal insights, and you keep them for the long term. So it's easy to see improvement or whatnot. For example, it is not such a big sport, then the tech solutions for that are not many. So now, when we are approaching sailing clubs, and just local sailing clubs for kids from the age of say 10, or 12, and up, and some of them may want to be Olympians in the future, some of them may not. But once we give them that platform, and suddenly, the coaches have better visibility for the sailors, and the club manager has better visibility of what the coaches are doing. And suddenly, the parents can see what the kids are doing. So suddenly, we have a platform that everybody wants to be a part of. And they suddenly see they need it, right. So that's, so that's one thing. The second thing that we do is develop our own algorithms that say, Okay, this is an important event, and this is a meaningful event or whatnot; we help filter out all the garbage from the day and make the debrief very, very effective, effective debrief. So it doesn't take much time to go over, and you don't waste a lot of time going through the rubbish. And that's why the Olympic team loves us. Because, yes, they may have their analysts and they are very good, but they stay looking at it and say, Oh, hang on a minute, instead of set, if sitting for two or three hours trying to analyze thing, I can do it in less than an hour. Or I can do it in 20 minutes, or whatever. And I can do it when I'm going back home because it's all sitting in the cloud, and I can log into it from wherever I am and see everything and start communicating with my coach. So this is what we do now in this is our go-to-market. For now, we are not advertising big time. So it's all going from word of mouth but in some targeted clubs. Yeah, that's the idea for now.
Ronen Ainbinder 17:23
Yeah, it's all about getting to iterate and finding better ways to deliver the product or the solution and coming up with smarter ways to provide better insights or more relevant insights. Maybe I don't know, but maybe I'm brainstorming here, but maybe using machine learning and AI to recognize specific patterns or specific trends personalized to each of the athletes. Once it feels more personal, like you can't, substitute that, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's not, it's not easy to substitute personalized it's like how hard it is to change doctors, right? Because the doctor knows you well. So if C analytics becomes the doctor of all the sailors, then it's going to be hard to substitute c analytics, so they will stick to it, eventually for good. So I think that you're in a great position now. Oh, man. And one of the other things that I'm very curious about to ask you is that this fact that sailing is one of these unique sports this, as you mentioned, not so popular but still, kind of like relevant and interesting sports especially because of how tough it is how risky it is how, it plays out, in the sea, so I want to know if there are some kind of like counterintuitive or non-obvious facts that you've learned in the through your experience about the ocean about the weather or other type of climate climatic factors through either, your experience as a sailor or through sea analytics or through anything that you've been you've been learning is there anything that you can tell us about the kind of like this, this element of the sport that is unique that you definitely won't find it on soccer? Syrup possibility you're gonna like find it on baseball, but you can find it on sailing.
Omer Brand 19:31
Oh, man, so I wasn't a football or soccer player. I was put in a boat when I was seven or eight years old. That's basically what I've been doing since then. That said, sailing is a well-rounded sport, which it's quite nice because I think, as I mentioned before, you have to consider the weather and your equipment. And you have to learn how to adjust your equipment to your personal body type, for example, or saving type. It's a very diverse sport. Men and women can compete against each other, almost on a level playing field, especially if the weather is not rough. If the wind is not too strong, then your physical strength does not have that much factor in it, right? It's not a big factor. So women can compete with men quite easily. And that's not to say that women are weaker than men, but it's great. It's great. And I think that sailing is one of the few Olympic sports that you can see. Mixed classes. So you can see boats that have a man and a woman on them, racing against each other. And this is this, this is great. Now counterintuitive, I'm not sure because I was doing it for so long.
Ronen Ainbinder 21:23
Yeah, for instance, what you mentioned just now about how to like, your, your physical strength may not be a factor like this is, for instance, something contrary to intuitive for me. Because I would say, Yeah, but if you're stronger than someone else, then you might be able to pull specific winds or grab a specific type of waves, but you say it's not like that. So that, for instance, is counterintuitive. I wonder if there's any other fact that you can think about now also related to the waves or the sea? Or how to, like how it feels – can you share with us how it can you if there's anything you can know of how it feels when you step into the ocean.
Omer Brand 22:10
So this is quite interesting. So in regards to Sea-Analytics, when I was younger, many people still do that, right? When you go racing or training in places you take, you take notes of the weather to start learning patterns. Now what we do with the analytics to make better insights, we gather weather data on the platform. And then we let people read it if it was a good one or not good or change it if it's not accurate because we take it from forecast websites for now. And what we see is that, more often than not, the weather is not stable. And a lot of the time, the forecast can be quite a bit of an I'm, again, I'm not a weatherman, so I'm not quite sure what it means. And it doesn't feel like it used to be like that. It feels that in the past, we were a little bit better on weather patterns. And today just seems a little bit bit more all over the place.
Ronen Ainbinder 23:29
That's very interesting. I think that it's one of those kinds of things that there's just so much room to learn and improve, that science hasn't got its head out, got its hands, more than like 1% of what's happening, understanding weather patterns and what changes winds and what creates specific conditions. So I think that it's an interesting area, an interesting sport, it's great to see that people like you are developing towards improving it and bringing more attention and solutions to it. So, man, I recognize, and I take my hat off for that Omer man, and I have been enjoying this conversation with you a lot. Omer has been fun, and this has been interesting and insightful. And I can't. I can't leave without asking you one last and more personal question. And that is I want to ask you what has been the best day of your life and why do you remember that day to be the best day of your life?
Omer Brand 24:35
Oh, man. There are so many. If I look at sailing, I find it quite difficult to choose. One of the days that I remember, I raced in a regatta, an awful race called Sydney to Hobart, quite a tough race and finishing there. Trace was just amazing. It's one thing. But then, I have two daughters. So if I said any of their birthdays, Oh man, I'll get into trouble.
Ronen Ainbinder 25:18
I like that you're keeping your family in mind, and that speaks a lot about you. Man, I want to thank you so much for coming to the Halftime Snacks. It has been such a pleasure in such a fun time. I can't wait to get in that time machine. Go to the future and see what you accomplished. Through Sea-Analytics and everything that you've been developing, man, I'm sure it's gonna be huge. And man, I can't thank you enough for coming. So yeah, man, I appreciate you coming to the Halftime Snacks.