Football’s Concussion Crisis

Pro Football Hall of Famer Junior Seau had an incredible career spanning 20 years. Seau earned himself a spot on the NFL 1990s All-Decade Team much before he retired in 2010. On 2nd May 2012, Seau took his own life, shooting himself in the chest. There was no suicide note. No clear reason why such a legend, admired and adored by millions, would take his own life. The following month, Seau’s family donated his brain to the National Institute of Health for a thorough examination. After extensive examination, the NIH released a statement in January of 2013 that Seau’s brain showed signs of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a progressive degenerative brain disease resulting from repetitive brain trauma such as concussions.

One couldn’t help but notice the similarities between Seau’s suicide and that of Dave Duerson’s. Duerson had shot himself in the chest a year earlier leaving a note that read “Please, see that my brain is given to the N.F.L.’s brain bank.” After examining his brain, researchers at Boston University concluded that Duerson was suffering from advanced CTE.

The concussion and CTE crisis run deeper. A 2017 study of deceased American football players found that 100 of 111 former NFL players suffered from CTE.  While the NFL has been taking serious steps to mitigate risks including changing rules and committing millions in funding research, concerns regarding concussions aren’t just limited to the NFL. Amid health concerns, high school football participation has dropped 6.6% in the past decade from 1.113 million players in 2008 to 1.039 million in 2017.

Helmets, the last line of defense against head injuries, have largely been the same since the 70s. That is until a two professors, a neurosurgeon and a former medical technology executive took it upon themselves to innovate the helmet.

VICIS and The ZERO1

VICIS was founded in 2013 by Dr. Samuel Browd, a pediatric neurosurgeon, Prof. Per Reinhall, Chair of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Washington, Dave Marver, a former medical technology executive and Prof. Jonathan Posner* from the University of Washington Mechanical Engineering Department. (*Prof. Jonathan Posner is no longer associated with VICIS).

The flagship helmet, the ZERO1, was developed over 3 years in collaboration with athletes, coaches, medical professionals, and engineers, with over $25M invested in R&D. While the basic technology in the ZERO1 was developed as part of an interdepartmental research collaboration at the University of Washington, it was launched commercially with the support of UW’s CoMotion incubator as Spark Medical. Keeping in line with their mission, Spark Medical was later renamed VICIS, the Latin word for ‘change’.

Four Layers of the ZERO1 | Photo Credits: VICIS website

The ZERO1 has a design philosophy inspired by the automotive industry. As opposed to conventional helmets with just 2 layers (hard outer shell and padding), the ZERO1 is comprised of 4 layers that help reduce impact forces. The Lode Shell is the outermost layer made of a soft thermoplastic elastomer that softens impact forces by absorbing and deforming on impact, much like a car bumper. The second layer, VICIS RFLX, is filled with columnar structures that move omnidirectionally upon impact and further reduce the force.

The ARCH Shell, the third layer, is a thin layer which helps ensure that the helmet properly fits the player. It consists of multiple snap connection points on to which the next layer, the FORM liner, is attached. The FORM liner consists of special waterproof memory foams to conform to a player’s head topography, ensuring precise fit while also distributing pressure uniformly around the head.

The first two layers work together to slow the force while the third and fourth layer work together to ensure precise fit and uniform load distribution.

Apart from a superior build, the ZERO1 also has superior performance attributes. With 212 degrees field of view, the ZERO1 has the widest peripheral view among helmets, reducing blind spots. The visor, VICIS Edge Shield, was developed by Oakley exclusively for the ZERO1. It leverages Oakley’s Freeform High Definition Optics® (HDO) and PRIZM Lens Technology to create an optically correct shield that also tunes the spectrum of light to provide better clarity and contrast.

Gaining Support and Recognition

The ZERO1 has successfully demonstrated its superior impact force reduction capabilities in extensive laboratory and on-field tests. While the NFL banned 10 helmets earlier this year for failing their safety test, the ZERO1 has managed to top the performance test for the second year in a row. Where standard helmets with hard polycarbonate exteriors cause the player’s head to ricochet upon impact, the ZERO1 is able to limit the recoil by absorbing and diffusing impact forces.

VICIS’ superior technology and interdisciplinary approach have attracted current and former football players to invest in the five-year-old startup. Pro Football Hall of Famer Roger Staubach was one of the early investors in VICIS with more recent additions such as Jerry Rice, Russell Wilson, Doug Baldwin, Alex Smith, and Aaron Rodgers. Apart from the investors, players such as Carson Wentz, Richard Sherman, Cliff Avril, Marcel Reece, Chris Conley, LaMar Miller, and Golden Tate among others have been sporting the helmet.

Apart from the football community, TIME, Fast Company, and Industrial Designers Society of America are among the many who have recognized VICIS’ contribution and innovation in sports technology.

Tackling The Helmet Field and Beyond

The global American football helmet market was sized at $140M in 2017 and is forecasted to grow at a CAGR of 1.2% to reach $160M by 2025. With a combined share of 97%, Schutt (60%) and Riddel (37%) dominate the NFL helmet market. However, VICIS has been making inroads with the number of players and teams using the ZERO1 steadily increasing. Last year, the ZERO1 was worn by over 80 NFL players on 18 teams and was used by over 20 NCAA programs. This year, players from 28 of the 32 NFL teams, 120+ professional and college teams and 1200+ high school programs are using the VICIS ZERO1.

Having raised $28.5M in series B funding in November, VICIS is focusing on deepening its market presence while also expanding its product offering. With the ZERO1 Youth helmet, VICIS is focusing on players at the high school level and above that constitutes 81.86% of the helmet market. VICIS also plans to expand into other sports such as hockey and lacrosse.

Leveraging their football experience, VICIS has expanded beyond the sports arena developing military application. Earlier this year, VICIS was awarded a contract by the U.S. Army NSRDEC to improve Army and Marine Corps combat helmets. VICIS’ helmets have outperformed currently deployed gear as per the results of a Department of Defense test. With tested technology and gaining support, VICIS is poised to emerge as a leader in the protection equipment space.

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Shyft, a Seattle-based startup founded in 2015, seeks to solve this problem. It’s a mobile app where employees can shift-swap and coordinate schedules in a quick and transparent way. With 12,000 Starbucks employees using it and a partnership with Gap Inc., workers must be seeing its value. With $8.1M in funding, investors clearly see it too.

Origins

Before becoming the co-founder of Shyft, Brett Patrontasch founded a small house painting company called Scholars at Your Service, one that employed around 250 students at a time. He soon realized even trying to coordinate the shift schedule of a small company was a logistical nightmare –workers were using every method to communicate, from Facebook to texts. In all the confusion managers were wasting time, while employees were getting too many, or too few shifts.

If a small company was having this problem, Patrontasch figured, the challenges of global corporations must be worse. So he brought together a team of friends from the University of Toronto: CTO Daniel Chen, Lead Mobile Developer Kyle Liu, and Director of Growth Chris Pitchford.

The team had formerly worked on another workspace app called Coffee Mobile, but Patrontasch realized the app was too top-down, focusing on executive needs rather than those of employees. With Shyft, Patrontasch and his team sought to correct the issue, making an app that was useful to employees first, management second.

The problem

According to a census analysis, about two out of every five American workers are shift workers–about six million people. All of those individuals need to swap shifts, and all of them have no better means of doing so than a series of disparate messaging apps.

So why does shift-swapping lose company money? Shyft’s argument is this: For every call out looking for a shift swap a certain amount of time is lost while management and employees seek to reschedule shifts. Often enough, employees won’t be able to fill it, resulting in a no-show, which is a loss for employees and management alike. Shyft makes its argument using a calculator to tell you how much money you may be losing for this very issue.

How Shyft works

Photo credit: Shyft website

The app is free to download: You sign in as a ‘worker’ or ‘manager’ first. Once that’s done you’re asked to enter the region and the store you work at, and this adds you to a channel where you can communicate with all other employees at that store. In the case of managers you’re able to control the channel, approve or disapprove of shift swaps. But workers can also use the app to simply communicate amongst themselves.

According to Shyft 12,000 Starbucks workers, 7,500 McDonald’s workers, and 3,500 Old Navy users have signed up so far. Because these are all corporations employees are able to swap shifts across the whole country, not just their own store. The app includes a number of features: For instance, someone trying to unload an unpopular shift—say, during the holiday season—can offer a financial incentive. This helps users not only control their schedules but to pick up some extra cash.

How Shyft compares

Shyft helps users control schedules and pick up extra cash – for free.

This isn’t the only app created to solve shift management, but it certainly is the cheapest. Shyft’s competitive advantage is twofold: it’s not top-down, and it’s free. Other apps, such as Deputy and When I Work is manager focused, marketing itself towards managers looking to better manage their team. But Shyft can be downloaded by anyone–its power is contingent on how many others freely download it, even though it has features geared towards management. Most of these apps work from a monthly subscription (around $2), while Shift Worker costs around a dollar and can only be downloaded on Google Play. These are small prices (albeit they can balloon up annual budgets for companies with large workforces), but in the age of the internet, even a small paywall can be a real detriment towards an app’s initial success.

Who’s involved?

Shyft was picked up by Techstars, a Boulder-based accelerator with a market cap in the multi-billions.The Seed investment of $1.5M was sourced from such seasoned tech veterans as Heather Redman, venture capitalist group Madrona, as well as Russel Okung of the Seattle Seahawks and Edgar Martinez of the MBA. An impressive $6.5M was raised in its first funding round, led by Ignition Partners and Madrona, with managers from both groups joining Shyft’s board of directors.  So far Shyft has partnered with Gap Inc., providing its services to workers from its many retail stores: Old Navy, Athleta and Banana Republic. The fact that Shyft is the 2018 Gold Prize Winner of the Seattle Business Magazine’s Tech Impact Award for Emerging Companies has also generated a significant amount of buzz.

With 4.7 rating in the app store it looks like Shyft is doing a great job helping workers swap shifts fast. With Starbucks spokesmen denying any knowledge of the app, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not this change is embraced by management. But with thousands of users already, it’s possible bosses won’t even need to know.

The post Shyft – An App to Help Workers Swap Shifts appeared first on Techweek.

So instead of long, painful weeks of waiting to meet your doctor, and miserable hours spent in suspiciously sticky waiting rooms, 98point6 lets you just have a virtual doctor’s visit when you need it, where you want it, how many ever times you choose to use it.

So how does it work?

Founded by entrepreneur Robbie Cape, 98point6 is a mobile phone app that brings together deep technology and board-certified medical professionals to provide reliable, confidential, text-based medical consultations and services to patients.

The app’s AI technology gathers patient history (of patients above the age of 18), updates their charts, performs other administrative tasks, and asks basic questions to collect diagnostic information. Patient profiles are automatically built by the system, avoiding redundancy at the next virtual visit.

The “Automated Assistant” uses Natural Language Processing (NLP), which allows patients to make their complaints in as few or as many words as they feel comfortable. “[Sometimes], we get several words from the patient (‘my head hurts’), and in others we get multiple paragraphs. This helps create a natural dialogue, even in the context of a machine/human interaction,” says Cape to VentureBeat.

Once the initial administrative work and basic questions are resolved, a certified, primary healthcare physician (a full time employee of the company) steps into the process to ask further questions, diagnose the patient, and answer any health-related queries. The certified physicians can also recommend lab work, write prescriptions (automatically sent to your local pharmacy), or recommend that you visit a primary healthcare provider in person for further consultation.

The company says that in beta testing, its system enjoyed a 93% resolution rate, and the whole process takes under 20 minutes from start to finish, including first time user sign up.

Who does it work for?

98point6’s model is likely to address some of the acute problems plaguing the healthcare industry in the US today. The Association of American Medical Colleges found that the US would face a projected shortage of between 40,800 and 104,900 doctors by the year 2030, and the National Association of Community Health Centers reported in 2014 that 62 million Americans have “no or inadequate access to primary care due to the shortage of physicians”.

98point6 increases access to doctors and medical care

An app like 98point6 increases public access to primary physicians and ups the chances of being able to ‘meet’ a doctor at a time when the country faces a dire shortage of them. Further, with the adoption of a technology like this, the time of medical practitioners working outside of tech-based apps could be better served treating only those who really need physical consultations, with a huge number of everyday, easily-curable ailments being screened out through virtual consultations.

98point6 requires no insurance, and allows for an unlimited number of consultations (at $20 a year for the first year, and $120 a year after that for individuals. It also has provisions for employer-sponsored plans) and is also likely to bring down the cost of primary health care for a number of Americans.

The app could improve the quality of primary healthcare itself, by focusing and streamlining the work of medical practitioners. And if widely adopted, it could also increase the overall health of the population: the company’s own research claims that adding a single primary care physician to a population of 10,000 people reduces that group’s mortality rate by 6%.

(Photo credit: 98point6)

Who is 98point6?

Founded in 2015, 98point6’s founder and CEO Robbie Cape was a former founder of family scheduling app Cozi, which he worked on for a full ten years before selling to Time Inc., and before that, he put in 12 years at Microsoft. 98point6’s Chief Product Officer Larry Engel also worked at Microsoft for 20 years before joining Cozi as its Chief Product Officer. Other employees include Starbucks veteran Steven Hurwitz and Cozi’s former VP of Marketing Samantha Bergin, who also spent time as a manager at both Amazon and Starbucks. The company currently boasts 110+ employees, and a 16-person medical advisory board.

Although the service launched in earnest only early this May, 98point6 has received a total funding amount of $86.3M, through four funding rounds. It received $50M from its latest round of Series C funding, led by the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs. The funding will reportedly be used to enhance its automation capabilities, grow the company’s product and physician teams, and add new features.

Given that the telehealth industry is growing steadily (a 2018 study by Transparency Market Research says that the industry was worth $6B in 2016 and expected to be worth $19.5B by 2025) its not surprising that the app has a number of competitors, like MDLive, HealthTap, DocHalo, Teledoc and HaloDoc.

98point6’s current annual revenue is under $1M, which is well behind its top competitor, MDLive, whose annual revenue is $16.5M, and Healthtap, whose annual revenue of $8.8M. When asked by GeekWire about the company’s competition, 98point6 founder Cape responded rather positively, “We absolutely believe that the market is so interesting, dynamic, and large that there is an opportunity for all of these companies to be successful. There is that much work to do.”

While all of 98point6’s full-time doctors are currently based in Seattle, they’re licensed to practice in all the states in which the app is functional. However, the apps operations vary slightly due to the differences in regulations in various states (a patient in New York, for example, is required to first have a 30 second video call with a physician before receiving text-based medical services). Available on the Apple App Store, Google Play and its website, 98point6.com, it is currently operational in 40 states and Washington DC, and plans to be operational in all 50 states by early 2019.

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Armoire is ‘the infinite closet for today’s bosslady’, according to Singh, designed to save them time for themselves. At its heart, the company wants to allow ‘bossladies’ across the world to be busy and social while being stylish. Armoire helps professional women cut down the time ordinarily spent shopping and provide access to a ever-changing wardrobe. Doing this allows their customers to overcome the two biggest challenges to looking fashionable – time and variety.

How Armoire works

It accomplishes this by using an AI-driven recommendation engine that determines customer tastes. Armoire’s proprietary algorithm builds customized profiles for users through a short digital process. By using images of outfits and through directed questions, it builds a customized user profile which accounts for colors, patterns, fabrics, cuts, and style.

Relying on this data, it presents users a curated collection of designer outfits, from which they can select 4 for a monthly rental of $149. These are shipped to the customer at no additional cost and can be kept for as long as the customer wants. If they get really attached, customers can purchase the outfits at a discount. At whatever time they tire of the outfits, they can be returned – to be replaced by another set of outfits which can be selected from the website again.

As the algorithm tracks which outfits you tend to select from a collection, it gets better at suggesting outfits for you. Each customer is also expected to provide feedback to the company, helping them better customize their service and increase satisfaction with the clothing they select. Armoire gives these insights to their suppliers, and in return gets its inventory at better prices.

Armoire’s fashionable value proposition

Armoire’s target audience is those busy working women who feel the pressure to be dressed appropriately for a variety of different occasions in their lives. Being a fashionably dressed woman at work requires navigating more questions, styles, and varieties than their male counterparts do. For modern women to take the time, effort, and expense to fit that mold is an unwelcome addition to the existing set of tasks society and the world expects them to perform.

The underlying truth is that a fashion-oriented lifestyle is too expensive for women to maintain in terms of time and money. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data shows that the 2017 average time spent by women on shopping was .83 hours a day –  which is 49.8 minutes daily, and a staggering 302.95 hours annually. BLS data also shows that in 2016, 25-34 year old Americans spent $161 on clothing, while 35-44 year olds spent $201 on average.

The company’s service is designed to deal with these problems. Time is saved as the company’s technology uses data to curate suggestions, while its products take the guesswork out of getting dressed. By ensuring that the outfits are sent to the customer’s home directly, it saves them the effort involved in shopping, making the experience more convenient. Armoire even helps their customers look fashionable at an affordable cost.

The future of fashion – renting?

The current culture of browsing, buying, wearing, and discarding is toxic for the environment, takes up too much time, and costs too much. Like many other industries, the fashion space seems to invite disruption. Today, there’s a wide variety of startups using technology in a variety of ways to disrupt the fashion industry.

Don’t like the designs you get in the market? AI-driven design is on the way, even though Google’s Project Muze gave a shaky start to that potential model in 2016. AI-assisted human design is also en route, via a project between IBM and Tommy Hilfiger. Technology is also being deployed to attempt to predict trends, and AI is uniquely placed to accomplish that purpose. By crunching through reams of data, it can make educated guesses about what is changing on the supply side of fashion. Getting ahead of the curve and predicting what is trend to be the new black is a huge multi-million dollar opportunity in a multi-trillion dollar industry.

But demand-side data is probably harder to find. While surveys and other data-collection exercises can be undertaken, Armoire distinguishes itself from other wardrobe rental services through insight delivery to designers. As its base of subscribers grow, the combination of the user profile, preferences over time, and selection patterns would create a dataset of increasing value.

Companies like Rent the Runway, Le Tote, and Gwynnie Bee are also selling rental as the new paradigm in fashion. Their services have much in common with Armoire from a customer’s point of view – subscription, a rotating selection, returns, and so forth. Armoire’s uniqueness stems from two facets – its data-driven customer-facing suggestion engine, and its ability to provide insights to suppliers.

Is Armoire wearing the same outfit as someone else to the party?

Is this differentiator enough to keep Armoire relevant in what is quickly becoming a crowded market in rental fashion? New York City-based Rent the Runway has rocketed to a $800M valuation, and has quickly become a favorite among high-end designers. Fashion houses are impressed with the quantum of inventory Rent the Runway is taking from them, and are happy that renting is opening new audiences to their wares.

For Armoire to stand out from the crowd, it must do precisely as it claims – make high-end fashion accessible to a wider audience, give customized selections to customers, and actionable insights to producers. Even if it manages to do that, it will have to fight competition from companies with greater funding – including companies which, for customers, will appear to have the same service.

But Singh has one more card up her sleeve – being a bosslady, catering to other bossladies. She is able to use this strong emotive appeal to get influential people signed onto the company’s services. She persuaded the CEO of The Riveter, the coworking space they work out of, to become a customer. Singh then used her to create a blog targeted at female CEOs. To appeal to the ‘woke’ successful professional woman, Armoire has also started its own line of t-shirts, leggings, and sweatshirts proclaiming ‘boss lady power’.

Armoire is bringing its refreshing brand message and intriguing business model to the big battle for the future of women’s fashion. Only time will tell if they are dressed enough for the occasion.

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