Simplifying High Performance: Raj Thiruchelvarajah, co-Founder & CEO of Hytro

Artwork for podcast Sports Business Conversations

Episode 87 • 9th December 2025 • Sports Business Conversations • ADC Partners

00:01

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Hey, this is Braj Thirachalvaraja, co founder and CEO of Nitro. And this is the Sports Business Conversations podcast from ADC Partners.

00:25

Dave Almy

Hey, this is Dave Elmy of ADC Partners. And many thanks for stopping by to check out this latest episode of the Sports Business Conversations podcast. If you use the phrase sports tech, people tend to think of things like artificial intelligence, data analysis, and apps that are meant to improve the sports experience. They're typically heavily focused on software subscriptions.

00:47

Dave Almy

And more often than not have a.

00:49

Dave Almy

Pretty intense learning curve. This is especially true for the hundreds of startups out there using technology to help athletes achieve peak performance. That's what makes Raj the Ruchel Viraja and Hytro so intriguing. Raj and his partners focused on creating a product that leverages blood flow restriction, a much studied but little applied method of improving performance. They ended up innovating a comparatively low tech wearable product that has generated compelling results for teams in the Premier League, World Rugby and the NHL. Results that will soon be coming to more pro teams and universities in the U.S. in our conversation, Raj and I talk about his decision to leave a successful career in finance and consulting to begin his entrepreneurial journey with Hytro.

01:40

Dave Almy

He dives into the realities of building a startup, how he found success selling to some of the world's most high profile sports brands, and what to expect as the brand looks to build upon its success in Europe and with an increasing US presence.

01:54

Dave Almy

So thanks again for checking out my.

01:56

Dave Almy

Conversation with Raj the Ruchel Viraja, the co founder and CEO of Hytro. Hope you enjoy.

02:04

Dave Almy

Raj, before you launched Hytro, you had a pretty solid career in consulting and finance, right? These are absolutely lucrative professions, but maybe not the most fulfilling. So what were the moments that led you to start thinking about, maybe I want to try something different?

02:26

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah. So firstly, thank you for calling 16 years of my life solid, a solid career. Fantastic, fantastic stuff. Come on.

02:33

Dave Almy

That's solid, right?

02:35

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

It's solid. Yeah, it was solid. I was actually asked earlier today, quite randomly, like, what was my favorite job before Hytra? And it took me a while to realize it was like, which is the least worst one? Like, and that's the kind of problem. And the big thing for me is like with high chair, like there's so much purpose, fulfillment, enjoyment. We're pushing the boundaries. You're doing something super cool. I'm sure we'll talk about that all later.

02:59

Dave Almy

Yeah, yeah.

03:00

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

With banking, management consulting, it's like you're not, you're kind of doing it for yourself in many ways. Like you're going, you're looking for promotion, you're looking to make money. What you actually delivering is often not meaningless, but it lacks kind of the real. You don't see it through because you're just part of a massive cog in what you're doing. And so there isn't a really greater purpose. And that lack of fulfillment was there through that time. And when I got down to it, right at the end, I remember working on a consulting project and we worked 30 hours straight at one point, stayed in the office and it's like the end of that. But why am I doing this?

03:36

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

I actually don't, I don't really want to be partner because what happens when you get to partner is just load of stress and you're still not in charge and it's like status and a bit more money. What's the point? And then at that point I was like, I've had enough. And then I went and took a sabbatical for about a year at that point.

03:52

Dave Almy

So you really, you felt it so strongly, you felt the need to step back and really reassess. Was that what the intent of that was?

03:58

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, exactly. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, so I took a year out, did the classic things. And when I've always traveled a lot my life and that point, I went out to Africa for a bit, came back, went out to Central America and so on. I did a bit of traveling thinking about what I want to do, wasn't really sure, but I just knew that wasn't going to fulfill me making kind of more and more money, I guess, in that kind of way. You know, in the banking manager consultancy area, you do, you're right, you made decent money. Right. You can make decent money. But that's not everything. Right? That's not, that's not everything at all.

04:28

Dave Almy

I've talked to a few people who've been in management consulting and positions like that where you're working adjacent to a business but not for the business per se. So there is this detachment that can lead to like, what am I really doing? Are they even going to follow the advice I'm giving them? And then it's off and they're off doing something else. I move on to the next project. Sort of does create a sort of disconnected moment.

04:51

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, this is classic thing with management consulting where admittedly it's a bit of a joke in many ways where you get, the consultants come in, they come up with this fancy strategy that's very expensive price and then they leave and nobody just sits on the table. Yeah. Now I do think there's a lot of, there is actually a lot of value in consulting and the people who generally meet in consulting firm, it's really smart people. So there's an element of wasted talent there where you've got really smart people coming up with great ideas that nobody's following through on is just a bit of a waste.

05:24

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

But and also the good thing about consulting many ways is you do learn a lot in that because you're often pitched into an area you have no idea about, you don't know anything about it, you have to learn really fast. And actually that translates quite well to startup life as well. So I'm glad I was a consultant for a while and actually my peer group at the consulting firm that I was at, quite a number of them gone on to start their own companies, become entrepreneurs in their own right and one or two very successful. So it's a breeding ground for that kind of thing. It's just if you stay in consulting too long then it is a bit of a waste in my opinion.

05:58

Dave Almy

Yeah. So it does give you that ability to start diagnosing challenges and learn very quickly, be curious and ask the questions that you need to be successful. But like, so you go on sabbatical, you're away from a year for a year. Was that process spent thinking about what would become Hytro? Was it more of a bolt from the blue, you know, what was the process that led you to saying, this is it?

06:23

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, so it's quite a convoluted process to get to hydro.

06:26

Dave Almy

I'm sure it's very linear, very straightforward.

06:30

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Biggest startup life is ever linear. Right, we'll get into that. Yeah. So I, I've always been into sport night health and wellness, to fitness, that kind of thing. So I grew up doing all playing everything and then so when I kind of like think about, I want to be, do something in the startup world, that's a great area to do. So I actually found firstly it was another startup that I joined, it was a health, fitness, nutrition coaching business. So I, I became the CEO of that as we started ground up and actually the founder of that one is a guy called Paul Hart is actually the third co founder on Hydrox. So it's me, Paul.

07:02

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And then what happened with that startup is we hired A guy called Dr. Warren Bradley to help us with some of our clients and Warren's actually the guy had the idea about Hytra. So it all comes from Warren. And Warren's background is very quickly. So he's a. He's got PhD in human physiology. He spent a decade working in pro sports. So he worked as a sports scientist with England Rugby, Munster Rugby, Premier League, football clubs and so on, or soccer clubs as you got called them. And every club he saw, he worked at, he saw a technique called blood flow restriction being used, and it was being used for rehabilitation. And he saw, for example, players meant to come back in 10 weeks, coming back in six weeks through using BFR.

07:40

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And Warren, like, really inquisitive guy, a researcher by background, he wanted to know more about BFR because most people have never heard of it. Most of your listeners probably never heard of it. I'm guessing, David, before this, you never.

07:50

Dave Almy

Heard all experts, every one of them.

07:55

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

All the experts in the world. So, yeah, most people never heard of bfr. And what I want to know, what about the research? What does it tell us? And so he went and started having a look at it. And what really surprised him was the quantity of research in BFR over that point. Over 10,000 research papers that show that you can increase muscle size and strength, increase your endurance, accelerate recovery. And you compare that to modalities that most people use. So a compression gear, ice baths, the cryotherapy, red light therapy, all that. There's a few hundred research papers that show it could possibly, may work, but no one's quite sure in some of these areas. And so it's a real disparity between mainstream, the kind of modalities that people use and the research that.

08:38

Dave Almy

10,000 research papers focused on this one topic but really hadn't been exploited from a product standpoint.

08:48

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Exactly that. And that's the crux of hydro. So Warren went back to the club and said, like, why aren't you using all BFR with all your healthy athletes? Why doesn't the man on the street use bfr? Because actually there's so many benefits of many different people from using it. And they said, well, look at the devices we've got. So the classic 1, there's two ends of this, really. So the ones they use in pro support teams, very expensive, cumbersome digital devices, boxes, wires, have to be supervised or you can buy some stuff off Amazon that may cut off your circulation of your arms. So you've got to be really careful with that kind of stuff. So therefore there was no safe, scalable, practical device, and therefore that's where Hytra came in.

09:27

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So Warren's genius idea was if you integrate BFR into clothing, you create the first ever BFR wearables, which means it's safe, scalable, and practical to use.

09:37

Dave Almy

So let's do this very quickly, because we've mentioned bullet flow restriction and BFR a couple of times, and I think people are maybe starting to get a sense of what it is we're talking about. But can you specifically delineate what BFR is and how an athlete uses it to their benefit?

09:56

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah. So I thought you said everyone was experts on this call, but okay.

10:00

Dave Almy

You know, I never want to take anything for granted. You know, my mom's probably listening to, you know, so we want to make sure mom knows, right? Hi, Mom.

10:07

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Okay. For the benefit of Dave's mum. So blood flow restriction, or bfr, it works by tightening a strap around the top of your arms or your legs, and that locks in the blood in the muscles. And you perform light exercise or recovery routines. When you do that helps your muscles grow strong, get stronger, recover faster than they would without it. And then while you're strapped in, what happens? The muscles are then restricted. They fill up with oxygen, poor blood. It makes easy. It makes easy exercise and recovery routines feel a lot tougher, makes your muscles work harder, helps your body adapt faster and better, make you stronger, improving your endurance and helping you recover quicker. So a good example of how proteins will use it. A lot of them use it for recovery.

10:50

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So, say, immediately post game, they'll put on their hydros or strap in, five minutes, two minutes off, five minutes on, two minutes off again, five minutes again. And that kickstarts the recovery process for them. And that's a, that's a typical use case.

11:03

Dave Almy

And as you look at the teams that you're working with now, what does that mean in terms of performance improvement? Like, okay, BFR means restricting blood flow makes muscles work harder. Like, intellectually I understand it, but do you. Is there anything that you can point to and say, oh, like this team is doing so much better because they're using BFR in a more constructive way with hydro?

11:26

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, it's. What you'll find is it is really difficult pro sports to identify, like one particular thing that you go, this is. This is it. What we have seen, though, and this happened in kind of the NFL last season. The teams that were using Hytro, they had greater player availability, and that's actually the one thing we would expect to see. So at that point, we Just started an NFL push a year ago. There were three teams that kind of using Hytro and they were in the three most available players through the season. And player availability is a big part of the problem. Exactly. So that's one of the things. And then you kind of like we do a lot of research so we will look at subjective and objective markers with the team so we can actually see the performance impact.

12:07

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So we can see that as well. So players not only feel better, but they can also example they can go longer in terms of power exercises. There's greater endurance from it as well. So yeah, there's a definite physical benefit as well as a potentially mental one as well.

12:21

Dave Almy

Okay, so you've got the research that leads to the decision then that after the sabbatical, okay, I'm going to tighter is real. I don't want to make this work. I want to make this the center of my working life for this initial. What were some of the initial challenges that you felt like you had to overcome? Right. I know obviously like you mentioned, the consulting background really helped as far as like, okay, I can now problem solve and diagnose and do all these things, but now it's kind of yours for the first big time. I mean, what were some of the things that prepared you for that moment?

12:54

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So the biggest challenge is I probably didn't really know what I was doing. You realize I've been doing this now for I've been in startup over seven years and actually realize you're always making up because you are operating particularly for a startup like Hytra. We're operating in a blue ocean area where nobody's really done this ever before. We're setting the way forward. There's no playbook I can pull out and go, oh, this is what we should do. And whenever you get this all the time with I'm sure other startup founders get this as well, where you speak to someone and they go, oh, I've heard five minutes about your business. I know exactly what you should do. You don't know what you should do because nobody knows. Because you've got to navigate and find the way to put forward.

13:35

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And we take it back to the beginning. It's like, obviously the consulting background is great, but I work predominantly in financial services. Right. In that kind of area. But I didn't know anything about how to develop a hardware product marketing classic go to market strategies, how to sell a product in that way. And so there is a lot of learning to and also a lot of mistakes. You Know, make. When you're really kind of like trying to grow this business so that it was just a massive learning curve and those first few years. And that's partly why I think a lot of startups do go out business in the first few years because you have to get on that learning curve, you have to keep going and you've got to raise money, you've got to find traction, you've got to find product market fit.

14:16

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And that's another reason I get why I guess second time founders and multiple, you know, multi exit founders do so well because you've just done that so many times you have a much better idea of what to do. I'm starting a startup tomorrow, another one. I reckon I would have a much better shot of getting it to kind of like a good stage quicker than Hycho.

14:34

Dave Almy

Yeah, you have some landmines that you already know how to avoid going forward. I mean it's just all encompassing. It's, there's never a oh I just think I'll take 15 minutes because I got nothing to do kind of thing. That moment doesn't exist in a startup environment. And the other thing that's interesting about the path that you chose too is, you know, there's the old expression and particularly in technology, hardware's art.

14:55

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Right.

14:55

Dave Almy

There's a reason why, you know, a lot of people look at, oh I've got this idea for a product and but it's hardware and they kind of go, you know, because it's can be very demanding. So can you talk a little bit about the product development process as you went through the iterations from talk about never a straight line from conception to execution. What was that journey like for Hytro? Like what were some of the first products you came up with and went and oh God.

15:17

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So the very first Hytro product was sewed by Warren and his fiance, now Claudia, I think about back in their home and then it evolved. So we tried to find people who could help us in the UK and we couldn't actually to develop this particular product because one of the people, things people are really surprised about Hydro when they see the product. It actually looks very simple, it's kind of low tech product but it's actually really difficult to design it and actually manufacture it to a certain degree. We ended up out in Porto in Portugal because that's kind of the textile hub of Europe and so we had to find some of the best textile expertise to help put it together. And so it's multiple visits over there with them, kind of multiple iterations of product.

15:57

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Looking at, you know, the tension, the composition, the fabric, the materials, how does it all come together? Do you get the right inclusive stimulus? Got to validate that in labs as well. So you know, we had to. We published two research studies, one by Queen Mary University of London, one by UW Essex to show our product does what we said it could do, that you can use it independently. So it was quite a difficult and technical process. And that is one of the reasons hardware is more, is much more difficult. Now if you're at a software company nowadays like you can go and lovable and build a website in a few seconds, right? And you can do that.

16:29

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

But then the flip side of that and I think we're seeing a lot of this right now in the market because it's so easy to bring all the new software companies. That's a real danger for you as a business. And what we've seen recently in probably particular last year and a half, two years, AI companies come to the market with a great product find product market fit, hit great revenues, phenomenal valuations, raise money and then six months later don't exist because somebody else like Google or Meta either poached all their stuff or produced a product exactly the same and they've got no business left. And it's the world is completely fit. Everyone thought you've got product market fit, you're safe, you can get, you can go and you can scale doesn't quite work like that for software.

17:13

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So some of the conversations we're having with VCs at the moment, we are already VC backed but we're looking at more funding is actually think about hardware as potentially a safer bet because someone to come and replicate what we're doing. It's not an easy process actually and it takes time to bring hardware to the market. You need supply chains, you need manufacturing, you need distribution. So in some ways it's now flipping to be actually so better.

17:36

Dave Almy

I just got done with a podcast interview with Jon Stewart who is a sold his company to Salesforce and he now is startup his fast break AI and they do all the scheduling for 50 of the 90 professional leagues across the country. And he made that exact point as well. Technology isn't your moat anymore. And this is from a technologist. The thing that really blew my mind. He says when he sold his company to Salesforce he had 150 engineers working on it. Right. From a, from a development standpoint for Fast Break AI he has seven.

18:07

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Right.

18:08

Dave Almy

So if you're talking about nimble and ability to, like you said, can get right to lovable and make that website and get the product turned in a matter of minutes. Like the. Okay, yeah, speed is important, but it's never been as important as in software. Whereas hardware, to your point, Raj, that's a development process. You have to go through physical iterations of the product that becomes its own moat.

18:33

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yep, exactly that.

18:35

Dave Almy

It's an interesting point. So I'm interested then as you get the product developed, as you start to develop. Okay, I feel like this is what we want it to be. What were some of those first approaches to pro teams like? Right. My sense of training staffs are they get deluged with companies that are saying, oh, you got to try this and you know that this is the next best thing. And da, da. How did you create distinction for Hytro and break through that noise with other pro teams?

19:11

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So firstly, you're absolutely right, like blood proteins, they get particularly nutrition products as well. They get all kinds of stuff thrown at them all the time and you know, we're different to that. But yeah, so it's. Firstly, it's really difficult to get them to listen to start. But one of the benefits we have is obviously Warren. So Warren worked in pro sports for 10 years. His connections and the people, you know, his credibility was above someone coming in, you know, just say, want to sell something to you. He could open the doors with that. What's turned out over the last few years with Hytro is pro sport coaches is our community. It's that it's actually the bedrock of Hytro. We have over 100 ProSport coaches and athletes invested in Hytra itself. And that opened unbelievable doors.

19:56

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And the way it started to happen is right at the beginning we'd be like showing them the product. Warren could get the intro because of who he was and kind of who he knew they would then come up. We like this product actually and we could start to use it. We'll buy a few to the team and just start testing out. Then they'd come back like, yeah, we really like it. Actually could buy some more. And actually how I should have thought this myself, really. It's a great idea. Down you are. Yeah, down you are. Should have thought it's too late. Well, we've got a pattern. Go away. But no, it's like, can we join you? Can we join you on this journey? And then Warren, I started thinking, okay, let's open up like funding Routes for the coaches.

20:33

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Because the problem with the hardware company is it's really unattractive from like VC funding. Right. It's really difficult to attract VC in this kind of world now, especially not software. So we started. Most of the first few million we raised was through coaches and athletes, most of it.

20:50

Dave Almy

And it's only recently become better athlete backed products. Right now that is a very viable way to get funded.

20:59

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yep, absolutely. I mean athletes bring in your bigger checks and bigger scale. Which is true. The bit that I, I really love as well is the coaches coming in because most of the coaches had never made a venture investment and they did it because they truly believed in where the product could go. Yeah. And, and then what happened was coaches would talk to other coaches, other teams and begin like and you know, same sport, different sport, cross countries, all the rest of it.

21:24

Dave Almy

And they were like old ladies in church.

21:28

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Possibly not the analogy, but yeah, absolutely. Exactly like that.

21:33

Dave Almy

I mean it's the coach network. Yeah, yeah.

21:36

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And it's surprisingly small as well. That's pro sport coaching. That's surprisingly small. So.

21:40

Dave Almy

Well Paul, you also figured this one out too pretty quickly too. Like there are. Yeah, okay. It's a small group but even within that small group there's probably like five to 10 people who are really the, call it a bell cow in that. Like they're the ones who are always trying to innovate and other people are always looking to see what they're going to do. So if you can knock down those particular dominoes, boy, they really start to flow.

22:03

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

It does. It's a lot of like advocacy and trust. Right. So you know, like, you know we've worked with example Falcons and like John Griffin and Josh and Nelson there. Like they're hugely respected and so they're advocates for hydro food because they believe in the product and they use it for the falcon. So people talk to them about it and they give us a glowing recommendation and then other teams buy and it just keeps going and going and it's a phenomenal thing for us though that difficulty approach force went in our favor because. Mainly because of Warren to be fair, like and should get one on this part at some point. He's like, he's got incredible passion for hydro. It's like he's got the, he's got our logo tattooed on his arm. Talking to you probably should better podcast.

22:47

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. This war, I'm coming for you. He. He his enthusiasm for we're doing. He spent all his money on a patent before he'd met me. Right. And he didn't know what to do with it. He didn't know how to build a business. He just knew it should be something. And you need that utter belief as a. As a founder of a company. Right. You need to go. He's a known.

23:07

Dave Almy

Known within the community too, right. They knew who he was so you could leverage those connections. Finally, you brought the expertise from the business side. I mean, I tell you, this is the quintessential partnership. Recognize where your challenges lie and find someone who can compliment them. And that's. That's. It sounds like exactly what happened here, but I think one of the other things that makes this so compelling too, is it says it right on the website, right? No wires, no batteries, no fuss. There is a. And I don't mean this in a. In a negative way. There's a simplicity to Hytro that I would assume makes it much more approachable for people who are. There's such a lens on technology and wearables and data and all the things that go along like that.

23:52

Dave Almy

This is much more straightforward because it lacks a lot of that, like, oh, my God, how am I going to. Yeah, okay, it's great. It captures all this data. How am I going to use all that data? And I'm assuming that facilitates your outreach and integration.

24:08

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

You've kind of hit the nail on the head of why we want to scale quite quickly into pro sports. It's because it's so simple, it's practical, it's safe. It's like you can give it to an athlete. You don't have to worry about it. And it's really easy to use. You just literally just strap in and just for a few minutes, you give a simple protocol. That's what you do. There's. There's a real. There's a real nuance in this in terms of the way the world's going at the moment, in terms of you. You touch something like technology and data we've just seen, I think, is it aura and whoop create like blood kind of labs there where they're looking at blood markers and looking at more data. And there's a tendency to go more, more, more data.

24:44

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

But actually what you want is better data and you want integrated data and you want simplified data so people can use it. Because otherwise, what I've seen with some of these kind of wearables is people going after. Well, I don't want the wearable anymore because I just don't want all that data. I want it to be really easy to understand. I want it to be simple. And that's our product kind of lens. It has to be simple, safe, practical. And so we will look at adding kind of technology advancements to the product, but it has to. It's not at the expense of the user experience, which is that beautiful simplicity of our product is why we've taken off and why people like it.

25:22

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

If we had an app and, you know, wires connected to it and all kind of digital stuff, that would be a barrier. So if we add anything has to integrate into it. So that's. That's the crux of it. And I think we're seeing that as the way the world's going. People start to understand it's not. Not about more, it's about better.

25:38

Dave Almy

Do you get pressure? Particularly as you start talking about VC funding and things and the way that they're accustomed to looking at the world, do you get pressure for them? It says, okay, but what happens after somebody buys the shorts? Like, what's the subscription model? Like, how does it link to the Internet? Like, how does it produce usable. We can use that data to resell to, like, they're. Everybody's always looking for additional revenue streams. Is it difficult to explain the why that you just did right now about simplicity and usability, or. Or is this feeling like something. This is like an iteration that's to come?

26:12

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

No, you're absolutely right. So, yeah, in the. In the VC world, I can't. I've lost count the amount of conversations we had where it's like, yeah, so. So where's the digital element to this product? You know, what's going on? It's just hardware. Right? Right.

26:29

Dave Almy

I'm gonna put this cuff on your neck and break off the blood flow to your brain, man.

26:33

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

They'll be like. They'll be like, I was just harder. Where's the exit button? And because they didn't quite. They couldn't understand the scalability of a simple hardware product. And the whole point is we are actually simplifying complex science in our product to make it accessible and easy to use, whereas every other BFR company has gone the other route. So we've taken the contrarian position here. Whereas it's a much better delivery mechanism of bfr, which means now everybody could use it. And that was the point. Now, that doesn't mean actually that we won't look to add kind of like data to it. We've got to think about now as the next evolution of eye track. How do we get more data from products?

27:14

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So one of the things we're doing, for example we did recently is were actually invited to whoop to their headquarters in Boston to have a look at how Hytra impacts their data. And so that was a really interesting experience. Actually. Can we work with partners to have a look at data? So rather than doing it on our own, actually can we integrate with others? And so we don't necessarily. Rather than someone have to add another app or another piece of hardware to, you know, to measure something, use the one you've got and see Hytra in there and then that can recommend use of Hytra. Maybe. Subscription models are absolutely. They were talking. We get that a lot. Actually we're moving to the B2B Business Pro Sport. We're moving that to a subscription model itself. B2C will come a little bit later down the line.

27:55

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

That that's part of our growth trajectory. We're not quite there yet with dc. We're not quite ready. And I don't. The world is quite ready for the scale that we need to deliver it because.

28:04

Dave Almy

God, no, I. I was just thinking that from the standpoint of they're.

28:09

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

The.

28:10

Dave Almy

Attacking the market from the professional sports builds in the credibility that allows you to reach athletes of all the B2C play, right. It becomes the. The. It's funny because. And again, I go back to that conversation we had with John Stewart of Fast Break AI his first client was the NBA. His ultimate goal was youth sports. And it's like such a backwards way to look at it, right? Because so many companies are trying to get to the major professional sports teams because they think that's the end of the rainbow. But really the money lies. They're great. And you want that from a credibility standpoint and to do that. But really when you look at B2C, my goodness, I mean, that's where the trajectory really starts to change.

28:53

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And so we started with pro sports because it actually was so many different reasons. One, it's kind of Warren's background, right. So that. And they already understood bfrs. We're now showing you here's something you understand. But you could scale it so it makes a lot of sense from that perspective. Pro sport adds awareness, credibility authenticates a product. You can storytell performance stories as well. There's nothing better than people, the general consumer seeing their favorite team or favorite athlete winning with this product. Right. With Hytra, that's where you want to get to and it's a precursor for everything else. Right. So the pro sports will always be the foundation of Hytro. That's where we always operate. We're operating there. We test our products in pro sport. We get the feedback there to develop iterations of what we're doing.

29:36

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

We do a lot of our research in pro sports as well. So at the moment, for example where we believe that cycling could be a big market for us going down the line. So. So we're working with a few Tour de France cycling teams, we're doing research with them. We want to understand how best Hytra and BFR should fit into their workflows. We will leverage that then to go to the consumer market down the line rather than us telling consumer Hydra going this will improve your functional threshold power VO2 max. Here's some research. Here's a Tour de France team winning and the research we did with them. And there's the story of it. And that's far more compelling way of doing it. So pro sports is a fantastic ground to start business. It's also like we've been to space twice, right?

30:19

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So the connection TO NASA and SpaceX came because they could see the visibility in pro sports and what were doing there. We've just started some sending to some. Some kind of national military bodies as well. And again it's because they've seen what we're doing in pro sports. It's just such a brilliant place to authenticate because people know that if you've got it on from the world's greatest athletes, it means. It means it should do something and it's credible.

30:44

Dave Almy

It's one of the reasons, honestly, it's this trend weird sort of tangential thing like there's a reason why media companies are so drawn to sports because people pay attention to them. What you know, you usually see that from a consumer play and all the products they want to market themselves to consumer because eyeballs still exist around sports on a regular level. What I hadn't really considered is that still applies to a B2B relationship as well because they're the people who run those companies. See your product being applied in professional sports and then make the leap. Oh well, this could work for our astronauts, this could work for our soldiers and things like that and reach out to you feel like that's something that could happen.

31:19

Dave Almy

Now let's talk about growth as it exists to the US because just were awarded a patent for hydro in the US relatively recently. Yep, that opens up. We've got some sports over here on this side of the pond. There's a few of them.

31:33

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

I've noticed they're a bit different.

31:36

Dave Almy

A little different, A little different, but big market. So do you feel like that's something you and Hytro attack from the same way that you've been going about it in the UK and Europe, or does that demand a different approach, just given the somewhat unique qualities of the market?

31:55

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So one thing actually we realized probably a few years ago now is actually that the US market, the opportunity over there, is so much bigger than in the uk and particularly the college market that you have over in the US is nothing like it in the rest of the world. So I was speaking to a VC earlier this today and I was having to explain to them the size of scale and money in the college market. They couldn't quite get their heads around like, you know, 100,000 people coming to see a college football team, you know, and then they spend hundreds of millions on facilities. Like the contrast with universities in Europe. Yeah, exactly, yeah. The contrast for universities in Europe is just, is night and day.

32:32

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

So we actually, like probably about 90% of business already is in the US, so we do most of our work in the US at the moment. There's an argument for flipping the company into a US company as well, which probably at some point we'll do. And so, yes, there's differences because obviously sports are different. But what underpins it and what is true in the UK as it is in the US market, particularly pro sport, is its relationship base. It's heavily relationship based. So that coach to coach, peer network again, is incredibly important for our starting growth in the US market. And so we're very lucky to already have US coaches or investors in Hydro as well. And we'd always happy to take more coaches and athletes, you know, who's a part of Hydro to join us on this journey.

33:16

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And what we need out and more in the us, we've only got one sales guy over in the US at the moment, Chase, and he's doing a fantastic job. We need more people out there because you need to be on the, you know, be on the ground for.

33:26

Dave Almy

Chase is like deluged.

33:29

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

He is, yeah, he doesn't sleep a lot.

33:32

Dave Almy

I can't keep going.

33:33

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

I mean, he's making good money though, like all those sales, but he's doing a lot on his own. So, yeah, he needs a bit of help and we're actively recruiting to help him. But he, yeah, we need more. We need more kind of time over there. Boots on the ground help us grow the market, but also it's the progression over there. So it's not just pro sports, college sport. We're looking at US physical therapy clinics as well. There's a, there's a big opportunity there, as I said, like military in the US as well. There's an opportunity there. B2C market. So it's just scalability of what we're doing. Obviously we're already working with NASA and SpaceX, so the space angle, the scalability of Hydra is no issue. It's the sequencing of how we do it is the challenge really for me.

34:14

Dave Almy

Sounds like this is a ride that you're holding on to a bit for dear life. I mean, the best way possible. Right? I mean, it's like it's starting to do the thing that you hoped it would do. And I'm really kind of interested now as we begin to wrap up, you know, with the US becoming this big fertile ground, you know, obviously it's starting to come and be applied to industries that maybe you didn't originally think that they might be applied to as coming, like, so it's like literally the growth trajectory I think, that every entrepreneur is hopeful for. But what have been some of your greatest surprises as you began this journey? I'm interested in your perspective in both the general sense, but also like working in sports business and how that shifted your perspective.

34:57

Dave Almy

Like, what have been some of the things that have surprised you, taking you aback, really intrigued you about the uniqueness of the market and being an entrepreneur in that market.

35:06

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah. So I don't think until you become a founder, you understand quite how hard it is and how much risk you deal with as well. You get super comfortable with a ridiculous level of risk as a founder. It's not that long ago where like, you know, and one day you'd be going into space, then the next day you've got, you know, a week to make payroll. And like, Warren and I would get super comfortable with like, you know, we've got 10 days to the end of the month. We, we need 150 grand. We'll get it. Yeah, we know we're going to find that there's one of those things, just a massive trust between us and the ability to deliver. I know we need that. Warren will be able to help us get there. And I can deliver it on that as well.

35:51

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

But you get like, to a normal person who isn't founder, that's a bit ridiculous. Really? Right. It's a bit ridiculous. You get really comfortable with that. Also, I thought I worked hard in the corporate world. Right. I thought I worked hard. Nothing compared to me, a founder. Right. You are 24, 7 thinking about your business and Hytronics and the stress levels are off the chart because it's. You are always faced with the existential risks. Like in the. We're now six years in, we're making these revenues. It's a little bit safer now, but in those first few years you could be out of business quite quickly if things don't go your way. So immense challenges from that. From a. From a sports perspective, a bit. I just.

36:30

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Particularly the UK market is very different from the US market and some of the challenge we found with the UK markets, but you'd be going, we've got a product that we know can give you a performance advantage and yet there's still an unwillingness to pay for that. It's still like we want it for free. It's like, you know, either take this competitive advantage or you don't. It's like it doesn't make a sense. We're not, we're not, you know, trying to give you a soft drink here or something like this. This is something that makes your team better and I couldn't quite understand that. And. And it actually, it took. What it takes in the pro sports world is. Is the science needs to be there, but it's the advocacy and the trust from the peer group and the coaches who really matter.

37:07

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

It's a point you made earlier, Dave, is like the people who really matter. They say, this is the. This is the. This is the thing that is really taking to the next level.

37:17

Dave Almy

You need to look at this.

37:18

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, yeah, exactly. You need to look at this. This product. That's what moves it. The scientist. It would, once they look at it, needs to be there. I couldn't quite get. Could understand that, like competitive advantages. Here, take it. That was a bit of a nuance and one thing found in the UK pro sports, terrible payers as well. It's very different in the US market. They're great payers, which is another reason to shift it to the US market. We get paid before we deliver the product in the US. In the UK we're still waiting six months later.

37:47

Dave Almy

We are big believers in that net 30 payment schedule here in the US.

37:51

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, I love that. I love that. Yeah.

37:53

Dave Almy

Every entrepreneur loves that.

37:56

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

They don't believe that over here in the uk, it's like you get paid when they could be Bothered on the.

38:01

Dave Almy

Entrepreneur front, a friend of mine who is also an entrepreneur said it best. Like somebody came up to me said, that's so great. You have your own business, you can leave whenever you want. You have all that freedom. It's like, look at you clock in at nine, you clock out at five, you go home and you do whatever the heck you want. This never, ever leaves. It is just part of who I am and what I am doing. And you're able to compartmentalize it for when you're doing other things. But it's ticking away always in the back of your mind. It's just practical reality of what you deal with.

38:32

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's quite difficult for people that haven't been found as well to really understand what it's truly like. I know my wife doesn't understand some of the time she's like, had a really like easy job in banking. Consult. Not easy, but it was fine. It's like comfortable. You're making good money and then look at how hard you work now. Every weekend you're working, you're. You're stressful. It's difficult. Why? Why are you doing it? And it's because it's the purpose of. Yes, the fulfillment. Yes, exactly. Look at what we're creating.

39:03

Dave Almy

Look at what you're creating. Like you're bringing it from. You birthed it. It's like, you know, it's this thing that you developed. I'm with Raj, the ruch of a Raja. He is the co creative officer for Hytro. Raj, first and foremost, thanks so much for the time. This is a great conversation. Feel like this could go on for several more hours, but it's late in London before I do. I got to put you through the lightning round. This is a series of questions that just want your first thing that pops into your mind. Are you ready?

39:33

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

This sounds dangerous, but okay.

39:35

Dave Almy

Yeah, that's the appropriate. That's the appropriate response. We're going to start with a soft. We'll start with an easy one.

39:39

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Okay.

39:40

Dave Almy

What's your greatest sports memory, either as a spectator or a competitor?

39:48

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

As a competitor winning the My town was called Newbury. Newbury under Levin's table tennis competition.

39:55

Dave Almy

That is a good one. What did you have the closing shot. Do you still remember the feeling like, oh my God?

40:00

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Yeah, I think a bit of friend in that as well. So I'm pretty happy.

40:03

Dave Almy

Are you still a very good table tennis player?

40:05

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

No, not so much. I'd like to play again but I don't have time because I'M like working a startup.

40:10

Dave Almy

Come on. Every great startup has either a foosball table or a table tennis table. All right, so maybe that's all right. You and I have a couple things in common. We're both entrepreneurs and fathers of twins, which is more exhausting.

40:23

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

I didn't know your father. How old are your twins?

40:26

Dave Almy

Mine are older. They're 24 now.

40:28

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Okay, cool. It's a tie. It's a time, which is what I thought it is. It's hard. I've got twin boys. They're at a really nice age, though. They're three and a half. It's really cool. Like, they're really awesome now and everything.

40:40

Dave Almy

Is like this.

40:43

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

And they're starting to play sport now. It's great. So kick a football around. I love it. But doing both being a parent and being a founder, that is.

40:51

Dave Almy

That's a tall order right there. No doubt about it. All right. Most memorable reaction from your parents when you told them you were quitting the finance world to start your own company.

41:00

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Slightly boringly. They were actually pretty cool about it, which is really unusual for Asian parents as well, actually.

41:06

Dave Almy

So normally it's like legendary in a sense. Right?

41:10

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Well, it's because, like, I wasn't young. I was like, come I was day five and I quit, I could always go back. Right. They knew I was happy. Yeah. They knew I wasn't happy. They knew I want to do something else. And the risk was limited at that point. So they were actually quite cool about it.

41:27

Dave Almy

Very supportive. Okay, good to know.

41:28

Dave Almy

Good to know.

41:29

Dave Almy

An anagram for your last name is a Java Hitch hurler. Any comment?

41:35

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

No, none. Why would you bother? Probably you have too much time in your hands. That's what it is.

41:43

Dave Almy

I spent six hours coming up with that. A Java Hitch hurler. Hopefully you appreciate it, Rog. Really appreciate the time. Thanks, Bert.

41:51

Raj Thiruchelvarajah

Really appreciate being on here. Thank you.

41:54

Dave Almy

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Sports Business Conversations podcast. If you enjoyed it, we always appreciate a subscribe, share, comment or like. And if you're the social type, you can always follow us in all the usual places. Don't forget, past episodes are located@adcpartners.com podcast a quick shout out to Scott Holmes for composing our theme music. This podcast is a production of ADC Partners. All rights are reserved.

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