A few weeks ago we wrote about how
But, the list of Chicago startups in the program doesn’t stop there. This afternoon, the founders of TRAC — a running startup that makes automated, cloud-enabled timers for coaches and race managers — will be pitching their idea to hundreds of investors at Y Combinator’s Demo Day.
Largely unknown, the startup was founded on a simple idea: running coaches waste too much time and energy on recording data that’s never put to effective use.
If you’ve ever attended a cross country or track practice at the high school or college level, you’ve probably seen the team’s coach standing by with a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard in the other, recording split times for dozens of athletes at the same time.
Runners testing a TRAC prototype.
But keeping track of precise splits isn’t something humans are particularly good at. For one, we only have two hands, which makes the stopwatch and clipboard combo an awkward balancing act. Moreover, if your notes get smudged or you accidentally mix up the times of different runners, the entire batch of hard-earned data can quickly become completely useless.
Trackers have traditionally been prohibitively expensive, making them a tough sell for athletic departments at high schools and colleges that are already tightening their belts. But equally as important, existing equipment is often large and unwieldy, and many rigs need to be plugged into a laptop to operate.
Which is where TRAC comes in. With the company’s highly portable, standalone cloud-enabled timers, all coaches have to do is set up the rig, give runners individual RFID chips and watch the splits tick in on their smartphones.
Co-founder Griffin Kelly said the idea arose from his own experience as a cross country athlete at Northwestern. His coach spent hours plotting splits into an Excel spreadsheet. By comparison to many coaches, this approach was high-tech.
“Many coaches have binders and binders full of data they don’t use for anything,” said Kelly.
Kelly's own workout log.
Needless to say, these dusty binders are a tremendous lost opportunity. If that data were electronically captured and properly tagged, coaches could get a high-level view of workout effectiveness, and how results differ from athlete to athlete.
After Kelly and co-founder Elliot Hevel graduated from Northwestern’s graduate engineering program in 2013, they got started working on a prototype, which they deployed at Kelly’s former high school: Jones College Prep. Soon, organizers of small races started reaching out to inquire about using the platform to time their participants.
Despite having a working product and a steady revenue stream, the TRAC team had a hard time getting investors to take them seriously. At one point they were told that the prototype looked like something that was put together in a basement — mostly because it was. After getting accepted into Y Combinator back in November, the company has brought its hardware through two iterations and closed a deal with a manufacturer.
In the past few months, the company has also made a number of big business partnerships, including the country’s largest track and field equipment supplier, a major ultramarathon organizer, and a track and field club famous for training future olympians. According to Kelly, the company has several additional major partnerships in the works and is setting its sights on the country’s major marathons, to whom they hope to sell their software as a service.
Already close to reaching profitability, the company is currently looking for seed funding to continue its rapid growth. According to Kelly, TRAC also has a major R&D project in the works, though he did not disclose further details about that project.
Images via TRAC.
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