Norm Joins MindFly as Senior Advisor

I am working with an incredible company that is gaining traction, acceptance and demand in live sports.  You may have heard about them or seen ESPN deploy their tech recently; NHL Stanley Cup, NBA All-Star Game Events, Mens NCAA Baseball Worldseries, etc.

MindFly has developed AI-based bodycams that are a complete solution for capturing immersive video and audio from a player’s and referee’s perspective for games and from behind-the-scenes. MindFly transforms raw footage into engaging live feeds and video clips through its advanced AI solution. This technology stabilizes and autonomously directs the raw footage, mimicking the decisions of a human camera operator and director. The result is an entirely new, enhanced, and immersive viewing experience for fans.

The solution is perfect for live TV and social media and works for any sports rights holder – broadcaster, sponsor, leagues, teams and clubs.

Players and referees wear MindFly bodycams, which are vests with integrated cameras, similar to the GPS vests that players are accustomed to wearing. The camera and battery are seamlessly integrated into the vest. Thanks to the vest’s design, players’ safety and performance are maintained, while the content captured is stabilized and automatically directed by the MindFly software. This allows customers to broadcast the footage live or edit the clips for social media and other publishing channels.

Since launching its Live product in early 2024, MindFly has made significant progress by collaborating with broadcasters like ESPN, CBS, and NBC; leagues such as the NBA, MLB,  NHL, World Baseball Series, UFL, Premier League, and Euroleague; and teams including Manchester City FC, Juventus FC, and Redbull Salzburg. The company is now transitioning these commercial engagements into annual agreements. Additionally, MindFly will be offering an end-to-end solution to help teams and leagues create and monetize content, positioning itself as a partner rather than just a technology provider.

“It’s with great appreciation to the Florida Panthers and their willingness to explore Mindfly in the most important time of the year,” says Linda Schulz, coordinating producer, NHL on ESPN. “We are very excited to see a goalie warm up first-hand.”

Here are some links to some events in the last three months (all were paid commercial events)

NBA All-Star 2024
The NBA All-Star event had referees wearing the Live Bodycam during the game.  Our bodycams were also deployed during their Rising Star Challenge events, with the broadcast lasting an exhilarating 4 hours. Of note, star players Donovan Mitchell and Myles Turner also embraced this groundbreaking technology.

NCAA Baseball (Men’s College World Series 2024)

NHL (Stanley Cup Final 2024: ESPN Outfits Florida Panthers Goalie With MindFly AI BodyCam for Pregame Skate)

UFL (American Football)

NCAA All-Star 2024
At the NCAA All-Star event, Mindfly collaborated with ESPN and CBS Sports to deliver an innovative viewing experience. During the event, we provided four simultaneous live feeds capturing the dunking contest with ESPN and two live feeds during the game with CBS the next day. These included seamless transitions to Mindfly’s “court cam” views of the players, enhancing the dynamic coverage of the event.

MLBWe had successful initial events with MLB and we are in discussions for next steps.

Euroleague – player cam official games
It took us one year to do the first official game with a Euroleague player, and only two weeks to do the second official game with two players.

Norm Joins Space Perspective as Consultant

Imagine a world where space travel is not just for astronauts, but for the masses. That’s the future we’ve created at Space Perspective, and we invite you to be part of this groundbreaking journey. Space Perspective is led by experts and visionaries with 35+ years experience in the space industry, who have helped mold the space industry and are at it again to combine exploration with luxury travel. 

Introducing Space Perspective’s Spaceship Neptune, a gentle, safe, contemplative journey gliding to the edge of space in a pressurized capsule elevated by our SpaceBalloon — at a fraction of the price… and completely carbon-neutral.  

But it’s not just about space travel; it’s about entertainment and talent too. We’re in talks with major artists for the “First live streamed concert from space,” and our third capsule will double as a production content studio.

  • Our Team: Our world-record holding team StratEx Jump) has been instrumental in the development of every US human spacecraft for the past 40 years, including every human space balloon flight.
  • Our traction:  Our first capsule is built, and we’re heading into commercialization with over $200M in backlogged ticket sales already.
  • Our Brand Partnerships: We currently have Mercedes Maybach and Mondelez/Oreos, Siemens, Hard Rock and more, which have successfully launched. We’re finalizing a partnership with one of the world’s largest online casinos where they will also be livestreaming the first poker game from space with every who’s who at the table. 

After years of development, we’ve built a space flight experience for all:

  • A transformative luxury experience and a global lifestyle brand
  • A team boasting an unparalleled safety record in spaceflight
  • Accessible to millions of consumers today (and tens of millions tomorrow)
  • A global experience with differentiated flight experiences all over the world
  • An extremely profitable and non-capital intensive business model
  • An insurmountable mote including 12 granted patents, 2 allowed and 12 pending

Norm Joins EDCON (Ethereum Community Developers Conference) as Advisor

Norm joins the EDCON 2024 team, supported by the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik Buterin. Set to be a landmark event in the blockchain community, EDCON is more than just a conference; it’s a deep dive into the evolving blockchain landscape. This year, we’re bringing the event to Japan, a country at the forefront of tech innovation and a rising leader in blockchain.

Why EDCON 2024 is Unmissable:

  • Seasoned Team: Our team includes one of the co-founders of ETH Denver, ensuring a seamless experience for over 20,000 attendees.
  • Decade of Ethereum: We’re celebrating 10 years of Ethereum with a special reunion of the co-founders, looking ahead to the next decade of innovation.
  • Local Impact: In partnership with the Shibuya government, we’re bringing tangible blockchain use cases to the Japanese community.
  • Global Collaboration: Major Japanese companies like Toyota are keen to explore blockchain integration, opening doors for international collaborations.

With influential figures like Vitalik leading the charge, EDCON 2024 promises to be an inspiring and transformative experience. We’re working closely with the Shibuya government and local organizations to initiate real-world blockchain use cases, setting the stage for impactful discussions and collaborations.

 EDCON 2024 Details:

  • Dates: July 26th – 30th, 2024
  • Location: Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
  • Venues:
    • July 26-29: Community Events (Tokyo-wide)
    • July 27-28: United Nations University – Limited (Shibuya, Tokyo)
    • July 29-30: Yoyogi National Gymnasium – Main Event (Shibuya, Tokyo)

Norm Joins KINO Studios as Advisor

KINO Studios, the new viral app for film fans just landed in the App Store and has rapidly surpassed 700k monthly engagements. The KINO Studios app is where filmmakers and actors have all the tools to monetize their fan communities during production, turning behind-the-scenes content, special merchandising and promotion into direct revenue streams.  And, by its very nature, it grows an army of superfans (and all the in-app data) to better market and sell their films/shows at the box office and to streamers.

Slow Ventures and Sequoia Capital-backed, founded by a team of veteran founders with multiple exits under their belts, including an entertainment lawyer turned founder, executive producer who has created and sold shows with Kimmel, Damon, Stallone, and more, and CTO who created TSA Pre-Check and led other major tech builds.

Norm Joins FC32 as Business Consultant

FC32 acquires football clubs (soccer teams for us Americans:-) from around the world at all different tiers of performance. We develop players with our proprietary performance methodology, and then move athletes between our clubs for free as they improve. Ultimately, we will sell athletes to the best teams in the world for the player transfer fees. We are doing this for both male AND female athletes.

FC32 is building several proprietary data science platforms including:

  • Player development – focused on athlete performance under pressure
  • Transfer Market analytics – to predict demand for certain players, optimise price, and eliminate free transfers (a mid-tier team has $5-10M a year in lost revenue to free transfers)
  • Fan engagement – focused on segmentation in order to personalise the fan experience

Highlights:

  • 2 team acquisitions have already been secured, and another 3 on the table
  • All teams at 30-70% below market value, with the pinnacle club being acquired on a stock swap (so no cash required)
  • 4 proprietary data science products:
    • Scouting * Player Development * Opposition Analysis * Player Transfer Market Analytics
  • $9.7B player transfer market (for context, the average sale price of a single player into the Premier League is $19.5M).

Norm Joins Blue Dot Motorworks as a Consultant, Converting Conventional Vehicles into Plug-in Hybrids!

As you know, gas-powered vehicles are the greatest end-use source of greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, even if we started producing nothing but EVs today, the current global stock of vehicle turnover is so slow that we would still emit 300% of the remaining carbon budget for the sector.  I just started working with a company called Blue Dot Motorworks that aims to eliminate that gap with the most cost-effective, resource-efficient, and equitable solution possible.

Ground-breaking technology from Blue Dot Motorworks fills a massive gap in the mobility market. Individual drivers and fleet operators of 1.4 billion conventional vehicles around the world are struggling with rising fuel prices and decarbonization mandates that they cannot afford to meet by purchasing new electric vehicles. Blue Dot’s Plug-in Hybrid conversion kits can be installed on nearly any light-duty vehicle by any mechanic in about a day and will reduce typical fuel usage by 70-80%. This first-of-a-kind, vehicle-agnostic approach, in development since 2015, enables mass production and is a paradigm shift in cost-effectiveness and scalability. Positive ROI can be achieved in as little as two years, and lifetime savings can reach tens of thousands of dollars.

Road-going prototypes of the Narwhal (for pickup trucks, traditional SUVs, and some vans) and the Humpback (for all other cars) have proven the viability and practicality of the technology. Multiple beta customers have signed letters of intent to purchase units for pilot programs in their fleets. First-mover IP, totaling 360 pages of innovations, provides broad protection through numerous alternative architectures. Adjacent hybridization technologies represent a strong product pipeline.

Norm Joins Ponto as Consultant, Building the Circular Economy for Footwear

Norm joins seasoned entrepreneurs who are driven by a vision to unleash resilience in people, products, and the planet. They founded Ponto Footwear which reverse-designs and manufactures footwear that makes life lighter on the sole and the planet, for D2C, B2B and B2C applications, made from bio-based and recycled materials, all in a closed-loop supply chain.

Ponto is built on an underlying platform of applied circularly sustainable innovation, to ensure the circular economy is a profit-driving force for the end consumer and the industry of footwear. Using the company’s platform of standards for design to ensure recyclability, its network of supply chain innovations, its fully waterless solar-powered factory, and its built-in technology stack provides consumers with direct financial credit for upgrading & recycling their shoes; Ponto exists to make the tent bigger for the entire footwear industry through their licensable business model.

  • Ponto’s owned and operated brand is sold direct-to-consumer, in wholesale, and is an official uniform supplier to Delta Airlines.
    • Their partnership with Delta Airlines emerged following a collaboration with Issa Rae and Delta as a part of LA Fashion Week which Forbes wrote a feature about here.
  • Ponto sets the circular & recyclable footwear standard for B2B enterprise uniforms.
  • The Ponto tech stack is set to be licensed to major footwear holding companies and brands.

Norm Joins Fieldhouse as Business Consultant; Data aggregation platform that maximizes athlete performance and wellness

Fieldhouse is an innovative early-stage start-up that uses proprietary data centralization, analytics, and AI to maximize athlete performance and wellness.

We are engineering:

  • Home Screen for Your Health – integrates training, performance, and lifestyle data from 150+ digital training tools and stores that data on each user’s profile.
  • Performance Coach in Your Pocket – delivers unmatched training insights based on real-time and historical data. We are in a prime position to capture the smart wearable market projected growth (15% CAGR through 2032) because we are device-agnostic.
  • Health and Wellness Insights Engine – provides companies with the opportunity to license our predictive analytics and insights to contextualize their existing data.

Our Go-to-Market strategy is to partner with complimentary sports businesses (B2B2C) that have established customer bases.

We will be piloting our web-based application (Home Screen for Your Health) with users, as well as professional athletes, after Thanksgiving, then rolling out our product to two strategic partners and onboarding 10,000+ users. With a conservative 25% ongoing subscription/retention rate, we expect to be cash flow positive in Q3 of 2024.

While we are executing the business model for our consumer application, we will simultaneously be developing our data models, pattern matching, and insights. We are currently in discussions with wearable companies (ie. Whoop), national gym chains (ie. Crunch Fitness), and healthcare organizations (ie. American Heart Association) about licensing the Fieldhouse Engine – predictive analytics and insights to contextualize their existing data.

Norm Joins ProFluence as Business Advisor, Helping to Tap into Global Sports Opportunities

Profluence Capital is run by Andrew Petcash, a GenZ sports-thematic expert who has built a substantial media company, and Mitch Baruchowitz who has a proven track record founding, managing, and driving returns in funds (10 exits). They have global advisors across sports/venture (with billions in exits under their belt).

Launched in September, they already executed a first close and made 3 investments, an aspect of their value creation model is they expect to receive advisory shares in most deals thanks to their ecosystem and strategic guidance, with LPs getting 100% of this value creation, which will help create outsized risk-adjusted yields over time.

Unlike traditional sports VC funds, Profluence Capital focuses on the complementary asset classes of emerging sports leagues/teams and early-stage sports, tech, and media companies that are on the path to expand globally, and into other sectors beyond just sports. Furthermore, our investment allocation is equally divided between all the verticals in sports/tech/media (with partnerships in place to make sure the portfolio is diversified beyond North America). 

We add value far beyond just a check – from a global sports network, commercialization to millions of viewers, and experts on the team not just in sports, but across technology and media. Profluence Capital seeks to provide exponential growth for both our companies and our LPs.  

On a Mission to Reinvent Crypto Wallets, Norm Joins Eucalyptus Labs as Consultant

Koala Wallet is reinventing crypto wallets as utility platforms, leapfrogging outdated solutions like Metamask by partnering directly with Layer-1s and providing deep ecosystem integration tools. Their team has been developing wallets since 2014 and they growth-hacked their last app (Coinomi) to over 3m+ users and millions in revenue. Now they are launching tools and services around Koala to help users educate, acquire, and utilize new blockchains.  Their mantra is ‘connecting users directly to emerging ecosystems’.

Koala has passed audits by Red4Sec and can only be downloaded from verified sources, ensuring users start safely. Our onboarding educates users in 30 seconds and we provide ongoing crypto education and partner with supported projects to further inform users. Built from scratch with the knowledge of 30+ years of combined blockchain development, Koala provides a single-chain experience in a multi-blockchain product.