San Diego Sport Innovators

SPOTLIGHT

HUMANCENTRIC PERFORMANCE

By Chuck Scott

Rob Logan has mentored more than 25 companies is his two years as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence with CONNECT, offering them expertise on everything from identifying and fixing holes in their business plan to raising capital to dealing with customers.

Then a little more than a year ago he found himself on the opposite side of the equation. He and three colleagues had come up with the concept of putting digital thermometers in mouth guards, as a way to monitor an athlete’s body temperature to improve performance and protect against hyperthermia.
Faced with the challenge of building a business from the ground up, Logan knew exactly where he wanted to turn for help – the CONNECT Springboard program and SD Sport Innovators.
Logan’s new company, called HumanCentric Performance, was accepted into the Springboard program, and he said folks from SDSI came into various panels they have in the process.
“Once we graduated from the Springboard program, SDSI literally embraced us,” Logan said. “They have been an incredible resource. They have provided us with many introductions, including members of the advisory board at SDSI, who have given us great insights, people to talk to, ideas and constructive feedback.”
What led Logan – not only an EIR himself, but a two-time CEO with a PhD in Cognitive Psychology – to seek business advice from others?
“As entrepreneurs, you don’t know everything,” he said. “People come in with different perspectives that you wouldn’t have thought of yourself or your team wouldn’t have thought of, and that can open up completely new opportunities.
“They’ve been absolutely awesome for us. They’ve put us in front of investors, have otherwise showcased HCP and given us visibility and buzz that we could not have generated by ourselves.”
Logan credited an SDSI invitation to a recent “Connect with CONNECT” event for potentially creating two entirely new markets for HCP’s technology.
“SDSI provided HCP a table near other SDSI companies, and that event opened up two avenues for new business opportunities,” he said.
One of those is in the medical space, for sleep apnea, and the other is with the military. “Our primary focus is on sports,” Logan said, “but as it turns out people are finding other uses for our technology.”
It’s that technology that’s at the heart of HumanCentric Performance.
“We are not a mouth guard company; there are companies that do that and do it very well,” Logan said. “We license our technology to those folks and we’re in negotiations with several of them now. … They’re interested in that base platform, which is temperature sensing and having a localized display.”
Logan cited research by Lance Armstrong’s cycling team, which began tracking riders’ body temperatures in the early 2000s and discovered that when their core temperature reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the riders lost up to 20 percent of their pedaling power.

By having their athletes use a mouth guard with a digital thermometer, trainers and coaches can monitor their body temperature. HCP is finalizing the capability to transmit that data wirelessly, for multiple athletes, in real time.
Logan envisions a team trainer on the sideline keeping watch on an entire roster using a mobile device.
“Could be a tablet, could be a smartphone, could be any device,” he said, “and you would have a list of their players – the player with the highest temperature on the top of the list, the coolest temperature on the bottom. That makes it easy to quickly identify somebody who may need greater attention, and to cool them down.”
Logan said they’ve also received significant interest from what he called “technology-engaged” athletes – including triathletes, bicyclists and endurance runners – who all want data.
“They have a heart-rate monitor, they know heart rate is important,” Logan said. “They know body temperature is important but they have no means of knowing it today.”
HCP also benefited from the opportunity to present to potential investors at an SDSI capital forum last summer.
“We able to pitch our business to a group of over 50 extremely high level investors and executives in the action sports space who have all ‘been there done that’ and were able to tell us ‘watch out for that,’” Logan said. “This has resulted in significantly increased networking for HCP and access to resources.”
Logan said HCP is close to completing a $450,000 round of funding. Once they finalize their wireless platform and secure commercial deals with major players, they’ll be on their way to having a product to market, with a big assist from SDSI.
“The resources and contacts of SDSI definitely contributed to our success thus far,” he said.

Visit HumanCentric Performance to learn more.

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