[Kurt] I am type A, I think a half marathon is a good goal. Mhmm. So, I ran the half marathon. When I crossed the finish line, there was no results. There were no screens. There was no nothing. And Right. I it was so anti climatic. And I and I remember thinking it. I literally turned around. I walked back over to the timing table and I asked the gentleman sitting there. I said, I what are my results? [Kamal] Hey, listeners. Welcome to Tech in 26.2 podcast, where I chat with the founders, the leaders in endurance tech industry who is supporting the athletes, the race organizers, or the community in general. If you have run a race recently, you probably have got something like this, a Race Babe, which is primarily, you know, your entry to the race and also uses, the details to track your results for that specific race. Now if I look at the back of the, the race bib, I do see something called a chip, which is addressed, which is primarily used by the race timers for the to track your results for the race. Now, have you ever wondered how that actually happens? There's a chip behind your babe, and and you start the race, and there are some technology used throughout the race course which tracks your results to the tee and also give you the results back when you finish the race. You're in it for a treat today because I am here talking to Kurt Hanson, who is the founder of Innovative Timing Systems, one of the top 4 companies in the world in race timing. Kurt goes deep into how he started Innovative Timing Systems, how he built the company to scale in a place where it has close to 700 offices across the world, and how he has grown this company to be one of the top four companies in the world. Plus, his insight into how he sees the industry is evolving, and also how the future lies ahead for the timing industry. Enjoy the story. And, yes, if you're enjoying the stories in this podcast, the great way you can appreciate this podcast would be if you just leave a comment wherever you're listening the podcast or subscribe to the YouTube channel or, you know, share with your friends and family. Enjoy the episode. [Kamal] Welcome, Kart. Glad to have you here. [Kamal] Thank you. It's great to be here. You know? Thanks. So I will start something I read, and I was really fascinated, with your introduction. So here it goes. The coolest guy you'll ever meet, the absolute best storyteller of our time, The world leader in patents and inventions in the rise risk timing industry. Right. A pilot and classically trained musician. Mhmm. And I'm a share radio operator with his own satellite uplink and downlink center at his home. Yeah. A former Ironman athlete who retired after finishing Kona. That's right. An undeniable animal lover. And last but not the least, the CEO and founder of Innovative Timing Systems. That's it. What did I miss, Kurt? [Kurt] Well, there's a few things you probably missed, but Okay. But I I love to garden. My wife and I are avid gardeners. We love very much, and we've traveled extensively. I think I've been to maybe a 140 countries around the world now. Oh, wow. And so we love to travel as well. So but everything else I think is spot on. You know? Okay. That's great. [Kamal] Are you tracking to travel all the countries of the world? [Kurt] No. Not particularly. Okay. A lot of times, because of the number of offices we have around the world, I travel to visit them. Okay. So that that accounts for a lot of it. However, having said that, you know, as a good example, my wife and I have been to Hawaii, I think, 11 times now. We love Hawaii. We love to vacation there. We've been to Bora Bora in the South Pacific several times. So I think, you know, probably 70, 80% of my travels for business, and the rest is when I can sneak in a little time. [Kamal] Okay. I would guess because, running this company as well as in supporting and wonderful running community probably takes a lot of or have a lot of travel on you in that case. Right? [Kurt] Yeah. I go all over the world, to attend races as well, not just to visit our offices, but to go to races. Yeah. I'm constantly traveling. Mhmm. [Kamal] I see. I see. So let's start talking about, the founding story of Innovative Timing Systems. Like, you know, I think if I see the data point, it started around 2,006 time frame, almost 18 years ago. Like, how did it all started? [Kurt] It was an accident. I'd say that to everybody I've interviewed with. It's an accident. They laugh and say, no. Seriously. No. It's an accident. A friend of mine, who was another Ironman athlete Mhmm. He had purchased a timing system from the, a new I won't say their name, but a new start up. They're gone now, but they were a new start up in the industry. And he called me, and he said, I've spent my life savings. He had just graduated college. I was much older. I'm 62 today, so, obviously, I was much older than him. But he I knew his family really well, and he called me and he said, I bought this thing. I spent $40,000, and I can't get it to work. And he said, would you mind driving over? Now driving over, he was 300 miles away. He was in Dayton, Ohio. Okay. That is would you mind driving over and taking a look at it and giving me your thoughts? And he said, you know, your background is perfect. And I think it in a in a way, I was. I'm a software engineer, a hardware engineer. I, I'm an RF engineer. Know a lot about RF. And he said, you know, I think maybe you could troubleshoot this. So I drove over, stayed with the family, and I told him within maybe a half hour, I said, it's never gonna work. This product is absolutely never gonna work. And, at the time, there was only one system in the timing industry, and that was championship. Mhmm. They owned the market. They had about 99% market share. And so, he said, I can't afford to buy championship, so I bought this start up product. Mhmm. And what am I gonna do? It doesn't work. And I said, well, let me call the manufacturer myself. So I did. I called them in California. That's where they were from. And I said, it doesn't it doesn't appear to read more than one chip at a time. Mhmm. How is somebody supposed to time races? They said, well, what you need to do is use cones or flag rope, and you need to get everybody at the finish line to pair down to a single file when they cross the finish. Right. Have you ever been to a race? That's not gonna happen. Yeah. And, so we we managed to get them finally to refund the money. Mhmm. And my friend looked at me and said, I've committed to 60 races next year to do their timing. I can't afford to buy the, championship system. I don't know what I'm gonna do. And he said, why don't you invent a system for me? And at the time, I was running another company doing really well, a really good company, and I said, I just don't at the time. He said, well, why don't you go home and think about it? And if it's if you're not he said something that really works with you well. He said, if you're not up for the challenge, I understand. Oh, no. He had to say that. So I drove home. Within a week, I was on a plane, and I flew literally out to the West Coast to meet with the RFID companies that were just emerging at that time. You had Impinj. You had Alien Technology, Intermac, Motorola, and they were really starting to get into the idea of RFID. So I flew out on my own, met with them, and I selected Alien Technology, and I said, I wanna buy a development kit. You sell that. And they said, we do. Mhmm. So I bought the development kit. I was back in Saint Louis a few days later. It arrived, and I said, I'm gonna I'm gonna write something. I don't know what it's gonna be. I don't know anything about RFID. And I developed the system, the the prototype, I should say, the prototype in about 3 months. Uh-huh. I called my buddy, and I said, hey. I'm gonna I'm gonna come over to Dayton. Do you happen to have a race? And he said, as a matter of fact, I do. Mhmm. And it it's a 5 and 10 k. It's not very big. Okay. Great. Good good place to go test the technology. So I show up. You should see the photos. I I show up with homemade antennas made out of copper wire, and, you know, readers RFID readers in in plastic bags. And, I I mean, it was it was horrible looking, but, he said, yeah. I think this is gonna be a great test. And I said, how many people are coming today? And he said, about 1800. And I had a heart attack. I said, what? Yeah. 1800? You told me it was a small race. Small race. Yeah. It's small it's small. No. It's not small. And to make matters worse, as you probably know because you're a smart guy, it was supposed to rain and have thunderstorms. And I I told my friend, I said, you know, rain is the enemy of RFID, and it's very hard to read chips in rain. So or tags, as they say. So Mhmm. Anyway, we ended up getting a 98.7% read rate. I was astonished. I could not believe that it worked that well, And I told him, I said, I might be on to something here. Went back home. He called and said, I need a few other features in the system. So I kind of worked on it for another 3 or 4 months. And I would send him the software and say, give this a try. And, one thing led to another, and suddenly, he's he's timing races. He's doing, triathlons, half marathons, 5 and 10 k's, and and cycling events as well. And, he said it's working really well. So one day, I'm in my car. This is now, mid 2007. I'm in my car going someplace, and I get a phone call. And it's from a lady who says, I'm with one of the major marathons in the US. I won't name them, but they're one of the major marathons. And she said, I ran in a race in Dayton, Ohio, and I had this disposable chip on the bib. Now you have to keep in mind at the time, nobody had a disposable chip on the bib. We were the very first. Nobody had it. Uh-huh. ChronoTrack hadn't come out with their system yet, So we were we were ahead of them. And so, she said, I've never seen such a thing, and I wanna find out. Can we buy this for our marathon? And I said, how did you get my phone number? And she said, oh, Jeff. That was my friend. Jeff gave it to me. I see. I said, did he tell you we were selling it? And she said, yeah. He said, you'd do it for us. And I laughed, and I said, well, I don't really I'm not in the business of that. I I run another tech firm. And she said, well, how much do you want for each system? Now you have to keep in mind, this was before there were a lot of other technologies. Yeah. Championship at the time was charging around $50,000 for a system and $35 a chip. And I said, how about $30,000 a system 40¢ for a chip? And she had a coronary. And she said, yeah. We'll we'll take 5 of them. And then my literally, my next phrase was, look. I'm I'm not gonna build these on spec. You've gotta be committed, so you're gonna need to wire transfer the money to me. And she's like, fine. I call my wife at home, and I said, do we have an account we can use for somebody to wire me a $150,000? And she said, what what did you just do? I said, I don't know. I think I've launched a company. That's how it started. And what happened was we continued to get phone calls from people who had run-in races in the Ohio area, and that led us to starting to build a business. I see. Eventually, it got so big that in my house we were literally in my house, and I have a big home, but I had 5 employees coming to my home every day. We had FedEx, and UPS trucks showing up. And the neighbors came over and said, you know, Kurt, we like you, but you gotta move this into a building somewhere. You know, you're you're putting into a manufacturing center, and we did. We moved right away. And, and my I looked at my wife, and I said, I think I've accidentally launched a company here. Mhmm. And that's how it started. My wife, by the way, is the cofounder, and she is also our chief financial officer. Oh, great. Company. And so she's heavily involved in our business as well. Mhmm. And I remember she looked at me and she said, okay. We're never gonna sell more than 25 systems. Right? And I said, yeah. Never more than that. She said, because I don't really wanna work this hard. At the end of that year, we had 75 customers around the world. And and I said, I don't know how it happened. And then the next year, it grew again and again, and it just kept growing. And we didn't start advertising for this company until probably 8 or 9 years ago because in the beginning, it was just all word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth. And so it was an accidental business. That's what we like to say around there. Now it's it's a major concern now. You know, it's not an accident anymore, and we run like major corporation. You know? That is so true. Now the the system called the jaguar system or the chips are also called the time called Jaguar. [Kamal] I think there is a story behind why did you name it jaguar. The reason is because my wife and I have been heavily involved, since we've been married in the rescue of animals. And in particular, we love the big cats, the carnivores. And, we got involved with an organization out of Kingsburg, Colorado, just outside Denver, called the Wild Animal Sanctuary. Mhmm. And it's it is the largest sanctuary in the world for carnivores. They have over 10,700 acres of property. And, they go all over the world rescuing big cats, and we love cats. And so, we sponsored the rescue. My wife and I sponsored the rescue and paid for the rescue of, 2 jaguars, Negrita and I just went blank from the other name. It'll come to me. But, Sophia. Anyway, we we we sponsored the rescue, and and then we got to go out to Colorado, and we we got to be with them. Now these are large cats. So with them means we're behind a fence, but it's a it's got large holes in it, and we're petting the animals under a supervision of the gentleman who runs the place. We're being very careful, and, and we fell in love. And I said to my wife, it seems like we ought to we ought to have cat names in all of our products, and so we do. So we've had cheetah. We've had jaguar. We've had leopard. Mhmm. We have tomcat. Oh, okay. And, and so we've named all of our products after cats. And today, we sponsor the rescue of wild animals from all over the world. Mhmm. It's a big part of our company, and we give back a fair amount of money Mhmm. To, rescue animals in great need all over the world. You know? Wow. [Kamal] That's why cats. That's great. You know? That's why I was wondering why it is called Jaguar, and then looks like there is a definitely a a story behind how did you name all the products of innovative systems that way. [Kurt] There's one other story there, which is short, and that is if you think about a jaguar, it's sleek. It's very fast. It's Uh-huh. It hides well in the in the in the forest, but it's it's in a phenomenal hunter. Uh-huh. And when I named the timing system, I said, well, we're kinda sleek and we're fast, and you don't really know we're there at the race, but we're reading you. We're keeping an eye on you. So I just thought it kinda was funny that it tied in. So that's why we named it that. Connected the dots. Yeah. [Kamal] Connected the dots. Oh, great. You know, we runners, when you run, you get the beef and you get some chips there or sometimes, you know, chips can be tied to your shoes on different ways. And you start running, you finish the run race, and then you get the results. Like, hey. I did this and that. And but there's lot goes in, like, when the starting the race or setting up the race to finishing it out. Because you are heavily involved in the innovation, and I see that you have 25 patents and counting as well. [Kurt] Yeah. Actually, by the way, it's actually 32 right now. [Kamal] 32? Oh, okay. So I have the whole data then. That's alright. Congratulations. So I was like, if you were to give a glimpse on, like, the runners, I want to see that, you know, runners feel that, like, it's it's a lot of magic to happen for everything goes perfect and get the results and and be proud of your accomplishments. Like, even to this painted picture for Ron, I was like, how does these things come together and work on a very high level? Great question. I've not had that question asked of me before, by the way. Okay. [Kurt] That's that's a good one. You know, it's interesting. I I had been very, very heavy at one time. Before I started this company, I weighed about 350 Lbs , And, my doctors had told me, if you don't lose weight, you're probably gonna die because you're type a, you work hard, and the weight is not good. And so I said, alright. Well, how about if I drop a £125? And the doctor said, well, it's not that easy, but good luck. I started walking. Next thing I knew, I was jogging. This was in about 2,005. And I made the decision that I would sign up for a half marathon in 2,000, late 2006. Okay. And a lot of people thought I was crazy. A lot of friends said, you know, why don't you start small, like a 1 mile walk? And I said, no. I'm gonna set the bar high. I'm I'm type a. I think a half marathon is a good goal. So, I ran the half marathon. When I crossed the finish line, there was no results. There were no screens. There was no nothing. And Right. I it was so anticlimactic, and I and I remember thinking it. I I literally turned around. I walked back over to the timing table, and I asked the gentleman sitting there. I said, I what are my results? And the reason that's important is I was a new runner. I wasn't wearing a I wasn't wearing a watch. Garmin didn't have the wonderful watches they have today. Yeah. And so I I had no idea what my time was. And he said and this was a Saturday, and he said, well, I have no idea, but if you look on our website on Monday or Tuesday, it should be there. And I remember thinking, my god. I trained for almost 2 years for this event. It's a big deal to me. I had, by the way, lost over a £100 at that point. Oh, wow. Yeah. And I thought, this ought to be a better experience for the athlete. It really bothers me that Mhmm. It's sort of nonchalant, and the answer is, well, I'll just check the website in a few days. And that stuck with me. And when I started this company, I said, every athlete deserves to feel like they've done the Olympics, every athlete, including people who even just walk. They're trying to lose weight. So I've got to I've gotta change this industry. Sort of business accidentally, I I was at races where I thought, why aren't there scrolling results screens? And and why isn't there an update on a phone that lets you know, hey. Congratulations. You just finished. I saw all of these things that nobody was innovating. There was absolutely no innovation at that time in the industry. Even as an Ironman, you finished an Ironman, and they did have one screen that was up that would show the results. But even there, there were no kiosks. There was no phone integration. There was nothing. And Mhmm. And I did some Ironmans, and I thought, can't it be better than this? And so that really stuck with me. And I think it's why we're so successful because maybe it was anger, maybe it was disgust, but I said, we have to change this industry. And we were the very first. If you don't know, nobody had kiosks. We were the first. We were the first to have scrolling results. We were the first to have an app on your phone. We were the first to send text messages to your family to say, you just finished the race. We were the first to have photo systems that captured your photos at the finish line. And my entire passion, including to this day, is to say, how can we make it better so that somebody who's never gonna do the Olympics, they weren't a college all American, they're just a a a a guy or a housewife or, somebody with a disability even. How do we make it so that they can feel like that 5 k was their Olympic experience? And that's what drives my company. All my engineers, all the marketing people, everybody that works here knows me, obviously, quite well, and they know we're gonna invent something to change the world. That's how we feel about it. It's not just a business. So that's the innovation drive. I I don't know if I answered your question. [Kamal] I hope I did. No. You did. I was also hoping you can touch on, like, okay. Someone got a chip to run. Like, how does the whole magical experience that you create with RFID technology? Maybe you can, you know, illustrate a little bit. Absolutely. If if for us, it really starts at packet pickup. You pick up your bib, and when you go over to the do the chip check with the bib, we're gonna read the chip, and then we're gonna tell you on screen, step next door, 10 feet away, and take a photo of yourself. So we have a software product that allows you to do your own selfies. And it's a nice camera, high resolution camera. It's a screen that says, type in your bib number that you just picked up, and then you've got 10 seconds to pose, and you can take as many photos as you want. It begins there. Why are we taking those photos? Well, we have we're up to some no good there, really. Number 1, we're gonna give those photos to the participant when the race is over, and they're gonna love that. Because we say, here's what you look like before, and here's your photo at the finish line. This is what you look like after that. Yeah. Yeah. They laugh, and they love that. But the other reason we do it is because when we take the photo of that person prerace, we can then use that photo to find them out on the course if there's a medical emergency. We've been doing this since I started the company. Oh, wow. Somebody can come to us and say and it it's happened countless number of times. It just happened again 2 weeks ago at a huge race. The medical staff will come to us and say, the gentleman has had a heart attack, and we're airlifting him to a hospital. His wife and kids are on the course. Can you find them? Can you find them? If if they've taken a selfie before the race, not only do we have the chip read from along the the route, but now we have a photo of what they look like. And we can send that photo literally to that timing point, the next timing point they're gonna show up at. So we'll say, well, they've gone past split 12. They're gonna hit split 3 in about 16 minutes based on their pace. We'll send the photo out there, and we'll say, we want you to look for these people. And when you see them, stop them. We've gotta airlift them to a hospital. Their their father's in bad shape. And so it started at packet pickup for us. Then I see. And then then the next step is on race morning is, we're reading their chip. We're unique in our in the stuff that I invented, it's unique in that we wanna read the chip a 1000 times before the race starts. Because what that tells us is we know we have a good chip. If we're gonna start a race and, a chip is missing so let's say we haven't read the chip yet. Well, there's a possibility that person's is way back in the pack, so that's normal. But there's also a possibility if this is a 200 person race, we probably should have seen the chip when that person was standing around. Yeah. So that gives us the ability to immediately say, we have a missing chip. Let's find that person before the race starts. We will literally go on the PA system that's playing music, and we'll say, Kurt Hanson, are you in the audience? And, yeah, I'm over here. Well, come over here. We're not getting a chip rate on your bib. Oh, yeah. I was playing around with it last night. My kid's interested in engineering. Oh, okay. Well, he messed up the chip. We're gonna replace it. So that was the next step. Today, not like in the beginning, but today, we even do race day chip bib assignment, right up to the race starts. And in fact, we're unique in this. Somebody can walk up 2 minutes after the 5 k has already started and say, I'm sorry. I'm late. Mhmm. Can I still run? And our answer is absolutely. So we have an app on a phone. We will literally type their name in, assign them the bib. They can take off and run, and they they get to participate. They're not held back from participating. Nice. So the technology is there to do that. Now when they're out on the course the next thing we're doing is if they have our free app on the phone, we're chat we're tracking. We're doing GPS tracking if they've allowed it. And so we know where they're at on the course. We tell their family. If you wanna see your son at split 1, let's say it's a 10 k and the first split is at maybe mile 3. We can literally say to the family, he's going to arrive there based on his current pace. He's gonna arrive there exactly this time, and we can tell that, family, here's where you go to park. Here's where you can go park, and then you hop over to the split point, you can see them. So so we're tracking the athlete. Now if the athlete doesn't wanna be tracked, that's fine too. We won't know their pace until they get to split 1 and we read the chip. But once we know that, then we'll start tracking them at the next split, and we'll we'll monitor their pace. This happens all the time. I was in a race not long ago, and parents walked up and said, our 14 year old daughter is missing. We're scared to death. And I said, okay. What what's going on? And they said, we can't find her. We can't find her, and she should have finished 10 minutes ago. Mhmm. And it was a pretty good size race, probably about 1500 people. And I said, well, let me look on this. I happen to be there. I said, let me look on the system. So I looked, and I said, yeah. She's finished. Her pace was good, and she finished. And I said, she's gotta be here, in the athlete village area somewhere. So we got on the PA system. We called her, and sure enough, she was hanging out with some other girlfriends, and she forgot to tell her parents she was there. Yeah. Yeah. We we could confirm instantly. And the reason is that on our systems, they all talk to each other. So I see. Split 1, split 2, split 3. Sometimes we have races that'll have 5 or 10 splits. They're all communicating to the finish line in real time in real time. And so we know where that person is. We know what their pace is, and we're tracking them the entire way. And so all that tracking allows us to do really neat things like on our kiosk. If you go to one of our big events, you can walk up on a kiosk and you can type in the person's name or BIM number, and it will literally tell you, they passed split 1 22 minutes ago. They're on their way to split 2. And, by the way, here's a photo of them from split 1. You can literally go to Kia and say, show me a photo from my family member of split 1, and it'll do that. Nobody nobody today does this. We're the only ones in the world that do this today. Nice. And and so the the whole tracking that's going on, the chip is there so I know who you are and where you're at. But behind that is all the technology that's saying, let's publish that to the web. Let's let's let the families know. Let's let them go up to kiosks. Even the disc jockey that they hire to do the finish line. You know, you've been to races. Somebody's calling your name out. Yeah. So when I did Ironman races, I love to hear Mike Riley say, Kurt Andersen, you are an Ironman. It was a great feeling, especially in Kona for the world championship. That was awesome. Yeah. Isn't it neat when it's a half marathon and the family is around the finish line and they hear over the PA, Laura Johnson just passed split 1. Her pace is 8 minute miles, and her family's sitting there. And they're like, oh my god. That is so cool that they know that. Yeah. Yeah. So so the technology of the chip is what allows us to then layer on top of that all these products and services. And the secret to making that work, and I'm really honest when I tell you this, is that you can't have an average chip. Because if you start missing a lot of chip reads, the whole concept goes out the window because you're not Right. You can't guarantee good data, and that's why we've always invented our own chip technology here. Going back to the very first chip we ever put out, I met with the engineers, the silicon engineers that were designing the chip and said, I know this is an off the shelf RFID chip that you're selling, but we wanna modify it. And I wanna be involved in the design, and here's some things I wanna do. And so our chips have always had this unique ability to deal with very harsh conditions, which is important because it's what lets the entire infrastructure operate. Right. Because, yeah, if the chip is not up to the mark, you're missing the whole point, the whole experience for the owners. Whole experience is done if we don't get you at us if we don't get you the 1st split Right. Or if the app isn't doing GPS tracking correctly Right. We're in trouble. And and and GPS is a great example. We we we did something really crazy there, which was we know GPS signals can be lost if you're under a lot of trees or running under a bridge. And so we did a tremendous amount of development, partnered with Apple on this, and we wanted to look at how we could use accelerometers inside the phone to, estimate your position if we lost GPS. Mhmm. It's remarkable. We're generally within about 10 to 15 feet when we pick up the GPS signal again. We're right back to where we should be. And so even that I mean, something as minor as that, we put a tremendous amount of engineering into that to figure that out. [Kamal] Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome. I remember a use case card. I think you'll be really happy. I'm not sure or the the family. So I I know a friend, which I talked to another podcast of mine. He's coming to run Boston next week. Oh. So he has a teenage son who grew up seeing him running. So he's the kind of the cheer squad. So, basically, he goes, you know, miles after and off and a bike or run to cheer his daddy up. So he has the app. He can know actually where my daddy would be in that split in so much time because of the pace. He can just go however he wants to, but it and a lot of kids or a lot of family members does it. So I wish to have that app that you have of intuitive timing system to track the family members. Yeah. We have competitors who've caught up on oh, not I wouldn't say caught up, but they implemented GPS tracking. It's kind of interesting. We joke around here that we invent everything so that everybody else can copy us. Mhmm. And it is true. I mean, there are probably 4 or 5 companies that make apps now that'll do the GPS tracking. What they don't do, and this is where it's unique for us, is it's not integrated into the entire timing architecture. Right. That's what's different. In fact, on our app, you won't know this, but if let's say you were doing Kona. You were doing Ironman. Now they don't use our platform, unfortunately. I wish they did. But if you were doing an Ironman like when I did Kona, when you run on Alihee Drive and you see this beautiful inlet with the ocean, with our app, you can literally stop running, take a picture of yourself in the app, and we'll report the GPS position. We'll publish that photo to your Facebook page and all your friends instantly. Well, let me just say, Kurt's out on Alihi Drive. He stopped for a second. Take a photo, and now everybody in your world who's a Facebook friend knows, hey. That's cool. He's on the course. So it's little things like that that we still do that we don't see anybody else doing today. Oh, great. It's hard. None. [Kamal] That that's thank you for sharing. And I think I happen to watch your whole demo of the system that you put up on the website too. So I'll share in my, I mean, show show notes too, but it's like an hour long demo that you go really in-depth for, you know, people who really on on to understand the system, how it works. But thanks for giving the high level overview of how you create this magical experience for the runners, the family members who were involved in the race as well. And there, yeah, I was curious to understand, like, you said you travel around the world, different races that, you know, innovative timing systems are helping to organize those races or, you know, helping those. Can you share us kind of the scale of, innovative timing stack? You're one of the leading timing companies in the world, so there are a lot of customers. What scale you operate? Can you share some insights there? Today, we have, we're approaching 700 offices now. [Kurt] And an office for us is it's a little little bit like a franchise. We don't charge a royalty like most franchises would, but we basically provide the equipment to that office. We do all their training. They have a regional leader that oversees them for a while to make sure they're doing okay. And, of course, they're buying all their supplies from us, the chips and bibs and things that they need. And so, it's interesting that when you're that size, you have to have training programs in place. You have to have technical support systems in place. You have to build if you're gonna grow that big, you have to have really remarkable infrastructure behind the scenes because Absolutely. On a given Saturday around the world, we might have 354, 400 races going simultaneously, maybe more. So we have a we have a network operation center here at our headquarters that have these huge television screens on the wall. Looks like NASA. And we have engineers that are sitting there watching all of these events. And the way that works is the systems can literally send us messages about anything that's going on. If they have an Internet connection at that race, our systems will literally email and say, one of the antennas is not performing as well as it should. We can run diagnostics while the race is going on, and the timer, the guy running the system out there, he doesn't even know we're doing it. We'll literally troubleshoot it. And if we see a problem, we'll send him a pop up message that says, it's headquarters. You have a little situation developing. We want you to replace the cable on that antenna during the race. I mean, literally during the race. Mhmm. So the scale of this thing has grown to be so big that we have to make sure that we can support that scale. And so we have we have 12 regional leaders in the United oh, North America. We have 12 regional leaders. And then overseas, we have regional leaders there, and they help us with training, technical support, things like that. Now, what's interesting is that in a normal year, non COVID year, when COVID happened, everything shut down, but this year is a good example. We'll do about 18,000 races around Oh, wow. This year. 18,000. It's a lot. And It is. And some of our offices are doing 4 or 5 events a year. That's it. And some of the big ones, like our office in Texas, he's probably gonna do 250 to 300 events this year. It's a lot. And so it varies based on office, but the total scale is we'll be we'll do races this year probably in around, and it's a guess, probably around 70, 80 countries, maybe more. Mhmm. Maybe more. Sometimes our great example is Singapore. So you have Singapore and Malaysia, which are basically next door to each other. Right? I mean, they have a bridge. So I count Singapore and Malaysia essentially as one territory, but in reality, it's 2 countries. So, you know, situations like that in Europe, as you well know, in Europe, our tyrant Liechtenstein, he goes and he times races in other countries around him. And so I don't know what the real fingerprint or footprint, I should say, is, but it's probably 80, 90 countries, 18,000 events a year. It's a lot. I mean, it's it's amazing. When I'm in here on Saturdays, which is almost every Saturday, if I walk into the network operations center and I look up at the screens, I'm astonished. I I I think to myself, 15 years ago, I was in my house. And today, I'm watching races going on in, you know, the South Pacific and all over Europe. Even in the Middle East, we have a we have a huge contingency in the Middle East. A lot of the countries there use our products as well. So it's kinda neat to see the board light up. There are maps up there that light up and show or, you know, what's going on around the world. Is is it like a command center you set up? Like, you can see what's going on? Command center. And that's that's the other thing I love about our company is that, tech support for us, for our customers isn't you know, it's not an answering machine. It's not an afterthought. And this is one of the things that really drives me crazy in this industry is that, we have 5 engineers whose total goal in life is to provide technical support. It's all they do. And, our systems are designed in real time to alert us here in Saint Louis anytime 24 hours a day if there's a problem. We're not open at 11 o'clock at night. It's not normal for us. But if we get an alert I noticed this the other night, actually. We have we had an event going on in, Ireland, and the guy there that runs the office was having we have actually 3 offices in Ireland, but he the one guy was having a bit of a problem. And the alert came in on Saturday. It came in for us at about 2 in the morning. And I I when an alert comes in and it's a a high level alert, my phone goes off. And even if I'm sleeping, I grab my phone, I look at it. So I said, well, I'm gonna get up and, because nobody's gonna respond to you in the morning. Well, one of my other engineers here, tech support engineer, had already responded. He was already he'd already from his home, he had woken up. He took remote control of the system in Ireland and figured out what they had done wrong, fixed it, and the race just kept going. And so I get a typically, I get an email from somebody that says, oh my god. I mean, it's 2 in the morning for you guys. You never sleep? And, well, not if the phone goes off. So, it's pretty amazing how we can support people all over the world. Now we do have a operation in London and we can support races from London as well. But it just so happened that at that office, the, staff there were at another race, so they couldn't they couldn't help the gentleman in Ireland at that time. And that's why the US kicks in and takes over. It. Yeah. Great. [Kamal] And I think if I am I read your the website card, this is one of your key competitive advantage. Right? The support that you provide to your customers, like, unparalleled. Nobody in the world in this industry yeah. I mean, they just don't build in systems to track every single thing that's going on. [Kurt] They don't, they just don't have the infrastructure that we have to provide that level of support. I mean, it goes beyond that. We do the training. We have an online training university that people go through to get certified. We have webinars that happen every single month. We have 2 webinars, and one of them is a training class, and the other one, we call it uncle Kurt's fireside chats. It's named after the famous fireside chats from Theodore Roosevelt. Uh-huh. And, it's an open mic. And anybody around the world can check-in and say, hey. [Kamal] I have a question, Kurt. So as a CEO and also the guy who invented a lot of technology, I make myself available to any question anybody can ask anywhere around the world. I do that every single month. The other rule we have is, you can call me every night. I'm here till usually 9 o'clock every night because I love what I do. I don't consider it work. And so if somebody will literally call me on my desk phone here, the extension is published. It's 111. And I don't have an admin. I don't have somebody screening my calls. I refuse to do that. I don't want that. I want if somebody needs to reach me, they can get to me. And then the other thing we do, and we it's a rule of our company is we do not go home until every single email or phone call that came in that day has been responded to. It doesn't mean that we have a solution. So if something electronically breaks in somebody's product, which is pretty rare, but if it happens, we'll let them know. We're going to tomorrow, we're gonna have our customer services team ship it back overnight to us, and we're gonna send you a loaner while your system's back here being repaired. So it may take to until the next day to get everything wrapped up, but we don't go home at night Right. Until every single person has been addressed. And that's we're legendary for our technical support. People are just shocked that you know, in fact, it scares them because sometimes I'll actually call. Right. If we're backed up on some support or if the if somebody's out sick. Last week, we had one of our guys had COVID, and he was out sick. And, so I called the customer, and they were terrified. I said, hi. It's Kurt calling. They go, oh my god. Why are you calling? Am I being fired? What's going on? Calm down. We're just we're just a little backed up, and I thought I'd call you. And then, you know, they're like, oh, that's a big deal. It really isn't. I'm just like anybody else, but to them, it's pretty big deal when I call. It is. You know, getting the call from the CEO to respond to their questions. Yeah. I'm sure people would be scared and and surprised at the same time Yeah. For sure. Now That's a by the way, that was a great question about tech support. I've never had that asked of me, and I'm surprised that nobody does because buying the timing system and I tell people this all the time. Buying the timing system is the easy part. You can buy anybody's timing system. When you get it, people think timing is easy. It's not. There are a lot of things you have to learn. There's subtle nuances. There's technical challenges. And what really differentiates a company isn't the sale. It's the after the sale support. That's what makes it that's why we are so big and we've grown so well is because you're not gonna buy our system and not have your hands held. That's for sure. Yeah. And, also, if you get that level of support, you build that loyalty or you will use it next time or the time after. Right? But if you say that, hey. There's nobody to help me, you may think twice. Like, your friend did in the the first, time he got the board, the 40,000 kit. Right? So Yeah. And and and I'll tell you something from a business standpoint now. I'll put on my business. One of the things we measure is turnover rate. How many of our timers leave every year? And we're very concerned. We always wanna know what that rate looks like. And for us, we've, had almost we're at 698 offices right now. So we're close to 700. Of our in the last, oh gosh, 17, 18 years now, I guess, we've been doing this, we've lost about 25 to 30 of our timers. 25 to 30. That is an attrition rate that's unbelievable. But what's interesting is then you have to dive into that and you have to ask, which we do. Why did those 30 p let's say 30. Why did those 30 people leave? Well, 10 of them left because they thought they were gonna get better technology somewhere else. Okay. Fair enough. That that's their call, and they think that's a better choice for them. I I respect that. They decided to do that. Mhmm. The other 20, roughly 20, 3 of those people died, unfortunately. They had heart attacks and died, so their business was done. Most of them, though, retired. They just said, I'm 65 or 7 years old. I'm too tired to get up in the mornings and go out on time races. It's a lot of work, and they just retired. They got out of the business. So when we look back, we know that there's probably 10 it might be 10 or 12, but I'm it's close. People who basically said, I give up on ITS. For whatever reason, I'm gonna go elsewhere. That's sort of that low number is so unheard of in our industry. It's just Okay. And people jokingly who don't like us say it's the cult of Kurt. They they think we're some sort of a cult that people join and they can't get out of. It's not true. But if you're if you're being well cared for and we love you and we take care of you and we support you Mhmm. Why would you leave? You you generally don't. You're just not gonna leave. Yeah. So usually, is that one office supporting one timer or can have multiple timers? It is the timer who's running the office. Is it okay? Office. I don't mean physically in a strip mall, there's a building. Although that's true. We have we have timers who are so large that they have, their own buildings. Mhmm. But, most of them work from their home, and that's their office. That's what we call an office. I see. Okay. Yeah. So in terms of real brick and mortar where we have offices, let me think about that. We have 1, 2, 3, I count them all. 3. Yeah. 3 offices other than our head well, actually, 4 London. We have 4 offices outside of the headquarters here at Saint Louis. So we have an office in Chicago. We have an office in Ocean City, Maryland. We have an office in London, and I'm leaving somebody out. Who did I leave? Oh, an office in Silicon Valley. Yeah. I see. Oh, yeah. [Kamal] Oh, great. Now changing the gear a little bit, Kurt, where do you see the industry heading? Like, looking into the future. [Kurt] Yeah. It's a great question. 2 years ago at our conference, we do an annual conference, and that's a big event. Mhmm. I stood up on stage, and I said, we are, to quote the Michael Porter 5 Forces model, at Harvard University that Michael teaches. I said, we are entering a phase here where, substitution is the possibility of substitution is great. The competitive pressures are enormous, and we're going to see, a fallout in our industry. We're going to see companies changing ownership, meaning my competitors. Mhmm. We're gonna see companies selling out. It is really hard to make money in the timing industry. And a perfect example of that, and and I have the utmost respect for the gentleman who runs it, but it's Mylaps. You know, Mylaps Camille, who runs Mylaps, is a is a brilliant CEO. He's fairly new to the company. They've gone through a number of CEOs, but, he's not a he's not an engineer. He's not a technician. He's he he's he's a runner, and he he loves the industry, but this is a very high-tech business. You have to really be a strong technician, I believe. Now he would argue otherwise, respectfully so, and he may be right. Maybe I'm biased. I I'm sure I am. But, Mylaps was owned by a venture capital firm, and it was sold to another venture capital firm. Okay? Venture capital firms only sell if they can make a substantial profit. And in this particular case, I don't think they did. I think if you look at ChronoTrack, ChronoTrack is owned by, Lifetime Fitness, and Lifetime has poured a lot of money into them. Have they received a a really great return on that? I doubt it. I doubt it. It's a hard business to be in because there's so many different pressures and forces coming at you, and the consolidation is clearly underway. We're seeing companies buying up other companies. We're by the way, we are the only company that's privately owned. My wife and I own the entire company, and there is no venture capital. There is no other owner. We're it, and we're the last. Every single one of the big competitors, which should be MyLabs, ChronoTrack, and Raceresult, these are all companies that are backed by VCs or backed by, other means, but we're not. And and I haven't sold out, even though there's a lot of pressure. We get a lot of phone calls to sell a company, and we don't. And the reason we don't is because we love what we do, and we believe that, we believe that selling out doesn't buy us anything. We have cash. We don't need money. Mhmm. And and we wanna preserve the level of support we have. And I think somebody who bought us would probably say, you're spending too much on support, which I'm not gonna cut back on. Our r and d, by the way, represents 40% of our revenue here. We spend 40% on if you know a lot about business, most companies, Microsoft's a good one. They'll spend 18 to 20%, and that's considered ridiculous. Mhmm. Tech industry, We spend 40% of our money goes back into R&D here. Wow. And that's because we're so committed. Somebody buying us wouldn't do that. So there's a consolidation absolutely underway, and we've seen companies come and go. There'll be more of those start up. Masha, which is a company out of Spain, they disappeared. They came out really strong and said, we're gonna dominate the the world. And I said, well, good luck. It's too late. It's too late for a startup to come into this industry. We're a very mature industry now. It's too late to come in as a startup. If you're not already here, you're not gonna crush MyLabs and ChronoTrack and Racers all for us. It's just too late. And so the industry is changing. There's been a rumor for a long time that GPS chips a GPS chip on a bib would wipe out timing companies, and it's never gonna happen. And the reason is we're we are the world leader in GPS tracking technology for sports events. We are deep into it, and we can't do it at a competitive price. Even if I produce 10,000,000 chips for bibs that were GPS based, the cost is just too high. There's a lot of cost pressure on our industry. So I think what's gonna what you're gonna see happen is you'll see a little bit more consolidation. Mhmm. I think there'll be, I think the 4 of us big guys will probably remain where we're at, principally because the other 3 are owned by VCs, and they're not gonna sell it. In fact, they couldn't sell it. They you couldn't sell MyLabs today, or ChronoTrack probably to most other companies because the asking price, based on what's been invested to build that business, the asking price would be just too high. Mhmm. There's not enough return on that investment. And so, I think the 4 of us will be around. MyLab is a great company. They'll be around. Race Result's a great company. They'll be around. ChronoTrack is an okay company, but they'll be around. They're not going anywhere. Mhmm. And what'll happen is the small guys that'll come in will either be bought quickly or they'll be wiped out. Mhmm. They won't be able to sustain themselves. So we'll get down to 4 companies. The threat of, you know, there'll be some new technology. What well, there is a company that started up that said Bluetooth. We're gonna do timing with Bluetooth, and we're gonna read the phone as it comes by the finish line. When they make that announcement, that press announcement, our engineers I met with our engineers, and we just busted out laughing because we know what it takes to create a Bluetooth connection to a phone. It takes about a quarter of a second. Mhmm. Quarter of a second. So if you're gonna time a race with 30 people and you're gonna ask them to spread out at the finish line, you can probably do it. But if you're gonna try to time a race with a 1,000 people coming across the starting line, you couldn't create the Bluetooth connections. Well, that company that bragged that they were gonna take the top 4 down, they're out of business. They're gone because they they quickly realized it's not gonna happen. So I think there'll be a battle royale of the 4 of us. I don't know who will win. I think it'll be us, but maybe we'll lose. I don't know. But the the 4 of us are fighting to, I think we're fighting to grow in an industry that's fairly saturated right now in the US. Now for us, our big growth is not in the US. It's overseas. We have I see. Operations going on in India and, parts of Asia and even China. We're in China now. And we see, tremendous opportunities for growth outside the US. North America is pretty saturated right now. Right. [Kamal] Right. Oh, great. Thanks for sharing. I think, I had an amazing chat with you, Kurt, and thank you for your time. I really appreciate you being generous sharing the story, the industry where it is heading, and some stories about Jaguar system and and and the innovative timing system as well. [Kurt] So thank you. You're welcome. And I I will say in closing that I I admire you because I do a lot of interviews. And most of the time, the interviewer hasn't done the research. Mhmm. And the fact that you I can tell you did your homework, and you were really well prepared. And so my compliments to you. You did a great job great job. [Kamal] Thank you, Kurtt. Really appreciate it.