UPenn Graduate School Group Project

AchievEEG Business Plan

Table of Contents

1. Executive Summary

2. Company Overview

3. Product Description

3.1.  Product Value Proposition

3.2.   Proprietary Rights

3.3.  Stage of Development

4. Industry & Market Analysis

4.1.  Industry Analysis

4.2.  Competitor Analysis

4.3.  Market Analysis

4.4.  Customer Analysis

5. Marketing, Sales and Distribution Plan

5.1.  Target Market Strategy

5.2.  Revenue Model and Pricing Strategy

5.3.  Distribution Plan

5.4.  Advertising and Promotion Plan

5.5.  Sales Plan

6. Operations Plan

6.1.  Scope of Operations

6.2.  Scaling Operations

7. Development Plan: Activities & Milestones

8. Management

8.1.  Company Organization

8.2.  Management Team

8.3.  Advisors and Board of Directors

9. Financial Plan

9.1.  Sales Forecast

9.2.  Financial Forecast

9.3.  Funding Requirements

10. Offering

10.1.  Investment Requirements

10.2.  Exit Opportunities

10.3.  Valuation of Business

10.4.  Offer

11. Conclusion

Reference List

Project Overview:

To develop a business plan for a neuroscience technology invented and developed at Penn’s Platt Labs.

Key Takeaways:

1. Research interviews conducted with subject matter experts on all aspects of the technology, sales and marketing, operations, etc., for starting in this business.

2. Drafted first iteration of each section of business plan and VC pitch.

3. Drafted final version of business plan and presented pitch to VC panel.

Process:

AchievEEG Pitch Deck

AchievEEG Business Plan

Executive Summary

Our Product and Competitive Advantage

The AchievEEG headband is a comfortable, durable, athletic headband that uses innovative electroencephalography (EEG) technology developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Platt Labs  to measure brain signals and provide actionable feedback on focus, stress, fatigue, and engagement levels and team synchrony in real-time. Our product consists of a headband with patented silver nanowire sensors that measures and monitors each individual’s EEG signals and a mobile application, which translates EEG signal data into actionable and easy to interpret insights using advanced proprietary algorithms. For each headband sold, we generate one-time revenue from the sale of the device itself and recurring revenue from our application subscription and optional upgrade packages. Our patented state of the art EEG silver nanowires sensors provide a research-grade signal quality. Unlike other EEG products on the market, our smaller, lighter, more durable sensors are integrated into a soft headband wireless wearable device that is designed to be worn during intense physical activity. Our modular design approach makes it easy to reskin our silver nanowire technology into a new headband. This allows  us to partner with large sport equipment companies like Nike and Adidas to customize headbands for our athletes, changing the color or branding of the headband depending on their preferences as part of a monthly customization subscription.

Market Opportunities 

We will initially target the rowing market as our early adopters. Rowing is a sport that requires intense focus and high synchrony between team members. We will work with elite national team rowers to develop a product that suits their needs and we will exhibit our AchievEEG headbands at large rowing regattas like the Head of the Charles, that gathers thousands of athletes from across the US and around the world in Boston each fall, to gain traction within the highly specialized rowing training device market. Our innovators and early adopters will be collegiate, masters, nationals and junior rowers in North America and Europe. Their adoption of AchievEEG will give our product credibility as being the only product on the market to measure and track team synchrony, along with each individual’s mental performance level and provide feedback in real-time. From there, we will rapidly expand to other paddling sports and then to boutique indoor rowing gyms, spinning, and CrossFit markets. These users will make up our early majority. They will initially discover our product at their gyms and will choose to purchase an AchievEEG headband via the gym for personal use. 

Sports Wearables Industry

The global revenues from wearable devices for sports is evaluated at $7.04B in 2019, with projections of close to 100 million devices shipped for the year. In recent years, sports have become more and more data-driven and athletes regularly track all kinds of metrics with many different sensors. The importance of mental performance has also becoming increasingly prominent and athletes are taught to work smarter not harder. AchievEEG enters the market at the perfect time to make the most of these two recent trends with our product that enables athletes to quantify and track their mental performance during training sessions. Current incumbents in this space include Fitbit, the first wearables only company to go public, China’s Huami as well as tech giants Apple and Samsung. While these companies are focused on products provide general physical information, such as heart rate, to a wider consumer market, AchievEEG differentiates itself by providing mental feedback and specifically targeting athletes.

Our Company and Team

AchievEEG is a mental performance and fitness tracking wearable device startup based in Philadelphia. Our founding team is composed of five students from the University of Pennsylvania’s Engineering Entrepreneurship program, who are all top academic and athletic achievers with diverse interests ranging from bioengineering, biotechnology, product design and manufacturing. We will make sure to hire to fill the gaps in our team’s expertise, focusing especially on hiring excellent software engineers and developers early on. Our team’s board of directors includes world leaders in neuroscience and sports performance, as well as successful entrepreneurs. They will provide a balance of academic and entrepreneurial insights to the AchievEEG team as we launch our product, scale our team, and grow our operations.

Financial Projections

By the end of our 5th year of operation, we project to achieve an annual revenue of $10.2MM  from the sale of 21,500 AchievEEG headbands and accompanying subscriptions that year, with operating expenses of $3.5MM and net earnings of $1.03MM. At the time of exit at the end of Year 5, we project AchievEEG’s valuation will be $226MM. We project continued exponential revenue growth as we launch in the niche rowing market and expand to a wider sports and fitness market.

Financing Requirements 

Together, AchievEEG’s five founders have bootstrapped $250,000 in the company. We seek a seed financing round of $250,000 immediately. At the end of our first year of operations, we also seek an additional $2MM in Series A venture capital financing to continue our research and development efforts. Next, in year 2, we are seeking $2.5MM in Series B financing as we continue to scale up manufacturing and product development and prepare for our expansion into wider sports and fitness consumer markets. Following this Series B funding, we will be financially self-sufficient. At the time of our exit 5 years post-launch, either in the form of acquisition or IPO, we project Seed investors will see a return of 9 times their investment after 5 years, Series A investors will see a return of 6.5 times their initial investment after 4 years and Series B investors will see a return of 4 times their initial investment after 3 years. 

Conclusion

Gone are the days of believing that the secret to unlocking human potential lies in working harder and longer. Human performance is becoming increasingly data-driven and mental performance is now recognized as having equal or greater importance than physical performance. We believe that AchievEEG lies at the forefront of these trends and will guide the revolution of quantifying human mental performance.

2. Company Overview

AchievEEG offers athletes a solution to measure mental performance, focus, engagement, stress and team synchrony during training. Our product consists of two parts. First, our hardware component is a comfortable athletic textile headband embedded with patented research-grade EEG sensors that measures the brain’s electrical signals and converts the signal into real-time feedback on mental performance. Our software component is a mobile application that provides easy to interpret actionable feedback on these mental performance metrics, in a ‘team mode’ where coaches can compare between teammates or ‘individual mode’ for just one athlete at a time that can be used either during or after the workout, in complement to other traditionally collected metrics such as speed, stroke rate and heart rate. Our product enables athletes to achieve their full potential by working not just harder but smarter together through the use of advanced mental performance analytics technology.

Our founding team consists of five students from the University of Pennsylvania’s Engineering Entrepreneurship program. The Executive Officer, Carolyne Godon is a bioengineering master’s student with previous experience in the medical device industry and in pharmaceutical regulations.1,2 She is also a former varsity and national team athlete. The Operations Officer, Prima Pisuttisarun is also a bioengineering master’s student who has previously worked in management and healthcare consulting and was involved in an early-stage biotechnology startup. AchievEEG’s Technology Officer, Samaya Sinha, is a graduate student in the Integrated Product Design program. She has experience at startups working in UX and design. Michael Song, our Marketing Officer, is a master’s student in biotechnology and has worked in hospital research laboratories and in management and healthcare consulting. Choyce, the Financial Officer, is an undergraduate studying Science, Technology, and Society and is also a current varsity football athlete. He has previously worked in manufacturing engineering facilities and has held several sales positions. Our board is composed of neuroscience researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, Penn’s men’s lightweight rowing coach and the CEOs of NK Sports and Muse. We will hire to fill the gaps in our expertise, particularly in software development. 

Our trademarked company name, AchievEEG, combines the words “achieve” and “electroencephalography”. The name was chosen to reflect both our mission and our core technology. Currently, AchievEEG is not yet an established company. We will organize our new company as an LLC since these types of companies are easier to set up and inexpensive to start. We will convert to a C-Corp immediately before venture funding.3 At this time, our company is based in Philadelphia and that is also where we plan to grow, since the city is a hub for rowing, which is our initial market, and it is also an up-and-coming technology startup hotspot.

Our goal as a company is to become the market leader in rowing training devices as the only product that measures mental performance and synchrony between teammates in real-time. We plan to go big and have our product used by every rowing team in the country then use the momentum gained in rowing to propel our product into a wider secondary market in other sports.4 A potential exit strategy is to get acquired by a company specialized in rowing products like NK Sports or a large sports company that is interested in the intersection of electronics, analytics and sports.

3. Product Description

3.1 Description of Complete Product and Its Value Proposition

AchievEEG is the first wearable headband and digital experience  of its kind that measures individual sports performance, such as focus, reaction times, stress levels, fatigue, and attention levels, as well as team synchronicity. Figure 3.1 shows the hardware and software components of the product. The complete product experience would consist of all team members wearing the headband during training sessions. Each headband consists of dry electrode sensors, with silver nanowires for high conductivity, that ensure scientific-grade EEG data collection during the training sessions (Penn Center for Innovation, 2018). An amplifier is connected to the sensors and can connect to Wifi or Bluetooth for data transmission and subsequent data processing for the whole team. The data collected will then be cleaned and processed in real-time with proprietary algorithms, ultimately displaying each individual’s mental performance activity during the training session (Ramakrishnan & Rennie, 2019).  During data processing, the algorithms developed by our team will measure certain EEG frequency bands from the brain that are known to correspond to certain human characteristics. For example, focus can be quantified by measuring alpha and beta frequency bands, while inattentiveness can be measured using theta frequency bands (Liu, 2013).5 Each individual’s data can then be overlayed with the data of other individuals to reveal synchronous patterns or team synchronicity, an indirect measurement of the empathy these individuals feel for each other (Konvalinka, 2011).  Figure 3.2, depicts a breakdown of key components of the AchievEEG headband. 

Our product is unlike any on the market because we are able to measure scientific-grade EEG signals for sports and fitness without the wet sensors typically used for medical purposes, that are typically very tedious to use, require that the sensors remain wet, and also require data collection from up to twenty or even twenty-five locations around the individual’s head (Liu, 2013). Our patented dry electrode sensors allow us to apply EEG technology to sports and fitness use-cases, easily collecting scientific-grade EEG signals using an easy-to-wear headband that measures signals from just a handful of locations across an individual’s forehead with dry sensors. In addition to this, our strategic decision to compare data across all team members provides coaches with a unique method for analyzing their teams. 

The digital display, accessible via a mobile app or tablet, will consist of a ‘team mode’, where coaches can analyze synchronous patterns in multiple players’ mental activity, regardless of differences in their physical activity, at any given time in the training session.  Please refer to the tablet in Figure 3.2 for a display of the team mode interface. This will help coaches and team players improve their overall team strategy because they will be able to quantify a team’s mental synchronicity, an indirect measurement of the empathy and support that an individual player feels for other players in the team, in real-time during the practice session (Konvalinka, 2011). The ‘team mode’ display will juxtapose each team member’s activity in one graphic display and highlight synchronous patterns, where multiple team members’ mental activity reveal the same patterns at the same time. In this manner, the coach will be able to quickly determine which team members do not show synchronous mental patterns that match the more mentally in-sync members on the team. They can then use the ‘individual mode’ displays available in the app to help under-coordinated team members catch up to the team members that are more in-sync with one another. They can also diagnose the root cause for under-coordination or poor performance, such as a lack of focus versus a lack of engagement during a particular training session. 

AchievEEG ultimately adds another metric to competitive sport that supports coaches’ gut-checks on which team members work best together or complement each other (Ramakrishnan & Rennie, 2019). For example, coaches will now be able to pair individual team members with confidence, knowing that their decisions are supported by data.  They will also be able to monitor changes in team members’ mental performance throughout the sports season, while matching or pairing up individuals based on these changes. This will be especially impactful for high performance, elite sports teams that invest a lot of time and money into team strategy, striving to achieve enough team synchronicity to beat competitors and remain one step ahead (Bogage, 2016). This product is extremely unique because there are no other EEG wearable devices on the market that address the mental synchronicity of groups. While there are other EEG wearables, like Muse, that track an individual’s mental performance, AchievEEG will be the first product on the market to analyze whole teams’ mental activity during competitive sport (Muse, 2019). We plan to enter the sports market by marketing and advertising our product for rowing use cases in particular, before gaining traction in larger market segments, such as high end gyms and other team sports. 

It is crucial that we bring this product to market first so that we can be the dominant supplier in a niche market of elite and professional rowing teams across the United States and Europe.6 This will help us obtain valuable endorsements and be our proof of concept, allowing us to demonstrate how we improve team synchronicity in a sport that depends on the rhythm that team members can only achieve together.  We plan to use AchievEEG data to show how a team member’s erg scores (i.e., how fast a rower rows) are not an optimal way to determine seat placement within a boat. Instead, rhythm depends on the way that individuals work together in the boat to achieve synchronicity, or the perfect rhythm.  The team mode can be used by coaches and coxswains during practice sessions, while the individual mode can be used by individual athletes on the team.7 From rowing, we plan to target other similar sports such as kayaking, canoeing and paddle boating. We also plan to take advantage of  the growing popularity of indoor rowing to begin to target gyms with indoor rowing equipment, later branching out to high-end, urban boutique and premium gyms that focus on other fitness aspects such as crossfit, spin, and pilates. For the gym use-cases, the individual mode will be particularly useful for gym members who strive to constantly improve on their training regimens. We plan to position this product as a sports wearable and will allow elite sports team managers and administrators to purchase the headgears in bulk for the team, ensuring that they feel they are receiving a reasonable, yet valuable purchase from an up-and-coming, high-tech startup company.8 We plan to obtain revenue through the one-time purchase of the headgear, as well as through an annual subscription for the mobile app, as further detailed in section 5.2 of this document.

3.2 Description of Complete Product and Its Value Proposition

The product leverages proprietary, laboratory-grade  silver nanowire-based EEG sensors from Platt Labs that was registered at the Penn Center for Innovation (Penn Center for Innovation, 2018). The core IP is owned by inventors Michael Platt, Arjun Ramakrishnan, and Naz Belkaya. AchievEEG will license Platt Labs’ patent to commercialize our product. In addition to this, the team will ensure that our IP is protected by enforcing Non Disclosure Agreements with all key strategic partners, manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors.9 

The team will also protect our data-processing algorithms by ensuring that they remain trade secrets, developing our software in-house and having all members of the technology team sign strict Non Disclosure Agreements with regards to our core technology. We will also file for a design patent for our unique headband. It is designed as two modules that separate the high-tech sensors and amplifier from the headband itself, so that the headband can be replaced more frequently than the sensors.  We believe that this modular design will help AchievEEG become a fashion-statement for team members who choose to replace the headband frequently as part of their subscription, swapping their old headband for a new color or personalization, while the core technology still remains intact. Our team will also file for a trademark on the name AchievEEG, so that we can develop a unique brand identity around the name. 

3.3 Stage of Development

At the moment, researchers at Platt Labs are working on properly cleaning and transmitting data collected from their basic working prototype. They have already identified key suppliers and manufacturers who could mass-produce this type of headgear. They are also in the process of writing algorithms that measure an individual’s focus or engagement, while testing this prototype with different sports use cases, such as rowing, tennis and football (Ramakrishnan & Rennie, 2019). More data is still required (i.e., thousands of users or sessions) for a sophisticated machine learning algorithm to be developed. The team has not yet tackled the concept of team synchronicity for competitive sport, but research suggests that overlaying or comparing the data of individual team members will reveal synchronous patterns, an indirect measurement of the empathy team members feel for one another (Konvalinka, 2011). 

We estimate the product will be ready to launch in one year, once the machine learning algorithms that measure team synchronicity are fully developed and finalized. Additional product development is needed to design the headband and the application interface so that it is easy to use and very simply displays any data the coaches would like to view within the individual mode or team mode. 

4. Industry & Market Analysis 

4.1 Industry Analysis 

Industry Sector

Our product combines a wearable headband with EEG sensors that measures brain waves indicating mental focus, stress, fatigue, engagement level and team synchronicity and a mobile application that analyzes the data and provides actionable insights to athletes and coaches. Like Fitbit (SEC, 2017), AchievEEG is primarily classified as a measuring device company. The SIC code for a company specialized in the measuring device is 3829 (Other Measuring and Controlling Device Manufacturing) and the NAICS code is 334519. It can also be considered as Sporting and Athletic Goods Manufacturing (SIC 3949, NAICS 339920).10

Competitive Forces in our Industry 11

We plan to target rowers as our entry market to gain credibility in the sports industry and then expand our customer base to similar sports such as kayaking, canoeing and paddle boating and then to indoor rowing tanks and premium gyms as our secondary market. As we scale and become a dominant supplier in these niche markets, we will expand our applications into other sports including golf and tennis in the future. Our buyers are professional and amateur athletes and coaches who want to use our technology to enhance their individual and team performance during training. They have power in the many options available when looking to buy a performance tracking device (Peake, Kerr & Sullivan, 2018). They would invest in the most cost effective product that gives them an advantage. This threat would be minimal since AchievEEG is the first-to-market to offer an EEG data analytic device in the sports and fitness market. Buyers also face a switching cost when adopting new accessories or sensors that may not be compatible with their training or fitness regimen. 

Suppliers are another important force in the measuring device industry. AchievEEG’s patented dry electrode sensors (Penn Center for Innovation, 2018) are a key differentiating factor for our product and require specialized materials and skilled manufacturing. Ensuring high quality and sufficient quantity of these components is key to AchievEEG’s success on the market. Our suppliers could pose a serious threat if they withhold materials or threaten to forward integrate. This threat can be mitigated by developing a strategic partnership with suppliers and imposing strict non-disclosure agreements. 

Potential competitors in this field will be further analyzed in Section 4.2 but the sports EEG field is untapped and currently consists only of a few small privately-held companies whose products are mainly used in neuroscience research and clinics. These companies do not have the resources to pose a significant threat to our company. For example, ANT Neuro offers EEG solutions that are mainly used in neurodiagnostic and neuroscience research. AchievEEG offers the only EEG solution specifically designed for the use in sports and fitness. Strong intellectual property and high R&D costs provide strong barriers to new entrants seeking to enter the EEG sensing fitness wearable market. The inventors of AchievEEG’s dry electrode sensors estimate that it would take at least several years for another group to develop similar hardware from scratch and achieve proof of concept. By that time, AchievEEG will be well established and have the resources to respond to the threat of these new entrants. In addition, AchievEEG’s data-processing algorithm for the mobile application is unique to our product and does not exist in the market currently. The data analytics algorithm will be protected by trade secret to ensure our market dominance. 

With our strong intellectual property and our capital devoted to our research and product development that will differentiate our product, we believe that the threat from the competitive forces would be minimal. 

Operations and Revenue Models

The integrator model is the industry standard. Most firms in our industry focus on performing R&D, design and marketing activities in-house and outsource the key activities of manufacturing and logistics management to external contractors. The most common revenue model in the sports wearable device industry is the one-time sale of the device. An increasing number of firms are choosing to supplement this revenue by adding a recurring revenue source through a mobile application subscription and/or the sale of replacement parts or accessories for the device. Fitbit explored this option in a recent report and Tritonwear, a wearable device for swim training, is using a tiered subscription model in addition to the one-time sale of their device (SEC, 2017; Tritonwear, 2019).

No FDA Regulatory Requirements

In accordance with the US Food and Drug Administration guidance (FDA, 2018) our product does not fall under the FDA’s medical device regulations as it is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of any disease or condition. 

4.2 Competitor Analysis

The sports wearables and fitness trackers industry is large and saturated with dominant players such as Fitbit and Garmin (Mind Commerce Publishing, 2014). Competition in this market is expected to intensify as multiple consumer health self-monitoring companies are planning to broaden their products’ functionalities and capabilities to capture market share in the sports and fitness industry (McWilliams, 2017). However, AchievEEG compete in a less-contested market as our unique value proposition utilizes the EEG technology to improve and enhance professional and amateur athletes’ mental performance and team synchronicity. 

At the point of our entry, we will be directly competing with companies that are offering tracking devices for rowing. Thus, our direct competitors in the first few years are companies which sell rowing devices or use neuroscience and EEG technology for sports performance. They represent a strategic group which is pursuing a similar competitive strategy. These direct competitors consist of: NK Sports, Ant Neuro, and Emotiv. Products offered by these companies are in the lower to high price range of the tracking device and EEG technology wearables. The EEG devices consists lower number of electrodes, providing a cost-effective understanding of the user’s mental performance (Farnsworth, 2017). 

Our indirect competitors are companies that use similar data analytic technologies to track fitness and optimize athletic performance such as Fitbit and Axon Sports. Systems in this price range offer wireless transmissions and real-time data collection and analysis with mobility, similar to what AchievEEG is aiming to achieve. AchievEEG will leverage insights from our direct and indirect competitors to finely segment the industry and establish a dominant position in a niche market of users.12  

NK Sports

NK sports provides a broad range of tools and instruments for rowing and paddling sports to help athletes and coaches improve their game (NK Sports, 2019). It is currently the market leading rowing and paddling device company. Their product SpeedCoach measures a variety of physical metrics including boat speed, stroke rate, heart rate, and peak force. Another product Oarlock measures catch angle and finish angle that provides technical insights and feedback after every stroke. However, they do not offer any solution that measures the cognitive performance and team synchronicity, which are very crucial factors in rowing sport. Our product is highly differentiated because it pinpoints the root cause of poor performance that are caused by lack of mental synchronicity between the players and provides insights into the best seating arrangements for rowing teams. In that sense, our product complements NK sports’ products, and a potential strategic partnership with the company is feasible. 

Emotiv

Emotiv’s product line consists of three EEG headsets: Insight, EPOC+, and EPOC Flex Kit. EPOC+ claims to be the “most credible and cost-effective mobile EEG headset on the market” at the price of $799 (Emotiv, 2019). The technology provides professional grade brain data and high-quality raw data, which attracts research professionals in data collection and analysis in cognitive and neural systems. However, Emotiv Insight and MyEmotiv application for sports performance application is little known because the device is bulky and not very suited for the use in vigorous training and movement. The lack of consumer awareness may also be attributed to its absence of brick and mortar presence as Emotiv’s website is its only distribution channel. Our patent protected sweat-proof EEG headbands that can provide the research grade brain data will ensure our dominance over potential threat from Emotiv in the sports industry. 

Ant Neuro

Ant Neuro’s eego™ sports provides a mobile solution tailored for the collection of high-density EEG data and multiple physiological sensor data. The product’s core features allow individuals to quantify their neuro activities. Users report portability and quality materials as the product’s key benefits. Despite their advanced technology, Ant Neuro has not been able to penetrate the mainstream athletes market. This may be due to the product’s poorly designed cap and complex process in collecting and interpreting data for users. Also, the product is priced much higher at minimum of $1,000 (Ant Neuro, 2019). We will ensure our dominance with superior price performance and intellectual property. 

Fitbit

Fitbit provides a broad range of products, ranging from low-cost and limited trackers to high-end multifunction trackers (Fitbit, 2019). Its strong brand identity enhances their existing established community of fitness enthusiasts, which boosts sales and enables low-cost pull marketing. Although Fitbit does not have an expertise in EEG devices, it still poses a threat to AchievEEG as they are highly active in M&As. Having recently acquired Twine Health in February 2018, Fitbit can expand its offerings in the health space. Thus, it is a possibility for Fitbit to also acquire a rising player in the sports industry. Additionally, its product mix shows continual research and development, highlighted by the annual release of higher quality models. However, in developing and introducing new products and services in a timely manner, Fitbit faces a large risk in disruptions in the supply chain as well as inventory management issues. Pricing pressure from several global new entrants such as Xiaomi can also lead to a decrease in Fitbit’s profit margin and loss of market share (Sun, 2018). 

Axon Sports

Axon Sports offers a data analytic technology that is used by professional baseball and softball players and coaches. Their product SwingTracker improves the players’ hitting. The product includes a sensor, which can be attached to a bat, that measures various metrics in real-time as players swing the bat, which are then sent to mobile application for feedback to optimize their hitting skills. Another product PitchTracker offers the similar functionality where the hitters can improve their pitch recognition through data analytic mobile application that provides real-time feedback (Axon Sports, 2019). The functionality of these products are similar to AchievEEG’s in a sense that it utilizes data and information to provide real-time feedback to athletes and coaches. However, the company is highly focused on baseball and softball, and the threat would be minimal. 

Insights for AchievEEG

While some of our competitors have advantages such as brand reputation and established strategic partnerships with suppliers and manufacturers, we are confident in our patented EEG technology and our in-house R&D, design and marketing capabilities. Based on our research and analysis, our competitors have yet to fully satisfy our target market of professional and amateur athletes. Our product is highly differentiated from our competitors in terms of our product value proposition. It is the only solution that enhances the athletes’ performance by improving their mental factors and team synchronicity. In addition, emphasizing design and connectivity, we will provide a customizable and simple-to-use solution consisting of hardware and software. A mobile application will be developed to give our users actionable insights and data using a subscription model. Despite risks in large R&D and patent costs and competing with large companies which possess more resources and partners, we will mitigate this by seeking robust funding from investors and employing a hypothesis-driven approach to minimize costs and uncertainty and maximize our differentiation.13 

4.3 Market Analysis

Initial Market in Rowing

We plan to initially launch our product for rowing use cases, where AchievEEG’s value proposition is well-defined and we have received several expressions of interest, before expanding to other markets like gyms in our 3rd year. Our initial rowing market or total addressable market consists of approximately 140,000 rowers in North America, Europe and Australia. In the United States alone, there are 75,000 active rowers, as well as 40,000 active rowers in the U.K (US Rowing, 2017; Statista, 2019). Within this population, we project that we can capture a market share of 50% of rowing athletes competing at the national and master's levels.14 We will also initially target other nations that value the sport at a nationally competitive level, such as New Zealand, Australia, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and Germany (FISA, 2019). International rowing is a tight-knit community and news about emerging technology spreads quickly through word of mouth, regattas, social media and rowing magazines (James & Naughton, 2019). Like NK Sports, we are confident that 60% of our initial sales will be in the North American market and 40% of our initial sales will be in the European market, in our first five years of business (James & Naughton, 2019). 

The North American market, consisting of the U.S. and Canada, can be segmented into four categories: (1) youth or high school rowers, (2) collegiate rowers, (3) post-collegiate club rowers in their late twenties and thirties, many of whom compete in national teams, and (4) master athletes of the sport, who may or may not be actively competing. The European and Australian markets can be segmented into two categories: (1) non-competitive club rowers and (2) competitive club rowers that compete at local, regional, and national levels. This is because rowing in Europe and Australia is not attributed to school or college, but clubs instead (James & Naughton, 2019). In Germany, the number of club rowers grew from 83,830 to 85,819 athletes between 2016 and 2018 (Statista, 2019).15 

Expansion to Other Sports

From rowing, we will expand to high-end, urban boutique and premium gyms, as well as other team sports use cases.16 We will also continue to fulfill additional rowing use-cases, such as kayaking, canoeing and paddling. We will also begin to target indoor rowers at fitness studios, as indoor rowing competitions have been gaining popularity across urban locations in the U.S. in particular (James & Naughton, 2019). The growth in rowing as a sport worldwide has led to this new trend, the growing popularity and demand for indoor rowing fitness studios, originating in New York City, but also trending in other American and European cities between 2014 and 2018 (Dawson, 2015). Indoor rowing as a fitness regimen has also turned into a competitive sport, especially amongst youths and older generations of users (i.e., baby boomers), the same demographic involved in masters rowing. We will target indoor rowers as a means to enter into a larger market segment of high-end, urban boutique and premium gyms across North America and Europe. 

We believe that owners of indoor rowing fitness studios closely follow rowing trends, and are well aware of all the products offered for the sport. They are very likely to invest in AchievEEG as our product becomes a standard in rowing, just like NK Sports’ SpeedCoach. They will choose to adopt our product in a similar manner to how heart rate monitors are currently used, both for outdoor rowing and indoor rowing scenarios (Eric, 2019). AchievEEG will continue to target indoor rowing fitness studios, but will also expand to other boutique or premium gyms, where it is possible to sell our product in bulk directly to the gym manager or gym owner (Deek, 2019). We are certain that AchievEEG’s individual mode will be particularly useful to members of boutique gyms, who invest a lot of time and money into training regimens for pilates, crossfit, and spin. These women in their mid-twenties to mid-forties are especially likely to purchase their own AchievEEG headgear directly from the gym, especially if it is recommended to them by their trainer. We see both our individual mode and team mode use cases being applicable to gyms, where it is typical to write up top members’ scores or even collectively work through a training regimen together in-sync, as is typically done in Soul Cycle sessions (Rutledge, 2019). A team or group mode for the gym use-case will inspire and encourage the more competitive gym members. 

Market Voids & Our Product Solution

There are no products currently in the market that apply EEG technology to sports and fitness use-cases. AchievEEG is the first of its kind to measure the root causes of an individual or team’s poor performance, quantifying individual focus, stress, reaction times, fatigue, and engagement, as well as team synchronicity. We believe that our product’s individual mode and team mode are very applicable to highly synchronized sports such as rowing, but also individualized fitness and other team sports. Our product solves the problem of quantifying the root cause of poor performance (i.e., focus, engagement, fatigue, anxiety) rather than just the symptoms of poor performance (i.e., heart rate). This provides coaches, trainers, and individual athletes with the insights they need to change their behavior patterns during training sessions in order to achieve better performance. 

4.4 Customer Analysis

Initial Rowing Market Customers

AchievEEG’s first customers will be rowers, specifically masters and top collegiate team rowers across North America. We choose to focus on this group because of their low price sensitivity and demonstrated interest in trying out new technology. Masters athletes have the disposable income to spend on new high-tech training gear and top collegiate teams have large budgets and are constantly looking for new ways to improve (James & Naughton, 2019; Farrell, 2019).14 After entering the rowing technology market through these customer segments, our next group of customers will be our early adopters in Europe and Australia, who are club members competing at the local and regional levels. 

In North America, collegiate coaches are looking to support their gut instincts about the sport with real-time data and are most likely to analyze raw data that the current SpeedCoach devices provide, unlocking hidden configurations of the technology to gain a slight competitive edge over teams that don’t approach the sport with this level of intensity or rigor (Calimag, 2019). Our other early adopters in North America will be the masters and national team athletes themselves who choose to continue to use AchievEEG to measure mental performance after graduating to the club and national team levels, where athletes are more independent in their training (Smith, 2019). These types of individuals will have the disposable income to invest in their sports performance for themselves. Our early adopters in Europe and Australia will also be the crew athletes who strive to compete at the national and international levels, and are willing to spend money on training devices that can help them reach their goals. Finally, our early majority users for the rowing use-case in North America, Europe and Australia will be collegiate and high school athletes, whose coaches will only be able to justify purchasing AchievEEG to school or club administrators if it is a tried and tested product and becomes a standard for national athletes and a standard for the sport as a whole. They will only purchase the product if it is necessary to use it in order to remain relevant as the rowing sport converges with modern technology applications.  

Our innovators and early adopters are motivated to purchase AchievEEG because they are curious about technological advancements that could improve sports performance and don’t mind analyzing data to confirm their gut feelings about the sport. They will want to use our product because they believe in rigor, gaining that slight competitive edge by using all the data available. They will find methods to purchase AchievEEG, with or without the support of administrators or club managers who typically provide additional monetary funding if it can be justified. Our early majority will be youth and high school coaches who will only be motivated to purchase AchievEEG if the technology becomes a standard in the sport, necessary for remaining competitive against other teams. They are influenced by how other college, university, or local and regional level coaches perceive the product. They will also be more likely to purchase the product if it is advertised in the few prominent rowing magazines that showcase the latest trends in the sport. They are also more likely to purchase the product if it is marketed at all the prominent regattas in North America, Europe and Australia. Our team will directly distribute our product to innovators and early adopters with an in-house sales team that convinces administrators, coaches and athletes of the benefits of tracking mental states during the sport. We will then rely on word of mouth referrals, 3PL distributors abroad, and marketing and advertising in magazines and regattas to gain traction with the early majority users of our product (James & Naughton, 2019). 

Customers in Gyms & Other Team Sports

Rowing, canoe- kayaking, and dragon boating are all paddling sports that require incredibly high levels of focus and synchrony. The customer and adoption profile for these sports is very top-down and highly similar to rowing, so we anticipate reaching similar customer segments for similar reasons (Black, 2019). We plan to successfully sell our product to innovators, early adopters and early majority users in the rowing segment during our first year of sales in our second year as a company. Next, our company will leverage trends in indoor rowing popularity around urban areas to target city-based indoor rowing fitness studios as our early adopters in the gym segment during our third year as a business. Our in-house sales teams will then sell AchievEEG headgear and app subscriptions directly to the studio owners of these fitness studios. Our early adopters will be indoor rowing studio owners in cities like Philadelphia, New York, Boston and Seattle that tend to be rowing hubs (James & Naughton, 2019). We will then expand to European and Australian cities with indoor rowing studios as well. Studio owners will be motivated to purchase our product because AchievEEG will now be a standard in the rowing sport, holding a place of esteem amongst rowers, just like NK Sports’ SpeedCoach (Eric, 2019). 

Our early majority segment in the gym market will be owners of high-end gym boutiques and premium gyms that will hear about our product through fitness trainers and gym managers, who will ultimately influence the gym’s or franchise’s decision to purchase AchievEEG for gym members. Gym members will be particularly influenced by their trainers to try out AchievEEG or even purchase the product for their own individual usage. In this manner they would be able to drastically improve their performance for fitness regimens in pilates, crossfit and spin with by tracking changes in their mental states as they train (Rutledge, 2019). Our sales team will advertise and promote AchievEEG to studio owners and boutique gym owners, as well as influential fitness trainers based at popular city gyms. They will leverage AchievEEG’s success in rowing to showcase our product’s success, impact, and applicability for a variety of gym use-cases.

5. Marketing, Sales and Distribution Plan 

5.1 Target Market Strategy

When we enter the market, we will specifically target the customer segment of masters, national team training camps, collegiate and junior level rowers as our early adopters. Based on the most recent available data from US Rowing, there are 75,000 active athletes in the sport in the United States. Of these, 38,000 are 18 and under, which has increased by around 2,000 per year for the past 10 years (US Rowing, 2017). Among the total athletes in rowing in the US, there are 7,400 women and 3,900 men varsity collegiate athletes and 1,686 collegiate club athletes (NCAA, 2019). High school participation, as of 2015, includes a total of 6,695 combined boys and girls at 152 schools in 7 states (NFHS, 2015). The rest 19,000 are masters and national rowers. Globally, the market is approximately 60% US and 40% international. Other large markets include Great Britain with 40,000 registered rowers as well as Canada and the rest of Europe (British Rowing, 2019; World Rowing, 2019). We plan to target masters and national rowers first because they have high disposable income to invest in the technology. According to a report, they would readily accept and incorporate new technology in their day-to-day operations when it is clear that it can help them win (Bogage, 2016). After entering the masters and professional segments, we will continue down to college, high school sports teams and club teams. Collegiate institutions may be particularly open to adopting EEG technology as they are already investing in other technologies such as mobile devices and data analytics that give players an advantage (Fagan, 2017).

After we gain greater adoption in the rowing market, we will leverage our expertise and gained reputation to target indoor rowing tanks and premium gyms and fitness programs like Soulcycle, Peloton, Orangetheory, and CrossFit as our early majority (Toptal, 2019).16 Targeting indoor rowing studios that the rowers use in off-season and during practices would not only minimize the impact of seasonality of rowing but also open up further opportunities in fitness market. Indoor rowing tanks will serve as our bridge to our early majority segment.17 According to our primary research with several owners and instructors of indoor rowing studios and premium gyms, people are willing to adopt new technology that would improve their performance since exercises require high level of focus and perseverance (Deek, 2019; Eric, 2019; Rutledge, 2019). For example, a lot of people are already using heart rate monitors during cycling and fitness lessons. After we gain greater adoption in our majorities, we plan to target other sports including golf and tennis. We anticipate the demand for our product to increase within our next target segments once professional athletes in other sports endorse our product. 

AchievEEG is the first and only complete EEG solution for sports mental performance measurement. As such, we are creating new market space and do not have to compete with other companies for market share since we are the only ones in this space. We are creating a new market space in wearable sports products by offering a comfortable, sports-adapted headband that measures mental performance, engagement, and synchronicity in real-time and provides actionable insight in a user-friendly mobile application. Our product stands out from other wireless EEG monitoring solutions because it is designed specifically for use during intense physical activity, it is less expensive, and it provides feedback in real-time via our companion mobile device application. We position AchievEEG as the only solution for sports teams looking to take full advantage of this new technology and unlock the potential of mental performance tracking and enhancement.

Mental performance is considered increasingly important in sports but there are currently no products on the market that can objectively measure and track signs of mental performance such as engagement and synchronicity during intense physical activity (Black, 2019). Our product solves this problem by providing athletes and their coaches with real-time feedback on mental performance metrics in a user-friendly interface in real-time. With this, teams gain from knowing what is going on in their brains and can use this feedback to work smarter, not just harder. AchievEEG can also help athletes save time. With real-time feedback and the ability to review their workout data on demand in our companion mobile application, athletes no longer need to spend as much time meeting with coaches in person to learn about when they lost focus by reviewing video hours or days after the session. With our product, they can implement changes sooner which can help them improve faster.

Our target end users are the athletes themselves, but our primary research confirmed that the customers who will actually purchase our products are their coaches and team administrators (Black, 2019; Hodge, 2019). The team managers/administrators who make the purchase are influenced by the coaches who make the decision to adopt new technology. The coaches are themselves influenced by other coaches or athletes and can also be influenced by their funders (the owners of professional teams or the national sport organizations for amateurs). Our initial research suggests that word of mouth is the most common way that coaches find out about new technology and they will readily adopt new technology if someone they know and trust is using it. We know that our target market wants our product because we have spoken to coaches from different sports who have shown interest in AchievEEG (Hodge, 2019). We also know that several professional teams are familiar with EEG technology since several teams are already using devices such as Halo Sport and Muse (Halo Neuroscience, 2019; Muse, 2019). 

5.2 Revenue Model and Pricing Strategy

Our pricing strategy is to price our product as a sports wearable technology product rather than as a high-tech EEG sensor product. We want our AchievEEG headband to be considered in the same class as other high-end sports sensors such as heart rate monitors and cadence sensors and be considered part of a sports team’s technology arsenal. Rather than selling an expensive research-focused product priced too high for wide adoption, we will price our product as one that a team will be able to use daily. We will price it in terms of the perceived benefit that teams are gaining from the use of our product.18 With the new technology that we are using for the dry silver nanowire electrodes, the cost of this most expensive component of our device is much lower than it is for standard EEG electrodes (Penn Center for Innovation, 2018). The unit sales price of $399 for our headband was determined by market research. Our mobile application subscription package will be priced at different tiers based on the information to which the users will gain access and the complexity of the analytics that they will obtain. The number of tiers, the annual subscription price of each package, and the features included in each package will be also determined by market research. We also plan to offer freemium based model so that the athletes can use the mobile application for simple tracking. This pricing strategy will strengthen our competitive position, because a core part of our value proposition is that we offer a better product at a lower price. Pricing our product as a sports wearable rather than as a research EEG product will position AchievEEG in the sports market where it will reach a broader customer base.

Our revenue model is based on the one-time sale of the headband and the recurring revenue from the annual subscription to our companion mobile application. The headbands will be sold as bulk orders, of a minimum number of units to be further confirmed by market research, which could offer more attractive prices to sports teams.19 AchievEEG will only offer annual subscriptions plan contracts for two reasons. First, our research has shown that most sports teams operate on annual budgets (Hodge, 2019). Second, we want to prevent attrition from customers who might try to save money by cancelling a shorter-term subscription during their team’s off-season and forget to re-subscribe.

Our pricing and revenue strategies are similar to other sports wearable products such as Tritonwear who combine one-time and recurring revenue sources (Tritonwear, 2019). Most other EEG products currently on the market only charge customers for the sale of the device and do not have a subscription model. We chose to add the subscription plan as a recurring revenue source because we believe that our mobile application experience is much better than what our competitors offer, that it adds significant value to our product and that our customers will be willing to pay for this added benefit.

5.3 Distribution Plan 

We plan on distributing our product to our target market through a third-party logistics (3PL) provider. In early stage, our sales will be made primarily through our website or our salesforce team, and the orders will be internally processed through our electronic system such as SAP. The orders will then be transferred to our manufacturing partner who will produce the products and to our 3PL provider who will manage our inventory and deliver the orders. Our products will be assembled and shipped directly from our 3PL provider to our customers using their own delivery vehicles such as trucks. We will gain access to these channels through forming a long-term, strategic partnership with a well-established, reliable 3PL provider. We will make sure to carefully choose a partner with expertise in distribution of sports wearables or fitness devices and with strong presence in the urban areas of the United States, such as C.H. Robinson and Fedex.

Outsourcing the distribution to a 3PL provider will minimize our fixed operational costs and investments at early stages of the company. This partnership will eliminate the need of a large upfront capital investment needed for inventory and warehouse facilities and transportation vehicles. It will allow us to decrease fixed costs and better manage our inventory levels, which will also allow us to scale easily as the demand for our product grows.

5.4 Advertising and Promotion Plan 

         Our main advertising message is that we are the first player in the market with the only complete EEG-sensing product for sports teams and fitness market. Our product allows users to comfortably wear a headband during their training that measures their cognitive and mental performance in real-time and provides actionable insight on how they can improve their focus and synchronicity through a mobile app, all for a reasonable price point. This message relates to our target market’s drivers of demand, which is cost effectiveness and ease of use. All athletes and teams want to be competitive in their sports and win. We are therefore selling them a product that is not only cost effective and will help them perform better but also easy to use. We will also seek professional athletes to endorse our products which will  help create demand in our majority segments who look up to the pros and want to use the same gear as them. 

         We plan on communicating with our early adopters mainly by presenting at coaching conferences and trade shows including World Rowing Coaches Conference where we will demonstrate our product and allow potential customers to test it. Another way we plan to gain visibility is to sponsor major competitions and regattas where we can promote our brand. We plan to launch our product at the Head of Charles Regatta, the world’s most prestigious rowing competition held in Boston. We also plan on having high profile current or retired athletes and/or coaches that we will recruit through word of mouth and personal contacts as our early sales rep in key regions. We will approach our early adopters on a more personal one-on-one basis. Our sales team will approach coaches from big professional or elite teams individually. We will invest more time personally demonstrating the effectiveness of our product to these coaches and their teams. Forming a personal relationship with the early adopters will strengthen our competitive position as we will take control of the specific customer segment and enable us to validate the demand and create a barrier against potential competitors.

Securing our early adopters will help us penetrate into our early majority and mainstream customers. At this point, we will invest more on direct-to-consumer advertisements and promotions and on partnering with major events such as local or regional competitions. As our company grow, we will use direct-to-consumer advertisements on our website, printed materials, and social media marketing where we will show how high-profile athletes and coaches use and like our product. Direct relationships with our customers are very important and we will make them feel like we are providing them a unique customized service and experience.  

5.5 Sales Plan

Initially, we plan on selling our product both directly to the customers through our salesforce and via our website. We will sell at first through in-person face-to-face interactions between customers and our salespeople, which will also help us form relationships with these early adopters. In the early stage of our company, our founders will be the the ones to reach out to potential customers. We will also have a website available as soon as we launch through which potential customers can request information, arrange for demonstrations from our sale team and also make purchases. Later on, we plan on expanding our sales channel to wholesalers, retailers and large sports wearable companies to meet the demand from our expanded customer base in a wide range of sports and premium gyms.

Initially, we plan on using both an internal sales force and professional athletes or fitness influencers as ambassadors to do the selling. This is a common model in sports where well-known athletes are compensated in exchange for endorsement and promotion of a product. Our internal sales force at product launch will be composed of technical experts who are also highly familiar with the dynamics of the sports industry. For example, they could be engineers with a sports background, or sports scientists and trainers who are comfortable with technology. We will also have customer service specialists who will be trained to answer basic general questions from customers and direct them towards the appropriate experts or resources. 

In recruiting our sales force, we are looking for the top technical people who also have a background in sports. We would be looking for cultural fit and ideally seek people with at least 2 of the 3 following attributes: strong technical skills and understanding of EEG technology, interest or education in business and entrepreneurship, and strong industry knowledge or personal experience in sports. We will aim to hire technical people rather than people who have made a career in sales. By having highly knowledgeable technical sales reps early on who can articulate the benefits of our product, we will gain credibility and more customers will believe in our product. Our sales force will go through an extensive training process with onboarding where they will learn about EEG technology and about the sports industry in general with lots of hands-on demonstrations and site visits with experienced salespeople and AchievEEG’s founders. We will also, as the company founders, make sure that we train our first salespeople ourselves and bring them along with us in the field, so they can learn directly from us and experience our passion. The sales reps at early stages of our company need to be very knowledgeable about the product and they will spend most of their time educating our customers and getting the product known, rather than making sales.25 Our sales team will be compensated at a level that is consistent with industry standards and sufficient for a good quality of life. They will be compensated with a base salary and a bonus scheme that is dependent on achieving goals that line up with the organization’s objectives.

Customer service representatives who handle emails, phone calls and live chat on our website will also handle the internal order processing for any direct sales or phone sales. Early on, while our company is still small, the sales reps will also have access to the order processing system to process any sales that they make, but as the company grows we expect this task to be transitioned towards our customer services and accounts teams. Packing, shipping and expediting will all be handled through a carefully selected 3PL contractor.

6. Operations Plan 

6.1 Scope of Operations

Our team plans to complete our product development in-house, with a process that consists of three consecutive phases: (1) research, (2) design, and (3) testing.26 We will start with customer research in the form of in-depth stakeholder and user interviews with team coaches and administrators, as well as athletes. The insights gleaned from this research will inform our prototyping process, as multiple headband form-factors and digital application concepts will be generated in an attempt to solve well-defined customer needs and problems. These prototypes, both digital and physical, will then be iterated on and combined into one final concept that prioritizes only the crucial customer needs that were validated during the research phase of our product development process.

Next, the final concept will be analyzed and its components will be broken down before being developed in-house or outsourced to third-parties.28 The headband will be manufactured as three components: (1) the textile headband itself, (2) the insertable silver-nanowire EEG sensors and signal amplifier, (3) other electrical components such as battery, processor and storage, and (4) the packaging for this headband (Ramakrishnan, 2019). All components of the headband will be manufactured by our exclusive suppliers who will have signed non-disclosure agreements with AchievEEG. We will also partner with a contract manufacturer who will assemble our device. Once manufactured, a third party logistics company will then transport the headbands to our customers. To further establish our company within the rowing market, we will form strategic partnerships with large rowing equipment distributors such as NK Sports that deliver to sports teams, initially targeting rowing teams (NK Sports, 2019). We have discussed the potential of a partnership with Alix James, who is the CEO of NK Sports. All partnerships with suppliers of product components, manufacturers, and distributors will be on a contractual basis, renewed annually.

The AchievEEG digital application will be developed in-house and then complete a rigorous, internal quality assurance process, before being released for Beta testing with our target early adopter customers. All our sales, customer service, and marketing initiatives will also remain in-house. It is especially crucial that we nurture our in-house development team and bring on team members that specialize in machine learning and data analytics, in addition to front-end developers for the app interface. We will continue to grow our development team as our user base grows, especially as we start to develop new versions of the application or new product lines altogether.30 All data will be stored and managed via third party services, like Amazon Web Services, to reduce fixed costs (AWS, 2019).31 In addition to our patented silver-nanowire technology, our proprietary data processing algorithms will help us maintain a strong competitive position against current sports-focused EEG devices or sports analytics providers. We will also be devoting internal resources towards branding and marketing our product as a high-end sports EEG wearable for professional and competitive athletes, in line with the way Whoop is currently positioned on the market as a recovery wearable (Whoop, 2019). Ultimately, our operations plan aims to streamline in-house processes and outsource high-quality, lengthy manufacturing processes to focus on our core competencies and key resources. We aim to remain flexible and nimble, focusing our in-house initiatives on competitive aspects that truly differentiate our product from other devices currently on the market. We will also create a high-quality product, leveraging third party supply, manufacturing, and distribution expertise for timely product development and delivery. Please refer to Figure 6.1 and Figure 6.2 to see a categorization of our in-house and outsourced operations, as well as a schematic flow of our operations.

6.2 Scaling Operations

We want to ensure that our company is able to scale at a rate that will match growing customer demand for our product. We will do this by formalizing our informal, internal product development, sales, marketing, and customer service processes into more robust, cross-functional processes. We will first identify current team members in the company who are experts in research, design, development, quality assurance, sales, marketing, customer service, and finance. Next, we will task them with the responsibility for recruiting and managing their teams, as well as identifying any resources they would need for smooth day-to-day operations (e.g. enterprise software). 

Our next goal will be to create an organizational chart or reporting structure, describing who makes the key decisions for each core, functional team within the company.32 Drawing the organizational chart will also allow us to visualize where communication channels between functions will be most necessary and we will hire product managers to facilitate this type of communication and day-to-day operations between these groups as we continue to grow and scale. However, communications between functions will be informal at first, and dependent upon the managers of each team to move projects or tasks across functions and in accordance with timelines. We will be sure to integrate different parts of the organization and increase documentation to help facilitate communication and information exchange across the organization.

As demand for the product grows and we must scale the company further, we plan to hire ahead of the curve and bring in veteran executives and highly experienced managers to lead multiple functions. They will be able to provide a strategic vision and experience to structure the company as we continuously scale, so that we can continue to increase sales and demand for our product. However, we will be particularly careful with hiring as we want to ensure cultural fit yet allow for diversity in experience and perspectives.

We will aim to maintain our entrepreneurial spirit and culture by frequently publicizing our mission and values, while advocating for transparency between functional teams and clear, honest, and open communications between all company members.34 We will strive to put a stop to any political affiliations or behaviors that creep up whenever challenging problems arise within the company that need to be solved. We will do this by organizing open town halls for company members to discuss problems and propose viable  solutions. In addition to this, we will encourage informal opportunities for team members to socialize via lunch events, happy hours and company outings. We truly believe that building a great company starts with hiring a diverse group of team members that are also the right cultural fit.

As our company scales, we will hire a human resources manager to track all HR activities for the company. We will also have to grow and develop a finance team and business development team to maintain our relationships with our strategic partners. These functions extend beyond the scope of operations currently outlined, but will be crucial to the company once enough growth has been achieved.

7. Development Plan: Activities and Milestones

7.1 Overview of the Development Plan Timeline

Our development plan will consist of three main phases, spanning across 90 weeks or approximately 21 months, including: (1) research and development, (2) manufacturing, and (3) marketing, distribution, and sales as shown in Figure 7.1, which is our Gantt chart included in the Appendix.

In phase I of research and development, we will validate our customers and product concept through extensive primary research methods such as conducting surveys and focus groups.37 After confirming our initial hypotheses and opportunity in the rowing market, we will then begin designing our hardware prototype which will be tested, reiterated and finalized upon feedback. Upon completion of our product design and prototype and obtaining seed financing, we will initialize phase II of our development plan focusing on manufacturing. 

The second phase of development consists of four main milestones: (1) pilot manufacturing, (2) finalizing quality control processes, (3) completing software application development, and (4) beginning full scale manufacturing.38 The first milestone of the manufacturing phase will depend on establishing relationships with suppliers and manufacturers. We will identify suppliers for the textile headband, the insertable silver-nanowire EEG sensors and signal amplifier, various electrical components such as the battery, processor and storage system, as well as the packaging for the headband in order to procure materials and ship them to a contract manufacturing organization who will manufacture AchievEEG’s complete headband-EEG product. While we are outsourcing the manufacturing process to focus on developing the software, we will ensure the quality of our product by implementing an extensive quality assurance (QA) protocol prior beginning full scale manufacturing. We will conduct alpha and beta tests during the QA process to evaluate the quality of our hardware and software. Both the engineering and manufacturing teams will be involved in identifying any critical issues there might be with the product during the alpha tests. Additionally, the sales and marketing team will participate in the beta tests with our early adopters, collegiate or masters rowing teams who are keen on using new technologies to improve their training, to learn about the user experience and further our understanding of our customers.

Finally, phase III of our development plan, marketing, distribution and sales, includes three milestones: (1) finalizing marketing materials such as brochures and website content, (2) forming a strategic alliance with a third-party logistics (3PL) company, and (3) receiving first orders for our product. A large priority during this phase is recruiting and training the early sales team. Our sales team will be critical in acquiring early adopters as well as communicating with the engineering team to make design modifications and informing the founding team on potential redirection or pricing changes.

7.2 Critical Path and Risk Mitigation Strategies

To ensure that our product is developed and launched in a timely manner, our team will focus on completing tasks and milestones on the critical path of our timeline, which are bolded on the “Task Title” column in Figure 7.1. The noteworthy factors that can influence the success of our business model are: filing a patent for our novel EEG technology, obtaining sufficient seed financing to fund manufacturing, hiring software engineers to develop the mobile application of our product, and forming key partnerships with raw materials suppliers, a contract manufacturer, and a 3PL company. Delaying of these activities can lead to a significant setback in the product development, manufacturing and distribution processes. Without a patent or financing, manufacturing of AchievEEG’s headband cannot be initiated. Additionally, contractual arrangements with a contract manufacturer and a 3PL partner are necessary in manufacturing and distribution of the product. In order to prevent delays and guarantee the successful execution of our development plan, we have created strategies to mitigate identified risks and contingencies. The major risks identified and its mitigation plans are outlined in Table 7.1 below. 

8. Management 

8.1 Company Organization 

Our company will primarily run by the founding team, with a five-member Board of Directors and four-member Board of Advisors. The key activities of our company include research, product development, marketing, sales, and customer support. In the early stage, we will put a particular focus on these key activities by focusing on mobile application development, headband design, and promotional events like exhibits. Our founders will serve as the key leaders overseeing the key activities and resources, as shown in the organization chart below in Figure 8.1. The ownership structure will be based on equity split: 60% for the founders, 25% for the investors, and 15% as an option pool. 

8.2 Management Team 

Our founding team will be the core leaders of the company. The Executive Officer, Carolyne Godon, will serve as the key leader of AchievEEG in executing the vision and mission of the company and forming relationships with investors and partners. As a former varsity and national team athlete, she will bring in the passion for sports and the ambition on the technology to enable our missions. She will be the key leader establishing and instilling the culture of AchievEEG. The Operations Officer, Prima Pisuttisarun, will serve as a the leader of the Operations department to oversee our core operations including customer support. She will also be responsible for forming strategic relationships along the supply chain with our supplier and manufacturing/distribution partners. With her previous experience with an early-stage biotechnology startup, she will bring in her insight and knowledge into maximizing our operational efficiency. The Marketing Officer, Michael Song, will serve as the leader of the Marketing department to oversee the sales activity, market trends and competitive landscape and organize promotional events like exhibits. With his previous experience as a consultant, he will bring in the expertise in market research and strategy formulation. The Technology Officer, Samaya Sinha, will serve as the core leader of the Technology department in overseeing the research, design and development processes. With her education and previous experience working in UX and design, she will bring in her knowledge and skills in the design of the mobile application. The Financial Officer, Choyce Bostian, will serve as the leader in the Finance department to lead on formulating pricing strategies and managing the cash flow. With his previous experience in sales positions, he will bring in the knowledge of managing the sales cycle. 

The founders will be compensated by salaries and equity split out of the 60% founders’ share. Carolyne, who came up with the venture idea, will get 14% of the share by getting the founder premium. She is also the key leader executing the vision of the company and has the most crucial responsibilities in both short and long-term success of our company. Samaya will get 11% of the equity. With her expertise in the product design, she will have critical contributions in long-term to the product design and development processes. In the early stage, additional software engineers we plan to hire will fill the gap that exists in the software development process. Prima will get 12% of share. She will have critical contributions and commitment to our company in short and long-term with her previous experience working at a startup. Michael will get 12% of the share. He will have critical contributions in short and long-term with his previous experience in management consulting space. Choyce will get 11% of the equity. He will have critical contributions to our pricing decisions and managing the cash flow. As we scale, a domain expert who has experience managing complex sales cycle and cash flow will fill the gap in the long-term. 

Although our founders will be the core leaders of the organization, we plan to hire domain experts to serve as the managers for each department and directly support the founders’ responsibilities. Particularly, our gap exists in the software development for the mobile application and managing complex cash flow, and we plan to hire software engineers and financial managers to fill the gap. As we scale, we will add an HR and Legal management team and hire domain experts for the respective department. The HR team will make sure we hire people of the right fit, and the Legal team will manage any legal issues that may arise. The first key domain experts we hire will also be allocated with 1% of equity share. 

8.3 Advisors and Board of Directors

AchievEEG will have a 5-member Board of Directors: Carolyne Godon, Michael Platt, Colin Farrell, Alix James, and Jinhyung Lee. As the Executive Officer, Carolyne will oversee the company performance and long-term health. With her expertise in our technology and sports, she will serve as a key member of the board to supervise the activities of AchievEEG. Michael Platt, the inventor of the technology, has deep expertise in neuroscience, psychology, and marketing. His expertise will give us direction in successfully delivering the technology to our customers and in formulating marketing strategies. As the head coach of Men’s Lightweight Rowing team at the University of Pennsylvania, Colin has deep expertise in the sport and will serve as the key director to bring customer insights. He will become a point of connection to the rowing community in the Philadelphia area and also serve as an ambassador to spread the word about our company. As the CEO of NK Sports, Alix has expertise in managing a sports analytics technology company. She will be the key member to oversee the business growth of our company as we move on to our early majority segment.  Jinhyung Lee is a professor of Neurology and Bioengineering at Stanford and a founder and CEO of a high-tech startup in Silicon Valley. Her network with investors will be critical to getting the resources and advice we need and gaining credibility in the early stage. Also, her expertise in running a startup will provide us with an objective eye overseeing the organizational health and growth. 

In addition to the Board of Directors, we plan to bring in several subject matter experts as our Advisory Board. Arjun Ramakrishnan, Scott Rennie, and Rosa Rugani, who are Penn post-doctoral candidates and part of the Platt Lab that invented the technology, will serve as our Board of Advisors and will bring invaluable advice from their technical expertise. They will provide constructive contributions to the positioning of our product in the market. Also, Chris Lindsay, the High Performance Director of Triathlon Canada, will be on our Advisory Board to bring in critical insight and knowledge about the sports industry and customer’s perspective. He has experience working with Olympic teams of dozens of sports, and his network and credibility will be crucial for us to enter the market and gain traction. In addition, we will have Thomas Cassel and Michael Platt as our mentors. Please refer to the Appendix below for the Directors’ and Advisors’ qualifications. 

The Board of Directors will be compensated by an equity share of 1%. Our Board of Advisors will be compensated by an equity share of 0.2% each. The remainder of 9% remains as the employee options and available pool.

9. Financial Plan

9.1 Sales Forecast 

We plan to initially launch our product in the rowing market in Year 2 and subsequently expand our customer base by targeting indoor rowing tanks and boutique gyms in Year 4. Based on rowing participation data in the United States and worldwide, and sales figures from NK Sports, we estimate AchievEEG’s initial market size in rowing to be 20,000 product units.40 When we gain adoption in the rowing market, we will leverage our expertise to target indoor rowing tanks, premium gyms and fitness programs like Soulcycle, Peloton, Orangetheory, and CrossFit (Toptal, 2019). In these niche markets, we have calculated a total addressable market size of 100,000 units.41,42

Based on sales figures from comparable products including SpeedCoach and primary research conducted with members of the rowing and coaching community, we projected the sales volumes presented in Table 9.1 (NK Sports, 2019; Smith, 2019). We anticipate sales to start low and increase more rapidly over time. As outlined in our development plan in section 7.1, we anticipate receiving our first orders in Year 2 of operation. Due to the high seasonality of rowing, we will make sure to time our product launch strategically with events such as the Head of the Charles Regatta, hosted every year at the end of October in Boston (Head of the Charles, 2019). These are well-established routes for launching new rowing technology products and spreading word of mouth in order to maximize initial sales (Nordrum, 2019). Table 9.1 shows how this sales trend will continue to increase annually. In order to minimize the impact of seasonality of the sport, we will expand our market to indoor rowing tanks, which will serve as our bridge to to early majority segment of boutique gyms and fitness centers. Figure 9.2 presents our modeled forecast for AchievEEG’s cumulative number of adopters over our first 5 years on the market.

Our revenue forecast was determined based on a unit sales price of $399. This price was determined based on the sales price of the SpeedCoach rowing device, Muse and Emotiv EEG headsets, and the sales price of upscale heart rate monitors and was further validated through primary research with rowing athletes and coaches (Emotiv, 2019; Garmin, 2019; Muse, 2019; NK Sports, 2019). The AchievEEG headband is a personal piece of equipment and should be worn by every athlete in the boat, unlike NK Sports’ SpeedCoach, priced from $399 to $619 depending on the model, that is only generally used by one of the athletes in the boat. Because our device will be used by each individual in the boat, our market research found that our customers would want each AchievEEG unit to be priced lower than those devices and closer to what they expect to pay for other wearables or sensors like heart rate monitors. However, the insight on focus and synchronicity that AchievEEG provides cannot be obtained with any other product on the market and the customers we interviewed placed great value in this, and were willing to pay a premium for this information that cannot be obtained by any other means (Brown, 2019; Smith, 2019). EEG headbands for use for gaming or meditation are priced between $299 for Muse, $299 for Emotiv’s 5-channel headset and $799 for Emotiv’s premium 14-channel headset (Fansworth, 2017; Muse, 2019; Emotiv, 2019). In addition to our one-time revenue from the sale of the device, we will have recurring revenue from our companion mobile application subscription. The subscription fee will be further tested with primary research but we plan to price it close to other comparable offerings in the market. For example, Whoop, a recovery analytics application used by many athletes is priced at $18/month (Whoop, 2019). Tritonwear, a swimming analytics platform is also priced at $18/month (Tritonwear, 2019). We used this value to generate our revenue forecast. To calculate the revenue from the application subscription, we estimated that 25% of the customers who purchase a headband would purchase the subscription plans. We also estimated that 25% of the units sold will get software and hardware upgrades which is priced at $100 per unit. This has been verified by preliminary market research and will be further tested before product launch (James & Naughton, 2019; Farrell, 2019; Calimag, 2019).

9.2 Financial Forecast

Our financial forecast are based on three key assumptions. First, in order to create realistic estimates, we used comparable companies and industries to calculate industry benchmarks.43 These include: Other Measuring and Controlling Device Manufacturing (SIC 3829 and NAICS 334519) and Sporting and Athletic Goods Manufacturing (SIC 3949 and NAICS 339920). In order to calculate more specific benchmarks, we further analyzed financial data from Fitbit, a large fitness wearable company, and Concept 2, a specialized rowing equipment company, as our comparable companies. Second, our revenue projection over 5 years is calculated using our estimate of units sold determined from our sales forecast. Lastly, the revenue projection is based upon our assumption that we are able to price our device at $399/unit, subscription at $216/year, and optional upgrades at $100.

The sale of our product generates three possible revenue streams: a $399 one-time fee for purchasing our headband device; an annual subscription fee priced at $216 for our mobile application that unlocks advanced insights for the headband device user.; and optional upgrades for both hardware and software components of our product priced at $100. These price points for both the headband and software application were tested through our pricing surveys, and are validated through competitive analyses. Based on primary market research, we estimate that 25% of the customers who purchase our headband will also subscribe to our premium subscription of the mobile application as well as get upgrades for the device.

In 2019-2020 (year 1), we will focus on the research and development of the headband device and mobile application to prepare for the launch our product and sales in year 2. We forecast that our unit sales will be around 5,500 headbands with 1,375 subscribers for the premium application and the optional upgrades. This will yield a net revenue of $2.6MM in year 2. In 2021-2022 (year 3), we forecast that our unit sales will reach 14,780 and net revenue will be $7MM . In 2022-2023 (year 4), we forecast that our unit sales will be 18,100 and net revenue will be $8.6MM. In 2023-2024 (year 5), we forecast that our unit sales will be 21,500 and net revenue will be $10.3MM. 

In the first year, our total operating expenses will be approximately $900,000. The majority of this cost is salaries paid to our 9 employees including the founding team members and R&D and Manufacturing staff as shown in the staffing schedule table Table A2 in the appendix. Other costs include renting office and laboratory space and purchasing equipments to develop our device prototype and begin pilot manufacturing. As we plan to begin full-scale manufacturing and launch our sales in year 2, we project that our operating expenses will increase to $1.4MM. We will hire additional employees, a software engineer, a procurement manager, sales representatives, and a customer service associate, bringing up our total team to 14 employees. Our cost of goods and services (COGS) will be 63.6% of our revenue in year 2 as 5,500 units are sold. There will be a noticeable increase in our sales and marketing spending as we begin to launch our product. The costs of our sales and marketing activities will come from initiating marketing campaigns, placing advertisements in rowing magazines, and travel to exhibitions, trade shows, and regattas to directly interact with potential customers. Across year 2 to 5, R&D spending will continue to rise as we will constantly be building and reiterating our product for current customers as well as developing future features for new markets.. Sales and marketing costs increase and almost triple in year 3 as we dominate the rowing market and begin to expand into other sports. R&D costs continually increase as we expand while G&A costs also increase as we hire more people. 

In year 3, the total operating expenses will be $2.6MM with 29 employees total, which accounts for 37% of our revenue. In year 4, the total operating expenses will be $3.2MM with 34 employees, which accounts for 36% of revenue. In year 5, the total operating expenses will be $3.6MM with 40 employees, which accounts for 35% of revenue. Since we plan to outsource manufacturing and distribution to our third-party partners, we will not require high fixed assets for these operations. We will still require capital expenses to orchestrate production and to have our own R&D facilities. Thus, PP&E costs will double from $500,000 in year 1 to $1M in year 2 as we invest in equipments and infrastructure to perform quality control and examine the potential of expanding in-house manufacturing activities as we scale. Overall, we will start to generate revenue in year 2 and have positive net earnings in year 3. 

9.3 Funding Requirements

Based on our cash flow statement, we realized the need to seek equity financing in Year 1 and 2. These funding rounds will be based on a milestone approach outlined in Table 9.2. We will raise funds after achieving a certain milestone during our development phase, allowing our investors to minimize risk and maximize returns. We will be seeking equity financing from leading and top venture capital firms or strategic investments from corporates in the sports industry. We believe this is important as we value mentorship, guidance and expertise within the field. 

Initially, we will begin to bootstrap our company with the founders putting in $50,000 each, totaling $250,000. Our initial investment does not only demonstrate the founding team’s commit to success but also will provide the company with the resources and means to conduct market research and develop an initial prototype. We will further seek $250,000 in seed funding from angel investors in the form of a convertible note. The initial investment of $500,000 will allow us to begin the early phases of research and development as we validate our core product and pilot small-scale manufacturing. Once we have hit both these milestones, we will then be seeking series A funding to raise $2MM in our first year. This initial investment is critical as we will have significant operating expenses and no generation of revenue. The series A funds will provide enough cash infusion needed to prevent our cash flow from going negative as we will have a cushion of $600,000 in the end of our first year. 

Our next milestone will be receiving the first sets of orders from rowing teams. We estimate that we will be able to achieve this by year 2.  Following this, we hope to raise $2.5MM series B funding in order to begin scaling and dominate the rowing electronics market. In addition, the funding will help us prepare for our expansion into adjacent markets such as indoor rowing and premium gyms. This round of funding will be vital in providing us with cash to scale our teams, as we hire more R&D  and operations such as sales and marketing activities as well as invest in equipments to set up the infrastructure of our supply chain. In addition, the series B funding will provide a buffer of cash in the case of unexpected additional expenses, the delay of income or lower than estimated unit sales. Overall, the funding will be critical for us to generate our target revenue, $7MM in year 3, which will then allow us to become self-sustainable in the next years. 

10. Offering

10.1 Investment Requirements

In order to achieve our milestones, we will require a total investment of $4.75MM over 3 years. The five founding team members have each contributed $50,000 of their own money to AchievEEG for a total of $250,000 of bootstrap financing to start with.44  In addition to this, AchievEEG is seeking to secure $250,000 in a seed round of venture capital financing immediately. This investment, along with our bootstrapped funds, will help us get us through our first year and help us achieve the milestones of validating our business plan and refining our prototype. Then, in May 2020 at the end of our first year of operation, we will seek $2MM in Series A venture capital financing to help develop larger R&D facilities and support our operating costs as we ship our first units sold in our primary rowing market. Next, in May 2021 at the end of our second year of operation, we will seek a following round of venture capital financing from the same investors for a $2.5MM Series B round. This financing will help us achieve our milestone of gaining significant traction in the rowing training device market and will see us through our R&D and market research efforts to launch in our secondary market. After this last round of investment, we will have fully penetrated our secondary market and will be financially self-sustainable by our third year.

10.2 Exit Opportunities

The most probable exit opportunity for AchievEEG would be an acquisition. NK Sports, the company behind the market leading rowing training device SpeedCoach, has already expressed interest in our product (James & Naughton, 2019). Alternatively, we could also be acquired by a big sports equipment company such as Nike or a big wearable technology company such as Fitbit or Huami. We anticipate acquisition as the most likely exit scenario because as our customer base expands into different markets, we will need significant resource to enable business growth. With an acquisition, we can bring in to the acquirer our expertise in the research and development around the technology, and we will in turn get their resources and expertise as well as the ability to leverage their distribution channels and brand. Also, portable durable dry EEG technology has great potential to various applications beyond sports including research, entertainment, and medicine (Ramakrishnan & Rennie, 2019). We believe that our performance in the sports market will be very attractive for a larger company to acquire and expand to different applications. 

 Another exit opportunity is going for a Initial Public Offering (IPO) after Year 5 as expansion scales and out market adoption becomes substantially defensible.46 Our decision to pursue an IPO will depend on our revenue performance after Year 5 and the condition of the economy at the time.47  If an IPO is timed properly in ideal market conditions, it can provide significantly better returns than an acquisition and a post-IPO acquisition could also be favorable.48 

10.3 Valuation of Business

At the time of exit in Year 6, AchievEEG will be valued at $226MM. This is approximately 22 times our revenues in our fifth year of business. The P/R ratio for was calculated by referring to financial data of four publicly available companies listed below in Table 10.1. Among these comparable companies, Huami is the largest wearable device company with over 17% global market share serving multiple industries including fitness and healthcare (Crunchbase, 2019). It is also a recent company to obtain an IPO in 2018. BioTelemetry is the provider of mobile health technology services that went public in 2013. Brainsway LTD is a medical device company for non-invasive brain treatments to treat depression and OCD. It is a company that also recently achieved IPO status in 2018 (Nasdaq, 2019c). Aurora Mobile LTD is a mobile collaboration platform that uses AI and machine learning algorithms to track work productivity and very recently achieved IPO status (Nasdaq, 2019d). These four companies were chosen to determine AchievEEG’s P/R ratio because their products or services all resemble certain aspects of our product. Huami sells wearable devices, just like AchievEEG’s headband product. BioTelemetry and Aurora Mobile LTD are digital solutions that leverage big data and AI algorithms, just like AchievEEG’s software component (Nasdaq, 2019d). Brainsway LTD’s non-invasive product for brain treatments resembles AchievEEG’s hardware component (Nasdaq, 2019c). An average of the P/R ratios of each of these companies led to a P/R ratio of 19.3 for AchievEEG. An average of the Revenues/Share was taken of the four comparable companies, to obtain a Revenues/Share value of 0.88 for AchievEEG. Our P/R ratio was multiplied by our year 5 revenues forecast of $10.2 MM, resulting in a valuation of $226 MM when divided by our Revenues/Share value of 0.88. 

10.4 Offer

With this structure, we seek to cumulatively raise $4.75MM in equity financing over 5 years. The founders will be bootstrapping $250,000 of our own money. Our seed round of funding will occur in our first year as a business, amounting to $250,000. We will return to the same investors to receive a Series A round of funding of $2MM in our second year of operations and first year of sales. We will require a Series B round of funding during our third year of operations, amounting to $2.5 MM. At liquidity, we project that our investors for our seed round of funding and our Series A round of funding will see returns of 6.5 times their initial investment, owning 20% of the company at the time of exit. We project that our investors for the Series B round of funding will see returns of 4 times their investment, owning 15% of the company at the time of exit. The founders will retain ownership of the remainder of the company, or 65% of the company, keeping in mind that we will create a stock options pool at the time of becoming a publicly traded company from the founders’ shares in AchievEEG. 

11. Conclusion

AchievEEG is the only device of its kind that measures team synchrony and individual’s focus levels, visualizing each individual athlete’s mental state in a side-by-side digital display for coaches and trainers to assess during practice sessions in real-time. Our customers will buy our product because it gives them an advantage during competitive sport, helping them hone their strategy and execution to achieve real performance results. AchievEEG helps reveal the root causes for poor or quality athletic performance, rather than just measuring symptoms of performance like heart rate and breathing. We go beyond Fitbit and Garmin’s wearable data tracking with our proprietary algorithms that analyze the brain’s electrical signals in real time to quantify focus, stress, fatigue and engagement for each individual, relative to each individual on the team. This will also enable coaches to pair up athletes with complementary mental skills or traits, ensuring balance during team performance. 

The possibilities are endless with our advanced proprietary data analysis because this will not only transform team sports practices, but will also be very crucial to improving group collaborations in the workplace. We envision businesses using AchievEEG during team meetings and project collaborations to help determine which individuals work best with each other, producing the most effective or creative results when matched or paired accordingly. We will start to gain traction with customers by focusing on crew teams both in the US and internationally, focusing on athletes competing at the collegiate and international level. In this way we will be able to validate the credibility of our concept with our innovators and early adopters and begin to enter the indoor rowing market. We will form bulk deals and partnerships with high-end gyms to gain traction with our early majority users, fitness enthusiasts but not only limited to indoor rowers, who would use AchievEEG in the gym and even purchase the headband via the gym for personal use. At this point the utility and effectiveness of our product will be well tested and proven, allowing us to target large workplaces as our next customers, and populating our late majority users.  AchievEEG’s market potential is substantial, and we project high returns for our investors of 9 times, 6.5 times and 4 times respectively for Seed, Series A and Series B rounds respectively. At the end of Year 5, we project AchievEEG’s valuation to be $226MM. 

Gone are the days of believing that the secret to unlocking human potential lies in working harder and longer. Human performance is becoming increasingly data-driven and mental performance is now recognized as having equal or greater importance than physical performance. We believe that AchievEEG lies at the forefront of these trends and will guide the revolution of quantifying human mental performance.

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