START UP NATION: ACTIVE MIND TECHNOLOGY:WHEN John McGuire heard that entrepreneur and investor Liam Casey was landing at Shannon airport, he drove from his Galway home to meet him.
Intercepting him at arrivals, he asked Casey where he was going. “He told me he had booked a rental car and was heading to Cork,” McGuire recalls, “so I asked if I could go with him and he said yes.”
That was how he secured the undivided attention of one of Ireland’s leading entrepreneurs for three hours. “You have to be willing to do that kind of thing,” says McGuire. “You have to be willing to do what other people are not, if you want to succeed.”
His company, Active Mind Technology, is on the verge of launching its first product. Now based in a start-up accelerator in San Francisco, he has moved on from hijacking entrepreneurs at airports.
His firm’s impressive list of advisers and investors now includes Apple founder Steve Wozniak, former Facebook director Chamath Palihapitiya, international entrepreneur Jerry Kennelly, Paypal president David Marcus and former Palm chief executive Ed Colligan.
Designer Yves Behar, famed for creating the Jawbone phone headset and the xo laptop, has dedicated a team of 10 people to McGuire’s first product. It will launch early next year.
Game is a product that monitors what you do while playing sports. The information it collects is uploaded to the internet so that your friends and competitors can see how you’re performing. “We are creating the digital home for your sporting life,” says McGuire.
The ultimate aim is to provide a product for every sport you can think of, but golfers will be the first to test it out. Using positional technology and Mems sensors, the golf application records what clubs you used, how far you hit the ball on each shot and how many strokes you played.
On detailed maps and satellite images of all the world’s golf courses, you can compare everything you do with the performances of your friends and professionals. “It actively records your game without disrupting your flow or concentration,” McGuire adds. “The aim was to create something easy, fun and visually appealing, and I think that’s what we have done.”
One of the world’s leading golfers tested the system at the recent Master’s tournament in Augusta. His identity remains a secret as the powers-that-be at the Masters have banned the use of such technology. The upcoming Open Championship at San Francisco’s Olympic Club will give more of the biggest names in golf a chance to test Game before it goes on the market.
Taking time now to reflect, McGuire recalls how he first developed the idea. When working with people from different sporting backgrounds, he would ask them a series of five questions.
“The most important question was the last one,” he says. “If you had a magic wand to create anything for your sport, what would you create? In the answer to that question I was getting years or decades of experience distilled down into a couple of sentences.”
The answer he kept receiving was that if he could bring technology into sport in a way that makes it seamless, then he would be on to a winner. If he could create something that tracks what you do without interfering with the game, then people will use it.
Up first is golf but tests are under way to monitor the performance of soccer players and surfers, runners and cyclists. Eventually, every sport will have an app, created by Active Mind Technology, to monitor contestants’ every move.
McGuire’s background is in sport psychology and technology, both of which he studied at University of Limerick. He has worked with All-Ireland winning hurlers and footballers and international athletes, helping them build the mental strength needed for success.
He remembers Kilkenny hurling manager Brian Cody tell him why his team was the best in Ireland. “He told me it was because they have incredible attitude, are incredibly motivated and incredibly committed. That’s what I try to instill in my team.”
A core group of engineers in Ireland have spent the past 18 months working for McGuire on wages well below the market rate. With the backing of some Silicon Valley investors, he is now in a position to offer proper salaries to his loyal staff.
McGuire himself has lived without a salary for three years, often sleeping on friends’ couches or staying in “sticky-carpet motels” when visiting California.
However his belief in the project and his determination have kept the company going.
“Liam Casey told me that I have the ability to make people want to help me,” says McGuire. “I suppose that’s part of what I bring to this. I can make people visualise success.”
