#At a glance
- Role: Founder and sole employee
- Duration: Four years
- Reach: Paying customers in more than 25 countries
- Products: Barbell Mate and Timing Mate
- Outcome: Acquired by Strength By Numbers in January 2026
#The problem
During the 2022 Commonwealth Games training cycle, I wanted access to the same performance tools used by professional athletes. The problem was simple: velocity-based training devices and timing gate systems were too expensive for many individual athletes and local clubs.
This was not an abstract market opportunity. I was the customer. I understood why the products were useful, where existing systems were frustrating, and what athletes would compromise on to make them affordable.
I started MATE Sports Tech to build practical alternatives.
#Starting with velocity-based training
The path to MATE began with Velocity 2 RPE, a small web application I made for a friend whose barbell tracker did not provide the calculations he needed. That project exposed a larger problem: useful training data existed, but the hardware and software were often inaccessible or incomplete.
The first MATE product was Barbell Mate, an affordable velocity-based training device that measured velocity, force, and power while lifting.
Building it meant treating the product as a complete system rather than a single piece of hardware. The sensor, electronics, embedded firmware, mobile application, physical enclosure, and user experience all had to work together during real training sessions.
#Rethinking timing gates
While researching timing systems, I kept returning to one awkward convention: every system required a beam device and a reflector to be placed and aligned on opposite sides of the track.
That setup was expensive, slow, and unnecessarily fiddly for a coach or athlete working alone. I wanted Timing Mate to remove that friction rather than simply produce a cheaper version of the same experience.
Timing Mate became a reflectorless timing gate system. Removing the reflector changed the physical setup and created a clearer product distinction: fewer components to place, less alignment, and a faster path from arriving at the track to collecting a result.
#What I owned
As the founder and only employee, there was nowhere for responsibility to disappear. I handled the full product and business stack:
- Product strategy and feature prioritisation
- Electronic design, PCB prototyping, and hardware iteration
- Embedded firmware
- Four supporting applications across Android and iOS, including product architecture, device integration, release, and ongoing support
- Enclosure and physical product development
- Supplier and manufacturing coordination
- Product positioning, websites, and customer acquisition
- Fulfilment, documentation, customer support, and troubleshooting
This breadth became one of the most valuable parts of the experience. A hardware decision affected firmware. Firmware affected the application. Manufacturing constraints changed the enclosure. Customer support exposed product decisions that needed to be revisited. I learned to make those trade-offs as one connected system.
#Working within constraints
MATE was bootstrapped. Every prototype, feature, and production decision had to justify the time and money it consumed.
The challenge was not producing the most technically elaborate system. It was deciding what customers genuinely needed, building enough to test that belief, and improving the product without allowing complexity to outrun the business.
I ran the company while continuing to train and compete at an elite level. That forced a strong bias toward useful work: shorter feedback loops, direct customer conversations, and products that could be supported by one person.
#Outcome
MATE grew from a problem I experienced personally into a commercial hardware company serving customers in more than 25 countries.
After four years, the company was acquired by Strength By Numbers in January 2026. I subsequently joined Strength By Numbers as Head of Sports Tech, continuing the work from a larger platform.
The acquisition was the visible outcome. The deeper result was proving that one person could identify a real problem, develop an interconnected hardware and software product, manufacture it, find customers internationally, and carry the business through to an exit.
#Products
#Relevant experience
I now bring this end-to-end perspective to founders and small teams working through difficult product decisions, particularly where hardware, software, customers, and commercial constraints meet.