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The day Kai asked if a stopwatch could replace us
A team meeting turned into a product pressure test. My co-founders questioned whether Slingshot needed to exist. Here's what I did with the silence.
Live
Hardware fails. Coaches push back. Plans change. This is what building Slingshot actually looks like — from a dorm room, with limited budget and the truth on the table.
A team meeting turned into a product pressure test. My co-founders questioned whether Slingshot needed to exist. Here's what I did with the silence.
Real feedback from the field. What worked, what confused them, what clicked immediately.
Deep dive into the sensor data. Raw accelerometer readings vs. what coaches actually need to see.
Form factor decisions matter. Why the mounting position changes everything — and why vest-based systems don't work for indoor sports.
Customer discovery in action. The feature we thought was critical that nobody wanted — and what we built instead.
What the first PCB got wrong, and the decisions that led to a complete redesign. Photos of both boards side by side.
The math behind our effort metric. What we tried, what failed, and what the data actually says.