Nine years ago my heart stopped.
Most people would assume surviving was the hardest part.
It wasn't.
What almost nobody knows is how close I came to quitting afterward.
Recovery was harder than dying
My brain wasn't firing like it used to. Things that used to come easy suddenly didn't. I had built companies before, and now I was struggling to hold a thought. I had the disability paperwork ready. I was that close to deciding my building days were over.
The day I stood in the Wright Brothers museum
Then one day I found myself standing in the Wright Brothers museum.
I read about the moment in 1901 when Wilbur, after another failed season, told his brother that man wouldn't fly for a thousand years. He was done. Beaten. I remember standing there staring at those words longer than I probably should have.
Because they sounded exactly like the conversation I was having with myself.
Then a question came to me. What would have happened if the Wright Brothers quit?
And before I could even finish that thought, a second question came. This one didn't come from me. I've had a handful of moments in my life where I knew a thought wasn't my own, and this was one of them. It cut straight through the fog and the self-pity and reached into my soul.
What would happen if you quit?
I stood there in that museum and felt something turn around inside me. I walked in ready to give up. I walked out recommitted. The disability paperwork never got filed. I doubled down instead.
What that decision became
That decision eventually became something real.
Nine years later, it finally has a name.
BallHawk.
The thing I've spent nine years fighting to build turns the phone in your pocket into a professional sports camera. It tracks the game on its own, follows the action up close, and streams it live. The kind of footage that looks like a broadcast crew showed up. And while it works, you're in the bleachers actually watching your kid play.
Nobody had solved this, and there's a reason
Push a phone that hard, running heavy AI and live streaming in the summer sun, and it overheats and shuts down. Problem after problem like that stood in the way, and I had to invent my way through every one of them. I've filed patents on what came out of those years. I'm 857 iterations into BallHawk.
And lately it has all been coming together in a way I can only describe as miraculous.
There were seasons I wasn't sure it would ever exist outside my garage and my head. Today, it exists. I've held it in my hands. I've watched it track a play across a field with nobody touching it, and I got emotional the first time it worked. Not because of the technology. Because of what it took to get there, and Who got me there.
Follow the last stretch with me
In a few weeks we'll finally introduce it to the world on Kickstarter. If you want to follow this last stretch with me, I made a list for the people who've been on this journey from the beginning. You'll hear everything first: join the early list here.
No pressure. Truly. If all you do is read this and smile because you remember where I was nine years ago, that's enough.
Why the name means so much to me
Wilbur Wright was two years from Kitty Hawk on the day he wanted to quit. He had no idea how close he was.
I think that's why the name of this thing means so much to me. Kitty Hawk was the spot where two brothers who almost gave up finally got off the ground.
BallHawk is mine.
Still here. Still grateful. Still building.
Continue reading: Why you can't build a great sports camera from an office.
