Sport's Cutting Edge

Maria Baker founded Nobody’s Princess to make snow and ski gear specific for girls and women.

Maria came up against the chronic issue of women being paid scant regard in sports apparel, with the “pink it, and shrink it” mentality falling well short of the mark.

She wants women of all shapes and sizes to feel completely at home in her gear, and to encourage people to head to the slopes, who may never have given it a go before.

Maria shares with us the difficulty of winning Government support, after a female-specific funding program ended, and with her business both too new and too advanced to fit into current funding categories. 

The recent inclusion of risk management into sports and

Founder of Safeguarding You, Adam Wood, created a platform where what once was daunting, is now made much easier.

The program provides users with a simple assessment to understand their risks, then actionable advice is delivered to lower the risk percentage.

Wood has been heavily involved with his own children’s sporting clubs, and understands the difficulty in navigating the need to report and adapt to issues that arise.

An area of great interest currently is concussion within the AFL, particularly exploring the trend of under-reporting, and the risks associated with trying to get back on the field.

Safeguarding You is constantly evolving, creating new technology to allow teams and groups to monitor what they’ve done in the past, and prepare for their future.

Ryan Talbot has spent the past two decades as one of Australia’s leading figures in IT security, working with our biggest bank- the Commonwealth, and our biggest state- New South Wales.

Ryan is the one who first introduced biometric security for the Commonwealth Bank, and was a gun-for-hire with international casinos to protect their security systems.

He’s also an athletics coach, and that experience led him to start VueMotion- friction free computer vision performance analysis.

VueMotion are now working with the biggest pro leagues in North America and Europe, having already cornered the domestic Australian market.

Ryan takes us inside an epic career and company story today on the pod!

Emma Thomson worked for two decades as a medical scientist, and in that time, also became a ‘Cricket Mum’.

That latter title led Emma to become a sportstech entrepreneur.

After endless afternoons bowling balls at her young son for batting practice, Emma realised there was a gap in the market.

Bowling machines are commonplace for adult cricketers, and so Emma tailor-made a bowling machine to suit kids as young as Grade 3.

Pitch It Up was born, and her e-commerce business is now also flourishing with major cricket and sporting goods retailers around the country.

Emma has just created a new iteration for visually impaired cricketers, and Pitch It Up has been working closely with the special needs and para sports people.

Today, Emma tells us the origin story, the tech, the growth, and the future of Pitch It Up.

Andrew Lemon has spent the past 15 years working on the front line of healthcare as an osteopath, he is also a business and tech entrepreneur. 

Eight years ago he co-founded Strength by Numbers, to finally fill a gap in the market he had been combatting for years, namely, the lack of specific strength measurements in healthcare.

Heart rate, blood pressure, weight, BMI are all measured as a matter of course. Andrew Lemon says for too long, strength has been the missing component.

Strength by Numbers has revolutionised the domestic Aussie market with their AxIT technology, and they’re about to attack the US market.

Andrew takes us behind the scenes of the science, the tech and the forward strategy.

Lining up for food, drinks and merchandise at events can cause the spectator to miss out on the action, spending time standing in a queue rather than enjoying the experience.

Tech entrepreneur David Jakic and e-business specialist Norbert Herrmann have created Liively- technology that allows the user to scan a QR code and order straight from their phone, and have their order brought directly to them.

The company has already captured the attention of big name clients, notably the NBA and Etihad Arena in the UAE.

Choosing to take Liively internationally was the move for the company, signing global clients and gaining exposure with every connection.

The company focuses on simplicity and need, onlyproducing what is required to bypass the issues that might arise with an online service.

Both Javik and Herrmann plan on expanding www.liive.ly to new ventures, creating something that's integrated and elastic within the technological landscape.

WSC Sport is the world-leading AI-generated short form sports video creator.

They create the video content distributed by the NBA, LaLiga, NASCAR, and the AFL, NRL & Cricket Australia.

Guy Port is WSC’s Asia Pacific Boss, and he describes the company's development of sports technology, and how it will continue to innovate new ways for the viewer to enjoy a personalised entertainment experience. 

The company has trained their tech to more than 50 different sports, implementing the data and information available, constantly soaking up new knowledge to become more advanced. 

Port, with his expertise in sports marketing, focuses on the visibility of sport to the audience in today's society, and how WSC is taking major league sport to people’s screens. 

Craig O’Shannessy is the architect of the Italian Renaissance of tennis- with Jannik Sinner’s AO 2024 win the first of many.

Before leading Team Italy climb back up the mountain, O’Shannessy was head-hunted by the most successful player of all time, Novak Djokovic in 2017.

O’Shannesy worked with Novak when during the most contested time in tennis history, with Federer, Nadal and Djokovic competing for the crown.

Craig O’Shannessy is an Aussie who dared to think differently, question the status quo of tennis and use tech and innovation to take an Edwardian sport and make it Web-4.

Craig’s agent Elia Hill, from Connecting In, also joined our discussion, to share how we can all benefit from greater connection and collaboration.

Amy Crosland is the Operations Boss of ASTN, and she has just released a ‘Women in Sports Innovation’ report, showing less than 10% of Aussie sport start-ups are female-founded.

The study also shows female-founded start-ups give a 63% greater return on capital investment than male start-ups.

20-year-old sports journalist Ava Stone also joined the discussion, and said true equality will be reached when we no longer need to discuss gender at all.

Amy and Ava gave insight into how we can increase female participation, and how women and men can both appreciate their unique value.

The simplification of betting mechanisms could be the future of sports gambling.

Founder of Statstrade, Chris Zheng has adapted an existing software to take up residency in the betting and sport statistics world.

Predicting the wager for sporting matches is becoming mainstream, with anyone able to view the odds right from their phone.

Zheng took the technology, and created tools companies can use to grow their business, furthering benefits for the user.

The future of Statstrade could potentially allow people to create markets, as well as bet on existing sporting match-ups.

Creating a product of interest in the ever evolving market is the hand that every business wishes to be dealt.