I’ve always been fascinated by the role of the brain in sports performance. As a Division III soccer player, I had an unusual journey to playing professionally abroad and in the States. Training alone, I quickly realized the biggest problem: In a real game, every movement is a reaction to an unpredictable cue. You can’t replicate that dynamic environment by yourself.
While training in Germany, I discovered reaction light systems—expensive pods that flash randomized colors to train cognitive skills alongside agility. I thought, why spend thousands of dollars on these lights when all you need is something to show randomized cues on your phone? I created a simple YouTube slideshow for reactive training at the park. When strangers came up asking to buy it, I offered it to them for free. That's when it clicked that other people were looking for this, too.
I contacted some neuroscience professors from my college, who confirmed the science. Training your brain and body simultaneously offers a “one plus one equals three” approach; you get far more out of doing them together than separately. Obsessed with the idea, I spent late nights researching and planning. Eventually, with some encouragement from my coaches to pursue it, I returned to Chicago and joined an incubator, where I met my co-founder and chief technology officer.
SwitchedOn optimizes human performance by combining physical and cognitive training using just your mobile device. By flashing randomized cues like colors, arrows, or numbers, the app forces you to react to external information, training cognitive skills like reaction time and spatial awareness simultaneously with physical speed. We serve three general categories: sports performance, fitness, and rehabilitation.
Being a non-technical founder who doesn't know how to code, AI has helped me so much with my communication with my developers. When bugs pop up, instead of trying to explain it in a way they wouldn't understand, I ask Google Gemini, “Help me write a message to my developers that explains the issue and what they should do.”
It responds with code snippets and points to exact areas, like backend authentication, which helps me understand so much about building this app.
Gemini also helps accelerate daily operations, like analyzing dense academic research for our evidence-based training programs and crafting instructions. Listing step-by-step directions for our library of 500 exercise videos was a very tedious job. Now, I share those videos with Gemini, and it helps me draft clear instructions instantly.
Gemini is not only helping bring efficiency to our workflow. It’s helping us understand our 750,000 users’ needs by analyzing customer feedback. When users requested accurate data to show they were improving, it inspired our newest feature, SwitchedOn Vision. We used Google’s ML Kit pose detection frameworks to implement computer vision through the front-facing camera, automatically measuring reaction time and movement time for data-driven assessments.
For a small team like ours, having access to this technology really accelerates our growth because we can work smarter and faster. We already offer the most accessible tool out there for cognitive motor training because it requires just a smartphone. Our vision? To build SwitchedOn into the premier global source for anyone looking to strengthen their mind and body simultaneously.