[00:00:00] Jay: Hi everyone, welcome to The First Customer Podcast. I am Jay Aigner. Today, I'm lucky enough to be joined by Rasmus Barfred. He is the co founder of The Magic 5, customized swimming goggles. Is that how you, describe it?
Rasmus: Yeah. Can't run from that. That's true.
Jay: No, it's, you know, obviously, you're on Shark Tank, got, Everybody excited, you know, to see this product.
And it is just like one of those things. You're like, why hasn't this been done yet? so, Rasmus, where are you from originally? And, any, was there anything in your childhood that led to you being an entrepreneur later in life?[00:01:00]
Rasmus: I'm from Denmark, in Europe, Northern part of Europe, tiny country up in, in Scandinavia. it's, when you're born in a welfare state, there's nothing that really pushes you to become an entrepreneur because life is really easy. Why go out and take a huge risk? it was not something that I like.
I wasn't born and thought about building my own business from day one. I, it just kind of happened to be honest. Then in hindsight, I can see that I definitely didn't get the interest and the, this, the foundation of running a company or being an entrepreneur from my dad, he's very risk averse and he's had the same job for, I don't know how many years.
And he really thrive and loves that environment. Whereas my mom's she's much more entrepreneurial in spirit. so it's definitely from her that I've gotten some of that stuff injected since, since my childhood without really knowing it. but I got in, I was part of starting the first business that I was part of from like an [00:02:00] early age.
Like basically starting up the business was Actually together with one of my current co founders boo whom I was in shock withhe called me same day that I started university and was like, hey I have this idea. I don't, I've developed the software online, B2B, SAS product. I don't have time to execute it.
It's a really interesting idea. We can try to build it up in Denmark as a test case and then expand to Europe and see if it works out. And I was like, yeah, why not? And then I jumped into that and did that for four years. and it was actually a successful business in and of itself, but we needed a certain legislation to be adopted across the European union.
That never happened. So after four years, it's like, it's no point in running it. FTE kind of company. So we get to scale it down, but that was my first experience. This is like 50, 17 years ago, 50, like ish when I was 18. so, yeah, that, that's how that whole world for me [00:03:00] began. Then I had,five years.
Jay: Doing corporate, borrowing stuff, mergers and acquisitions, suit and tie every day. A lot of Excel sheets, a lot of PowerPoints before we started the magic file. So, Wow. Well, that's a, interesting, taste of startup life before you got, you know, jumped back into things. I saw you had all sorts of degrees from various places. What was your goal? Were you, I mean, you know, you seem to at least have some of the business basics,
or advance things, you know, in your pocket.
Rasmus: yes. So I always knew that, that I was not going to be a hairdresser. So I was not going to,be, developer, like software wise, like I wanted to venture, I wanted to go into, the business side of things. That was what I was drawn to. So I, in Denmark, we have like three different types of, kind of high schools, and I picked the one that was catered [00:04:00] towards like business, commercial marketing, all that stuff.
And I did the same for my university degree that I picked something that was. I went to Copenhagen business school, but I also had, I've always had like a really strong interest for the society and like geopolitics and stuff. So I ended up studying international business and political science and found that to be a very good mix.
I studied, it was the same for my bachelor's and master's degree. it's a very good way to get, you A very holistic education on what's going on in the world, how things moving micro and macro. And it's like, yeah, it fitted well with the kind of path that I was on, but I didn't know from the get go that it would be running a company, being an entrepreneur.
I've learned that I really thrive in that and it's definitely where. I feel the most at [00:05:00] home. so I'm happy that I've ended up here, but there's no, it's been no big master plans. I didn't sell golf balls on the side of the street when I was eight years old and stuff like that. Like it's, yeah, kind of just happened to be honest.
Jay: I mean, I think that's fair and not everybody grows up, you know, selling lemonade or whatever. and,you know, at the end of the day, if you're doing it, that's all that matters. so let's get to magic five or the magic five. first of all, where's that name come from?
Rasmus: So it's, so I called when I, when we were about to start the company, I called one of my friends, Morten, who is like this super creative guy, Brand,really creative and very talented guy. And I called him, I was like, Hey Morten, I need to buy a coffee. I have this, we have this new idea.
it's a new swimming goggle. I know it sounds crazy, but we basically take 95 percent of the product. It's exactly the same as other goggles. And then it's the last 5 percent of the product where the magic happens. And. [00:06:00] That's where the name come from, came from then more than he took me, Bo, like our team on a journey where we kind of discovered that name.
For ourself and figured out that it actually had meaning to us. What it means to us is not, it's nothing related to swimming. It's not like, it's not because you need to swim five lanes and then you'll be the best swimmer or something like that, but it's our whole product philosophy. And that really talks into our technology.
So we haven't,we have gone in and applied technology where it really matters for swimming goggles. Swimming goggles is all about finding a pair of goggles that you, that's comfortable and that doesn't leak. It's about the fit of the product, the glass and the straps and the tempos, all that stuff is commoditized.
It's, there's no reason to go in and try to change that. It's just changing what matters. That's the last 5%. That's what makes the whole difference. If we would, if we were to take out technology where. Just for the background, the way you get the goggles is that you go on our website, buy the goggle, [00:07:00] the color you like, then you download our app.
And based in that app, you scan your face. And five days later, your custom goggles are made. They're made to fit the coverage of your eye socket and they'll be super comfy, right? If we took that same approach, And make ski goggles or make helmet products or scan your foot and made a custom shoe product, whether that would be a running shoe or protection shoe, whatever it is, would approach it in the same way.
The last 5 percent is where the magic happens. How do we go in? Make a product that's significantly better when it comes to fit and comfort.yeah, so
Jay: I love that. Yeah. And
Rasmus: product.
Jay: is the technology proprietary, the scanning technology? Okay.
Rasmus: this, so the scanning, so we, this, our technology stack is basically, three components. It's scanning. So how you scan your face. That's how we get data, figure out what your face looks like, Jay, and said, I can see a 2d image of you right now, but what's the depth and dimensions of your [00:08:00] face, we get that from the scan.
So that's step one. It's complicated, but it's actually not as complicated as it sounds. Then once we have all that data that doesn't like magically produce a pair of swimming goggles, right? So our core technology is really, a fading technology. It's a huge set of algorithms that. Has learned to understand how goggles are fitted the most optimal way on your face, right?
That fitting technology goes in work with the 3d model we created from scan and then figures out How should we make the goggles so they will be as comfortable as possible for you and don't leak? That's the second part third part is then the production technology We use robotics. So we have a robot arm.
We basically installed it on the desk and that goes in and then it cut the goggle To reflect the curvature, right? So it takes a
Jay: is that how it started? Is that how the, when you guys sat down and said, how are we going to make [00:09:00] this a repeatable, scalable business? You said these are the three things and you did it.
Rasmus: we, so we start, it started out again, Bo called me and said, Hey, I have this idea. I can't leave it. he was training for an Ironman. So triathlon where you swim, run, and swim, bike, and run. And at the time I had done a few Ironman. So he, I was kind of his go to guy for advice on gear. So he called me, I was like, Hey, I can't find goggles.
That's comfortable. And that doesn't make sense. All the goggles on one size fits all of course they don't fit. Right. And then he wanted to know which goggles I use. And my response was, well, my best friend, he's a professional swimmer. He's a competitor swimmer. And when I swam with him, he said, just buy the cheapest possible pair because nothing works.
And then the three of us got together and was like, okay, how can we make a product that is custom because that's what you need? And [00:10:00] then we put out the cornerstone for the product and said, okay, we want to make a product that is significantly better than the existing products.we want to do it by using technology.
And we want to do it at a price range that was not only for Michael Phelps or the top athletes. We want to hit everyone who swims. My mom who's swimming 30 minutes at the time in the local Y.and that really put a lot of requirements on our product development. And we, for instance, we thought we should 3d print the goggles, but it's not scalable.
It's not economically viable. It's way too long time. you can't really.the amount of 3d printers you would need to be able to make 5, 000 goggles a day. It's like, it would take up most of Manhattan. No, it wouldn't, but it's like, it would just be if it's just not possible. Right. So we had to go out and explore what are the different types of technologies that we could try to use to make the product.
But before that, we're like, how are we going to get the [00:11:00] data in someone's face? There was no technologies, nothing we could use. So we had to start out by developing the scanning technology, the fitting technology. so,
Jay: there was no, there was nothing out there that could
like that.
Rasmus: we got the idea back in late 16 at that time, I was working with MNA.
Nicholas was a pro swimmer and Bo was,a director in the big Danish software company. there was nothing we could, it was in 17, it's iPhone five S six at the time. The technology in those, like, there's nothing on the market. we actually thought that we would be able to license some kind of scanning technology at the time. You could get a device that you put into, you put on top of your phone and then you could scan something.
It was like, it was a huge thing back then. No, not a huge thing, but it was a thing back then, but it was just very clunky. And then everyone needed that device to scan the face. So what we ended up doing was we found out [00:12:00] how we could extract the Metadata from pictures taken by your phone and then we developed an app that basically took a lot of pictures on your phone of on your phone of your face and then we extracted that data and were able to transform that into a 3D model of your face.
yeah, so that's, it started on a whiteboard and then, okay, we need to lay the foundation for technology. We need to validate that this is feasible. And we did that in our spare time. And once we kind of laid that foundation for the product, then we were ready to quit our job and convince our wives to move from Denmark to the US to start up the business.
Jay: Did you have, who was, how did you get to the tech from not being tech guys? Like who, who did the first iteration of the algorithm?
Rasmus: The Nicholas, the swimmer on our team, like me and Bo, we swam a bit as well. I was, I did a lot of triathlons. So I've also spent a [00:13:00] lot of time in the water, but I was just not competitive swimmer like Nicholas, me and Nicholas. We studied IB international business and political science together. so we can't develop, but we understand the math behind our technology.
Particularly around our fitting technology. Bo is an engineer, so he could develop
Jay: Got it. Okay. Okay. So you kind of had, you
Rasmus: in the founding team, we have the foundation to make the technology.
Jay: got it.
Rasmus: But it's not, it's a, it's not just developing an app where you can text with one another or there's flowcharts. There's, it's a different kind of technology to,when you develop something from like the bare bones, basically coming up with the concept and how do we do this mathematically and how do we put all these pieces together?
But, yeah, but we did that in house the first, what took, it took us six months of spare time. After our day jobs to see, okay, we can, this is possible, right? but it was very [00:14:00] MVP. It was very early. The scanning experience back then, it was horrible. It was super difficult, but we knew that every time a new iPhone or new Androids would hit the market, the camera's going to get better processing power, get better.
back then it was actually a. Big challenge in certain parts of Europe and also the U S that wifi, that, connectivity to the internet was so bad, most places, if you're not on wifi, so people couldn't scan their face, if they were just walking around the streets, now you're fighting everywhere, right?
Jay: So we knew that there were a lot of things that were working in our favor, but it was, yeah. love that. and I, yeah, I mean, I was asking because, you know, a lot of founders don't have that tech in house, right? If you don't have a technology kind of co founder, if you didn't have, you know, those ability to hop in as an engineer there, how do you think you would have, you know, Kind of procured this [00:15:00] technology outside of your team, or would you have to hire for it?
Rasmus: so first off, I don't think it would have, I think the chance of succeeding would have been extremely low because then we would have, if you go out and get funding to develop tech and you're not a developer yourself, you need to convince the investor that, okay, this, yes, I can't do this. I can't develop this technology myself, but there are thousands of other engineers that has developed a similar social media app.
Or there's thousands of other developers that has worked, that has developed, or worked on, a flow and process oriented app, like a work efficiency app, something like that, right? Or a customer service product, something like that. So do you, so you could do so, you could hire and get, probably get higher and get funding.
For things that's already in the market where you just basically like how many apps haven't we seen that does [00:16:00] custom service or that does engagement or some sort of influence of marketing or whatever it's right. but for this type of thing was like, Hey, we think we can develop a scanning technology.
we don't really know how ourself. We need to find a developer that knows it would have been very tricky to get funding for that, I think,
Jay: Yeah, no, I agree.
Rasmus: Yeah. So we, but we didn't get funding in the beginning. We, and this will tie back to our first customer, but we bootstrapped as far as we could, and then we haven't really raised a lot of funding, got some funding on Jackting, but, it's not like we have venture funded our way through this.
And,yeah.
Jay: tell me about it. That was a great segue. who was the first customer? Beautiful.
Rasmus: So when we had laid the foundation for the technology, those three cornerstones, like the scanning. The fitting technology and okay, we're going to use robots to [00:17:00] do subtractive manufacturing and not additive,additive manufacturing. We're like, okay, the robot arms that 35, 000 each. We didn't have that kind of money.
Just to throw into the robot arm, right? This had this type of cost. We would need a lot of money to buy the first round of materials and products and everything. So we, did a Kickstarter campaign, in August or September, yeah, August and September 2017.and that's when we got our first customers.
We got 1500 customers out of Kickstarter, raised a hundred thousand dollars ish. And that provided us with first portion of startup capital that we needed to get hardware machinery and everything in. But most valuably it gave us the first 1500 customers. And if you develop, [00:18:00] if you're doing something that's super innovative, there's a lot of things you don't know.
So. The first, remember this three step of the technology, scanning, fitting, and production. Our fitting technology is really our holy grail. If our fitting technology doesn't know how to fit goggles on Jay's face, it's game over. Our scanning technology could be really good and our robots could be good.
But if we found your production data, if the fitting technology doesn't work, Nothing works. So after the Kickstarter, we had a minimum viable product of our fitting technology that was, that algorithm was designed based on my feedback. And I did, I was way fitter back then that I am right now. I was based on Nicholas's feedback, who is a competitor to swim in a lot of competitive swimmers and the Danish national team provided a lot of feedback in the product development, so we could take all that feedback and then design it.[00:19:00]
Start up our algorithm and run their feedback. What happened on Kickstarter was all the customers we got on Kickstarter, they were not competitive swimmers. They were 45, 55 overweight. Or just look like a normal person. They were not skinny and lean and young. And, fitting technology didn't work for the first 1500 customers.
It's very bad results. And we were scratching our head, like what's going on? Until we realized that the way that the goggles fit them, The way the technology fit the goggles would work really well on a thin, younger customer, but not someone who's 50 and looks like a normal person.
Jay: Wow.
Rasmus: we basically had to get feedback from all these 1500 customers just to
Jay: were they
Rasmus: know,no.
That's the amazing thing about someone would probably frustrated, right? But the Kickstarter community is awesome because [00:20:00] it'sit's a type of person who know what, who they're getting in bed with, right? They're backing something because they really want this to be out there in the market and they buy it at a Discount and they buy it up front and there's a lot of risk involved in it for them They might never get the product, but what they're motivated by is helping you succeed.
And of course getting the product in the end. Right.so they were super, super keen in getting product feedback. We of course had to like, Get back to them and say, Hey guys, these are finding from the first 1500 goggles that we send out, which basically was a lot of you guys didn't get the experience that we all expected.
And here's the reason, right? So we need your feedback so we can go in and modify our feeding technology. And they gave us that feedback and then we could see. It started to work [00:21:00] better. It was not ready, but it started to work much better. Right now we have 200, 000 customers worldwide. and our refund rate, the amount of customers that we refund because they don't like the fit is 2%.
So we don't have a problem right now. Oh, and we haven't had a problem. For the last couple of like five, four years, right? it actually, we started to see some good results pretty quickly, but, that was the first customers and super valuable way to one get.
Get initial funding from that Kickstarter campaign, but most importantly get a Group of super fans that feel very vested It's a it's not the same type of relationship you have with your customer that you buy on Facebook or Instagram or something Like 2%, 1 percent of them are going to be Karen's anyway.
And, you know, it's,[00:22:00] Kickstarter community is completely different. So that was,that's another way to get your first initial customer base. Right.
Jay: That's a great, actually, nobody's ever brought that up before. That's a great, that's a great idea. And I actually, I've only bought 1 thing. I think off kickstarter was the solo stove. The, those portable, camper stove things, and then they took off and got super popular. And I was like, I'm part of that like thing.
I helped make that possible. So, yeah, it's a, it's an interesting kind of community dynamic to have, I'd never really thought of it that way. all right, let's do one more question. non business related.if you could do anything in the world and you knew you wouldn't fail, what would it be?
Rasmus: If, and I knew I wouldn't fail. I would ride the Tour de France.
Jay: See, I love him. So it just has an answer. Like that's like a genuine, it means you don't need to think about it. I love that answer. It's the first one, obviously that we've gotten. why would you ride the Tour de France?
Rasmus: Well, I love sports. I come [00:23:00] from triathlon. I've, swum. I've cycled. I've run my entire life. And cycling, has a very,unique thing about it. And that is that you get a ton of experiences while you do the sport. See a lot of things going up and down a mountain and you typically do it with other people.
So there's a social aspect to it as well. so the Tour de France for me is the most aspirational thing I would like to do. As an athlete, right? a few other things that I would also really like to do is, swim around Manhattan. I live here and in a few months, then every weekend someone is swimming around Manhattan with a support crew, following them.
And I would really like to do that. it's a very long swim. It's not an easy swim because there's currents and it's a little bit choppy, the water actually. but I would really like that. And again, it's a part of swimming where you get a memorable experience for life. It can be a [00:24:00] little bit monogamous to go to the pool if you go by yourself.
So anything that's over water where you see things that's a. That, that would be my go to.
Jay: Wow. Those are both great answers and never had either one of them. so, dude, I love your story. I love the product. I love everything about you. if you want to get in touch with you directly, how do they do that? And then obviously magic five, the magic five, how do they reach them, reach you guys there?
Rasmus: I think Instagram would be the best places, for would be the best place for the company. the magic five, that's our handle. you'll find it on there. You can, if you can't find it, just Google swimming goggles and shark tank will pop up all over YouTube and whatever, me LinkedIn.yeah, it's not a, I think there's not a lot of guys called Rasmus Barfred,
Jay: No, there's not. You're very
easy to
Rasmus: me on the, exactly.
Jay: We'll link you. well, dude, I love your story. Thank you for being on. And, we wish you the best of luck and we'll catch up again soon. All right.[00:25:00]
Rasmus: Thank you, Jay. Appreciate it.
Jay: Thanks, buddy. See you, man. Have a good one.
Rasmus: Yes.