About Me

Hi, I'm Kai. Thanks for reading my blog! Here’s a bit more about me:

I grew up in Los Altos, California, the same Silicon Valley suburb where Steve Jobs started Apple in his parents' garage. Growing up, I was fascinated by Apple products, not realizing how fortunate I was to witness the introduction of some of the most historic products in the world. When the iPhone 4S was released in seventh grade, I vividly remember sneaking onto the Apple website during computer lab to watch the keynote. The excitement of seeing Apple unveil another groundbreaking device gave me goosebumps.

As a child, I was passionate about cars. In fourth grade, I was convinced I wanted to be a car designer, spending my free time drawing concept cars. I even "created" my own electric car company called "Voltz," complete with a prancing deer logo—a playful nod to Ferrari's prancing horse. However, when I reached middle school, I discovered that playing basketball made me "cool," and the sport quickly became the center of my life. I joined multiple AAU teams and played for my middle school team.

By the time I got to high school, basketball was still my main focus, but during my sophomore year, I was persuaded to give football a try. Having played flag football and grown up watching college football with my dad (specifically the Texas Longhorns), I quickly fell in love with the sport. I stopped playing basketball to focus solely on football and dreamed of playing at the collegiate level.

Fast forward to my senior year: instead of focusing on my studies, I spent most of my time sending emails to college coaches, hoping to secure a preferred walk-on spot. I sent close to a thousand emails to various FBS and FCS schools I was interested in. Eventually, I was accepted to the University of Texas, my dream school, and decided to send a final, desperate email to Jordan Traylor, who was overseeing the new walk-on program under head coach Tom Herman. I was incredibly fortunate to receive a spot on the team at my dream school, something I never thought possible.

Playing football at Texas was a significant adjustment. Coming from a small high school football program, I was unprepared for the challenges ahead. As I settled in, I became frustrated with the outdated and cumbersome software we used to watch film. It was far from what I was accustomed to as a dedicated Apple user. I couldn't help but think that Steve Jobs would have been appalled by the software the top football programs were using. This realization inspired me to start PreSnap. I saw an opportunity to make a difference in the game I loved.

In my sophomore year of college, I began assembling a team to build PreSnap. I met my co-founder and CTO, Larkin Williams-Capone, in a Creative Coding class. Larkin was my TA, and he often helped me fix my projects before they were due. I always joke that Larkin is the only reason I got an A in that class—I was terrible at coding. At the end of the semester, Larkin presented some of the projects he'd worked on, and I was incredibly impressed. I knew I couldn’t build PreSnap on my own, so after a meeting at the Taco Bell Cantina in West Campus (sadly no longer there), Larkin agreed to be a co-founder.

My other co-founder was my wide receiver coach at the time, Drew Mehringer. During my spring evaluation meeting, I told Drew about the work I was doing with Larkin. He saw the same opportunity and was already planning something similar on his own. Drew also became a co-founder of PreSnap.

Building PreSnap was far from smooth sailing. Being a student-athlete and a startup founder is not an easy combination. Despite my best efforts, it was difficult to achieve real progress while playing football. After graduating, I decided to pursue PreSnap full-time. We explored multiple ideas, all of which were flops. I learned the hard way that you can’t find product-market fit on your own—you need to talk to your customers.

One day, Drew came up with the idea of giving high school football coaches access to all-22 film from college football teams. We created an app using Vimeo's OTT service and began uploading all-22 film cutups. Finally, we had paying customers who loved our product.

There was just one problem: we didn’t own the rights to the film. High school coaches loved our app because all-22 film is strictly controlled by college football programs. College coaches are incredibly protective of their all-22 footage to maintain a competitive advantage over their opponents. Our first product that was finally generating revenue had to be shut down.

During the development of our app, I watched hundreds of hours of film and learned so much about football that I hadn’t understood as a player. I became obsessed with studying offenses in college football and realized that the tool players and coaches use to watch film is the central software solution for the game. Initially, I was intimidated by football technology giants like Hudl and Catapult (formerly XOS). I thought there was no way PreSnap could compete with a company backed by $250 million in funding or an Australian public company. But as I used these products more, I realized that these companies didn’t care about their customers—they only cared about making money.

You might wonder, "How do they still exist?" It’s because both Hudl and Catapult are monopolies deeply embedded in the rules of high school and college football. They can afford to offer the bare minimum to their customers because, no matter what, people have to use their products—or so they think.

In 1998, when Apple was on the verge of bankruptcy, Steve Jobs told his team, “Our job isn’t to make money for Apple. Our job is to try and make the very best products we can.”

This is why we believe PreSnap can take on the $250 million Goliaths of football technology. Money is not what drives me. If I wanted to make lots of money, I would work in real estate. What motivates me is the opportunity to change the game of football by building beautifully simple software that enhances the lives of coaches and players—the software they deserve.

Some of you might think, "That’s bullshit," but it couldn’t be more true.

These blog posts will document my journey as we work to build the best software for the game of football.