Against the Current

 

How Hydrow CEO & Founder Bruce Smith created a revolutionary in-home rowing experience to disrupt the sport’s culture of exclusion and introduce more people to the beauty of rowing.

 

Episode Notes

Bruce Smith peered into the future and saw a different path for rowing—one that transcended old perceptions of the sport: that rowing on water is for the rich, and rowing in the gym is for Type A personalities with something to prove. And that vision led him to create Hydrow, an immersive in-home rowing experience unlike anything that the world had seen before.

In his talk with Jesse, Bruce describes his entrepreneurial journey, starting with setting up shop in Boston and how the city proved to be both a fitting backdrop and a powerful catalyst for early growth. He gives an insider’s look at rowing culture and how it led him to pursue a more inclusive path. He breaks down his company’s process for designing machinery, software, and content synchronously. He advocates for rowing’s holistic health benefits. And he offers a peek into how Hydrow was able to develop its now-patented approach for broadcasting content live from the water. Throughout, it’s an inspiring look at how an insider disrupted the status quo to bring a beautiful human experience to everyone.

(3:28) Launching Hydrow in Boston

(6:21) Why in-home rowing needed, and deserved, a deeper connection to on-water rowing

(8:50) “The best things in life should not be reserved for elites.”

(15:45) Building the machine, software, and content in parallel

(22:32) Ripples of the future: what lies ahead for live outdoor reality

(27:16) Navigating a successful omni-channel strategy

(31:11) Safeguarding the mission to create the most beautiful human experience

Guest Bio

Bruce Smith is a lifelong entrepreneur and an accomplished rower and coach. A former Head of the Charles winner, Bruce coached the US Lightweight Eight to a Bronze medal at the 2015 World Rowing Championships. He is the former Executive Director of Community Rowing – Boston. He holds a BA in English Literature and Theory from McGill University.

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+ Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Bruce Smith: We are just getting started. It is early innings for Hydrow and what I hope will happen is in 2030, we will have a claim to tens of millions of people's 30 minutes in the morning or 30 minutes at night. And it will be the very best part of their day and they really look forward to it. And they take that feeling that they get from that 30 minutes and it carries them through the rest of the day and helps them be the people they want to be, kinda, more generous, more thoughtful. Able to consider the benefits for everybody, not just for themselves.

[00:00:37] Jesse Purewal: From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders. A series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas, fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands, and experiences. I'm Jesse Purewal, head of brand at Qualtrics, builder, coach storyteller and your host.

I believe one of the most powerful forces in business is the rebel, the outlaw, the one who pushes the status quo. And perhaps no type of rebel is more fascinating than the one who questions, refutes, and offers an alternative to the very establishment from which he or she came.

Consider John Legere. John served as an executive for 17 years, well, at the establishment, AT&T, Dell, Global Crossing before for taking the helm as the CEO of T-Mobile, where he helped transform a failing wireless company into the business and brand we all know now as the Un-carrier.

It's one thing when someone peers in from the outside and wants to disrupt the status quo. It's quite another when they've been part of that status and then they decide they want to do something to change it or offer an alternative to it. That's why I wanted to talk to Bruce Smith, the CEO of Hydrow, the whole health company behind the innovative new in-home rowing experience.

Bruce is an accomplished rower, former head of the Charles winner, and coach who led a men's team to a bronze medal at the 2015 world rowing championships. He's also someone who's done an incredibly honest reckoning about the historically exclusive and exclusionary nature of rowing, and his company and brand Hydrow, is as much about optimal exercise and whole health as it is about radical inclusivity and bringing the experience of rowing to everyone. Bruce and I started our conversation bantering a bit about the status quo of rowing machines themselves.

Ever since I started listening to some interviews with you and reading some stuff, now I can't unsee the design blemish of the Concept 2 that's in my basement. We've got a life fitness, which masquerades as the peloton, right? And then we've got this Concept 2. And now and every time I look at it, I'm like, okay. I'm missing an accessorization opportunity. I'm probably doing some of the wrong ergonomics and probably... Or maybe not.

[00:02:55] Bruce Smith: Concept 2s are awesome.

[00:02:56] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. They're really good.

[00:02:58] Bruce Smith: I like concept 2. You know and I know the guys who made the machine. It's two brothers and one of their wives and it's bulletproof. And it's really, it was the foundation for a lot of the stuff that we do and we wouldn't be here without them, so we're grateful.

[00:03:12] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. So there's obviously an inextricable link between the business Hydrow's in and the Boston location you're in. Given the history of the sport of rowing, what has been some of the most interesting set of unlocks around having a talent base in the Boston area?

[00:03:28] Bruce Smith: It is really amazing to be in a place where there are so many people. And there's a conversation in Boston, it's like the credibility in Boston comes from being smart. And I really thought that we had to start Hydrow in New York City because we wanted to make the most beautiful human experience, and the best creatives in the world are in New York.

But actually, when you have a relatively complicated business like ours with four or five different functionalities that you need to master, having access to MIT and Harvard graduates, and just the churn of information here is so vibrant and full of life.

So I was a little bit naive and I think it was better lucky than good in this case. We ultimately decided every movie ever made that features rowing has a shot of the Harvard Bell Tower. And we thought that from a branding standpoint, from a storytelling standpoint, it would be great to have that location. We could see a tiny bit of the Charles River from our original office in Harvard Square. So that was a really great part of the story. The talent piece was a surprise, and I just didn't know how rich we are here in Boston. It's crazy. So lucky.

[00:04:31] Jesse Purewal: And what do you think has been cultivating that as you look out in the community? I mean, obviously, the university base is incredibly strong. It's a draw for all kinds of social and intellectual reasons. But what do you think either helped shift your perception or helped you realize that your current perception should have been your perception perhaps all along?

[00:04:49] Bruce Smith: Right now, I think I was just biased in eating output New York was sewing, which is arguably the very thing that I'm trying to prevent with Hydrow. We are not a bicoastal company, we are a company for everybody, but the person who really dropped the scales from my eyes was this guy that I met through the hardware process.

So we did a nationwide search for hardware company, and there's a company called Cooper Perkins in one of the suburbs of Boston here. And I met the principal there, Garhard Palweka, and he was just like the most generous guy. He took the company under his wing to a large degree, and really... He didn't tell me, no, we couldn't hire a designer from California or New York.

He said, let me present some options for you. And he just very skillfully introduced me to a whole bunch of people around the city, as well as international and national people. But it became really clear that Boston had this incredibly deep base of super, super talented people and all they needed was an idea to iterate on and, and they could go wild. So kudos to Gerhard and Cooper Perkins. He was the kind of person who was able to communicate that information and blow up my own notions without discouraging me. It feels really rewarding to work with him

[00:06:01] Jesse Purewal: At the time you started Hydrow, if you look at the trends in technology, if you look at the shifts in society and, and maybe even at your own personal life in terms of what you were looking for next, what unique combination of things happened to be going on at that time where you said, let's go, let's do this.

[00:06:21] Bruce Smith: Truthfully, I saw these companies working in connected fitness, like iFit and Nordictrack and Peloton. And I saw the growing popularity of rowing with CrossFit and Orangetheory. And I was desperate it to connect the experience of rowing out on the water and the impact that I can have on people, that positive impact to what happens on a rowing machine.

And I was terrified that if we didn't get out there and tell the rowing story, that was the underpinning kind of like, semi dusty forgotten machine in the back of the gym that people were starting to get really excited about that it would become this like fitness class thing, and it would lose its connection to where it came from.

I was highly, highly motivated to get that story out there. And we had this chance to define what indoor rowing should be, and it needs to be connected to the impact that rowing out on the water has in the rhythm of rowing out of the water and the beauty and the awareness of water that that has. And I was really motivated to move quickly before a fitness company that was selling classes from a box, took over the rowing space and really connected back to the water.

[00:07:31] Jesse Purewal: And Hydrow's mission is to create not just an amazing fitness experience, Bruce, but a beautiful human experience. And you've written about being honest, inclusive, and positive. Can you talk about the meaning and the importance of each of those three ideas, honesty, inclusivity, and positivity?

[00:07:50] Bruce Smith: With this company, we really put our lives in the line. And we are trying to do something that is really good for people and completely direct in every level of the company. We fight and argue amongst ourselves and then we don't have to agree. We recognize there are multiple points of view. And nevertheless, at the end of every meeting, we lock arms and we agree, okay, we're running forward.

So agree or commit, disagree or commit but you're still on our team. We go really hard at that. And if you're not honest, you don't even have a shot and you can't even begin to do it. Inclusive is the antidote for the cultural overhang of rowing, really not a rowing company or a whole health company, but rowing is this a really special tool. There are not a lot of tools like it in the world where you get this experience of rhythm and flow immediately.

The moment you sit down, you experience rhythm and you also use your whole body, which most people don't get a chance to do that often. The trick with throwing is that the rich people knew about it, and they were not telling everybody else you were going to Harvard or Yale, and you definitely had access to it.

But if you went to a public school, you did not have access. So that inclusive part, it has to be a foundation. The best things in life should not be reserved for the elite people, but should be available to everybody. On the positivity side. It was something I learned from coaching with broadly speaking, when we were hiring coaches in my old life, where we defined two kinds of coaches and they can both win. There are closed fist coaches and openhanded coaches. Closed fist coaches are people who hoard information and don't share anything and believe that the secrets that they have are the tools of their success.

Open-handed coaches are the people who will be like, yeah, here's everything that we do. And I look forward to competing with you, and I know that we're still going to beat you because we try harder and we're better. We really embrace that second approach, that positivity, but it flows through everything that we do. And those three things together, they line up to form a really strong core, and it makes really easy to hire people that want to be in that kind of environment, want to build trust. They want to do something good in the world and they want it to be for everybody.

[00:10:05] Jesse Purewal: So to what extent have you pissed off the establishment by going rogue and trying to open things up versus enlightened the establishment, or actually had the establishment say, "Hey, Bruce, actually we wanted it to be this way, all along. It just took someone with the braveness and the bravado that you finally did to get it to where instead of being closed fisted, it could be more open handed and inclusive."

[00:10:32] Bruce Smith: Yeah. They're very entrenched. And I'm the new guy, so I wouldn't say that they're exactly pissed off, I just don't get invited to their parties. And it's totally cool. The investors we have are all iconic class and really love to shake things up. And the Charles River is this little microcosm.

So there are seven rowing clubs in the Charles River. And I worked at community rowing for the past 2008 to 2018. And it really was open to everybody. And here we have this really transformational impact, I think on the view of rowing and what it can do for people and how it can relate to people's lives all over the world. And I couldn't tell you that there are no invitations forthcoming from the other rowing clubs on the river to be like, Hey Bruce, we want you to join our rowing club. They're very happy to just try really hard to ignore the revolution that's going on and it's super fun.

Individually, they're all really nice people, really good people. It's when you put them in a group and they put locks in their doors and they want the river to stay empty. And that was really one of the key insights for Hydro. Like you don't actually have to get on onto the river anymore, you can have that experience from your home.

Eventually all those locks are going to come off because the truth is, waterways, everywhere are public benefit. And the rights that people have established generally are through park districts, which belong to the people and all of those boat clubs that occupy land on rivers all over the country. And in fact, all over the world are all going to open their doors and make that stuff accessible.

[00:11:54] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. There's a design movement of foot here, there's a health and wellness movement of foot here and there's... In some ways, although you could argue the term is overused, a bit of a social justice angle to this as well. Talk to me if you would about the intentionality of surrounding yourself with those iconic classes that you mentioned as I think about someone like Kevin Hart in a creative director role or Lizzo in an investor role. I assume it's not by accident that your backers include the likes of those folks, but talk about the maybe mix of serendipity and intentionality that's at play there

[00:12:29] Bruce Smith: It's hugely intentional, I mean, it's also the only way forward for us, because those are the only people who will talk to [inaudible] and we just [inaudible] . It's totally great. I think it's how the coolest stuff happens. When you put a bunch of people who don't accept the status quo, we see so many opportunities and let's get creative and make it genuinely accessible.

And we are just getting started. It is early innings for Hydrow. And what I hope will happen, is in 2030, we will have a claim to tens of millions of people's 30 minutes in the morning or 30 minutes at night. And it will be the very best part of their day. And they really look forward to it and they take that feeling that they get from that 30 minutes.

And then it carries them through the rest of the day and helps them be the people they want to be kinda, more generous, more thoughtful, able to consider the benefits for everybody not just for themselves. And kinda really feel great. Let's gathering those like-minded people under one roof and that's basically my job description. Find those people and then get the dollars to fuel the amazing stuff that could happen when they work together.

[00:13:28] Jesse Purewal: Is it also important that the folks who are backing the company and backing your team are ardent users of, and proselytizers for the experience that you're creating, where you're bringing that on water flow, into the living room or into the home or wherever it may be, or is it more about who they are as humans and that they stand for maybe disrupting the narrative or pushing the status quo? Or is it a little bit of both?

[00:13:55] Bruce Smith: Yeah. It's definitely people who really have tried the Hydrow and understand that it's not a rowing thing. They understand it's a whole health thing and it's completely universal. It's what every single person needs in their day. And the people who get stuck on the fact that this is a rowing machine, it's a niche thing. They don't end up getting involved. It's the people who really get that whole health mission and leaning in on that part, I think is really key.

So I think that organic connection to what we're trying to do is really important. And truthfully we don't... On the celebrity side, we just celebrities have so many options. And for us, that authentic connection is crucial. And if people haven't used the Hydrow very much, if they're not super engaged, if it's just their agent brokering a deal so they can make a few bucks, it's not nearly as attractive to us. Like for example, with Kevin who got really involved in his Hydrow and the conversation started with his involvement, with the actual experience of being on Hydro.

[00:14:51] Speaker 3: My God, listen, man, I don't just talk about it, I live it, I am it. So for me, when I'm on set and I'm doing anything that I need to do, I got to make sure I'm in my right head space. My right mind. And what helps me do that of course, is a nice row and go. That's right people, working my body to the max, talking 86% of it, put it to use, do it in a very, very good way, very clever way. Matter of fact, let's just call it the right way. I'm talking about the Hydrow Rowing Machine. Doesn't get better, man.

[00:15:18] Jesse Purewal: Now, Bruce, I know you like to think in constellations rather than in linear sequences. So in a constellation context, if you're trying to get that best 30 minutes of the day to a person and you look at components like the rowing machine, the instructor and the content, I wouldn't ask you to stack rank those elements, but how do you think about the alchemy of bringing them together? And is there one thing that has to be done right first?

[00:15:45] Bruce Smith: That's why it's so hard. They're interdependent and there's no escape. You need to do them all well at the same time. And if you cannot spend four or five plates at a time, you can't do it. I would say the physical shape, it's the one time hardest thing. And we were so fortunate this woman, Julie Miller was just a tremendously inspired designer and overcame all of this data and confusion that we threw at her and created these two lines that come together.

Like a wave, like a bow, like a... Shaped like a boat, like a 1971 Maserati Ghibli, like that shape of the Hydrow was really in my mind, like a genuine inspiration. And after that we built our software and our content and the machine. We started the same day and we built those three things in parallel, even though we didn't have a machine to play the content on.

And even though we didn't have a computer system to deliver the software features are we just ran it all three at the same time and hoped that they converged at the right place. And we were really combination of luck and extreme skill and some very talent people brought all of those three work streams together at the same time.

Johnny Ivy said, pick two or three jewels and fight for those like a corner grad and then compromise another stuff. And that was an incredibly helpful statement. I had an advisor tell me that and it helped us prioritize and maintain pace, because you have to compromise in almost every single decision.

[00:17:09] Jesse Purewal: Let me ask you about one of those jewels in particular then, which is the rowing machine technology itself, I know that you have a lot of respect for concept 2, despite the fact that it's a strong product and that they've built a really great following around it. You saw an opening for a product that could do something a little different. So my question for you in that context is to understand how you on one hand study and learn from those that come before you and on the other, how you maybe have to unlearn or introduce new elements as you create a new experience.

[00:17:41] Bruce Smith: Yeah. I had this amazing opportunity because we started a coaching education school, community rowing where I used to work. It's a year long program. It was accredited and certified. Certification is very difficult, but we had a curriculum designer and we built a pretty sophisticated master's level program for coaching education.

What that meant was that I had this laboratory of between six and 12 students every year who came in from around the world. And their only job was to learn about rowing. And we got to have those discussions for 12 month periods in a really in depth kind of way. So around sports physiology and around psychology and around management around fundraising and around measurement of athletes performance and around rowing machines and what do rowing machines do in the world? And why are they built that way? So I had this unfair advantage, I think, because I had this learning machine that was educating me every day that I went to work, with this extraordinary amount of new information.

And I do love the concept 2, and I have rode many millions of meters and actually the Dress [inaudible] brothers are much better rowers than I ever was, but it's very utilitarian and it's made as a personality test. And if you can survive that thing, then you belong in some people's minds in that sort of exclusive group.

And Hydrow is exactly the opposite. And it is this thing that is made to be attractive and something that you celebrate and something that you love to get on. It's not a personality test, it's the honey in your day. And it's just a really different approach. Harry Parker is a Harvard rowing coach, he was the coach there for 53 years, arguably the most successful college coach in the history of time.

And he was known as this [inaudible] of the Charles because he never said anything. And he just inculcated all of these rowers and you were not allowed to talk about it and you just embraced the struggle and the pain and did not share the joy. And that's two or three generations of rowers. And all of a sudden you have a culture.

Not that I was wrong, it's not wrong. It's one way to approach it. It's just that we really aim to blow all of that up and blow it wide open and make it this thing you can enjoy for 20 minutes. And it really is experiencing water and movement and rhythmic flow and some kind of sync with other humans and it is a joyful act. And that's what we're aiming really squarely at. Just two radically different things.

[00:19:53] Jesse Purewal: And how do you look at what John Foley and the team at Peloton were able to do to either increase the aperture on willingness to embrace a combination of fitness and content and community in interesting ways and maybe where that helped you go. And the extent to which some of the things that you're trying to do with creating inclusivity are either helped by, or had some degree of table set by that or whether it's a different kind of experience that you're trying to fashion entirely.

[00:20:24] Bruce Smith: It is always hugely complimentary to be compared to a company as successful as those people and huge respect for what they've accomplished. We are trying to do something very different. So we're not a kitchen sink company. We're not an everything company. We are a whole health company and we have expert knowledge and we know the most about rowing, we know the most about strength and movement, we know the most about yoga and awareness.

Most important, we understand who our customers are and how to meet them exactly where they are and what their recipe needs to be for their whole health for their whole life. So you're not on your own. It's not a self-guided tour around 19 different formats of exercise and it's not a TV show. It's a lifetime relationship that we're building. And especially as the information comes together, as tracking devices start to really measure what people are about, it becomes really clear that you need to start with a foundation of the very best exercises.

Truthfully bikes are kind of a red herring. You have seven major muscle groups in your body. Hiking loads two out of those seven major muscle groups, rowing loads six out of those seven major muscle groups. It's just a huge opportunity and it's converging that recipe for the individual and that's where the magic is really happening and that's why they have so much confidence in our future as a company.

Or in the early days, what we do offer a specific recipe for each person. And that's where you start to see major, major differences, because the workout you need today is really different from the workout you need in five years, which is really different from the workout your spouse needs and why should we be able to all be served the same workout? It's really crucial to start to put the individual into the experience and that's what technology's allowing us to do. And we're investing heavily in AI right now to build those experiences and make them even and better every single day they improve.

[00:22:10] Jesse Purewal: Yeah. Talk about what's in your imagination right now and maybe even percolating outside your imagination onto a longer term roadmap. What gets you most excited, if you think of rowing as the tip of the spear for this wellness experience company that you're building? Where do you think the abilities can take you and your community next?

[00:22:32] Bruce Smith: So live outdoor reality was specifically named and positioned because we know that two dimensional screens are going to be the leading form of visual information delivery for the next three to five years, maybe a little longer, maybe a little shorter, back to your question about geography. The MIT sandbox is just full of people who are experts on visual technology and how pixels are going to operate.

And I think as soon as that form factor is solved, then augmented and mixed reality is going to be so much fun. It's not just the form factor, it's also the bandwidth and the computational power. And all of those things really are converging pretty rapidly, maybe a little bit faster than people think. The real question is just how soon can we get glasses that are really comfortable and fun to wear? And how soon can we get two-way communication going between the person on their own machine or whatever they're doing climbing Mount Everest in their living room or rowing down the Amazon.

And can you have that two way communication going with the people they're doing it with? Why we positioned Hydrow where we did? Live outdoor reality is just so much more engaging than being in a sweaty black box. But imagine when it's three dimensional and you can look around and see everybody you're with, it's going to blow your mind. And we're definitely really excited. We've got some prototyping already done and we can do it with the existing form factors. We know that it works. It's just getting those form factors up to speed and getting the bandwidth up to speed.

[00:23:56] Jesse Purewal: And what about operationally, Bruce, if you think about what you've been able to learn about shipping manufacturing, the global supply chain, bringing products from the roadmap into the world and then into customers homes, what turned out to be some of the biggest challenges that you've had to endure versus maybe where have you been able to gate in grooves that have been globally established over the last couple of years by more platform come companies, having hardware, software, ecosystems?

[00:24:27] Bruce Smith: Yeah. All the groups that were there have kind of been jumped. We're in this relatively unknown territory where our container costs 14 or $15,000, when just last year, it cost two or 3000 and for no really solid reason other than some weird bumping together of the train cars, the prices and the demand have just gone sky high.

And it's really fascinating. So we don't want to be the best delivery company in the world, we want to be the best whole health company in the world. So we're not building our own delivery system because other people are really good at that. Similarly, and we don't want to be the best company at putting a screws and bolts on an aluminum frame because other people who really perfected that and we can work with them and they're phenomenal partners, we do want to be the best whole health company in the world.

And I definitely see in the future leaning more into inventory supply and building a financial architecture around that that gives us more supply, not less. We're entering a period as a company, people talk about the tornado and software all the time, we are entering that period for rowing.

Rowing is the new everything, it's better than biking, it's better than running. And so for us that means having a lot of inventory on hand because we want to enter that tornado period. And it's not something that hardware companies really contemplated necessarily before, but we definitely believe strongly we're actually in it right now where we just see extraordinary demand. And we're really grateful that we've built up a lot of inventory at this point. I think that's a radically different approach from even like four years ago when companies were thinking about just in time supplies.

[00:25:58] Jesse Purewal: Hey, it's Jesse. If you like conversations with entrepreneurial CEOs who are building businesses around experience, check out one of our past episodes. My conversation with Steve Schwartz, Steve is the founder and CEO of Art Of Tea, the organic online tea shop.

Steve and I talked about how he followed a passion and took a risk to innovate on 5,000 years of tradition in tea and built a distinctive brand that required resilience and respected ritual. It's episode eight of season two. And you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. Now, back to the rest of my conversation with Hydrow CEO and founder, Bruce Smith.

If I go to the crosshairs of inclusivity for a broad audience and growth potential for your company, I might contemplate something that looks like a B2B kind of relationship, where you might be able to scale the operation by being in a number of hotels or Airbnbs, or even working with residential home builders to say, well, just like you have a refrigerator to keep that drink and food that you need to stay attuned to whole health. You ought to have your Hydrow as well. It strikes me that there's some immense scale opportunities that might push on the boundaries of kind of traditional distribution models or business models to get this thing in front of more people.

[00:27:16] Bruce Smith: We are definitely an omnichannel company and we have contracts in place worldwide with Hilton and Marriot and are rowing out there. And obviously great conversion actually from hotels. People really enjoy using Hydrows in hotels. And it's got that form factor that really does attract and they get pictures almost every day from people traveling who take a picture of the Hydrow and peloton side by side.

And it's clear from our data who is using what more, it's really encouraging. And on the B2B site, it's like in the 1920s, when publishers really encouraged home builders to put bookshelves in the homes that they built. So do people would have to buy more books. I think on that same order of consideration, you need to consider the place that you're going to stay healthy in your home.

That's the ultimate luxury. Feeling good is the new Cadillac or the new Bentley it is absolutely the thing that has the biggest positive impact on people's lives or across the board leaning into that. We also believe strongly that people will still go to the gym. They're not going to stop going to the gym. People are people and they love doing stuff together, and we're going to be in every gym around the world a few years and leaning into that really aggressively. And we built a commercial grade machine specifically to support that strategy.

[00:28:34] Jesse Purewal: And let me ask you about recording content on water. This is not rolling into some well lit sound optimized air condition, production studio, and recording a spot in the then going home. It's beautiful, it's authentic, but I imagine it's got to be so difficult for so many reasons. So how do you pull off creating content on water and what talents turn out to be the ones that people need to be good at it?

[00:28:59] Bruce Smith: Creativity and resilience, heard the two things so you're absolutely right. I don't want to brag, but I do think it is great. The content is genuinely immersive and we make it look simple, but it is wildly difficult. So it's something that just nobody had ever contemplated before. And truthfully until cell phone signals had been able to be combined and cameras miniaturized, and we're not talking GoPros, we're talking real cameras with cinematography lenses upon them, you couldn't do what we do.

And we brought all of these different pieces of technology together and the technology can't do it. What you really need are really creative directors of photography and directors and a team who are willing to bend and break all of the rules to make it happen in a watery environment. And so it is really cool. And we actually, we own the patent on broadcasting from the water to a rowing machine in your home.

It's actually a published patent from the U.S PTO. And it is an experience that until people have it, they don't understand how good it is. But once you sit down on a Hydrow, by your like second or third row, people light up and it's really fascinating to watch the trajectory, every single customer, you see it practically in Facebook.

And it is really hard and really fun to do every day. And we have a team of about 30 people who work exclusively on each episode, that's a monumental undertaking. We try really hard to make it look easy, but it's something special that I don't think can be your replicated, I'm glad we have the patent, but honestly it's not the patent. It's the people who do this really crazy stuff every day that make it happen.

[00:30:30] Jesse Purewal: So you talked a little bit about the inclusivity challenge in rowing historically. So let's assume that one makes it past the first gate and says, I'll give this a shot. Even though I maybe had a perception, I shouldn't. I'm presuming that there's a next series of stages that one crosses with the help of an athlete instructor or someone who's part of your community, who is both outstanding at understanding how to create a level of fitness for an audience, but also just a really great communicator and somebody who can do this complex thing that ordinarily is done on water on a machine, just reflect for me if you would, on the importance of the athlete community for Hydrow and for the audience as well.

[00:31:11] Bruce Smith: So we want to make the most beautiful human experience. And that means this really gorgeous and immersive experience, but there's got to be a little spice in there and the spice is learning. So every time you sit down on the Hydrow, one of our athletes is sharing some new tip with you. Every time you sit down on the Hydrow, like every time... I've been rowing for a really long time and every time I sit down, I learn something and I love it.

It's part of that journey. So we don't want you to get somewhere, we want you to enjoy where you are today. But part of that enjoyment is learning something new every single time. And the athletes really lean into and we work with the very best coaches in the world. So that the line of information is directly from literally the best coaches in the entire world who know the most about rowing. They are informing every single workout.

[00:31:56] Speaker 4: Are we going to find that mental strength? Probably because you are capable of so much more work than you think you are, right? So I want to see it.

[00:32:07] Bruce Smith: We invest really strongly in that these are not retired actors or retired dancers, who are acquiring a new sport and then sharing it with people. These are people who've been on their journey in rowing for a really long time, whether it's to the Paralympics or the Olympics. Aquil Abdullah the one of our most popular people, he was the first black man to compete for the United States in rowing at the Olympics. He just has this treasure trove of information and he shares little bits of it every day.

[00:32:32] Aquil Abdullah: Hey, family, my name is Aquil Abdullah, Olympian, father, husband, athlete, engineer. The list goes on and on, we all wear so many different hats. It can be hard to find time for ourselves. So what I like to do is, I like to make a list of three things that I want to do for me. Not for work, not for anyone else, just for me. And if I can achieve one of those things, then I've set myself up for success.

[00:33:00] Bruce Smith: Along with really bad dad jokes.

[00:33:01] Aquil Abdullah: All right. Something smells delicious. You guys smell that? Is that the beer garden over there? Well, that concludes this workout. All right guys, seriously.

[00:33:14] Bruce Smith: It makes every experience, not only really engaging, but you feel like, not really, something good is happening to me today. Not just because of the work that I'm putting in, but because of the information that I'm acquiring, how to be a little bit better at this.

[00:33:26] Jesse Purewal: And what kinds of people are you surrounding yourself with to go on the learning journey to go on the building journey. We talked a little bit about the kinds of investors that you're looking for. People who are believers in what you're doing as well as folks who are maybe willing need to punch against the grain a little bit. But if you look at the portfolio folks that you find yourself placing trust in, find yourself drawn to as a learner and just are impressed by in terms of what they can bring to the table. What's true about that portfolio of people?

[00:33:55] Bruce Smith: So we hire people who are the best in the world at what they do. And I love it. I learn so much from them every day, but these are really builders. So they're people who aren't enamored of hacking their way out of the jungle. They want to actually drive on a dirt road or a highway. We also really look hard for people who are good at finding their own way, because we are a super, super lean company.

We don't have a lot of infrastructure and we don't want infrastructure. We want people who can make great decisions. And so we're looking for kind of a unique skillset. They can run really fast, but they also can find their own way still. They're not addicted to that corporate, like, Hey, let's hire three consultants and figure out the safest path. They really... They want to try new stuff. It's a very, very high opting group of people and we have a total blast together.

[00:34:42] Jesse Purewal: And what do you think is the best advice you have received along the way? Maybe from your time in coaching or just working with high performance athletes or being close to the sport that turns out to have a strong knock on effect as an entrepreneur and as a company builder.

[00:35:00] Bruce Smith: Best advice by far was from Dick Cashin. Who's the first major investor in Hydrow and two time Olympian, very successful investor himself. But he repeated to me almost every time that I saw him, where we talked about the company. Remember you're going to win by a bell ball, not by a deck.

And what that means in rowing is the boats have decks and there about five or six feet long, depending on the boat. And they have foul balls, which are about two or three inches of rubber, the very tip of the boat. So if you run into something you don't hurt them or the boat too much, you're going to win by a little, not a lot.

I keep that mantra very close and it's served us well at every single turn. I've never regretted trying to go a little bit faster and trying to squeeze a little bit more speed out of things. It's definitely that philosophy that has allowed us to accelerate into the opportunities that have come up.

[00:35:52] Speaker 6: [singing].

[00:35:52] Jesse Purewal: Bruce Smith. It's been a pleasure and honor to get into your brain a little bit today and hear where you're taking things and all the mileage that's left to go. So appreciate the time and the candor and the input. We'll see you next time.

[00:36:05] Bruce Smith: Thanks. Thanks for the pleasure to talk.

[00:36:12] Speaker 7: [singing].

[00:36:12] Jesse Purewal: Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. If you're enjoying the show, please subscribe and leave a rating and a review and tell a friend about the show. Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios, original. Hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal.

An awesome team of people puts this show together, including our show writer, Todd Bagnull, the folks from StudioPod Media in San Francisco and VaynerTalent in New York. From StudioPod Media, our executive producer is Katie Sunku Wood, producer is Sterling Shore, editing and music is by Ryan Crowther and our show coordinator is Kela Sowell.

From VaynerTalent, publicity and promotion support come from Samantha Heapps, Hannah Park, Lindsay Blum and Iyvonne Lynn. The show's designers are Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Our website’s by Gregory Hedon and photography is by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Ben Hawken, John Johnson and Kylan Lundeen.

Season 5Jesse Purewalhydrow, product design, inclusivity, boston tech scene, product experience, advice for entrepreneurs, bruce smith, fitness brand, rowing, connected fitness