Thriving In The Digital Age: Nick Bicanic and the future of Pickleball

Nick Bicanic, a serial entrepreneur and filmmaker, discusses his diverse background and his current passion for Pickleball. He shares his philosophy on learning and problem-solving, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking and passion. Nick explains the challenges he identified in the Pickleball industry, particularly the rapid degradation of paddles. He describes his journey of developing a replaceable paddle surface to improve performance, value, and sustainability. Nick highlights the potential conflict between existing paddle manufacturers and his innovative solution, but also the opportunity for a customer-centric approach. In this conversation, Nick Bicanic discusses the environmental impact of pickleball paddles and the need for sustainable solutions. He explains how his company, Reload Pickleball, has developed a paddle with a replaceable surface that is more environmentally friendly. Bicanic emphasizes the importance of considering both performance and sustainability when developing products. He also discusses the growth of pickleball as a sport and its unique ability to bring together players of different skill levels. Bicanic offers advice to young entrepreneurs, encouraging them to not be afraid to try and to continuously learn and improve.

Transcript

Joe Crist (00:01.695)
Hello everyone and welcome to another episode of Thriving the Digital Age. I'm your host, Joe Crist Joining me today is Nick Bićanić He's a serial entrepreneur and award winning filmmaker. Nick, thank you so much for joining us. Could you the audience a little bit about yourself?

Nick Bicanic (00:18.116)
Yes, definitely Joe. Thanks a lot for having me. So as the giveaway is in my name, I was born and raised in Croatia. Many people from that part of the world have a name that ends in itch. fact, almost everybody. Went to university in the UK, the accent you're hearing is slightly English, although Americans tend to call it mid -Atlantic in some cases. I was born and raised in Croatia, educated in the UK, went to university in Cambridge, postgraduate as well as undergraduate.

And I have done a number of things over the years. My interests have spanned filmmaking, virtual reality, augmented reality, lots of hardware products, software products, but specifically for the last year and a half, my passion has been in the space of Pickleball. And I have invented and have now brought to market with a co -founder and a number of other team members, a

a repicable paddle with a replaceable surface. I'm to tell you more about that, but that's good for an initial round.

Joe Crist (01:24.395)
Okay, so you have a pretty diverse background, right? So were you formally trained in all this stuff or are you self -taught? And obviously you're working on your Pickleball project now and you've done a lot of other things with AR and VR in the past. Did you go to school for this or you just decided one day I'm gonna pick up a book and experiment?

Nick Bicanic (01:42.32)
I'm not sure how many of us ever actually go to school these days for the thing we're actually doing. I mean, yes, yes, back in the day a long time ago, if you wanted to be a baker, you would apprentice as a baker and then eventually you would become an assistant baker. And maybe if you're really lucky and you work very hard, you would one day become the head baker in the particular bakery.

Honestly, these days, mean, my undergraduate as well as my postgraduate degree was in chemistry. I specialized in physical chemistry, did a lot of work with lasers. But on one hand, I haven't done anything really to do with lasers in my entire professional life. But on the other hand, everything that I learned to directly answer the question of were you taught to do this, I wasn't necessarily explicitly taught to do anything to do with Pickleball, to do anything to do with VR and AR.

But if I was taught one thing, was how to think, how to think critically, how to approach a problem analytically, how to look at an environment. And that environment could be a film set, it could be a war zone, it could be a particular problem in a particular industry, how to look and go, what exists here? Where do I want to go? What obstacles are in the way? What assets do I have? What assets do I need? And then how do I identify a pathway?

to navigate the particular landscape that's in front of me to achieve my goal. But my goal, interestingly, is not, I don't think it's always as simple, and not necessarily just for me, but for anybody who's trying to do things like this that are innovative. The goal is, can never be, in my opinion, truly selfish. It's never about, want this. But there has to be a component of selfish passion, because if you don't have that, it's very difficult to get motivated. So I would say that the most direct answer to your question,

is that it's a mix of all of the above. So I would definitely have, I'm the fortunate benefit of many years of traditional academic education at a very high level. It's impossible to go to a place like Cambridge and not feel many aspects of that, both explicitly and implicitly. But in addition to the formal education, I also had, I was brought up with, in a loving family where my parents both took their time in making sure

Nick Bicanic (04:02.276)
that whatever curiosity I might have, whether it's books or music or art or sports, they would indulge like many parents do for their children. They would indulge and encourage in equal measure. So it feels like my entire life has been about learning and problem solving and education in various different ways. But there's another thing with regards to how do you do all this stuff. And it's a mix of luck, timing, skill and experience.

anybody who tells you otherwise that luck and timing is not a big feature is, is I think either lying or trying to sell you something. In reality, it's always a mix of all of the above. So no, I was never taught formally to make pickable pedals, nor was I ever taught formally how to make virtual reality and augmented reality. But I was taught a lot of other things. And when you combine them all together and throw in a dash of passion in there, you it's that's, that's where my drive and my curiosity come from.

Joe Crist (05:01.115)
That's a really interesting philosophy. I think a lot of people get really stuck on having that failsafe plan, where it's just like, if I follow step A, B, it will get me to C. think luck does matter a lot. But it's also about having that persistence until that moment hits.

Nick Bicanic (05:16.122)
for sure i mean i would i would say that one of the things that that's that that the evolution of various aspects of technology society is tortes it's not that we have never had big changes before we didn't have tv's and we suddenly did have tv's we didn't have motor cars and then we suddenly did have motor cars the issue is not that we haven't had inflection points in evolution of technology before

The issue is that they were very far spaced apart chronologically. So you had X decades or X years or X decades for society and businesses and entrepreneurs to adjust to new technology coming into place. What's happening right now is the timeline is massively compressed, which means that something new will come out and then within a few months, in some cases, another new thing will come out. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about large language models in AI, whether you're talking about

crypto and what it may or may not do to the way in which finance is conducted globally. Or you're talking about things like the change between interacting on telephone or on a keyboard and a mouse or on an iPhone, which you're touching and always carrying with you. And then all of a sudden with Apple's latest reality, augmented reality glasses, you know, the Vision Pro, they call it. So those kinds of leaps.

as I said, have always existed in the past, but they've been much more compressed closer together. So while yes, in some ways, my passion for Pickable and changing the way in which the Pickable industry works is my current focus, all it really is is the most recent incarnation of me looking at the world and seeing a balance of what's interesting to me, what's a challenging problem to solve, what gives value to the most number of people, and ultimately what is investable in.

It's great to have passion when you're a creative or creator, but banging your head against the wall, trying to focus your passion in an environment where there is never any possibility for revenue and no one will ever therefore invest in what you're doing, that's a hard thing to do. There are definitely some people out there who are

Nick Bicanic (07:32.954)
who are forced to do that because they just can't help themselves. There's a problem that they want to solve and there's absolutely no monetary gain whatsoever. But they don't care. They're going to commit their entire life to solving it. I've always tried to run a fine balance between trying to identify the things that I like, the things that are valuable to humanity overall, and the things that can have a fighting chance of a sizable return on investment. And if I can get those three things to align, I'm golden. Because I'll be motivated.

Joe Crist (07:47.348)
you

Nick Bicanic (08:00.142)
because it'll be valuable to society and it'll be valuable to investors. In general, if those three things can align, the rest is details.

Joe Crist (08:11.655)
It's really interesting way of looking at things too. And you mentioned the challenges in the pickleball industry that you're trying to actually fix, right? So can you elaborate on those? Like what are you seeing in the pickleball space that's

Nick Bicanic (08:26.126)
Yeah, for sure. mean, I think one way to elaborate on that is to describe the genesis of what I'm currently focusing on and what I'm doing. And the simple fact is it's almost impossible to avoid conversations about Pickleball these days. Whether it's Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon openly opining at a post -match press conference that Pickleball is taking over tennis court space and we need to do something about it because this thing is just going to

this virus will infect everybody or what used to be the sport played pretty much by the 60 plus age group. So your grandma and grandpa might be talking about their pickleball buddies. All of a sudden is being played by everyone and their dog and it shows no signs of slowing down. So I was fascinated by, okay, this is interesting. What does this mean? Cause there are loads of reasons why this is a good thing. It's a good thing cause it gets people outside and you know, we need

We need social activities, certainly after the sociological slump that many societies felt post COVID. The idea of something that encourages people to go outside and do physical activity, there's no way that that's a bad thing. However, as an engineer and a product person, I took a look at the space and I became really frustrated for very personal reasons. I never intended, I need to make clear that I didn't go.

I am making a business in pickleball come hell or high water. That's not how my brain works. My brain works by going out and doing things, looking at what I enjoy and then finding problems. And in some cases, I don't care enough about the problem to solve it. For example, if I, I don't know, if I go to a restaurant and I, and I need, and I grab a salt shaker and I try and shake it onto my food and the salt doesn't come out in my brain, I know that there are a couple of different reasons why maybe the salt is coagulated in some way and you know,

The holes are no longer open enough and the fault can't come out. But I don't care enough to solve that problem. Maybe someone else can solve that problem. But there are problems of plenty around the world that you can see in various different ways. But in this particular case, I was very frustrated because I started really enjoying Pickleball and I bought what was at the time one of the most expensive paddles on the market. Doesn't matter who the brand is, but let's just say they were

Nick Bicanic (10:47.984)
Acknowledged as being the best it cost $220 which I thought this is this is a decent amount of money for me to play pay for chunk of plastic I mean guy get it. It's got carbon fiber on it still $220 and I was very happy with this thing It played really nicely it allowed me to top spin and control the ball very well and all of sudden about I don't know maybe three weeks three and a half weeks after owning this thing I noticed that I couldn't quite catch the ball anymore and to clarify what I mean by that

The way in which almost all ball sports work, matter, racket sports, doesn't matter whether it's table tennis or tennis or badminton or pickleball, when the paddle brushes the ball and causes it to spin, that is what allows you to hit the ball faster, with more power, more accurately, which is better for your control and is more likely to win you the game. So it's a massive component of any kind of racket sports. I noticed that my paddle could no longer top spin the ball as effectively. And I thought,

That's a bummer. Maybe there's something wrong with it. So I contacted the company and I say hey, you know the guys can I do a warranty thing because something's wrong. This thing is wearing out. It's just it's almost smooth and they said yeah, yeah sure. No problem. Here you go. Yeah, he's your replacement. Okay, I thought cool problem solved move on to the next thing except three weeks later same thing happens same panel. So thought that's odd wonder if it's a maybe it's a bad batch.

to contact the company again and i go guys sorry i don't know if it's about that but i have the same problem they said yeah well too bad there's nothing to do about it and i'm like what do mean they said well replacement paddles are not covered under warranty and i look and it's an industry standard everybody has the same it's not i'm not in any way trying to single out this company by saying they were somehow doing something evil not at all everybody was doing the same thing so i thought that's that's a bummer so basically what are you supposed to do so

I start talking to some professional players and some high level competitive players and they all go, yeah, that's just how it is. They all wear out. And I'm like, no, go ahead, sorry.

Joe Crist (12:43.883)
That's insane.

Joe Crist (12:48.779)
I'm just, just, I'm trying to do the math in my head right now. So say you spend about 220 on a paddle and after in less than a month, right. It's no longer good. Right. So you're spending.

Nick Bicanic (12:51.365)
Yeah.

Nick Bicanic (12:59.728)
Now, so we're doing, you're right, but let me just clarify this just so people understand the implications of this. Clearly, if you play once a month with your buddies and you just chill out, you you have a couple of drinks and you're hanging out enjoying yourself and you play for 45 minutes and that's about it, and you play once a month, this is not a problem that will affect you. However,

If you play frequently, which a lot of people do, and the number of people that do is increasing, you will notice the surface degradation incredibly quickly. we, this wasn't, given my science background, it wasn't enough for me to hear from everybody, this degrades all the time. And it wasn't enough for me to hear from people who were saying, when I asked them, what do you do to solve this problem? They go, we just buy a new one. And I go, I don't understand. You buy a new pedal every month?

for $220 and they go, no, we your paddle more frequently than that if we're competing. If we're competing, we'd swap paddles out every two to three weeks. So I just thought, this is insane. Would you toss your car if the tires wore out? No, of course you wouldn't. You replace the tires, same thing with a tennis racket. You don't toss a tennis racket when the strings break, you restring it. So I thought, this is ridiculous. Let's apply some science to this.

It wasn't enough for me to think about this conversationally. did the math or I did the data or I did the study. I took, I twisted a lot of arms, called in lot of favors and got about approximately half a million dollars worth of analysis equipment, laser, 3D scanners, all kinds of different analytics and ball machines. basically we constructed an experiment where we defined what we consider to be a day of play. We happened to pick 544 hands.

It doesn't matter what we picked. I mean, we picked an arbitrary number on the basis of analysis of high level play and estimating what two hours of play would approximately look like. And then we did what you would do if you were doing this experiment in a sensible way. We 544 hands analyze the paddle, 544 hands analyze the paddle. And we call that, that was one, that was called a day. We did that 30 times in a row. took a long time. It took about four weekends worth of hitting and analyzing and 3D microscopes and calibrations.

Joe Crist (15:18.711)
wow.

Nick Bicanic (15:20.72)
And in the end, we were astounded to discover that you lose 25 % of your surface roughness of a pickable pedal in seven days of play. And you lose, it's exponential, so it's not like it continues, to get to 50 % is 30 days of play. But either way, 50 % in 30 days of play was insane. And it was insane that we were in an environment where this is like the pickable industry was selling

picks and shovels in the gold rush everybody wanted a pickable paddle and if you had a premium pickable paddle then everybody who wants to improve they keep on wanting to buy the cool equipment it's like when you're when you when you play golf you want to buy the cool golf gear you don't want to buy the crappy stuff that's ten dollars on Amazon I mean you can but you you like there there's definitely a strong sector of the market in the popular sport that wants to get the improved equipment because they understand that the improved equipment will help it's not everything but it's a it's a definitely a part of a

high level game. So I was astounded by the fact that the degradation was so fast. And it was at that moment, it was when I started out with the with a pain point that was personal to me because I was frustrated by paying $220. And then it continued with the data to back it up. I the moment that I knew that the stuff degrades so fast, I knew that this had to be redone. There had to be a way to to to basically

make the outer surface of a pickable paddle consumable or replaceable if you wish. And that's exactly what the company became. mean, obviously, there's a lot of other things behind the scenes that we don't have to go to in details because if you are experienced as an entrepreneur, you do not enter a space like this without filing the appropriate IP. So clearly, I did all of that very early on before I talked to anyone about it because I knew that when push came to shove down the line,

If I had the IP locked up, I'd be in a very, very interesting position. But again, this is not about, let's lock up the IP and sit on it like a patent troll. This needed, this wasn't just IP, this was idea, analysis, proof points, IP, then long series of development to identify, you know, what is the correct adhesive in order to do this correctly so you can keep on taking it off and putting it back on with no residue being left behind so it's stable in all kinds of temperatures.

Nick Bicanic (17:45.732)
So it's a long way between an idea and something like this, which is ultimately what ends up being the end product. You know, a pickable paddle on which you can remove the textured outer surface and put it back whenever you want. Why? Because for three simple reasons, it's better performance because you're not having to deal with degradation immediately. If it ever degrades, you just peel it off and put it back on. It's better value because you don't have to buy a new paddle every time.

And also honestly, it's better for the environment. There is a massive amount of waste created in Pickleball. There are lots of estimates. don't want to quote them because they just sound insane and I can't verify the data. But let's just say there's tons upon tons of waste that gets created. I Pickleball balls, balls like this, they crack depending on the temperature. If you're playing in cold climates, these things crack every half an hour. And they're $3 each. So you just have to toss them.

It's bananas, right? Except everybody loves the sport, but the sport has some interesting problems that they have to solve. The thing I decided to focus on was can we create a product which can replace the grit without sacrificing the performance that everybody expects? In other words, can it feel right? Because it's all well and good creating a replaceable surface, but unless you get the balance of adhesive, thickness, coefficient of restitution, touch and feel,

Unless you get that balance correct, you don't have a product because people are not going to want to play with it. So that took a long time, but we got there and it's exciting. Sorry, that was a very long -winded answer. Was that kind of okay? Okay.

Joe Crist (19:23.083)
I love that though. You know, it's, I was thinking about that. So we're a mountain Arizona. Pickleball is big. It is. And I, I'm one of those guys who plays for 45 minutes every now and then with my friends. And I'm not great at pickleball, but people who I do meet who are three hours a day.

Nick Bicanic (19:36.1)
Yep.

Nick Bicanic (19:43.024)
Yeah, it's easy. That's the thing. By the way, the data that I talked about, it's worth pointing this out. The data that I talked about, which is 25 % in seven to 10 days and 50 % in 30 days, that is based on a certain level of player for the sake of argument four, five to five, this is in, is, the numbers refer to a ranking system known as DUPRA, which is a very common ranking system in pickleball. Let's just say that, not pro level.

but still lots of ability to hit hard and have controlled games. could pros use them as hitting partners, that level. So at that level of play, you're talking about the degradation that I'm talking about, but that's at two hours a day. You increase the number of hours per day or you increase the level of player, all of a sudden the numbers get worse. So if you're a high level competitive player, you're like playing pro qualifying tournaments, you're looking at...

three to four days to get to 25 % and 10 to 20 days. It's crazy, right? So, but here's the thing. If you put yourself into the shoes of a traditional pickable brand, it's not obvious that they want this to exist. Because if you're capable of selling, for the sake of argument, know, let's take a nice run number and say that the majority of these panels, the existing panels on the market are made in China and the majority of them cost approximately

Joe Crist (20:42.869)
and sing.

Nick Bicanic (21:06.192)
what between 25 and $30 landed, which means manufacturing, shipping duties, et cetera. Let's call it $30. So if you're selling a $30 product to people for $235, there's some that are even more expensive than that. Even if you tack on top of that retail margins or e -commerce costs of customer acquisition, you still have a pretty hefty profit. You kind of the idea that, if it wears out, you got to buy another one.

That's a good thing for the bottom line. If the customers are willing to do it, it's just a bad thing for the customers and a bad thing, long term for the environment. So the question is, can you, can you construct a business like this where everybody wins? And I believe you can because I believe that even though there's, there's a school of thought that says, Hey, that's great. You've made a replaceable, pickable paddle surface. We hate you. We're never going to work with you because you're, you're like, you're messing with our meal ticket.

we're knowingly selling paddles to people that degrade in 30 days we don't care because they're to have to buy another paddle and that's more money for us they're a bit pissed off too bad they're buying it anyway well there is another way of looking at this which is make the customer happier the customer is going to be loyal because otherwise every time that the paddle degrades the customer looks at it goes well that sucked I paid 220 dollars for this thing and it lasted for four weeks I'm going to try another one and I'm going to try another one you can't hang on to them but if you if you treat them

ever so slightly with more respect and you deliver them a product that appeals more to their ability to have maximum performance when they want and much better value, you get a recurring customer, you get a recurring customer, your long -term costs go down, so your revenue per customer goes up. So there is, not to mention the fact that you have a recurring revenue business which in the end could provide you more overall enterprise value. So there is a way of looking at this that's actually better for the companies, but if you're thinking short -sighted,

If you're thinking money grab, yeah, for sure. I can see why existing companies might not be super happy about somebody creating something like this.

Joe Crist (23:09.215)
Yeah, and that makes sense, right? Having that, you know, recurring monthly revenue coming in because you're actually keeping customers happy with good products, right? You know, I see that a lot nowadays too when, well, not a lot, but I do see companies that are focused on the quick money grab, right? Like, hey, how can we make this like really amazing product and follow a trend just to, you know, cash out early? And they don't really think about the longevity of the business, but when you actually really do have that more customer -centric approach, it's like, hey, we do care about our customers.

And not only that, mentioned too about the environment, right? Putting ESG in there as well. Like it's like, hey, we are a company that does right by our customers and we do right by the world.

Nick Bicanic (23:47.448)
I mean, look, yeah, so just to give you an idea. this is a, again, this is deliberately unbranded because I don't like the idea of like throwing shade at any particular brand on the market. I'll have it associated with all of them, but not at any particular ones. The generic pickleball paddle is rigidly bonded. You've got super glue in here or cyanocrylates. You've got epoxy resins holding together polypropylene and carbon fiber. You've got

polypropylene in the butt cap, TPU in the over grip, all these things rigidly bonded together makes for an impossibility of recycling. It's just cost prohibitive. Even if you could separate the materials, which in some cases is very hard to do, it's almost impossible to do it. It's actually not even almost. It is impossible to do and make it cost effective. So basically nobody does it. It's impossible to recycle. But this, which is the consumable component, in fact, let me just...

make it even more obvious by taking one off. This is essentially, with the exception of the adhesive layer and a tiny bit of a, we call this a pull tab, it's a woven tab which makes it easy to remove and put back on. With the exception of those two pieces which are easy to remove, this is essentially pure carbon fiber. So we've, this is not, I'm not giving you a theoretical argument, we did this. We went to multiple different recyclers, some in the EU, some in Korea, that specialize in carbon fiber recycling.

a seventy five percent of the carbon fibers in this can be recovered to be used in additional products which is which is huge longer term especially because guess what this thing you're not throwing up you can just keep reusing it the paddle base you keep reusing it with new versions of this so so overall yeah the ESG component is is significant

Joe Crist (25:33.887)
Yeah, and I really appreciate myself, right? And I think that's something, you know, as society, we need to really be focused on when we build these products is, you we're all trapped on the same planet together until we go to Mars or wherever else, but we really do have to take care of the world we're on. And keeping that in mind when it comes to actually developing these things, that's a big deal, right? Because that does impact people.

Nick Bicanic (25:57.072)
I know I 100 % agree, but you see for me it was very important. I'm a, I mean, I'm I'm I'm a kind of equipment nerd, like, like many, many people in various different sports and activities and passions. I like to have the best stuff and I like to know what the best stuff is. It was very important for me that if I'm, if I'm going to be building a premium product, in other words, one that has to appeal to the highest level of performer.

there cannot be any compromises in the performance. In other words, if this product was like, hey, it's really green and makes the world a better place, but it's kind of a crappy paddle, that might be noble, but nobody would buy it. And likewise, if I make a product that's amazing, except you're basically like burning gas from your exhaust while using it, also not the greatest feeling, it may not work so well, but...

Joe Crist (26:38.346)
Yeah, no one's gonna buy it.

Nick Bicanic (26:52.752)
due to a number of different things, luck, circumstance, skill, experience, and lots of effort, I've ended up with something that actually, we call this the reload triple threat, because as I mentioned before, it's one, better for performance, because think about it, the moment, like, yes, when you buy the brand new $220 paddle, day one, you have an amazing paddle, day seven, you have a problem. So it's really interesting how fast you have a problem, whereas day one, these things are neck and neck.

Joe Crist (27:22.187)
you

Nick Bicanic (27:22.704)
But day seven, with a regular paddle, you're already going, I'm starting to feel this day 30, you really are feeling it. Whereas day, whenever you feel it with our paddle, you just rip it off and put on another one. And now you have a brand new paddle again. So if we do this, I'm sorry, the third thing was the environment. So better performance, better value, that's better for the environment. That's the triple threat. But yeah, it was, was all of those things where there's take any one of those things away. You still have an okay business, but

Altogether, the three of them are very powerful cocktail because overall it means that whichever way you slice it, you go, this is a better mouse trap. Everything should be this way. And this is one of the reasons why. I mean, I've had a lot of inbound interest from again, I don't want to name them, but let's just say if you consider the top 10 companies and pickable pick any of them and they've all they've all come in and said, hey, listen, we're really interested. Let's talk about licensing. What does this look like? And it's really interesting because the first two

that I had this conversation with all open by saying we want exclusivity. We want to lock this up. And I said, you can't have, you know, you can't have that. We're not going to do that. And they said, why wouldn't you do that? It's, really lucrative deal. I said, cause the point isn't to lock up something like this. The point is that the entire industry needs to do this. It is, it is absolutely ridiculous to have to be selling tens of thousands of paddles, knowingly degrading over a short period of time, counting on the fact that

Many customers won't realize they degrade. Many customers will be like, well, this thing's only a couple of weeks old. You know, it can't be that. It must be me. I can't blame the paddle. The manufacturers know full well how fast this stuff degrades. It's a question of can they come around to approaching this in a slightly different way? So yes, my, the, the aim here is, definitely to, to try to let's say, fix pickable paddles overall. In order to do that, I had to develop a paddle. I had to develop a brand.

Because if I just knock on the door of some companies early on and I said, look, here's, I've got some IP. Do you guys want it? Maybe they do it, but more likely they would just go, go away. We're quite happy selling $30 products for $220. Why would we even talk to you? So in a way I had to build a brand. Like this is, this is full on. mean, I don't know. I know we can't show it here to everybody, but if people go to reload pickleball .com, they can have, they can very quickly understand.

Nick Bicanic (29:46.692)
that the way the way this is branded every aspect of the visual communication of this from the way the paddle looks the colors the construction the every every aspect of it yes is that we use the videos the animations we're looking at something very different from my perspective when i look at branding i don't think let's look at what the other competitors in my market are doing i look at the best friends in the world

So as far as I'm concerned, my competition isn't other pickable paddles from the branding perspective. My competition is Nike and Apple, because that's where the bar is. And I think that if you don't try and strive beyond what's currently available out there, if you just go, well, everybody else is just doing black paddles. Let's just do a black paddle with a stupid logo on it. Great. But nothing really changes. way we actually make big changes if we just go, you know what? No. Let's make the best thing. all the other brands look kind of crappy. Cool. Let's do a better brand.

Let's do a better press, do everything. Let's do everything better if it's possible. Obviously, if it doesn't bankrupt you, but as long as you can keep that in mind, then push, push limits.

Joe Crist (30:51.125)
So you brought up an interesting word too, and I think it's a great segue into the next question, right? So change, right? So obviously you want to be the best brand out there. You want to make real change. So what does the future look like to you when it comes to the sport of pick wall? Even the product you're putting out there, like how do you see it really impacting?

Nick Bicanic (31:07.28)
So it's a complicated multi -layered question, but I'll do my best. But it's a very important question. So when I first started in Pickable, prior to Reload being even an idea, this is just me being interested as an external observer, I started with a significant amount of disdain. And that is not uncommon in Pickable. The first time I picked up a tennis racket, I was five years old.

while I played a lot of tennis in my, in my teen years, it was never beyond club level. wasn't, it wasn't my main sport was basketball. played basketball at national level in the UK, under, under 15s, the 17s, on the 21s, European championships, you know, it was, it was decent up until college. played a lot and, but racket sports for me, it was only tennis. was old school tennis was the thing. I loved playing tennis. I was a decent enough player that I really enjoyed it.

And when I first looked at pickleball, I did what a lot of tennis players, former tennis players would do is I just thought, well, this is stupid. This is for people who can't do sports. This is not for athletes. This is just a sport for old people. Look, this court is so small. You don't, it's so slow. What is the stupid plastic ball? And it was interesting because the way my opinion changed about pickleball and what pickleball can do, what happened very quickly. I walked into it thinking,

I don't even want to do this. think somebody, somebody asked me to do it, to just try it out. think I had just had knee surgery, so I couldn't, I couldn't run on a tennis court yet. So I was interested in my recovery. What could I do? Let's try it out. But something happened after a, after day two, it happened pretty quickly. And that was that I noticed something that I'd never seen in a, in a, in in a sport before, which is that I noticed that a high level player with a lot of hand -eye coordination.

could still enjoy themselves with a lower level player, like a complete beginner. And again, I'm not suggesting that the lower level player can win. Clearly that's not the issue. The issue is that, not to put too fine a point on it, if I went on a tennis court with a friend of mine who had played very little tennis before, within five minutes I would be bored. Because they wouldn't be able to serve, they wouldn't be able to return my serve, they wouldn't be able to get the ball across the net.

Nick Bicanic (33:32.084)
The level of skill required to even start is so high that it's demoralizing to new people. They'll just never do it. But Pickleball did something really interesting. Not only was the level of skill required to learn it very low, but on top of that, there was an unusual balancing act. There's no way the founders of Pickleball intended for this to happen. This was a happy accident, but it doesn't matter. It was unusual because it allowed a higher level player to play with a lower level player and still

both players got something out of it. it's incredibly socially empowering because of this. Because it means that people in most sports, especially racket sports, you need a lot of determination to make it through the initial, I suck, I don't want to do this again, period. But in pickleball, it gives you just enough of that endorphin rush because at the very beginning, it's very easy to just, I mean, again, if you have...

significant movement difficulties or you're injured or there's a variety of different kind of musculoskeletal conditions that will make it impossible but in most cases if you can walk and throw an object you can do the basics of playing pickleball and it's enough to get people hooked and then you really interesting things happen so you the reason why i'm answering in such a long -winded ways because it's an interesting question to ask of

what will Pickable do? Because Pickable is an unusual example of a sport, albeit having a very, let's say, unusual name, and not a particularly cool name at all. It's a sport that is far less watched than it is played. So it's amazing. For example, you would imagine that if you get a networking event together, I went to one the other day,

If you get a networking event together and it happens on a pickleball court, that it would be kind of cool because everyone's into pickleball and they can all hang out and talk. No, they all want to play. It doesn't work. People just want to play pickleball all the time. It's this weird activity that just encourages continuous play and competitive play, which is fascinating because it doesn't follow the patterns of traditional sports where in traditional sports, you you build the sport around, around

Nick Bicanic (35:44.196)
Phenomenal athletes like LeBron James who or Michael Jordan much earlier than that you build it around these people who do superhuman feats that nobody can possibly emulate and everybody loves watching them because of it you get all these fans that love following the sport and but pickleball is is is interesting because People just love playing it at various different levels So I couldn't help myself but but observe this time and again my my girlfriend's parents who while they were they were outdoors a lot

They were, they tended to be outdoors and low impact activities. They never did any competitive sports together or if they did, it was 30, 40 years ago. We introduced them to pickleball. All of a sudden they're playing every day and they have a totally new set of friends and they're more active. It's, healthier for them and they get to do something together as a couple. There's a lot of, there's a lot of mixed doubles. Mixed doubles is the most popular form of pickleball. So I was, I became extremely bullish on the sports overall and, the economics of the sports.

work with us as soon to explore so inund in not secure question is i generally believe that the pickable explosion is not slowing down it's speeding up because it's pretty much exclusively grown in the united states and yes all the countries have bits and pieces of it but it's nothing in comparison to the u s over the next one to two years there's a massive push

in expanding and initially australia india and uk are the three most promising territories but but vietnam china are close behind and it's it's it shows from a social demographic perspective it shows no signs of slowing down and falling the city will follow a similar pattern in those countries you can play the political eight you can only also people with your eighty and there are and and not only that you can play together mean the first people game i played

I think I played against two people who were 70 and 80 and they kicked my ass. Now fine, if I play aggressively, I will comfortably beat those people today easily, but I don't have to play aggressively. I can tone the game down a notch, practice a different kind of slower shot. It'll still be challenging for me and it'll be really enjoyable for them. And that is a really rare thing in a physical activity. So yeah, that's a kind of long -winded answer to the question.

Joe Crist (38:05.417)
No, that was good though. I mean, that makes a lot of sense.

Nick Bicanic (38:06.692)
But on the equipment side, by the way, on the equipment side, I firmly believe that in the future, it will be... The industry will have to change to a paddle surface system akin to ours, which is replaceable. If at the moment there is... We were the first people to go down this path.

We we have a certain amount of IP that has already been granted We have a significant quantity of IP inheriting the same priority date Which is in the process of making its way through the system, which we're extremely confident about so there is there is every there's every possibility that in the future there are interesting things from a financial perspective for reload, but That's not the only answer here. The answer is it's not just about

It's not just about how much money Reload might be able to make from people licensing its IP. It's also about looking at what this industry is doing, what the governing body is doing, what happens when a sport is slowly birthed and eventually maybe becomes an Olympic sport. There are a lot of variables and there's a lot of sharks in this space. There's a lot of people who are doing this for

for the right reasons. also some people doing it for the wrong reasons. And it's fascinating. It's like right now, without going into nuances, there's kind of a Game of Thrones going on in Pickleball where there's multiple different organizations jockeying for position and trying to figure out who's going to be able to be in charge. But at the end of the day, yes, that's noisy. And yes, that can be complicated if you're on the wrong side of the Game of Thrones. But at the same time as a sport, no matter what happens, it's not going to kill the sport.

the genius out of the bottle very firmly and i think it's just gonna continue

Joe Crist (40:04.911)
I love that. It's really exciting to watch. I was seeing it myself, like how fast pickleball has grown out here, right? And how fanatic some people get about it. I I like it too. It's very fun. And like, I'm not a terribly athletic guy when it comes to paddle sports. But yeah, no, it's, I see myself and I like that you brought up, you know, the whole idea of like the Olympics, right? Like that's a very real possibility. Right. So I do have one last question for you.

Nick Bicanic (40:30.17)
Yeah, Interesting.

Joe Crist (40:33.887)
So Nick, you've done a lot in your life, from multiple companies to making films. There's a lot of really young entrepreneurs out there. People are really starting up. And just people who are looking for opportunity to make the world better. What advice would you give them, if you can give them anything at all?

Nick Bicanic (40:54.96)
so yeah, the million dollar question. It's, I mean, the most obvious advice to give, which I have seen people surprised by when it happens to them for the first time, is don't be afraid to try. And I know that sounds like a simplistic thing to say, but trying, the whole, it's in the word, right? Trying assumes that there's a possibility of failure.

If there's no possibility of failure, it's not a try, it's a do. It's like, go, okay, go and grab this, right. You're not going to fail at grabbing this object from the table, but go and try to accomplish X, go and try with this idea. The reason why I think it's important to try, and it's important to try as early as possible. mean, there's a hundred different ways of saying this, like fail fast, fail early. I think it's vital to try because the most, if you're not...

If you're the type of person who comes up with an idea and who isn't willing to accept the world as it is and goes, there's a better way of doing this. I would like to do something that's better. Unless you try, guess what? It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. The only way that we can all collectively, every single entrepreneur out there, big or small, the only way that we can collectively change the world is one effort at a time. So don't get discouraged thinking,

There's no point in trying this because it's, you know, there's bigger companies out there. If they've, they've never tried this before. So therefore if they've never tried it before, then why would I even bother? It's never going to work. It's doomed to failure. That's not always the case, but that doesn't mean that as, as advice, like, so step one, never be afraid to try, never be afraid to fail. But step two is learn and absorb as much information as possible. If you see something that's interesting and if you can afford to do it.

Take it apart, break it, try and figure out what makes it tick. It doesn't matter whether the object is a pen or a calculator, or I'm just looking around randomly here on my desk or a pickleball paddle, but understand how things work because, that's, it's not just about objects. It's also about processes. For example, if you, if there is a bus that arrives and it's always arriving late and you're pissed off that the bus arrives late because you're, you're, I don't know, your grandma who's always on that bus is always sitting there waiting and her legs hurt.

Nick Bicanic (43:19.748)
and you want to fix the bus system, try to understand how it works. Don't just be angry. If you want to fix something, try to understand how it works because the more you understand how things work, the more you understand how you can make them better. That involves something which many in the current generation are unfortunately in my experience a little bit lazy to do, which is look at things, open the box, look under the tin, look under the rug. What makes this tick? What process? Where's the money coming from?

Where is the logistics coming from? What kind of fuel are the buses running on? How are people communicating about them? So there are many things that you can have ideas about. They're not all physical objects. Some of them could be pieces of software. Some of them could be processes. Some of them could be political systems. It doesn't matter what it is, but there is one thing that the evolution of our society and of our companies and technologies out there has taught us is that

there's you can never stay in incumbent for too long sure let me to use a commonly quoted example when my space was the thing everybody thought my god my space is the biggest what's the point of anyone ever doing anything else yeah facebook came along and suddenly it was like shit everyone's got facebook my space is dead when when instagram started i don't know if you guys are familiar with the story the listeners or you but kevin zistrom was never intending to make instagram

He was intending to make some kind of an app that he himself admits was totally daft for sharing what bar you were hanging out at with your friends the night before. And nobody cared. It was called Bourbon. You can look this up. And then one day they happened to notice that the photos sharing feature of that app was used ever so slightly more than the other features. They reshaped the app. They made it just about photos and less than two years later they were bought by Facebook for over a billion dollars. What I'm saying is

don't be afraid to try and it's very easy to get discouraged when you go well you know i can't do this because i'm gonna need ten million dollars and i can even try yeah okay fine if the idea that you have requires ten million dollars to start you might have a problem maybe you need to scale it down a little bit that doesn't mean your idea is bad it just means you're not yet ready to be experimenting with that kind of idea but there are plenty of ideas these days

Nick Bicanic (45:45.466)
that certainly it doesn't take ten million dollars to think about a problem. Google is free. ChatGPT is free. You can learn so much from observing how things are out there just by looking at what other people are doing. The reason why the phrase stand on the shoulders of giants exists is because everything that has come before you, doesn't matter whether it's whether I'm looking at history books from a hundred years ago or ideas from six months ago, it's all standing on the shoulders of giants because the way I look at it is

What did they do wrong? What don't I like about a certain product or process or political system? What could be done better? What do care enough about changing? So I guess if I had to summarize all of what I just said in two things, I would say one, don't be afraid to try and two, use the tools that are available to you to learn that are free because they're more powerful. We have more information available to us for free these days than previous generations have had for untold quantities of dollars.

And it's just there. It's there for the taking. That doesn't mean everyone can do it. But if you're the type of person who's motivated and wants to and has a curious mind, there is no barrier to trying to think. When you get to the next level and you go, okay, now I need some money to implement, that's okay. Because if you've thought something through and you can present an identification of a problem, a solution, and the potential reason why your solution is a good idea, yeah, there are plenty of guys out there who have checkbooks. You've to get to them.

different level of problem, every mountain you have to climb to get your idea to market is climbable. People have done it. Believe me, I've done it. Other people have done it. And people will continue to do it. So yeah, don't be afraid to try and learn as much as you can. Be analytical. There's no free rides. It's not luck. Yes, fine. There'll be elements of luck, but you don't just click your fingers and suddenly you have a successful idea. You need to go through the process.

Joe Crist (47:41.215)
Yeah, it's absolutely true. Well, Nick, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it. I learned a lot not just about pickleball, but also really how to develop good products, right? And to the audience out there, I hope you learn as much as I have. Again, thank you everyone for coming today, listening and learning.

Nick Bicanic (47:59.482)
Thank you very much, Joe. Thanks a lot for having me and thanks everyone.

Joe Crist (47:59.871)
with it.

And everyone join us next week for another exciting episode of Thriving the Digital Age. See ya.