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There are some founders who think that only good ideas can come from them. Haniff Brown is not one of those founders. <\/p>\n
In 2024, the Williams College math major and former private equity investor was promoting his company Fit:match<\/a>\u2019s AI body-scanning technology as a way to help shoppers find clothes that fit. Then a major English soccer team asked if he\u2019d bring the tech to their youth academy for an entirely different use. He almost said no, but went anyway, and after listening to the coaches, he found an entirely different use for the tech \u2014 and much bigger business in the process. <\/p>\n Today, Fit:match partners with FIFA, Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball to deliver athletes a full set of anthropometric and body-composition measurements in seconds. Brown spoke with Entrepreneur to share his insights and advice for building, growing and seizing unexpected opportunities.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the elevator pitch. What is Fit:match?<\/strong> Talk to us about the pivot from your tech focusing on people buying clothing.<\/strong> You\u2019re a die-hard Manchester United fan \u2014 how does it feel to build a business around something you love?<\/strong> Photo credit: Fit:match<\/em><\/sup><\/p>\n For entrepreneurs, how important is it to put your product in people\u2019s hands to<\/strong> experience it?<\/strong> What\u2019s your advice to founders out there seeking funding?<\/strong> There are some founders who think that only good ideas can come from them. Haniff Brown is not one of those founders. <\/p>\n In 2024, the Williams College math major and former private equity investor was promoting his company Fit:match<\/a>\u2019s AI body-scanning technology as a way to help shoppers find clothes that fit. Then a major English soccer team asked if he\u2019d bring the tech to their youth academy for an entirely different use. He almost said no, but went anyway, and after listening to the coaches, he found an entirely different use for the tech \u2014 and much bigger business in the process. <\/p>\n Today, Fit:match partners with FIFA, Major League Soccer and Major League Baseball to deliver athletes a full set of anthropometric and body-composition measurements in seconds. Brown spoke with Entrepreneur to share his insights and advice for building, growing and seizing unexpected opportunities.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Fit:match is a body intelligence platform. Think of us almost like the ChatGPT or the Claude or the Gemini of the human body. We provide remote access to body intelligence and body analytics at scale. So if you want precision or data analytics on the human body, we are the company providing that for hospitals, for athletes, and coaches, and really across the board.<\/p>\n
I think it was in 2024 when we got a call from a really large sports team in England. We were doing some work in a retailer and they said to us, \u201cHey, we really like your technology. I know that you\u2019re using it for shopping, but can you swing by our youth academy out in the countryside in England?\u201d At first, we were like, no, the technology is built for this purpose. But sometimes as an entrepreneur, you just have to take a risk and you have to go with your gut. And I felt, why not? So when I was there, I started to talk to the coaches, I started to talk to the scouts and then the sports scientists. And that really was the aha moment for us. What they told us at that academy is, \u201cHey, if you can get this body scanning process down to 10 to 15 seconds, you would unlock a huge advantage for us.\u201d Because most assessments in sports take a long time and involve pulling an athlete out of training. I came back from that trip and I was just like, \u201cWe\u2019re going all-in on this.\u201d<\/p>\n
What makes me the happiest is the fact that whether it is the MLB or Major League Soccer, we\u2019re doing it at the youth level. If you can democratize it the right way, you can get access to more youth, you can help develop ecosystems and pathways that don\u2019t exist today, and you can also provide data to parents so they can make better decisions for their sons and daughters.<\/p>\n
You have entrepreneurs, and then you have founders that are trying to build something that doesn\u2019t exist. I\u2019m on the latter piece. A big part of this journey for me has not only been, \u201cHey, the technology works!\u201d but it\u2019s also now proving to enterprises, businesses, markets and consumers that this is something they can do. A big part of how I\u2019ve tackled adoption is to put the technology out there as much as possible. Because the more that\u2019s hidden, the more obstacles you have to face in that selling journey. So every client call that I have now, whether I\u2019m talking to Cleveland Clinic or a sports team in Peru, I start with a demo of the technology. Not a video, not a picture. We have someone on our team get on the call, take out their iPhone, click four pictures, and go through the technology, because I want to educate the person on the other side that this is easy. This is an experience that I always tell people my eight-year-old son can do and my 70-year-old mom can do. And what I found is the ROI and the payback on putting it out there has been huge.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been fairly open about this. I do not like fundraising. I like building products, I like scaling teams, I like having fun on that side of the business. So I view fundraising almost as if you\u2019re going in a car from Los Angeles to New York, and somewhere along the line you\u2019re gonna break down and not have any fuel left. And you need a gas station along the journey. Fundraising is those gas stations. It\u2019s not the means, it\u2019s not the ends \u2014 it\u2019s just some fuel that you need to get to the next stage and execute your journey. If I build the right product, if I build the right market, if I have customers who are paying, I\u2019ll find the right investor. I find a lot of entrepreneurs try to focus on fundraising first, then those things second. What I found is that fundraising becomes easier once you solve for those things. So my advice is to focus on the stuff that investors really want to see.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n