Racket Pulse: Building a B2B Analytics Platform for Tennis Academies

🎾 More than a sensor — a coaching infrastructure play.

At a glance

Role: Founder · Product Manager · Customer Researcher

Skills: Customer Discovery · Market Research · Product Strategy · Financial Modelling · Stakeholder Management

Outcome: Top 10 Finalist at the University of Greenwich Enterprise Challenge 2025 (out of ~200 teams). Built a full 12-month financial model, validated the B2B problem through primary research, and retained IP on handover to the academy pilot partner.

💬 "We rely on verbal feedback that's time-consuming and lacks data. Haptic feedback the players could feel mid-rally would change how we coach."

— Head Coach, DUTA International Tennis Academy

The Gap

Smart tennis sensors exist. Every single one - SwingVision, Babolat Play, Qlipp, Zepp, Sony - was built for individual consumers. Most have been discontinued. The pattern is always the same: players buy the sensor, can't interpret the data without a coach, stop using it.

The 100,000+ tennis academies worldwide have no purpose-built tool. They sit on a goldmine of performance data they have no way to capture, store, or coach from.

Racket Pulse was built for the coaches, not the players.

Discovery

I conducted an in-depth interview with the head coach and manager of DUTA International Tennis Academy, covering current workflows, the limits of verbal feedback, and what a useful tool would actually need to do in a live session.

Three things that changed the product:

The Engineering Proof

A sensor that promises to read swing characteristics only works if the underlying physics holds. I used my final-year dissertation to test exactly that — a MATLAB-to-ANSYS parametric framework for tennis racket frame vibration, validated to within 0.5% of published experimental data.

The simulation confirmed: vibration signatures from ball-on-string impacts are measurable, repeatable, and distinguishable across different contact points. The engineering behind Racket Pulse isn't a guess — it's quantified.

→ Read the full engineering case study

The Product

A small sensor attaches to the racket face. The software splits across three users: academy admin, coach, and student. Each sees only what they need.

The dashboards below are high-fidelity prototypes built for the Enterprise Challenge pitch. Engineering feasibility was validated through the dissertation; a working build was scoped in the R&D plan as the next stage.

Coach view — glanceable during a live session

Active students, sessions this week, average performance vs target, one-tap student access. Designed to be used on a courtside tablet, not reviewed in an office.

Player progress view

Serve speed, ball spin, and accuracy across weekly/monthly/yearly views. Coaches can finally answer "is this student actually improving?" with numbers instead of instinct.

Admin view

Total students, active coaches, court usage, upcoming sessions. Turns a fragmented operation into a single dashboard.

Student view

Start vs current numbers, streaks, recent sessions. The gamification layer that keeps junior players engaged and helps academies retain them.

Business Model

Two tiers. Three revenue streams. One thesis: hardware drives initial revenue; subscriptions drive long-term value.

Premium unlocks: live haptic feedback · booking system integration · unlimited cloud storage · per-coach permissions · academy-wide leaderboards · hardware upgrade path

📊 Specific pricing figures are withheld here. The structure was designed around three commercial principles: larger bulk orders unlock a per-sensor volume discount (offset by a higher onboarding fee justified by integration complexity); Basic stays subscription-free so academies can adopt hardware without committing to recurring cost; Premium layers a monthly per-academy fee for the features that drive long-term retention: booking integration, unlimited cloud storage, permission levels, leaderboards, hardware upgrades, and live haptic feedback. The financial model pointed to break-even at month 10–12 with profitability compounding through Year 2 as the subscription base grew.

Competitive Landscape

The signal: every B2C player tracker has either died or struggled. Nobody has built for the segment that actually monetises tennis tech.

The Enterprise Challenge Journey

• Stage 1: Initial submission and pitch
• Stage 2: Full business plan — market research, competitor analysis, customer validation, marketing plan, 12-month financial model, 3-minute video pitch
• Final: Top 10 Finalists of the full Greenwich cohort

Mentored throughout by Peter Miles, serial entrepreneur, NED, 35+ years building and exiting businesses. His challenge to me was to "Stop telling me about the product. Tell me about the unit economics." And that has run through every iteration of the model since.

Outcome

After the Enterprise Challenge, I retained the intellectual property and handed operational responsibility to DUTA International Tennis Academy: the partner with the closest commercial proximity to the buyer and the operational capacity to run pilots and pursue early sales.

Building something is one decision. Recognising who the right operator is, and structuring the handover to keep your upside while freeing your time, is a different one entirely. Both matter.

Five Things I Learned

1. One deep interview beats ten shallow ones. A single DUTA conversation generated more product direction than any survey would. In B2B, depth beats volume.
2. Pricing is product strategy, not a finance question. Whether to charge per sensor, per academy, or per subscription completely changed who I was building for.
3. The graveyard was the best market research. Knowing why four competitors failed was more valuable than knowing what they did.
4. Commercial credibility has to be earned separately from engineering credibility. Explaining the sensor took five minutes. Justifying a four-figure annual contract took ten times longer.
5. Knowing when to hand something over is its own skill. Holding on to a project you can't fully execute is worse than handing it to someone who can.

What's Next (for the IP holder)

• Junior gamification: sound cues, point systems, and predictive goal-setting that turn training into a game
• Cross-racket expansion: badminton, squash, padel, pickleball. Same sensor architecture, same academy model.
• Data licensing: aggregated performance data at scale has commercial value to federations (LTA, USTA, ITF) for grassroots talent identification

Links

The Business Model Canvas

The Pitch Deck

Racket Pulse Pitch Video

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