When you think about AI technology, sports nutrition might not necessarily be a use case that comes to mind.
David Dunne thinks otherwise.
As a doctor and long-time performance nutritionist, he noticed how difficult it was for him and other nutritionists to support and deliver results to all the athletes they help.
After pursuing a self-funded PhD, and diving into a ton of research, he and his founding team came up with Hexis.
Hexis is regarded as the future of sports nutrition.
Whether you’re a coach, an athlete, or a fitness enthusiast, the platform is designed to maximize your full potential through custom, AI-powered nutrition plans.
All high-level athletes know that the food they put in their bodies is key to reaching peak performance, recovering effectively, and allowing them to achieve their goals.
With a recent new round of funding and several partnerships, Hexis is well on its way to changing the entire industry.
In this interview with Dr David Dunne, we discuss how Hexis differs from other solutions, his advice to other founders on building an AI product, and his predictions for the industry.
Hello, who are you and what is the name of your company?
My name is Dr David Dunne and I am the CEO and Co-Founder of Hexis. For more than the last decade, I’ve been working as a Performance Nutritionist with the best athletes and organizations in the world.
I’ve been fortunate to work across leagues such as the NBA, Premier League, and Premiership Rugby, as well as with organizations such as Ryder Cup Team Europe and Team GB.
During my time in these roles, I got frustrated by the limitations of time and scale, as well as fascinated by the opportunities that technology can afford our industry.
When my curiosity peaked I decided to take a deeper look and self-funded a PhD exploring Behavioural Design Thinking in Technology Innovation in Sports Nutrition.
Throughout my research, I uncovered a fundamental mismatch between what practitioners can currently deliver and the personalized support athletes describe they need, after all, every athlete is unique!
Hexis delivers intelligent personalized nutrition to enhance the performance of both the athlete and the coach.
What was the process of getting the company off the ground?
I met my co-founding team during my PhD journey where we collaborated on research together initially to test concepts but in an incredibly rigorous manner that led to multiple peer-reviewed publications.
In one of the pilot trials, we recruited 963 athletes (a 54:46% female-to-male split) from 8 different sports, many of whom were playing at international level.
During this trial, I spoke with 121 of them to gain feedback, positive or negative, as it became available.
From here we gained incredible insight into what value we need to deliver to become critical infrastructure in the nutrition for performance space.
Before this trial, we started testing concepts with clickable prototypes and conducted some concurrent think-aloud user testing sessions with target users to better understand where they were perceiving value, as well as the usability and utility of our initial MVP designs.
We didn’t over-index on what competitors were doing because as a practitioner, I had been exposed to all their solutions for the last decade, and had they met our industry’s needs I never would have embarked on this journey.
Instead, we focused on the job to be done, the scientific evidence base, and our team’s tacit knowledge gained from supporting the best athletes in the world.
How is the company doing today and what does the future look like?
We are incredibly excited about the future with some big news coming out this past week.
We are delighted to share that we have recently closed a £1.6m Pre-Seed fundraising round backed by APEX and Sport Republic.
Simultaneously we have recently partnered with the world’s largest endurance training platform, TrainingPeaks, and since the start of 2024 have begun working with multiple UCI World Tour Cycling Teams, Premier League Football Clubs, Premiership Rugby Clubs, and National Governing Bodies preparing for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Over the coming months, we will be growing our technology team and further enhancing our product capabilities, as well as our sports partners.
Today we have a growing team that has recently been bolstered by Stephen Moon, the former CEO of Science in Sport, who has joined the board.
Additionally, Professor James Morton, previously a performance nutritionist for Liverpool FC and Head of Nutrition and Physical Performance at Team Sky, has joined the team bringing extensive experience from the pinnacle of elite sports.
Through his work with INEOS, Morton is playing an important role at Manchester United FC, where he is helping to shape the team’s performance strategies.
Through starting the business have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Your team is always your biggest asset.
Continually invest in the people around you and be very selective about who you introduce to the team.
The right hire can be game-changing.
What advice do you have for founders trying to build an AI product in the sports world?
Understand the job to be done first and foremost.
It has to start here otherwise you could waste time and resources integrating AI just for the sake of it which will not benefit you, your stakeholders, and most importantly your users.
How have you been able to differentiate Hexis from other products or solutions that are already out there?
In a world where the status quo is retrospective tracking, Hexis is predictive.
Our ability to tell you what to do next, instead of having you tell us what you have already done has set us apart.
Combine that with our improvement in cost, efficiency, and productivity to demonstrate how we have changed the game.
Let’s take efficiency for example….
Measuring it is simple. Efficiency = Output / Input
Daily personalized & periodized nutrition planning is an essential output when supporting athletes.
However, the input can take ~20-45 mins per athlete…even with the latest spreadsheet. This is often why only 5-10 athletes in a 45+ person squad get this level of support.
The result?
Assuming the best case for both time and number of athletes impacted:
- Efficiency = Daily Plans / Time Taken
- Efficiency = 10 Plans / 3hrs 20mins
- Efficiency = 3 per hour
This is not good and here’s why:
- It limits the number of athletes that can receive this level of support
- It introduces an unbalanced standard of care across the organization
- It reduces the time available for 1-2-1s, building relationships & human facing components of the role
Enter Hexis which uses a unique Carb Coding™️ system, developed by world-leading experts in nutrition in conjunction with advanced predictive AI technology.
There’s no more guesswork, just real-time personalization to maximize performance.
With Hexis:
- Input: ~5-30 secs
- Output: 45+ daily personalised and periodised nutrition plans
As a result:
- Efficiency = 45 Plans / 30 secs
- Efficiency = 5,402 per hour
That’s 1,800x more efficient.
With our solution, the following problems are resolved:
- No limit on the number of athletes receiving this level of support
- Ensures a higher standard of care across the whole organization, from 1st team to the academy
- Significantly increases the time available for 1-2-1s & building relationships
What advice do you have for founders looking to raise capital?
We were fortunate that some of our initial capital was raised almost by accident.
I was supporting some professional athletes who heard about what we were doing and they immediately wanted to get involved because they not only believe in what Hexis is building, they live and breathe it every day to maximize their own performance.
VCs were different though.
Given I had a steep learning curve coming from a sports nutrition background I found raising very similar to sparring. The first time I got in the ring I got punched in the face, but over time I learned to not get hit.
My advice to anyone looking to raise is to make sure you reflect, unpack, and learn why you got hit and use these lessons to sharpen your tools for future spars.
We are fortunate now to have the support of APEX and Sport Republic, as well as DPMN Sports Ventures.
These organizations each have origins stemming from the frontline of elite sport and we are delighted we have found such great partners for this journey.
What are some predictions you have for the industry over the next year or so?
In elite sport, we are entering the era of the Hybrid Practitioner.
Fundamentally, human coaches need to double down on what humans are best at, having conversations, building relationships, and listening, whilst technology is integrated into practice to automate and scale personalization services.
Are there any particular tools, software, or resources you use to be more productive?
I’ve got a two-part answer to this. The short, slightly more vanilla answer is yes.
Our team are heavy users of collaborative communication, design, and documentation tools, specifically Slack, Figma, and Notion. Slack enhances our day-to-day comms whilst ensuring our team can “switch off” when they need to take time to recharge.
Figma is a vital cog in our machine as it allows us to quickly design, iterate test, and create concepts with current and future users of Hexis. Notion helps us document a “single source of truth” for all teams to refer to.
Outside of the above, we are using both ChatGPT and Claude to help enhance the efficiency of day-to-day tasks within the business.
The second part of this answer is slightly more personal. When considering my productivity I find the most valuable tool at my disposal is exercise and cold plunging.
Even if it is a short burst, as it often needs to be, I provide a space to effectively consolidate my thoughts, reflect, and gain clarity and perspective on problems that I’ve been working on.
Fortunately, I live right beside the sea in Ireland, and although a hot day here is still less than 20C, a couple of minutes in the Irish sea at 6 am is a great way to sharpen focus for the day ahead.
Are you currently hiring and if so, where can people apply and find out more?
We are always interested in exciting talent and intrinsically motivated individuals, in particular, if you have a keen interest in endurance sports such as running, triathlon, and cycling!
On top of a few recent appointments, we are on the lookout for a great full-stack software engineer, ideally with a backend focus.
If you’re interested or know someone that wants to be part of the future of sports nutrition please drop us a line over at info@hexis.live.
