HockeyHash

*This is a message sent privately to L*** P*******. *

I have been thinking a lot about how to organize all of our HockeyHash ideas without getting buried by them.

Right now, the biggest risk is not lack of ambition. It is fragmentation. Too many ideas, too many possible directions, too many things that feel important at once. That kind of energy can feel productive, but a lot of the time it is just motion without progress.

I keep coming back to a simple conclusion: the right forcing function is a pitch deck.

At first glance, that sounds slow. Maybe even outdated. We are in the middle of an AI explosion. Tools are improving weekly. Everyone is talking about agents, automation, and infinite leverage. A deck can feel almost embarrassingly traditional in that environment.

But so is most of the world. And hockey, if we are being honest, is even more traditional than most industries.

That matters.

If we lead with the full HockeyHash vision too early, most people will get lost immediately. Once that happens, they do not just stop understanding. They start judging. People put up a wall the moment something feels too big, too abstract, or too unfamiliar. So I think the smarter move is to intentionally simplify. Use familiar channels. Text. Email. A PDF deck. Plain English. A story people can actually follow.

That is not selling out the vision. It is creating an on-ramp to it.

It would also help me personally.

I know one of my own patterns. I get scattered. My focus fragments. I try to advance five important things at once and convince myself they are all connected. Sometimes they are, but that does not change the outcome. Meaningful progress usually dies when attention gets split too many ways.

I learned that the hard way at Evertas. One of the best things I have ever written was a post about desperation-induced focus. I printed it out and read it again recently because I needed the reminder myself. Wearing multiple hats is normal in startups. It is normal in life. But there is a big difference between carrying a lot of responsibility and making real forward progress. If we actually want to build something, we need the discipline to focus on one artifact at a time and finish it.

For HockeyHash, that artifact should be the deck.

Not because the deck is the company. Not because slides matter more than product. But because a deck forces clarity. It makes you define what this is, who it is for, why it matters, and why now. It also gives us something concrete to finish, refine, and send. Something that can travel without us having to verbally explain a giant idea from scratch every single time.

In simple terms, the deck should explain HockeyHash like this:

HockeyHash is a hockey identity and data layer. It turns scattered proof like stats, video, testing data, articles, awards, and performance history into a verified profile and real insights.

It starts with players. That is the wedge. Players claim and build their profile, upload or link their proof, and begin creating a clearer picture of who they are and where they are headed. From there, the value expands outward to coaches, scouts, teams, media, and fans.

That sequence matters. Start with the player. Earn trust. Build utility. Then let the rest of the ecosystem connect around it.

To me, that is the opening. Not another generic sports app. Not another noisy platform pretending to serve everyone equally. Something built specifically for hockey culture. Something rooted in trust, ownership, verification, and useful insight.

The deck would not just explain the idea. It would become a distribution tool.

We could send it to friends first. Then to people who can open real doors. Then to media and hockey channels that help shape credibility inside the sport. Instead of trying to unpack the entire vision fresh every time, the deck becomes the thing that carries the first layer of the message.

That alone would be valuable.

But I also think it could do something else for me. It could change my posture.

At Evertas*, I lived through pre-seed, seed, and Series A fundraising rounds that totaled roughly $25 million. I was not always in the room for every conversation, but I was close enough to absorb the pattern. Being around that process made something click for me. Sometimes what a project needs is not more private thinking. Sometimes it needs an external forcing event.

* I’m so clandestine, lol *

That is part of why I think a possible sequence here is: deck first, stronger MVP second, then a small round from the right hockey-connected people to force speed, accountability, and seriousness.

And if I were going to start that process anywhere, I would start close to home.

Mike E******* is literally my neighbor and basically family through G******** side. I call him Uncle Mike, which felt strange at first and now mostly just makes me laugh because Winthrop is ridiculously small. But jokes aside, he is exactly the kind of person who can compress time if the idea is clear and credible. If I sat down with him and walked through this the right way, I think there is a real chance he either invests, opens doors, or both.

After that, from a pure distribution perspective, one of the most obvious dream channels is S****** C*******. Not because we need celebrity validation. Not because attention alone solves anything. But because B** and W*** sit inside the culture in a way that very few people do. They are an on-ramp to trust, relevance, and reach within hockey.

That is what I mean when I say I want to light a fire under this.

Once something becomes real and external, I think my emotional posture changes. I stop hiding behind private ambition. I stop being anxious and secretive about wanting to build something big, which is usually just fear of failing publicly in a nicer outfit. Once the thing is out in the world, there is no point pretending I do not care. I do care. A lot.

I also think it could light you up too, but I want to be careful there. You are still playing. You are still living the dream in a very real sense. I do not want HockeyHash to distract from that. I want it to add to your life, not pull you away from it. I am trying to build my dream. You are still inside yours. That distinction matters.

The other piece here is urgency.

The current wave of agentic tools and AI workflows makes this feel like a real window. Models are improving weekly. The cost of building is dropping. The ability to prototype, test, organize, and move is better than it has ever been. I keep pulse-checking the hockey world, and I still do not see a company whose vision is even close to what we are imagining.

That could be a warning. Maybe there is a reason nobody has done it.

Or it could be the opening.

I am choosing to treat it like the opening.

I know I can sound delusional when I talk about wanting to do big things. But I do want to do big things. More specifically, I want to do things that feel impossible until they are real. And I think hockey deserves a platform like this.

So the cleanest next step, at least from where I sit now, is straightforward:

I draft a simple 10-slide version one deck in plain English.

Then it gets pressure-tested from the player perspective. What feels real, what feels off, what feels cringe, what is missing, what actually matters.

Then we tighten it.
Then we send it.

That feels like focus. That feels like movement. That feels like the right place to start.