Our guest is former NFL Pro Bowler and current CEO of Windpact, Shawn Springs. Windpact is a technology and applied science company focused on the analysis, design and implementation of impact protection solutions for our everyday lives.
Windpact is currently helping to solve for impact protection in the sporting goods, military and automotive industries. As a father, Shawn gave his thoughts on social injustice in America, Colin Kaepernick, the NFL, his new leadership position, and his recent success of being just one of nine companies out of 500 to get accepted into Morgan Stanley’s Multicultural Innovation Program.
Podcast Highlights
4:04 – NFL and players stepping: “I’m proud to see a lot of these guys stepping up and obviously utilizing their platform as a professional athlete. We know we have influence in our communities. It was great to see Roger Goodell step up from the NFL perspective.”
7:50 – Sports bringing community together: “When you are on the same football team, whether you’re black, white, or asian, now you’re teammates and that kind of brings you together. We see that in sports quite often. And that’s a beautiful thing about sports from someone from a different background or race or anything, we all have one common goal and that’s to win and play a game that we love together.”
10:10 – Shawn Springs never expected to be an entrepreneur: “My coolest award is being on the cover of the United States patent, doing a story as entrepreneur of the month, February, which is black history month. If you would have asked 21 year old Shawn Springs if he’d be working with engineers and professionals, who’ve done some of the most amazing things and solve some of the amazing problems from scientists and everything, I would have said no way, man.”
11:45 – The NFL Head Health Challenge: “When you think about the direction in the last five years, when the NFL was looking at the safety of these athletes and looking at new technologies, you know, that’s right up my wheelhouse.”
14:15 – Being a black athlete in Technology: “It’s been a little bit of a challenge because, you think about Silicon Valley, most of the time getting an investment is very difficult if you didn’t go to Harvard, Stanford, or some of those other places.”
16:35 – Working with Morgan Stanley: “AI machine learning is the future. The data is a future. So our data on the materials itself is the most valuable thing to us. So when you think about Morgan Stanley, they see the big picture.”
21:38 – Technology in sports behind other industries: “Under Armour and Nike are doing innovation but for the most part it was just stale.”
22:35 – Recognizing the seriousness of impact protection: “It’s been something we’ve been working through and we just been trying to really change the industry. I’m always on Capitol Hill talking to those guys about how we look at standards.”
26:15 – Crash Cloud Technology: “So when you think about our technology, the good thing about us is we provide solutions so we can solve problems for any group.”
29:07 – Morgan Stanley Accelerator: “About five years ago they started looking at underrepresented minority businesses. They felt that it was a trillion dollar market that wasn’t being invested in or opportunities were overlooked.”
