Editor’s Note
Volume 24. All eyes on ICEMAN… more on that below 🧊.
Last night, I was invited to a Sports Business Discussion hosted by JP Morgan's Private Bank. The room was full of operators, investors and dealmakers talking youth sports, team valuations and what it actually takes to build and exit a business in this space. Exactly the kind of conversation No Huddle exists around.
More to come there, and huge shoutout to JJ Luger for pulling it together.
We’ve got some big things in store over the next few weeks and months for No Huddle. New ways to revisit our previous features and opportunities for this community to get closer to the companies building in this space.
If you want to be featured, connect with founders in the No Huddle family, or have suggestions to help No Huddle grow, just reply to this email or reach out directly to me at [email protected].
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⚡The Highlight
Kühler Technologies Opens $500K Seed Round With First Capital Already Committed
(more below)
🎙 In the Pocket
How I am seeing the field across sports, media, entertainment, wellness and CPG
Whoop. Cold plunge. Sauna. Theragun. Creatine. Proteinmaxxing. Eight Sleep. Blood tests.
A decade ago, word leaked that LeBron James spends $1.5 million a year on his body. Tom Brady created an entire business squarely focused on pliability and nutrition (and some hats and hoodies that I bought back in the day).
We’ve seen it for years: personal chefs, cryotherapy, hyperbaric chambers, sleep specialists - an entire infrastructure built around one goal - optimizing for peak performance. At the time, it felt like the ultimate flex. A luxury available only to the rare few at the very top of the pyramid who could afford it like professional athletes and executives.
That's certainly not the story anymore. Walk into any mid-size gym in America and you'll find accessories across the gym floor. Head to the locker room and you’ll most likely see plunges, saunas, hot tubs and more. Scroll IG for ten minutes and you'll see a podcast host doing a 37-degree dip before 6am to kick off their day.
Whoop has north of a million members. Eight Sleep is selling mattresses that regulate your temperature while you sleep. Normatec compression boots (owned by Hyperice), once exclusively in NFL training rooms, are being unboxed in living rooms across the country. The recovery arms race that used to live behind the velvet rope of professional athletics and wealth has officially gone mainstream, and the capital is pouring in to meet it.
The global wellness economy is now worth nearly $7 trillion. But what's most interesting to me? Where the growth is starting to concentrate. It's not Soul Cycle classes, Equinox gyms or protein shakes…It's recovery and performance technology.
Technology - including the GLP-1 craze - is helping shape an entirely new segment of people even more motivated than ever to get in shape and stay that way. Wearables have made biometric data legible to people who've never set foot in a sports science lab. And a generation raised on content from Huberman, Attia, and The Skinny Confidential isn’t treating recovery passively anymore.
Here's the thing though: look closely at every major product in this category and you'll notice a pattern.
Cold plunge? At home or at the gym, post-workout
Percussion therapy? Pre-game, post-game or maybe if you are in the NBA - mid-game
Compression boots? On the couch, recovery day
The recovery industry has been built around what happens before and after the whistle blows. Nobody has seriously gone after what happens when it’s showtime. Think about what's happening during a timeout, between sets, or in the middle of competition. Heart rate is elevated, body temperature is climbing, the clock is ticking. Those sub-minute windows are where marginal performance gains could make all the difference, but until now, the only tools available to act on them were ice bags and Gatorade cups.
I'm bullish on human performance as a vertical. The infrastructure is maturing and consumer behavior is shifting. What used to be a niche corner of sports science is becoming one of the most commercially interesting categories in all of wellness, and we're still early.
The bookends have been built, but what’s in-between hasn't. That lane is wide open, and a company I've been watching closely is building directly for it. More below. 👇
📺 The Watch List
A mini investment memo on the stars of tomorrow
The Company: Kühler Technologies
The Business in a tweet: Kühler is a palm cooling device built for athletes during competition. Think Hyperice, but for moments between the whistles, not after them.
The 101:
Industry: Sports Technology / Recovery Technology / Human Performance
Headquarters: Brookfield, VT
Year Founded: 2023
Founding Team/Current Leadership:
Braeden Ostepchuk (Cofounder, CEO) - Former pro hockey player, NCAA national champion, human performance engineer, valedictorian; inventor of Kühler and leads operations.
Dr. Brian Bradke (Cofounder, Chairman) - Former USAF fighter pilot, university research executive, professor, published researcher, inventor, and experienced entrepreneur; leads technology and research.
Brian Billett (VP, Sales & Partnerships) - Former pro hockey player, NCAA national champion, and experienced business development; leads sales and partnerships.
Employees: 3
Fundraising Status:
🚨Currently raising $500k Seed 🚨
First commitments already in from Accelerator Fund and angels
Previously raised $375k pre-seed from friends and family in 2024 and 2025
If you’re interested in learning more, seeing the Kühler investor deck or meeting the team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected].
Business Model:
Hardware sales across three core channels:
D2C via Shopify, IG Shop and TikTok Shop
B2B direct to teams, NCAA programs and gym facilities
Wholesale through exclusive distribution agreement with Medco Sports Medicine
Strong unit economics: landed COGS under $90, retail at $289 (pre-order at $199); healthy gross margins with further upside as volume production grows
Traction:
Sold out of first 500 unit production run with early adopters from MLB, NHL, NBA, NFL, NCAA and consumer markets
2 patents issued (with a third pending). Utility patents covering core thermoelectric palm cooling methodology and apparatus, making Kühler the only patented device in its category
Performance Study: A six-week independent study found an improved heart rate recovery using Kühler (+36%), as well as improvements to volume (+13%) and reps (+8%). More studies are on the roadmap
Deep Dive: The science here actually predates the Kühler product by decades. Stanford researchers first validated palm cooling as an athletic performance boost in the early 2000s (Journal of Applied Physiology). The mechanism is straightforward: specialized vasculature in the palm increases warm blood flow during exercise, and cooling that surface actually can pull heat out of the bloodstream in real-time to help maximize performance. The Stanford team's research showed palm cooling increased pull-up volume by 144% over six weeks - a data point that’s bounced around biohacking circles ever since. Kühler re-built and miniaturized what used to be a bulky clinical system into something that fits in your gym bag: just grab it, pull the trigger and hold for 30 seconds between sets. No ice, no water, no prep. The early demand is there as production run #1 is used and sold through locker rooms of some major logos:
Pros:
Science-first foundation with 30+ peer-reviewed studies
More evidence of technical functionality: published technical white paper that shows Kühler’s device maintains the optimal 50-60 ℉ contact temperature during use
Hardware economics that work (<$90 COGS against a nearly $300 retail price before scaling efficiencies kick in)
Only patented thermoelectric palm cooling device on the market - IP moat baked in from day one, with a third patent pending
Operator-grade management team with experience scaling startups, plus and professional athlete/warfighter/academic credibility
Already in pro and college locker rooms with repeat buyers and independent performance data
Clean wholesale channel through exclusive partnership with Medco - puts Kühler in front of thousands of athletic trainers supplying programs from high school to the pros. Institutional distribution before the brand goes broad
Tailwinds across the sports performance and recovery market - from Hyperice to Theragun to Whoop, in addition to generalized cooling devices from even bigger players like Dyson and Shark Ninja.
Cons:
Cross into mainstream hype isn’t there yet unlike percussion massage, compression, cold plunging, etc.
Education and brand recognition two keys for mass adoption
Further performance studies to prove out clinical validity: more research will only strengthen Kühler’s case
Comparables:
Kühler Differentiator: The only patented thermoelectric palm cooling device. The smallest, lightest, fastest, and the only one with clean IP. Competitors are either ice-and-water systems that require prep or thermoelectric devices without patent protection.
Jackson Smith, Penn State University Men’s Hockey, 1st Round Draft Pick (14th Overall to Columbus Blue Jackets)
📶The Signal (No Huddle’s Take):
Recovery tech is having its moment right now, but the thing is, so much of it is focused on what happens after the whistle. Kühler is going for an entirely different game: recovery during competition, in-between sets or in the midst of a timeout.
Famed neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman broke down palm cooling during an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience back in 2023, saying devices were “effective, but still clunky.” That line validated the category and left the door wide open for recovery tech devices.
Companies that have focused on recovery have soared over the past 5 years: Hyperice and Therabody have successfully entered mainstream consumer markets and private capital by doing exactly what Kühler is doing now: building credibility in pro locker rooms before going mass market.
On that note, I am a believer in Kühler’s GTM strategy: get into training rooms through Medco, let athletes see the effects in real-time, have the data do the talking, and then see the logos serve as social proof. Kühler is creating a defensible product and entrenchment before mass production and knockoffs can even enter.
The unit economics are already there: <$90 COGS against a nearly $300 retail price before scale. Extremely strong margins that fit a premium hardware brand. Think about how Dyson can sell a $600 hair dryer or Whoop can charge a recurring subscription for a wristband. When the product works and the brand means something, consumers seem to have zero issue spending on it. Also, keep in mind that Kühler’s product is just in its early days - think about how many variations it could go through - sensors, bluetooth capabilities, a mobile app or syncing across other health devices/data points.
I see several attractive lanes for the future of Kühler :
🤝Integration: Whoop already tracks recovery data - a Kühler integration that connects active cooling to HRV trends is a natural product collab. Equinox and LifeTime have built entire brands around elite performance; Kühler belongs on their gym floors and in their retail.
💵Strategic Exit: the acquirer universe is broader than people think. Hyperice and Therabody are the obvious comps, but innovative sports companies like Nike have made aggressive moves into performance tech, and a palm cooling device used during competition is exactly the kind of product that fits a connected athlete ecosystem.
Nike is also at a well-documented inflection point - making the timing of a performance tech acquisition particularly interesting (Editor’s Note: Check out this phenomenal breakdown of where Nike is at from our friends over at T4Q)
👀Big picture upside: could we see the premium consumer electronic brands enter this high-performance space? The Dysons and SharkNinjas of the world are science-first and design-obsessed with their hardware. Could they consider broadening their cooling product lines?
The underlying momentum is all there: a heavily oversubscribed Kickstarter (558%), a sold-out first production run, a strong management team and industry-wide tailwinds. Kühler is pushing to redefine where and when recovery happens. This is one to watch closely.
If you’re interested in learning more, seeing the Kühler investor deck or meeting the team, respond to this email or reach out to [email protected].
From the archive
Back in Volume 6, we covered Catapult and the rise of athlete-performance infrastructure in sports. Kühler is a different part of the same broader shift — the tools built not just to measure performance, but to improve it in real time.
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