Coaches on nearly all levels have used video to evaluate their players’ performance and to figure out how they can improve their game. Cambridge, Mass.-based startup Ubersense wants to make the process easier than ever, with an innovative iPad app. The startup hopes to improve athlete performance by giving users tools to analyze videos, compare their techniques to others, and track their progress over time. And so it’s raised a little bit of cash and rolled out a new and improved version of its app.
Today Ubersense is announcing that it has raised a $1.1 million round of seed funding, with investment from Atlas Venture, Google Ventures, Boston Seed Capital, and some individual angel investors. Co-founder Amit Jardosh told me that the funding is being used to add team members — Ubersense now has seven employees in total — and to improve the product.
With that in mind, Ubersense also just rolled out a completely redesigned version of the app with some new, key features added in. The app, which is now free to download in the Apple App Store, already enabled users to capture and analyze video of their performances. But new features will improve their ability to highlight things they could do better and track progress over time.
In particular, Ubersense has added a timeline feature, which will let users look through videos that have been shot over time to see where athletes have improved. It also provides frame-by-frame video playback and drawing tools to help coaches analyze form and posture. Users can also overlay video or place it side-by-side so they can compare their techniques to that of the pros.
The app also has improved collaboration tools for coaches to interact with athletes. That includes “Uberviews,” which allow coaches to give audio feedback or drawings on the video to pinpoint places where athletes can improve their game. It also provides Dropbox integration to allow them to more easily share videos with each other, as well as social sharing tools in case they want to post to Facebook or YouTube.
Ubersense was originally created back in early 2011 as a tool to help co-founders Jardosh and Krishna Ramchandran to improve their golf swings. But they’ve found adoption from coaches across many different sports and competition levels, ranging from high school all the way up to the Olympics.