Clearwater Wellness co-founder Matt Visitor is bringing classes he realized as a top-level athlete and ICU physician to a contemporary problem: scaling a startup.
There’s a saying that goes: ‘Select your laborious’. It means life gained’t be simple, however you will be intentional with the challenges you face.
Matt Visitor has chosen his laborious. A number of instances over.
Now, he’s bringing the teachings he realized as a top-level athlete and present ICU physician to a contemporary problem: scaling a startup.
Visitor is the co-founder of Clearwater Wellness, a Geelong-based enterprise hoping to revolutionise the common-or-garden chilly plunge via progressive expertise.
Entrepreneurship presents a brand new sort of ‘laborious’, and Clearwater Wellness faces the prospect of elevating capital in a deeply unsure second.
Chatting with SmartCompany, Visitor mentioned the “lengthy highway” to startup life has ready him for what comes subsequent.
“I can take care of the adversity of making an attempt to get a startup off the bottom,” he mentioned.
Chilly plunge origins
Clearwater Wellness is at the moment looking for buyers to develop the SnowCap, its flagship chilly plunge tub with an in-built chilling system.
Not like conventional chilly plunge tubs, which require copious quantities of ice to remain cool, the SnowCap makes use of an in-built thermoelectric cooling system to achieve the appropriate temperature.
The startup can hint its origin to the rudimentary ice baths Visitor endured as a younger participant on Canada’s area hockey crew.
Years earlier than launching the startup with co-founders Laynton Allen and Max Chapman, the Australian-born Visitor balanced gruelling med college research with sporting performances on the world stage.
Visitor wore the maple leaf uniform on the 2016 Rio Olympics and represented the crew on the Commonwealth Video games in each 2010 and 2014.
“There have been a whole lot of up and down moments, making an attempt to persist,” Visitor mentioned, describing the psychological and bodily toll that got here with balancing his research and top-level athletic efficiency.
Chilly plunges supplied respite from the gruelling psychological and bodily calls for of high-level sport, not less than quickly.
There isn’t any scientific consensus over the advantages of chilly plunging, and Visitor makes no scientific guarantees about its impact on efficiency and wellbeing.
“When there’s something within the well being and wellbeing house, it takes time to construct a physique of proof and analysis,” he mentioned.
Even so, “there’s little question in my thoughts that it made an enormous distinction” after a heavy coaching session or bruising hockey match, he mentioned.
An icy resurgence
Chilly plunging grew to become a supply of respite as Visitor pursued a profession as a vital care doctor.
“I used to be going via some worrying specialist examination preparation, and I had children of my very own at that time limit, and life was fairly worrying,” he mentioned.
Co-founder Laynton Allen, an entrepreneur navigating a personal fairness buyout on the time, advisable Visitor revisit chilly plunging via his research.
After a mentally taxing day, the vital care doctor would soak at house, surprising his system with chilly plunges within the bathtub.
These dips weren’t chilly sufficient, it turned out, and Visitor envisioned an all-in-one chilly plunge system with an in-built ice maker.
An early prototype included a industrial ice machine hooked up to the lid of a giant soaking tub, earlier than Visitor and Laynton mentioned new potentialities with engineer Max Chapman.
Merely producing ice could be too energy-inefficient, Visitor mentioned, with the trio touchdown on a thermoelectric cooling system as a substitute.
A ‘yard’ prototype served as proof of idea. After a small family and friends funding spherical, the startup in 2024 turned to Indiegogo for crowdfunding.
That effort earned the startup $700,000 in pre-sales, and caught the curiosity of one other high-level athlete with a deep appreciation for the common-or-garden chilly plunge.
Former Australian males’s cricket captain Tim Paine used chilly plunging as a coaching software all through his taking part in profession, Visitor mentioned, earlier than he independently realized of the SnowCap venture.
“The overlap in perception in what chilly plunge remedy might provide was a serious drawcard, and I feel he noticed one thing in our crew, an excellent steadiness,” Visitor mentioned.
Paine stepped up as an early investor, with Clearwater Wellness itemizing him as a founding companion within the agency.
Studying from adversity
Clearwater Wellness is now elevating $2 million through convertible notice, at a touted valuation of $6 million, as it really works to speed up manufacturing and enterprise into each the US and European markets.
The method is its personal distinctive model of ‘laborious’. Elevating capital for a hardware-based startup is difficult, Visitor mentioned, significantly as buyers flock to synthetic intelligence.
Silicon Valley VCs centered on ‘biohacking’ and private optimisation may seem to be the archetypal chilly plunge demographic, but the concentrate on AI is difficult startups with little overlap with the booming AI sector.
“You get a whole lot of noes in startups,” mentioned Visitor. “Lots of people let you know ‘Nice thought, come again whenever you’ve completed this, this, and this.’”
However that’s the place the teachings realized over his profession come into focus.
“The stakes of danger, versus the stakes of what I take care of at work, in intensive care… it grounds me very nicely,” mentioned Visitor.
“I can take care of the adversity of making an attempt to get a startup off the bottom.”
“It provides perspective that has enabled me to see the larger image a whole lot of the time,” he continued.
With a singular product within the multi-billion-dollar wellness trade, Visitor thinks the resilience gained via sporting {and professional} life will profit the startup.
“I can say this categorically: this solely strengthens one’s psychological fortitude,” he mentioned.
“I stay up for the chance of telling sure individuals ‘I instructed you so’ when the time comes.”
