Neuqua grads' invention makes final 5 on TV's 'Greatest Makers'

Two Neuqua Valley High School alums from Naperville and a Chicago resident are coming down to the wire in their bid to win $1 million on the TBS-TV show “America's Greatest Makers.”

The show is a collaboration between Intel and Mark Burnett, producer of hit reality series such as “Survivor,” “Shark Tank” and “The Voice.” It pits teams of innovators to create wearable, “game changing” technology.

Naperville natives Dave Krawczyk and Neil Kumar, along with Aaron Fazulak, make up team NWTN (pronounced “Newton”). The trio has created a tracking device placed in football helmets that provides coaches with real-time data on any concussive hits their players take.

The device, also called the NWTN, allows coaches to use a phone or tablet to select a player and see on a 3-D-rendered helmet where hits have been taken and at how much force.

The reality contest debuted April 5 on TBS with 24 teams from across the country and now the field has narrowed to five. NWTN is among them and earned $100,000 winning the fifth round of eliminations on May 3.

The final teams are putting the finishing touches on their products and pitches as they prepare for the final competition for $1 million. The finals will air at 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 24.

Members of Team NWTN recently spoke with the Daily Herald about their experience on “America's Greatest Makers” and what's next after the cameras stop rolling. This is an edited version of that conversation.

Q. You three had never worked together before this show. How did you get teamed up?

Krawczyk: I knew Neil when we were students at Neuqua Valley, but we weren't really friends until we were in college, with me at Illinois State and Neil at Purdue.

Since then, we had wanted to work together. So when we got the call to gauge our interest for the show — based on my work as co-founder and director of iOS at Windy City Labs and Neil being the founder of ImployMe digital recruitment service — this was a perfect opportunity to do that.

I also knew Aaron, who is the CEO and co-founder of Designation Labs in Chicago, because we previously worked together in the same business incubator, 1871 Chicago.

Q. Does your team have a personal connection to the damage concussions cause in athletics? Or did you choose this project based on heightened public awareness for sports safety?

Fazulak: Both. A close friend of mine had taken his life due to head trauma from athletics. He was a Division I college football player, a linebacker taking a lot of hits, and it quickly spiraled into him taking his own life. That has been heavy on my mind.

So when the show required us to work with the Intel module (the module is called Curie, a low-power, wearable device about the size of a keyboard with flash storage and static random-access memory, or SRAM), we realized it was something that would enable us to solve the problem of head injury in contact sports.

Q. Your team has worked throughout the season to perfect the NWTN and now the show requires you to deliver even more data to win $1 million? How can the NWTN improve?

Krawczyk: I focus on the software side and, moving forward, the show has challenged us to track the player's velocity. We will be implementing speed tracking so that the device uses the on-board accelerometer. So, in addition to telling the coach the location, direction and force of the hit, the NWTN will tell how fast the athletes are running and that will add another benefit.

Kumar: From the hardware side, we are taxed with making the device smaller. Currently it's somewhat of a hindrance to (the) player between helmet and head and the goal is for athletes not to feel it.

Fazulak: I'm working on the business front, working to create relationships and secure letters of intent to purchase our product. We are showcasing the prototype and working to demonstrate that we are gaining traction and have fire. And that's what's great about our team, we are multidisciplinary. I'm entrepreneurial, Dave specializes in software and Neil in hardware. Because we work together and share information, we are able to make incredible progress on the NWTN in a short period of time.

Q. What is the biggest lesson you have learned in this process?

Krawczyk: That it's important for people to take the lead on an aspect of the business the others don't really know. It was awesome, because I don't know much about making business relationships. I just know software. So I learned that trust is critical; I can trust what my other team members are doing to advance the business.

Kumar: But we also still share information. When it came to going to trade shows, everyone was there but we were able to trust each other to each own a component of the project. We also learned that you need to really dive into the data and understand your customer. By sharing all of that information, you end up with a great product.

We've also learned how collaborative the “American Maker” community is. Going into the show, we've all got $1 million on the line. We thought teams would hate each other, but all of the networks we have created are unbelievable. We are all supporting each other to develop our products and everyone is unbelievably talented.

Fazulak: Yes, you'll see on social media that everyone from the show is supporting each other, no matter who wins.

But my biggest lesson from the show … I've never been part of building a physical product myself and I see now that, when you have a multidisciplinary team and can collaborate, I've learned it's unbelievable what you can accomplish in a short period of time. We didn't have a product or idea when we submitted to be part of this show. We came in with a piece of paper on Day One and you're watching us progress in a very short amount of time and hit major milestones.

Q. Does your $100,000 prize money get invested back into the technology?

Krawczyk: We didn't pay ourselves throughout the entire competition, so some goes back into the business and some is payment for the time we spent there.

Q. What comes next for you guys after “America's Greatest Makers” is finished? Do you continue working together?

Fazulak: The entire team heads back to 1871 Chicago. We all want to succeed after the competition, building something that people want and that serves a need.

Q. What else do the viewers, as well as your family and friends in Chicago, need to know?

Kumar: We really wanted to do our best to represent Chicago and give people a sense of the tech scene here and how collaborative it is. This was our chance to show what three kids from Chicago can do.

Krawczyk: Yes, I think we did a pretty good job representing how Chicago does business, showing that we are open to helping one another. Hopefully we have helped bring attention to that.