October 8, 2025 • 25 mins
What happens when a Harvard-trained mind obsessed with data meets a 300-year-old sport run on “eyeballs and intuition”? You get Jeff Seder—and a blueprint for spotting champions before the world sees them.
In this conversation, Jeff shares how he spent decades building a proprietary database on elite equine performance, inventing tools along the way (yes, including a portable ultrasound protocol for horses) to measure what actually predicts winning. He explains the counterintuitive metrics that matter, how EQB avoids breakdowns while extending careers, and the call that turned a $40M buying spree into $64M—culminating in American Pharoah, the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years. It’s part Moneyball, part moonshot, and all relentless faith.
If you’re an entrepreneur, investor, or operator, you’ll love Jeff’s “show me the data” ethos, his rule for evaluating talent (equine or human), and the mindset that carried him through 20 years of “no” before everything clicked.
Hit play to learn:
- Why elite-athlete data does not look like average data—and how that changes decisions
- The multi-variable checklist EQB uses to buy future winners (and what they ignore)
- How to de-risk big bets with original research, better questions, and patience
- The mindset move: “How do you know?” as a daily operating system
Ready to think bigger—and smarter? Let’s dive in.
=============================
Chapter Stamps:
00:52 Jeff Seder's Unique Background
01:24 The Birth of EQB and Early Challenges
03:58 Innovations in Horse Racing Technology
05:44 Breakthrough Successes and Key Partnerships
08:45 The Rise of American Pharaoh
10:29 Overcoming Industry Skepticism
15:10 Applying Data Analysis to Human Athletics
- Top 5 verbatim pull-out quotes (guest)
- “You have to build a database on the elite athletes to understand what there's different and what you're looking for and what to do with it.”
- “I actually, along the way, invented the first portable ultrasound machine to go in and look at a horse's heart…”
- “He's not fast, but he never slows down.”
- “Sell your house, don't sell this horse.”
- “The main thing that I did right, was not trusting anybody to give me an answer without asking them. How do you know…”
- Social + Disclaimers block
Social:
Website: https://www.eqb.fyi/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jseder
Disclaimer: Please be aware that the opinions and perspectives conveyed in this podcast are solely those of our guests and do not necessarily represent the views, ideologies, or principles of Super Entrepreneurs Podcast, its associated entities, or any organizations they represent or are affiliated with. We provide a platform for discussion and exploration, and the content of each episode is understood to be independent expressions from our guests, rather than a reflection of the beliefs held by the podcast or its hosts.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You have to build a database on theelite athletes to understand what
(00:03):
there's different and what you'relooking for and what to do with it.
And when I thought Jesus horse racingis still eyeballs and intuition
of 300 years, I can do better.
I can take all this education I've had in.
So he spent $40 million.
Over about five, six years andwe turned it into 64 million.
Welcome back to SuperEntrepreneurs Podcast.
I'm your host, Shahid Durrani.
(00:25):
Today we have with us Jeff seder.
Jeff took science and data analysis andused them to completely change one of
the world's oldest sports horse racing.
Jeff started a company called EQB thatuses advanced technology and performance
data to find future champion horses,including the famous American Pharaoh.
(00:52):
His background is pretty unique.
He went to Harvard Law and BusinessSchool, worked on Wall Street,
and even spent time as groom.
Taking care of horses at racetracks.
Jeff has worked with billionairesand some of the top horse stables in
America building a specialized companythat the biggest names in Racing Trust.
(01:15):
So welcome to our show, Jeff.
I started out as pre-medat Harvard, so I had some.
A firm scientific kinda foundation.
You started EQB backin 19 before Moneyball.
78. Yeah, before Moneyball.
The reason this is so exciting is thatyou found something in an industry that.
(01:37):
You could utilize toamplify that industry.
Right.
And that's really unique andclever and genius in its own way.
Having those, the background that youhave, all the great things that you've
done before getting into this, how didthat help you get into this specialized,
advanced technology in sports medicine?
(02:00):
I was in my senior for horses atharvard in the business school and law
school program, which I did both atthe same time before they had a joint
program to tell you how a DDI am.
And I had to do a thesiscombining, something, combining
business and law and my.
Thesis advisor was Archibald Cox.
Some of the older people willremember that was with the Nixon
(02:23):
resignation and the midnight massacreand all that stuff in those days.
So he was a famous guy.
His office was in the stacks in Harvard,like a desk or something, and with all
these books all around, you know, andat desk and the, and I had to go in and
meet with him late in my senior year.
And I hadn't even started the thesisand I still knew I was in troubles.
(02:45):
So he says, well, how's itgoing and tell me about it.
And I kinda looked at the floorand I thought I'm in trouble.
And he said, well, whatchaare you interested in?
He got the picture and I looked atthe floor again and they said horses.
I had gone on a blinddate for rental Yeah.
Riding horses.
And I had, instead of fallingup when the girl, I fell in
love with my horse and I be cut.
(03:05):
I became fascinated and I spent timetaking lessons and I bought 'em.
Oh, no way.
And so I went and I said, oh, horses.
And he said, so he turned aroundand he took amazing from me out.
Instead, he turned around andhe took this great big book off
shelf behind him and drops it onthe desk and then dust goes off.
Yeah.
He says, this is the statuethat covered his horse racing
in Pence in Massachusetts.
(03:27):
No one in Harvard has ever looked at it.
Why don't you do that?
So I did, I went into archiveson the racetrack and I went to
town on the, I really got, and I,and wow, I decided that was how I
could spend time with stay involvedwith the horses that I was loving.
And it only took 20 years and severalmillion dollars of private research,
and I had to earn the money doingleverage buyouts and things so I
(03:50):
could spend it all on the research.
The first 20 years were a bust.
But after that, it started to work.
Once we had a core thing of data.
I also, when I first got out, I was, hadthe opportunity to work with the United
States Sports Medicine Committee, thecreation of the sports medicine committee.
That was back in 76 when the eastGermans burst on the scene, winning all
these medals in the Olympics, uhhuh,and scared the shit out of everybody.
(04:13):
'cause supposedly they were doingit with man scientists, kids
outta kindergarten, some shit.
Turned out a lot of it was steroids.
But anyway, we started out and I gotto see what they were doing, and I
got to work with Olympic teams andbiomechanists and engineers and the MDs.
But I learned that the elite athletesthat where's different from normal as
(04:34):
normal is from like sick or injured.
So your data.
It doesn't work.
You have to build a database on theelite athletes to understand what
there's different and what you'relooking for and what to do with it.
And, and when I thought, Jesus horseracing is still eyeballs and intuition
of 300 years, I can do better.
I can take all this education I'vehad in medicine and statistics
(04:57):
and science and management.
So that was my theory.
But it turned out the data didn'texist for horses and the equipment to
get the data didn't exist for horses.
I actually, along the way, invented thefirst portable ultrasound machine to go
in and look at a horse's heart redid.
Redid the port, the the protocolfor looking at Echocardio
exam so we could measure stuffreproducibly on young horses stalls.
(05:20):
I should have patented it along the way.
We invented a bone scanner and thatone new medical device of the year
in Europe in 1986 for Johnson boughtit from, to use an osteoporosis.
We were.
Predict what Orton would break their legs.
Whoa.
And we were building databases and we hadthe first heart rate meter that was, or
you could use in a race horse that wasactually accurate and even in any weather.
(05:42):
And we learned a lot.
And then finally I got a partnerwho knew, who had been a jockey
and a successful trainer, andwas really a very bright person.
She, got into Bryn Mawr at like 15 andwent out the back door with her father's
credit card and hitchhike to California.
(06:02):
She'd been riding since she wastwo years old, bouncing in the back
basket of her mother's horse on honey.
Anyway, so and then she, when she broughtin all the best of the traditional
horsemanship and we technology audit,boom, it started to work and then
we got an opportunity with one ofthe biggest stables in the country.
(06:22):
And he told us to make one recommendation.
I was trying to explain tohim, that's not how it works.
It's a whole program and it's this.
He said no.
He had five, 700 horses.
He says, make one recommendation.
So I made this outrageous recommendation.
I took, he had a horse, a youngcult that he had a new stallion.
He was trying to establishit in its first crop.
He had this one cult named afterhis grandson, and he it was
(06:46):
a man that hadn't won a race.
And it was like a monthbefore the Belmont Stakes.
And so I said, which is one ofthe biggest races in the world
right then It's a mile and a half.
And I said, remember the Belmont Stakes?
And he bursts out laughing.
I said, that's my recommendation.
He said, why?
He hasn't run a race, he hasn't even run.
I said, yeah, he's not fast,but he never slows down.
And from the Olympics and swimming, wehad these logarithmic velocity decay.
(07:10):
Curves that what repetitive actions, themuscles decay in their their fatigue at
a predictable rate for each individual.
And if you can fit a algorithmiccurve to it, and you can extrapolate
that to see what their timewould be at further distances.
And that's how he knew in a mile, whichalmost nobody, none of the races are a
(07:30):
mile and a half, so nobody's run 'em.
And they don't even run amile and a quarter like the
derby, except very rarely.
So I went dirt, so I said, that's it.
He's not gonna slow down.
So the trainer was a famous trainerand the night before the Daily
Racing Forum, they said they hadan article about who's this and who
might that and who's good, blah.
And then so then there'sthe jokers and the idiots.
(07:51):
That was us.
They never apologized.
So anyways, so I get there andthe trainers are telling the press
he has nothing to do with it.
It's a command performance, right.
And I'm there.
So we get him in the gate and he leaves.
I knew he'd be dead last.
He's trailing the field and Iwant to go under the table and
I'm thinking, please, God please.
And about halfway through the race,he starts picking up horses and then
(08:13):
they get about three quarters of theway and he's up to the pack and now
he's rolling and he is by the end,if there was another two strides,
he to won the race and he was third.
So that meant now in his first crop,instead of having a nothing cult
where it was completely worthless,oh, he had a classic place grade one,
you know, world famous of course.
And deployment wasn't afluke about a month later.
(08:34):
And Louisiana Sup or Super Derbyfor a million dollar per, he did the
same thing and he went up upfrontand at the end he was flying.
He would've wanted if itwas longer, so he hired me.
And I ended up working on like 200 horses.
And then some years later Igot the opportunity, a guy
from Egypt, loved horses.
He wanted to get into horse races, andI picked up the phone and he just called
(08:57):
us and and I, he said, can you help me?
I said, you bet.
And so he spent $40 millionover about five, six years, and
we turned it into 64 million.
And he, in his third year, hewas leading stable in the United
States, spending a fraction ofwhat his competitors were spending.
We usually spend below the actualaverage of these auctions, and we
(09:18):
had the first Triple Crown winnerin 37 years, American Pharaoh.
So unfortunately how he had otherbusiness problems and he was from
Egypt, and that was when the.
Yeah, spring came whatever thatApril spring, the Arab Spring and
that the Egyptian currency droppedby half and he lost his all kind.
So he got he ended up going bankruptand we lost him as a client.
(09:40):
It wasn't, but it wasn't us.
We made him a we made him a fortune.
And so that's kind of how it built.
Oh man.
But the first 20 years we'rehaving to keep Yeah, this the
faith and keep building dataand building technologies and.
And seeing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a key word right there, is faith.
(10:02):
Right?
Right.
Without the faith, you know,everybody you know, you would've
given up every business.
A lot of 'em are very wealthy andthey all think they know everything.
Everybody's an expert.
Every trainer, even if they havean eighth grade education, knows
everything about worth roots.
There's nothing you can tell.
Yeah, it is just, it's very tight.
It's very traditional in thatindustry from this Harvard
pinhead, from Philadelphia.
(10:23):
You wanna listen?
So Jeff, go ahead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I resonate with what you're doingbecause my dad's late business
partner, he had a Arabian horsetraining establishment in Belgium.
So the Saudis, he used to getthe horses from Saudi Arabia.
(10:45):
And then train them and send them back.
So I visited there onetime when I was younger.
And since then I've just beenreally excited about this industry
and what people do with these.
They live horses.
People that love horses.
They love horses.
That's why I did it.
It's, yeah.
By the way, there's one of the thingspeople say about oyster racing.
(11:06):
The horses break down and die and is bad.
We figured out mostly what'sdangerous and we don't buy those
horses and how to prevent it.
Our horses don't get hurt.
They don't break down.
They don't have to retire at three.
Like most of 'em, they're going andfreezing at five and six years old.
With the technology's out there to stopall that if they don't even listen to it.
But a lot of 'em, it'simpossible to penetrate.
(11:27):
They're making so much money.
The guys who the.
The guys right around the wealthypeople, they don't want anybody
else in there to doing anything.
And anyway, we had to, the main thing thatI did right, was not trusting anybody to
give me an answer without asking them.
How do you know that was theway that was the key to success?
How do you know, where's the data?
(11:48):
And mostly it was either badstudies or it was veterinarians.
Yeah.
Big time bio guys in universities, vetschools, they, their data was from ponies
on treadmills, and I was gathering dataat major racetracks on major horses.
And it was different.
It was different.
It was different on the ones staysafe, different on the ones, yeah.
(12:12):
So you.
So you collected, that on over10,000 horses approximately, and
you had all these people joinyou on this mission for years.
How did you convince all thesepeople to invest in something
that would pay off after, in sucha distant future, some day jobs.
(12:32):
And I had to pay, I had to pay guys fromprofessors from MIT and Harvard Medical
School and University of Penn School.
And I had teams of people and theyloved me 'cause I was Oh you paying
them and their research, and we werebuilding stuff and publishing it.
We even published some of the stuff'cause nobody believed this shit.
Yeah.
And who am I?
How would I know?
I'm not a veterinarian,I'm not an engineer.
(12:54):
I got so pissed off.
One of the first papers I publishedwas they were telling me, biomechanics,
I couldn't that, that I didn't know.
And they had all these textbooks about it.
So I published a paper on ten first,one on 10,000 words, 500 pictures
per second, all digitized, all lost.
And I showed the gate of the racehorses when they're rolling down
the stretch and they're going fullspeed, they didn't even know existed.
(13:15):
It wasn't what they said it was.
They didn't know the gi what thegate was, let alone be analyzing
it for safety or efficiency or.
Powers.
Yeah.
So that was that, and that said, and I gotit published in one of the major referee
ate journal in the United States, eitherequine sports and pre coin medicine.
And so that sent a lot of people back.
They said, I guess he's not such a wacko.
(13:35):
And then I did it again and it'snot, that was our first paper.
That's 10,000 words over five years,but since then it's like 50,000, 60,000.
It's just a huge databases.
We're adding thousands a year.
And no, I never got anybody to investin it except myself, until I got
Ken Ramsey, who's a real gentlemanand a terrific horseman in the
(13:56):
handicap, did let me do that forNolan's cat, his grandson's horse.
And after that, Achman Zaya,who was a tough guy, but a very
smart one, and he understood whatwe were doing and he helped us.
And then we just took it to the moon.
No.
You know what?
I don't.
There's a lot of people.
So you work outside ofthe country as well.
Do you go other countries andhelp them with their horses?
(14:19):
No.
Giving somebody a a violin and aninstruction manual and expecting
'em to pay, play a symphony.
Yeah.
There's a lot of cheap imitations abroad.
But they say they're doing,what're doing, but they're not, we
don't go abroad on, you know why?
Wait, I want to tell youwhy we don't go abroad.
Oh, I don't go abroad.
No.
I'm saying for you because we've got dogs.
I'm speaking about you.
That my, especially mykey partner Patty Miller.
(14:42):
No she has this what companiontalk what are they called?
Service talk.
And if we went to England, keypartner warn blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
Australia.
So it's, it is a big deal.
So we said screw it.
We're not doing, we don'tneed, oh, it's a big thing.
They want, they can sendthe, so that, I don't know.
That's probably stupid.
(15:03):
Yeah.
Happy where you are becausewe love, that's great.
We love the farm.
We love horses and dogs.
We live with 'em.
you know the data that you collectthrough Slowmo video and body scans and
tracking the how tired the horse getsand all that kind of stuff, can that be
used for human beings in athletic world?
Is that already being donein the Olympics and whatnot?
(15:26):
Velocity, the K curve ball swimmers.
The repetitive motion stuff from theshot putters and things, the gate
analysis on, we, our first coupleof jobs were with the Olympic teams.
We did it, for example, with the luge.
The, everybody thought they hadto buy a million dollar sled
from the Swiss or from the east.
Germans are from the Swedes, becausethey weren't doing what, and it
(15:49):
had, it really wasn't the sl.
And so we went up, we didour camera and Lake Placid at
one of the big competitions.
An East German guy kept steppingin front of my camera to block me
'cause he knew what I was doing.
I had one of these and it was a camera,not video, it didn't exist then.
It was 500 rings a second.
It was this Oh, really?
Fairly expensive elaborate camera.
I was A wrestler.
(16:10):
Yeah.
In high school and college, I actuallyqualified to go to the Olympic
trainer trials, but I wasn't thatgood that I would've gone there.
But I, I was a pretty good restaurant.
I was in great shape.
So I had to body block this guy and Igot the data and it turned out that.
We were the Olympic team was getting likevery strong and like football players to
push the s leg, and that was not right.
(16:31):
What was working was the Swedes andthe Swiss had like ballet dancers.
They were completely synchronized.
The outside leg, the inside leg,and the sud didn't wobble at all.
And a teeny weenie wobble at thebeginning became a lot of friction.
So was a big time difference.
Wow.
At the bottom of the hill.
So we got to benchmark that.
Stop getting guys that werepushing it , with huge force.
(16:53):
Start getting guys that were pushing youtotally synchronized and they got in the
mal condition con contention immediately.
Yeah.
That was one of our first big successes.
And that was how I, so you,Ben, I found that, you benchmark
what the champions are doing.
Benchmark who they are, and that'swhat I started to do with the horses.
And we did it with swimmers.
We did it with.
With ice skaters.
(17:14):
What did we that andit taught That's great.
What kind of data I needed to collect.
And then I had, of course,the equipment to collect it on
oysters didn't exist, right?
So I had to build it andI did, I was relentless.
Y and along the way wegot patents and shit.
(17:35):
That's good.
You mentioned that the AmericanPharaoh has had a spleen that works
like a natural performance enhancer.
How do you actually haveto study the exercise?
How do you figure out whatmakes a horse special?
We would put them, for example, andhave them all wired up with all kinds
(17:56):
of shit and they'd be swimming in placein a pool when we gather the data.
At the university of PennsylvaniaVeterinary School, and we would put
sensors on their hooves and film'em and put force plates in the
race track and just gather data.
And then you gradually see the differencein the data between the really good
horses and the ordinary horses.
The spleen thing came out ofthe, developing that ultrasound.
(18:19):
We scanned all the organs and thenwe, when we had enough data, we just
said what relates to performance?
And it turned out that the thicknessof the left ventricle septum wall in
the heart the diameter of the spleen.
Cool.
That they just bounced out of there.
They were different on the elite horses.
We didn't really know why.
We could think about why theseGermans were doing blood doping.
(18:40):
They would take blood, red blood cellsand out and plasma for reason, do all
this shit and then put 'em back in beforethe competition so blood could have
hold more oxygen and a horse, a spleen.
Toms when he gets really excitedwhen he starts the race and it
can actually increase the redblood cells by like stubble.
It almost, it's huge.
It's a huge effect.
(19:01):
It's blood doping, but naturally theydeveloped it from evolution having to
run when the wolves came from a deadstop and per run for a mile get away.
So it just pops out of the data.
Everybody told me what was important andI just said, I think I'll go get the data.
'cause they were almost always wrong.
I went to the leading experts inthe heart rate, they told me the
heart rate we're gonna do intervaltraining and they told me the heart.
(19:23):
Yeah.
Which was a big Yeah.
Olympics.
And I, they told me the heartrate for the resources would.
Because it was such a big organ and itwas much heavier and blah blah, it was
gonna be like 180 pizzas of minute itwas gonna be, then it would go up and
down the scale, slower, up high to low.
It turned out that was bullshit.
Their heart rate coming down thestretch was a hundred beats faster
than that was like two 20, and theycould go from 25 pizzas of minute at
(19:47):
rest to 120 meats of pizza a minute,standing in their stall without
turning the hair when you walked in.
So I said, holy shit.
This heart, as big asit is, it's more labile.
It can shift gears faster.
It can go much faster.
And it's different.
It's different than a human heart.
I needed to study, I needed to findthat I had to vent the equipment and
get the data to change the protocol,change the mega the frequency of the
(20:11):
transducers looking in there to get it.
So it was producible.
Wow.
And we, we discovered these things and, soI forget, I, you can tell I'm passionate.
I forget what else I wasgonna tell you about.
So that's how we got to the organs.
We were everything because wedidn't know what would be important.
And it came out of the data'cause nobody had done it before.
Nobody did it.
Yeah.
And wow.
(20:32):
So no price because of the cost.
It cost a fortune.
Interesting.
I initially went for grants.
I tried to get research grants.
You managed, realized, hey, they weren'tgonna give 'em to me 'cause I wasn't.
At Event University.
And secondly, I needed more moneythan all the grants they gave together
to everybody from these places.
So I said, screw it.
So I said, I'm gonnahave to earn that money.
And I did.
I can't believe I did,but I did and I spent it.
(20:55):
Yeah.
Good.
No, that's awesome.
I spent that's good.
How many horses do you have right now?
15 of my.
Oh wow.
I do.
That's great.
Really good.
That's a lot of, you probablyhave a team to take care of them.
Smart people, hardworkingpeople's, everything.
Yeah.
People in my, that's awesome.
(21:15):
Really, people's everything.
Yeah.
He puts everything.
So you, that's great.
Yes.
So you helped choose and manageseveral, top winning horses, right?
Including the TripleCrown winner in 37 years.
Can you share some of your twoor three main rules your team
(21:36):
follows when you're looking atyoung horses to buy at auctions?
And then we did all the testing tosee who he'd keep and who he'd sell.
And he was gonna sell it.
He actually put it in an auctionbecause he was starting to get in
financial trouble and there was anarticle about it the day before he won
the Triple Crown Front Page Center,New York Times, and they always have
(21:56):
a quote of the day for the newspaper.
The quote that day was from usto him, which was, sell your
house, don't sell this horse.
So he brought it back for 300,000and then the rest was, history
is what came with 50 million.
So what's our rule in buying a horse?
First of all, don't getexcited about one variable.
If it has the best heart or the bestcater, want the fastest workout in the
(22:18):
field, or the best this, or the best that.
It doesn't mean squat.
That's number one.
That makes us different.
It has to have a good everything.
We're really looking for the whole,not for what's, if it's got the
greatest something that doesn't matter.
Secondly, you have to, thetraditional stuff has to be there.
All the traditional waysyou're looking at it.
That confirmation, the way to puttogether the angles, the size of the,
(22:41):
this muscle and a for count for armand all that stuff is really important.
Third, pedigree, we ignore until theend, and that's only about price.
Whereas everybody else, that's thenumber one thing they look for them.
In the Olympics we didn't havethe parents of the tryouts.
And the pedigree is the probabilityof what you're gonna get.
And we're gonna look at what we got.
And maybe it's like getting snake eyes.
(23:03):
Throwing snake eyes with dice three timesis not very probable, but it happens.
And that's what we're looking for andthat's why we would find all these horses
at below average auctions and prices.
So we're really different.
The pedigree comes last, not first.
We don't look at the catalogpage and decide to look at.
And most of 'em, they justgo through the catalog.
They won't even look atthe non pedigree horses.
Okay, good point.
(23:24):
And I've got some of my verybest choices that won on you.
Like a million, almost a million bucks.
Bought 'em for 37,000 and they tryto resell and nobody would buy.
They're too cheap.
They don't have that pedigree, blah.
Then after they do all that, oh,they can find where the pedigree.
It was good,
yeah.
So what is the val?
What?
Oh, I don't, what is the totalvalue right now of your stable?
Like how many horses do you have?
I do it.
I'm doing it for clients approximatelybecause the clients don't like
(23:46):
it if you're competing with them.
I'm only, I only got the, oh, okay.
Horses I got that were really good andworth a lot of Oh, you do it for clients.
Okay, now you're all perfect.
I couldn't, I got 'em at an auction.
I couldn't leave 'em thereand no, nobody would buy 'em.
So I did and then they were great.
They, one of 'em was in the world.
Yeah.
Chip races twice.
He would've won last time, but the jockeyfell, almost fell off in the gates.
(24:09):
They're the world champion.
That's awesome.
Prince 20 league lengths atthe beginning of the race.
Then he caught up and almostwas like a length from the
winner, but he wouldn't won it.
And he cost 37,000 bucks andthey didn't like his pedigree.
What would be your number one tipfor fellow people in business?
Number one tip that youhave learned over the years.
(24:30):
An innovator.
They ask how people vote.
When you're to try to find, becauseoften you'll find it's lousy
studies or they, somebody's opinionand you have to get the data.
No, I get always check.
Don't go by based on their word.
Check your own data.
That's how you then you and whatyou won't find what you expect,
but you'll find what it is.
(24:50):
Love it, man.
Expect you.
You'll find it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it was great chatting with you today.
It was great to have you on theshow sharing your, past your history
and what you're doing right now.
This incredible.
What a human being can accomplish whenyou make a committed decision as you did.
(25:11):
And this is, I'm always excitedto speak to people like you.
So thank you for coming.
I wanna share my story.
A lot of people still don'tknow who we are or what we
did, so I'd like to get it out.
Tyson.
Yeah, but now you are this isthe best way podcast touring.
Thank you is the best way rightnow if you want to get your
message out, so keep doing it.
You have to build a database on theelite athletes to understand what
(00:03):
there's different and what you'relooking for and what to do with it.
And when I thought Jesus horse racingis still eyeballs and intuition
of 300 years, I can do better.
I can take all this education I've had in.
So he spent $40 million.
Over about five, six years andwe turned it into 64 million.
Welcome back to SuperEntrepreneurs Podcast.
I'm your host, Shahid Durrani.
(00:25):
Today we have with us Jeff seder.
Jeff took science and data analysis andused them to completely change one of
the world's oldest sports horse racing.
Jeff started a company called EQB thatuses advanced technology and performance
data to find future champion horses,including the famous American Pharaoh.
(00:52):
His background is pretty unique.
He went to Harvard Law and BusinessSchool, worked on Wall Street,
and even spent time as groom.
Taking care of horses at racetracks.
Jeff has worked with billionairesand some of the top horse stables in
America building a specialized companythat the biggest names in Racing Trust.
(01:15):
So welcome to our show, Jeff.
I started out as pre-medat Harvard, so I had some.
A firm scientific kinda foundation.
You started EQB backin 19 before Moneyball.
78. Yeah, before Moneyball.
The reason this is so exciting is thatyou found something in an industry that.
(01:37):
You could utilize toamplify that industry.
Right.
And that's really unique andclever and genius in its own way.
Having those, the background that youhave, all the great things that you've
done before getting into this, how didthat help you get into this specialized,
advanced technology in sports medicine?
(02:00):
I was in my senior for horses atharvard in the business school and law
school program, which I did both atthe same time before they had a joint
program to tell you how a DDI am.
And I had to do a thesiscombining, something, combining
business and law and my.
Thesis advisor was Archibald Cox.
Some of the older people willremember that was with the Nixon
(02:23):
resignation and the midnight massacreand all that stuff in those days.
So he was a famous guy.
His office was in the stacks in Harvard,like a desk or something, and with all
these books all around, you know, andat desk and the, and I had to go in and
meet with him late in my senior year.
And I hadn't even started the thesisand I still knew I was in troubles.
(02:45):
So he says, well, how's itgoing and tell me about it.
And I kinda looked at the floorand I thought I'm in trouble.
And he said, well, whatchaare you interested in?
He got the picture and I looked atthe floor again and they said horses.
I had gone on a blinddate for rental Yeah.
Riding horses.
And I had, instead of fallingup when the girl, I fell in
love with my horse and I be cut.
(03:05):
I became fascinated and I spent timetaking lessons and I bought 'em.
Oh, no way.
And so I went and I said, oh, horses.
And he said, so he turned aroundand he took amazing from me out.
Instead, he turned around andhe took this great big book off
shelf behind him and drops it onthe desk and then dust goes off.
Yeah.
He says, this is the statuethat covered his horse racing
in Pence in Massachusetts.
(03:27):
No one in Harvard has ever looked at it.
Why don't you do that?
So I did, I went into archiveson the racetrack and I went to
town on the, I really got, and I,and wow, I decided that was how I
could spend time with stay involvedwith the horses that I was loving.
And it only took 20 years and severalmillion dollars of private research,
and I had to earn the money doingleverage buyouts and things so I
(03:50):
could spend it all on the research.
The first 20 years were a bust.
But after that, it started to work.
Once we had a core thing of data.
I also, when I first got out, I was, hadthe opportunity to work with the United
States Sports Medicine Committee, thecreation of the sports medicine committee.
That was back in 76 when the eastGermans burst on the scene, winning all
these medals in the Olympics, uhhuh,and scared the shit out of everybody.
(04:13):
'cause supposedly they were doingit with man scientists, kids
outta kindergarten, some shit.
Turned out a lot of it was steroids.
But anyway, we started out and I gotto see what they were doing, and I
got to work with Olympic teams andbiomechanists and engineers and the MDs.
But I learned that the elite athletesthat where's different from normal as
(04:34):
normal is from like sick or injured.
So your data.
It doesn't work.
You have to build a database on theelite athletes to understand what
there's different and what you'relooking for and what to do with it.
And, and when I thought, Jesus horseracing is still eyeballs and intuition
of 300 years, I can do better.
I can take all this education I'vehad in medicine and statistics
(04:57):
and science and management.
So that was my theory.
But it turned out the data didn'texist for horses and the equipment to
get the data didn't exist for horses.
I actually, along the way, invented thefirst portable ultrasound machine to go
in and look at a horse's heart redid.
Redid the port, the the protocolfor looking at Echocardio
exam so we could measure stuffreproducibly on young horses stalls.
(05:20):
I should have patented it along the way.
We invented a bone scanner and thatone new medical device of the year
in Europe in 1986 for Johnson boughtit from, to use an osteoporosis.
We were.
Predict what Orton would break their legs.
Whoa.
And we were building databases and we hadthe first heart rate meter that was, or
you could use in a race horse that wasactually accurate and even in any weather.
(05:42):
And we learned a lot.
And then finally I got a partnerwho knew, who had been a jockey
and a successful trainer, andwas really a very bright person.
She, got into Bryn Mawr at like 15 andwent out the back door with her father's
credit card and hitchhike to California.
(06:02):
She'd been riding since she wastwo years old, bouncing in the back
basket of her mother's horse on honey.
Anyway, so and then she, when she broughtin all the best of the traditional
horsemanship and we technology audit,boom, it started to work and then
we got an opportunity with one ofthe biggest stables in the country.
(06:22):
And he told us to make one recommendation.
I was trying to explain tohim, that's not how it works.
It's a whole program and it's this.
He said no.
He had five, 700 horses.
He says, make one recommendation.
So I made this outrageous recommendation.
I took, he had a horse, a youngcult that he had a new stallion.
He was trying to establishit in its first crop.
He had this one cult named afterhis grandson, and he it was
(06:46):
a man that hadn't won a race.
And it was like a monthbefore the Belmont Stakes.
And so I said, which is one ofthe biggest races in the world
right then It's a mile and a half.
And I said, remember the Belmont Stakes?
And he bursts out laughing.
I said, that's my recommendation.
He said, why?
He hasn't run a race, he hasn't even run.
I said, yeah, he's not fast,but he never slows down.
And from the Olympics and swimming, wehad these logarithmic velocity decay.
(07:10):
Curves that what repetitive actions, themuscles decay in their their fatigue at
a predictable rate for each individual.
And if you can fit a algorithmiccurve to it, and you can extrapolate
that to see what their timewould be at further distances.
And that's how he knew in a mile, whichalmost nobody, none of the races are a
(07:30):
mile and a half, so nobody's run 'em.
And they don't even run amile and a quarter like the
derby, except very rarely.
So I went dirt, so I said, that's it.
He's not gonna slow down.
So the trainer was a famous trainerand the night before the Daily
Racing Forum, they said they hadan article about who's this and who
might that and who's good, blah.
And then so then there'sthe jokers and the idiots.
(07:51):
That was us.
They never apologized.
So anyways, so I get there andthe trainers are telling the press
he has nothing to do with it.
It's a command performance, right.
And I'm there.
So we get him in the gate and he leaves.
I knew he'd be dead last.
He's trailing the field and Iwant to go under the table and
I'm thinking, please, God please.
And about halfway through the race,he starts picking up horses and then
(08:13):
they get about three quarters of theway and he's up to the pack and now
he's rolling and he is by the end,if there was another two strides,
he to won the race and he was third.
So that meant now in his first crop,instead of having a nothing cult
where it was completely worthless,oh, he had a classic place grade one,
you know, world famous of course.
And deployment wasn't afluke about a month later.
(08:34):
And Louisiana Sup or Super Derbyfor a million dollar per, he did the
same thing and he went up upfrontand at the end he was flying.
He would've wanted if itwas longer, so he hired me.
And I ended up working on like 200 horses.
And then some years later Igot the opportunity, a guy
from Egypt, loved horses.
He wanted to get into horse races, andI picked up the phone and he just called
(08:57):
us and and I, he said, can you help me?
I said, you bet.
And so he spent $40 millionover about five, six years, and
we turned it into 64 million.
And he, in his third year, hewas leading stable in the United
States, spending a fraction ofwhat his competitors were spending.
We usually spend below the actualaverage of these auctions, and we
(09:18):
had the first Triple Crown winnerin 37 years, American Pharaoh.
So unfortunately how he had otherbusiness problems and he was from
Egypt, and that was when the.
Yeah, spring came whatever thatApril spring, the Arab Spring and
that the Egyptian currency droppedby half and he lost his all kind.
So he got he ended up going bankruptand we lost him as a client.
(09:40):
It wasn't, but it wasn't us.
We made him a we made him a fortune.
And so that's kind of how it built.
Oh man.
But the first 20 years we'rehaving to keep Yeah, this the
faith and keep building dataand building technologies and.
And seeing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a key word right there, is faith.
(10:02):
Right?
Right.
Without the faith, you know,everybody you know, you would've
given up every business.
A lot of 'em are very wealthy andthey all think they know everything.
Everybody's an expert.
Every trainer, even if they havean eighth grade education, knows
everything about worth roots.
There's nothing you can tell.
Yeah, it is just, it's very tight.
It's very traditional in thatindustry from this Harvard
pinhead, from Philadelphia.
(10:23):
You wanna listen?
So Jeff, go ahead.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I resonate with what you're doingbecause my dad's late business
partner, he had a Arabian horsetraining establishment in Belgium.
So the Saudis, he used to getthe horses from Saudi Arabia.
(10:45):
And then train them and send them back.
So I visited there onetime when I was younger.
And since then I've just beenreally excited about this industry
and what people do with these.
They live horses.
People that love horses.
They love horses.
That's why I did it.
It's, yeah.
By the way, there's one of the thingspeople say about oyster racing.
(11:06):
The horses break down and die and is bad.
We figured out mostly what'sdangerous and we don't buy those
horses and how to prevent it.
Our horses don't get hurt.
They don't break down.
They don't have to retire at three.
Like most of 'em, they're going andfreezing at five and six years old.
With the technology's out there to stopall that if they don't even listen to it.
But a lot of 'em, it'simpossible to penetrate.
(11:27):
They're making so much money.
The guys who the.
The guys right around the wealthypeople, they don't want anybody
else in there to doing anything.
And anyway, we had to, the main thing thatI did right, was not trusting anybody to
give me an answer without asking them.
How do you know that was theway that was the key to success?
How do you know, where's the data?
(11:48):
And mostly it was either badstudies or it was veterinarians.
Yeah.
Big time bio guys in universities, vetschools, they, their data was from ponies
on treadmills, and I was gathering dataat major racetracks on major horses.
And it was different.
It was different.
It was different on the ones staysafe, different on the ones, yeah.
(12:12):
So you.
So you collected, that on over10,000 horses approximately, and
you had all these people joinyou on this mission for years.
How did you convince all thesepeople to invest in something
that would pay off after, in sucha distant future, some day jobs.
(12:32):
And I had to pay, I had to pay guys fromprofessors from MIT and Harvard Medical
School and University of Penn School.
And I had teams of people and theyloved me 'cause I was Oh you paying
them and their research, and we werebuilding stuff and publishing it.
We even published some of the stuff'cause nobody believed this shit.
Yeah.
And who am I?
How would I know?
I'm not a veterinarian,I'm not an engineer.
(12:54):
I got so pissed off.
One of the first papers I publishedwas they were telling me, biomechanics,
I couldn't that, that I didn't know.
And they had all these textbooks about it.
So I published a paper on ten first,one on 10,000 words, 500 pictures
per second, all digitized, all lost.
And I showed the gate of the racehorses when they're rolling down
the stretch and they're going fullspeed, they didn't even know existed.
(13:15):
It wasn't what they said it was.
They didn't know the gi what thegate was, let alone be analyzing
it for safety or efficiency or.
Powers.
Yeah.
So that was that, and that said, and I gotit published in one of the major referee
ate journal in the United States, eitherequine sports and pre coin medicine.
And so that sent a lot of people back.
They said, I guess he's not such a wacko.
(13:35):
And then I did it again and it'snot, that was our first paper.
That's 10,000 words over five years,but since then it's like 50,000, 60,000.
It's just a huge databases.
We're adding thousands a year.
And no, I never got anybody to investin it except myself, until I got
Ken Ramsey, who's a real gentlemanand a terrific horseman in the
(13:56):
handicap, did let me do that forNolan's cat, his grandson's horse.
And after that, Achman Zaya,who was a tough guy, but a very
smart one, and he understood whatwe were doing and he helped us.
And then we just took it to the moon.
No.
You know what?
I don't.
There's a lot of people.
So you work outside ofthe country as well.
Do you go other countries andhelp them with their horses?
(14:19):
No.
Giving somebody a a violin and aninstruction manual and expecting
'em to pay, play a symphony.
Yeah.
There's a lot of cheap imitations abroad.
But they say they're doing,what're doing, but they're not, we
don't go abroad on, you know why?
Wait, I want to tell youwhy we don't go abroad.
Oh, I don't go abroad.
No.
I'm saying for you because we've got dogs.
I'm speaking about you.
That my, especially mykey partner Patty Miller.
(14:42):
No she has this what companiontalk what are they called?
Service talk.
And if we went to England, keypartner warn blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
Australia.
So it's, it is a big deal.
So we said screw it.
We're not doing, we don'tneed, oh, it's a big thing.
They want, they can sendthe, so that, I don't know.
That's probably stupid.
(15:03):
Yeah.
Happy where you are becausewe love, that's great.
We love the farm.
We love horses and dogs.
We live with 'em.
you know the data that you collectthrough Slowmo video and body scans and
tracking the how tired the horse getsand all that kind of stuff, can that be
used for human beings in athletic world?
Is that already being donein the Olympics and whatnot?
(15:26):
Velocity, the K curve ball swimmers.
The repetitive motion stuff from theshot putters and things, the gate
analysis on, we, our first coupleof jobs were with the Olympic teams.
We did it, for example, with the luge.
The, everybody thought they hadto buy a million dollar sled
from the Swiss or from the east.
Germans are from the Swedes, becausethey weren't doing what, and it
(15:49):
had, it really wasn't the sl.
And so we went up, we didour camera and Lake Placid at
one of the big competitions.
An East German guy kept steppingin front of my camera to block me
'cause he knew what I was doing.
I had one of these and it was a camera,not video, it didn't exist then.
It was 500 rings a second.
It was this Oh, really?
Fairly expensive elaborate camera.
I was A wrestler.
(16:10):
Yeah.
In high school and college, I actuallyqualified to go to the Olympic
trainer trials, but I wasn't thatgood that I would've gone there.
But I, I was a pretty good restaurant.
I was in great shape.
So I had to body block this guy and Igot the data and it turned out that.
We were the Olympic team was getting likevery strong and like football players to
push the s leg, and that was not right.
(16:31):
What was working was the Swedes andthe Swiss had like ballet dancers.
They were completely synchronized.
The outside leg, the inside leg,and the sud didn't wobble at all.
And a teeny weenie wobble at thebeginning became a lot of friction.
So was a big time difference.
Wow.
At the bottom of the hill.
So we got to benchmark that.
Stop getting guys that werepushing it , with huge force.
(16:53):
Start getting guys that were pushing youtotally synchronized and they got in the
mal condition con contention immediately.
Yeah.
That was one of our first big successes.
And that was how I, so you,Ben, I found that, you benchmark
what the champions are doing.
Benchmark who they are, and that'swhat I started to do with the horses.
And we did it with swimmers.
We did it with.
With ice skaters.
(17:14):
What did we that andit taught That's great.
What kind of data I needed to collect.
And then I had, of course,the equipment to collect it on
oysters didn't exist, right?
So I had to build it andI did, I was relentless.
Y and along the way wegot patents and shit.
(17:35):
That's good.
You mentioned that the AmericanPharaoh has had a spleen that works
like a natural performance enhancer.
How do you actually haveto study the exercise?
How do you figure out whatmakes a horse special?
We would put them, for example, andhave them all wired up with all kinds
(17:56):
of shit and they'd be swimming in placein a pool when we gather the data.
At the university of PennsylvaniaVeterinary School, and we would put
sensors on their hooves and film'em and put force plates in the
race track and just gather data.
And then you gradually see the differencein the data between the really good
horses and the ordinary horses.
The spleen thing came out ofthe, developing that ultrasound.
(18:19):
We scanned all the organs and thenwe, when we had enough data, we just
said what relates to performance?
And it turned out that the thicknessof the left ventricle septum wall in
the heart the diameter of the spleen.
Cool.
That they just bounced out of there.
They were different on the elite horses.
We didn't really know why.
We could think about why theseGermans were doing blood doping.
(18:40):
They would take blood, red blood cellsand out and plasma for reason, do all
this shit and then put 'em back in beforethe competition so blood could have
hold more oxygen and a horse, a spleen.
Toms when he gets really excitedwhen he starts the race and it
can actually increase the redblood cells by like stubble.
It almost, it's huge.
It's a huge effect.
(19:01):
It's blood doping, but naturally theydeveloped it from evolution having to
run when the wolves came from a deadstop and per run for a mile get away.
So it just pops out of the data.
Everybody told me what was important andI just said, I think I'll go get the data.
'cause they were almost always wrong.
I went to the leading experts inthe heart rate, they told me the
heart rate we're gonna do intervaltraining and they told me the heart.
(19:23):
Yeah.
Which was a big Yeah.
Olympics.
And I, they told me the heartrate for the resources would.
Because it was such a big organ and itwas much heavier and blah blah, it was
gonna be like 180 pizzas of minute itwas gonna be, then it would go up and
down the scale, slower, up high to low.
It turned out that was bullshit.
Their heart rate coming down thestretch was a hundred beats faster
than that was like two 20, and theycould go from 25 pizzas of minute at
(19:47):
rest to 120 meats of pizza a minute,standing in their stall without
turning the hair when you walked in.
So I said, holy shit.
This heart, as big asit is, it's more labile.
It can shift gears faster.
It can go much faster.
And it's different.
It's different than a human heart.
I needed to study, I needed to findthat I had to vent the equipment and
get the data to change the protocol,change the mega the frequency of the
(20:11):
transducers looking in there to get it.
So it was producible.
Wow.
And we, we discovered these things and, soI forget, I, you can tell I'm passionate.
I forget what else I wasgonna tell you about.
So that's how we got to the organs.
We were everything because wedidn't know what would be important.
And it came out of the data'cause nobody had done it before.
Nobody did it.
Yeah.
And wow.
(20:32):
So no price because of the cost.
It cost a fortune.
Interesting.
I initially went for grants.
I tried to get research grants.
You managed, realized, hey, they weren'tgonna give 'em to me 'cause I wasn't.
At Event University.
And secondly, I needed more moneythan all the grants they gave together
to everybody from these places.
So I said, screw it.
So I said, I'm gonnahave to earn that money.
And I did.
I can't believe I did,but I did and I spent it.
(20:55):
Yeah.
Good.
No, that's awesome.
I spent that's good.
How many horses do you have right now?
15 of my.
Oh wow.
I do.
That's great.
Really good.
That's a lot of, you probablyhave a team to take care of them.
Smart people, hardworkingpeople's, everything.
Yeah.
People in my, that's awesome.
(21:15):
Really, people's everything.
Yeah.
He puts everything.
So you, that's great.
Yes.
So you helped choose and manageseveral, top winning horses, right?
Including the TripleCrown winner in 37 years.
Can you share some of your twoor three main rules your team
(21:36):
follows when you're looking atyoung horses to buy at auctions?
And then we did all the testing tosee who he'd keep and who he'd sell.
And he was gonna sell it.
He actually put it in an auctionbecause he was starting to get in
financial trouble and there was anarticle about it the day before he won
the Triple Crown Front Page Center,New York Times, and they always have
(21:56):
a quote of the day for the newspaper.
The quote that day was from usto him, which was, sell your
house, don't sell this horse.
So he brought it back for 300,000and then the rest was, history
is what came with 50 million.
So what's our rule in buying a horse?
First of all, don't getexcited about one variable.
If it has the best heart or the bestcater, want the fastest workout in the
(22:18):
field, or the best this, or the best that.
It doesn't mean squat.
That's number one.
That makes us different.
It has to have a good everything.
We're really looking for the whole,not for what's, if it's got the
greatest something that doesn't matter.
Secondly, you have to, thetraditional stuff has to be there.
All the traditional waysyou're looking at it.
That confirmation, the way to puttogether the angles, the size of the,
(22:41):
this muscle and a for count for armand all that stuff is really important.
Third, pedigree, we ignore until theend, and that's only about price.
Whereas everybody else, that's thenumber one thing they look for them.
In the Olympics we didn't havethe parents of the tryouts.
And the pedigree is the probabilityof what you're gonna get.
And we're gonna look at what we got.
And maybe it's like getting snake eyes.
(23:03):
Throwing snake eyes with dice three timesis not very probable, but it happens.
And that's what we're looking for andthat's why we would find all these horses
at below average auctions and prices.
So we're really different.
The pedigree comes last, not first.
We don't look at the catalogpage and decide to look at.
And most of 'em, they justgo through the catalog.
They won't even look atthe non pedigree horses.
Okay, good point.
(23:24):
And I've got some of my verybest choices that won on you.
Like a million, almost a million bucks.
Bought 'em for 37,000 and they tryto resell and nobody would buy.
They're too cheap.
They don't have that pedigree, blah.
Then after they do all that, oh,they can find where the pedigree.
It was good,
yeah.
So what is the val?
What?
Oh, I don't, what is the totalvalue right now of your stable?
Like how many horses do you have?
I do it.
I'm doing it for clients approximatelybecause the clients don't like
(23:46):
it if you're competing with them.
I'm only, I only got the, oh, okay.
Horses I got that were really good andworth a lot of Oh, you do it for clients.
Okay, now you're all perfect.
I couldn't, I got 'em at an auction.
I couldn't leave 'em thereand no, nobody would buy 'em.
So I did and then they were great.
They, one of 'em was in the world.
Yeah.
Chip races twice.
He would've won last time, but the jockeyfell, almost fell off in the gates.
(24:09):
They're the world champion.
That's awesome.
Prince 20 league lengths atthe beginning of the race.
Then he caught up and almostwas like a length from the
winner, but he wouldn't won it.
And he cost 37,000 bucks andthey didn't like his pedigree.
What would be your number one tipfor fellow people in business?
Number one tip that youhave learned over the years.
(24:30):
An innovator.
They ask how people vote.
When you're to try to find, becauseoften you'll find it's lousy
studies or they, somebody's opinionand you have to get the data.
No, I get always check.
Don't go by based on their word.
Check your own data.
That's how you then you and whatyou won't find what you expect,
but you'll find what it is.
(24:50):
Love it, man.
Expect you.
You'll find it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, it was great chatting with you today.
It was great to have you on theshow sharing your, past your history
and what you're doing right now.
This incredible.
What a human being can accomplish whenyou make a committed decision as you did.
(25:11):
And this is, I'm always excitedto speak to people like you.
So thank you for coming.
I wanna share my story.
A lot of people still don'tknow who we are or what we
did, so I'd like to get it out.
Tyson.
Yeah, but now you are this isthe best way podcast touring.
Thank you is the best way rightnow if you want to get your
message out, so keep doing it.
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