REFS NEED LOVE TOO
An honest perspective from the 3rd team on the pitch... the referees. Through humor, analysis and education, we are slowly changing how people view referees and officials in all sports. We care and have a love for the game as much as any player or coach. Sometimes even more. Youth soccer (proper football) is a multi-billion $ industry in the US. Tremendous money is spent on players, competitions, travel etc., but almost nothing spent on developing the next generation of referees. I hope that this Podcast inspires, educates and humanizes the next generation of referees for their own development and appreciation from the players, coaches and spectators they need to work alongside.
REFS NEED LOVE TOO
From Haters To Hardware: Making Better Buzzer Flags For All Referees
Tired of holding your flag up for Offside, while the whole sideline screams “REF!”? We go straight at the problem and bring on engineer and referee Sam Rall, the creator of RareBit Offcial buzzer flags. He shows how a simple haptic signal can transform crew communication, reduce chaos, and keep matches flowing.
David opens with the bigger picture—why innovation in referee education meets resistance from comfortable committees—and then we zoom into the design and decisions that make a better tool: modern Bluetooth 5 for reliable range, firmware that boosts power only when needed, and an ergonomic, slightly elliptical grip that feels right for 90 minutes and beyond.
Sam takes us from sticker shock to solution. He breaks down how legacy electronic flags cost hundreds more than their parts, why redundancy matters even with comms, and where a buzz beats a shout: delayed offside, coffin-corner touchlines, quick subs, and review awareness. We map out practical pregame logic—press without flag to cue involvement questions, distinct patterns for AR1, AR2, or fourth official—turning a basic button into a shared language that prevents confusion after the net ripples.
Building hardware isn’t glamorous. Sam shares the five-year journey through prototypes, molds, dead boards, firmware bugs, and the realities of a niche market where American refs often buy their own gear. The payoff is real: long battery life with USB C charging, waterproof construction, and sets that sell out because they simply work. Along the way, David makes the case for builder-led progress in officiating—tools made by refs, for refs, at a price that brings pro-level communication within reach of the grassroots.
If you believe better decisions start with better tools, you’ll love this one. Subscribe, share with your crew, and leave a review to help more referees find gear and ideas that make the game better for everyone.
Today, we're going to be talking about entrepreneurs, innovators, and why the establishment gets so angry when you blaze your own path. And I'm going through it right now in my new job at SoCal Soccer. I know many of you feel it in your own lives, whether you're in a big company or a small company. But it's a challenge when you're trying to do something new in life or in industry. Okay, personally, for me, within referee education and just around youth sports in particular, that there's a pretty big gap right now in how we train and develop our refs. From the time they get certified to the time someone has a desire to become a regional referee in that top 1%, there's not a lot there for that 99% of referees. If not every day, at least two or three times a week, I get messages from dinosaurs who don't like what I'm doing. They don't like the fact that I'm using social media to educate. They don't like that I'm going directly out to referees with the content that I'm developing. They don't like that I'm working for an organization, a soccer league, as opposed to an established state referee committee or U.S. soccer to actually do the training. People are complacent and they're comfortable and they fear competition and change because innovation threatens their control and their budgets. Oftentimes, people in established organizations believe the only legitimate way to evolve is to wait for a three-year committee meeting and maybe have two years of input to then come out with some vanilla gobbledygook watered down solution. Well, guess what? Technology is changing fast. And we're in an age where user-friendly tech allows pretty much anyone to create podcasts, videos, presentations, social media posts, websites, you name it. And I think someone who has a heart in the right place should be out there doing it. We get enough content that's generated by random fans and commentators who hate on referees and constantly are saying that we're doing such an awful job. And I try and create content to help explain what's going on out there and what we go through and the decisions we have to make and how much gray area there is. Now, this is a great little note that I got from one of the followers of the channel. He writes, This is Seth. He writes, Hi, my daughter and I are newly minted grassroots soccer refs in North Carolina. I want to tell you how impactful your content has been for our training. The explanations in your videos give life to the rules, which has given us a lot of confidence. Your positive energy is refreshing in a world that is inherently negative towards refs. We are happy we found you and keep up the good work. I won't let the haters bring me down. Yeah. And that's the what I want to hear, man. That's the kind of feedback I'm looking for or that I need. I again, do I need it? No. I've got a lot of self-belief and I've got purpose and I've got direction in my life, and I feel what I'm doing is right. But that kind of stuff puts wind in my sails, and it reminds me that the haters and the people who don't believe in the mission and want everything to stay the same and want what I'm doing to go away is that I think they're misguided. Would I love to be doing things in a more professional capacity for US soccer or something like that? Yeah, that'd be great. But they're just not ready for me yet. So we're going to keep on creating content for the masses, for that 99% of grassroots referees out there who want it, who desire it, and I think need it. And speaking of a visionary who saw a massive problem, decided to solve it themselves. We're going to be talking today to the creator of the rare bit buzzer flags, wireless vibrating flag system. And it's finally making AR communication instant, undeniable, it's and affordable, which I think is fantastic. I love what Sam has done. We're going to dive into how he overcame the challenges, build something truly disruptive, and how this system is really empowering all officials to make the right call with absolute confidence. I think you're going to enjoy today's show. Hello and welcome to the Refs Need Love2 podcast, a show that gives you a real, raw, behind-the-scenes view of one of the hardest jobs on the pitch, the referee. I'm your host, David Gerson, a grassroots referee and certified mentor with over 11 years of experience and over 1,300 matches under my belt. You can find me at refsneedlove2.com, on Instagram, on TikTok, and now on YouTube. Today is a very special guest, Sam Rawl. Sam is an engineer, a referee, and a disruptor. He's also the founder and creator of Rare Bit Pro Buzzer Flags, the project born from the unique intersection of his two passions, soccer refereeing and wireless electronics and engineering. He's based in Chicago, he's been officiating soccer since 2009 and currently referees at the competitive college level, although he throws in some youth games from time to time too. The Vision from Rare Bit was born purely out of the limitations and high cost of the leading electronic flag brands. After reverse engineering competitor set, which cost like$750 to$850 but used less than$50 in parts, Sam set out to create a superior product at less than half the shelf price. His ultimate goal is to make the best quality tools more accessible to the grassroots referee everywhere. For Sam, Rearbit isn't just a business. It's about using his passion for electronics to contribute to the growth of the beautiful game and ensuring that every referee has access to the best possible tools. Sam, welcome to the pod. Wow, thank you. Thank you. Wow, what an intro. Appreciate that. Well, it's exciting. And I got to tell you, Sam, I'm really passionate about people who are creating products for the referee community. And I'm also really passionate about entrepreneurs because I think it's so important. And I've had so much joy building my own business. So I really like supporting and learning about people's stories in their own business and supporting them and their growth. So I want to go back to the beginning buzzer flags. But not a lot of referees, unless you've refed at a high level, have used a buzzer flag. But was there a specific moment in a match where you're like, man, there has to be a better way than the current flag on the market?
SPEAKER_00:I was aware of what they were just from people talking about them. I think I used the Herbal Com sets one time and I was impressed with the products. Despite all the things that inspired my product, the HerbalCom sets were nice and they're a good product. So I'll be clear on that. So I was inspired by that and checking it out, like there was some clever things going on with that. And I used them for a college game for the first time. And it was pretty slick without comms, the best sort of like use case. They were nice flags relative to some critiques that I had, but I really liked them. And I don't think there was a moment where there was like, besides every single time that you're an assistant referee and you're standing there with the flag up and the referee hasn't noticed you yet, and all the parents and the coaches and the players, and you feel I've been on both sides of this where I haven't noticed everyone's like, ref, look up, just look. This moment that is so cumbersome and awkward, and you're like, Oh yeah, sorry. All right, offside, here we go. So that's really the bulk of it. And that's always been happening. I'm starting to do college games, and my buddies got these IrvalCom flags. Okay, so that solves that problem for sure. There was one game, or I did a tournament in Virginia one time, and I was refing with a guy who had some pretty cheap comms who had like those$300, I forget what brand it was, but they were okay. They worked well enough. And I was, I think started my curiosity on what these kind of product spaces looked like because I noticed that it wasn't for referees, the com sets. I had been kicking around the idea for the flags that I could make them cheaper. When I used my buddies' flags, I was like, how much?$800? Oh, that's why I've never heard of them. I think the inspiration was piecemealed a little bit. I was, I and I think the kicker was like, I when I thought about, because I was in college at the time that I was kicking this around. And as I'm learning wireless communications, a button press is not that much data to send across. You know, someone said glorified garage door opener one time, and I was like, you know what, you're right. This is not a complicated thing with the prior knowledge that these things are$800. I was like, there's something here. It's just one of those moments where you take a look around in the space and you're like, is anybody doing this? Because if not, I'm gonna do it because this is ridiculous. I bought a pair of Uralcoms to take a look at them, and they're they're a good product, especially for when they were developed. That sort of thing was hard to do at the time, I think early 2000s. Like radio, it was a proprietary radio protocol that they invented on a very specific frequency band that cuts through uh the noisy environments of stadiums and stuff. So it's a good product, but for the amount of data being sent across a button press, that's nothing. So it was just like, yeah, all right, I'm gonna do this. And I was refinging a tournament in Virginia, and that guy, we were talking about it with the headsets. I was like, what about flags? You think about that? I might do those. And he was like, he was like, Yeah, that's hurting because those are$800. And if you did that, I would, I think he said, I would invest and never found that guy again. But just the fact that he said that, he was like, if you do that, that'd be a good idea. If you can make him even in the realm of these 300, because we were comparing to his headsets that were less than half the cost of an UrvoCom flag set. So there was this sort of mismatch on what the technology was doing.
SPEAKER_01:So let's talk a little bit about that. Not everyone has the knowledge to even start to dissect. Can you describe? So you were said you were in college. Like, what did you study in college and what type of jobs have you had that would qualify you to develop this technology?
SPEAKER_00:Sure. Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering with emphasis in wireless communications and computer architecture, a lot of chips, programming, and hardware stuff. The electrical engineering was a lot of hardware studies. And then as I started to specify, started getting to metal chips and how those function and how computers work. That's my background. As far as what I've been doing as far as day jobs, yeah, I've been a lot of product design stuff whenever I can. I was developing some survey tools for MEP engineers and designers. We delivered blueprints for contractors to build large buildings. Our designers and engineers would go on site and take measurements of the environment. I was helping develop those tools, those instruments to do that. Um, so that's the background of the smaller electronics stuff. The whole time throughout the day job, I've just been coming home and take a little break and then just hook at this. Uh at first it was a lot of research. And but yeah, this has been the rare bid flags have been an overarching effort probably since 2017. That's the background.
SPEAKER_01:So I'd love to first understand at the high levels. Like I recognize, and I think everyone recognizes that a dumb flag, just a flag, without any buzzer sufficient at low-level grassroots games. But why, when you get to the college level where you might have big crowds or a professional level where you may have crowds and things of that nature, and it's a big field and things are happening fast. Why are buzzer flags an important part of the arsenal? Because usually people do have comp sets. Maybe they're not the top of the line comp sets, people have comp sets at that level for communications. Why buzzer flags? What does it do? Or ad that just comms by itself can't.
SPEAKER_00:So I've heard a lot of professional referees. I'll start with though guys. I've talked to some very high-level MLS pro guys, and they're like, really, it's redundancy. They keep using buzzer flags. I think they're used to it, first off. And then second off, it's redundancy. So the buzzer flags are a little bit more immediate because there might be a delay over the comms. There might be a split attention for the center referee because he's hearing a lot of things offside, might not come through either immediately or over the top of Air One who's getting yelled at by the coaches or whoever's on the open line. So it's redundancy, I think, first and foremost. And at the pro level, obviously you want those fail-safes. You want to be sure that you have an offside position and you have to deal with that. At the college level, there's a number of things that we've been doing, honestly, and it's been a little bit thinking outside the box and getting creative sometimes. We've just recently been pushing or encouraging one homeschools to buy com sets, um, two really, really pushing the referees to use them. Um, there's been a little bit of pushback on that just because when so many referees use the same set of comms, they become a very expensive community uh piece of equipment and over time it wears out. I don't think those products are bad. I don't think they're they're amazing, to be honest with you. But when you're using them like two or sometimes four games a week between the men's and the women's game, because they share them every single week in the fall between August and November, over just a handful of years, we're already starting to see problems. Just immediately after they got introduced, or immediately after the homeschool started buying them, we're starting to see issues. And there's a number of ways to solve that. Sometimes we are without comms because they don't work, or sometimes we're without all the comms because not all of them work. And then we have to play like Russian roulette. Who doesn't get one? Does the AR2 get one? So I've been bringing these flags along, and we've been trying different variations, like the fourth official having the short stick. That's been working out pretty well.
SPEAKER_01:Uh without a cloth on it. So the fourth official holding a handle with a buzzer but no cloth on it, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, before we had VAR, remember when UEFA put additional assistant referees in the goal line? Good times. Good times. Yeah, those little short sticks that the first substitution has just been a in substitution, that's a pretty low-hanging fruit, not exactly a critical unless the coaches really wants to get their players in and it becomes critical. But I think substitutions are a really nice fourth official to just say, hey, let's keep the game rolling when there's an attack imminent and they're trying to hustle up.
SPEAKER_01:For the fourth official at college, there is video review. It's not video assistant review, but there are times like maybe something happens and someone wants a review and people are yelling or things are going fast or someone's trying to restart with a corner or a goal kick and you need to get someone's attention. In a big match, whether it's professional level, semi-professional level, or college level, you've got players yelling, you've got the crowd yelling, you've got coaches yelling, you've got three other officials, okay, two assistants and a fourth official who may be talking. And sometimes you need to get someone's attention. And if the comms are not working properly or going in and out, now you've got that other way to say, hey, look at me. You know, because the again, the comm system you've developed, not only does it buzz immediately on the referee's arm, but it also has two different buzzes. So you could differentiate between one official or another, which I think is really important. But let's talk through some of those use cases real quick. How many times have we been at a match and there's a play, it's a counterattack, and a ball is played through and on the referee. And I look over at the assistant referee who we've all told to be patient now, right? Yeah. To wait on an involvement. And you may have multiple players running towards a ball, and you look and they don't have their flag up, they're just running down there. And then all of a sudden, you've got a key match decision. It might be a dog so situation, might be spa. I mean, it's a counterattack, it's late in a match, and you're focused on the action as the referee. You in it it's in the opposite corner from where the assistant is, and the assistant's got the flag up. Yeah. Maybe they're yelling ref, but that's not very professional. You're not looking because you're focused on the play. Now you've got that buzz. You know it. You've got the offside. You know it. Yeah. In that situation, before you've got like crazy contact or a goalie collision with an on-rushing attacker, now you've got that buzz, and it tells you, what are some of those other situations where maybe the referee is focused on the play in front of them, just based on where they are on the pitch, and they're not looking over at the assistant referee because they've got action. It's a high pressure situation. What are some of those other times when a buzzer flag would be really helpful?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up. There's a number of uh considerations that I think uh that we can now start to be thinking about. Beeper flags or buzzer flags are more prolific. It doesn't have to just be like I throw my flag up for offside as an extra critical communication moment pressing the button. It's absolutely the referee's attention is split. You don't even have to look over. Once you stay comfortable, you can count on these things. You can rely on like an expectation that I don't need to look over. It's a good idea, maybe do a check, your head is on as a referee. If your attention is not on the assistant referee and you feel that buzz, you know at least what's coming. You can split the number of uh things you absolutely need to pay attention to instead of everything. So there's a number of things. And I was just talking to a referee that I was working with the other day. There could be in the age of even in college when we're waiting to see if something is reviewable or not, or even just the classic, like the assistant referee um is not able to make a determination of which uh defender or attacker is involved. The assistant referee has an offside position, but they don't know if uh the attacker is in the goalie's line of vision or not. There's always been that case. Review or no, there needs to be a conversation between the assistant referee and the referee. The AR needs to be like, I've got offside position. Were they involved? Were they in the keeper's way? When you uh press the button and they get a page, but you don't put the flag up, it can communicate that exact scenario. There's this fork in the decision uh tree. If I press the button, but I don't put the flag up, I'm just telling you something. The game doesn't necessarily need to stop, you don't necessarily need to blow the whistle. Yeah, you can communicate something to the referee with a page, and sometimes that's hey, I've got position, but I haven't put my flag up. This attack, we're gonna have to talk. Like we're gonna have to, I need to give you information. Um and the referee, I think, would appreciate being a little bit more aware of that situation.
SPEAKER_01:Um, another one I don't bring my comms set to most games because it's not allowed for USSF matches. If it's an adult match, I bring my comms. But with the buzzer flag, if I need to give someone a subtle indicator that I think a card is warranted, like a yellow card and a little tap to the chest, as opposed to yelling across the field. Yeah, yeah. Especially if I'm working with a younger referee, it's like a little tap to the chest. Yeah. Like, hey, definitely. There's something a little bit more there you may want to consider. I think those subtle signals can be really helpful on a match.
SPEAKER_00:And it's choose your own adventure as the referee. This is just part of the pregame. Whatever you want to program as far as how the ARs are gonna use this, just like you're like whatever pregame you have with your ARs, this can now be a part of it. Touch calls, the ball goes all the way in and out, um, or all the way out and back in, real real fast. And the players don't, they're just gonna keep playing. Um if I send you the buzz, you can blow the whistle. I don't want to snap my neck and see if the players are still playing, there could be a bad challenge thing. There could be whip saw my neck back to the AR who's down in the other half. So there's this signal where it's like it's out of touch and the players keep going as they should, you can buzz them, and then I don't have to look over, I can just blow the whistle.
SPEAKER_01:I think it's a really big deal. Just to explain what Sam is talking about there, like coffin corner. Okay, so the corner of the pitch where you don't have either assistant referee with you. If you're working the diagonal, there's gonna be a time when play is deep into those corners of the pitch where you're not gonna be able to be left of the ball and have the assistant referee on your right in your field of vision. And that assistant referee on the far side of the pitch is not gonna have the call on that touchline. The referee who's gonna know if that ball's in or out is all the way back at half field, yeah. Right. Or maybe even further back the pitch. So you're watching the action, these two players going after the ball. And now instead of just a throw-in signal, which on this one goes out and goes in, you're up and then over, but it's a silent signal, or you have to scream ref, or everyone in the stands is screaming ref, or people scream ref all the time. No matter what. So it doesn't actually mean the ball's gone in or out. Now you've given that little click on the flag, and now it's yeah, I know it's because it's immediate. Ball goes in, comes boom, arms up. I got the buzzer. Now I know I've got a call, balls out. We start with the throw in whichever direction it's gonna be. So I think those are critical key incidents. I had one last week where there was a shot on goal from outside of the 18, and a player runs down to the corner flag to collect it and immediately one times it back in across, and the ball bounces around, and then there's a goal. Okay. And referee who's watching this ball come in, whatnot, focused on the ball coming back in to play the ball bouncing around and the goal afterwards, after he's pointing towards the center circle and looks up, he sees his assistant referee's arm in the air for the offside flag. And the referee was really focused on what was going on in the center of pitch. Everyone thinks the goal is scored. It's a one-one game, it's late in the match. Everyone's fired up. They think they've got the goal goal. Right. And now he's having to go over to the assistant referee and try and understand where was the offside. I didn't see it. Right. It was before the cross, that kid, he was in an offside position. If he had a buzzer flag, then immediately, as soon as he puts his flag up as that ball's coming in, okay, referee turns out, ah, I got it. And it eliminates that frustration and the confusion. No spectators knew what was going on. The players didn't know what was going on, coaches certainly didn't know what was going on. And it's I nipped it in the butt. And it's something little like that can be so powerful and eliminate a very angry situation. All right. So I want to go back to the genesis again of RareBrick. I think this is really important. I've mentioned how passionate I am about entrepreneurs and about people starting businesses, because in this day and age with AI, the world is your oyster. It was Shopify, you can build a website and all these things. That's one thing when you've got an idea or you want to do consulting. When you're building a physical product, okay, something that is like physical and tangible, okay, that has to be molded and created. And you've got circuit boards. It is not a short process. I know Umpiro Shoes, my buddy Leland, I was about seven years before he was able to actually start selling his first pair of shoes, maybe six, but it's a long time. Talk to me about initial sketch and concept to actually having a rare bit flag in your hand. How long did it take you to come up with the idea? Okay, I want to do this to actually get to the point of actually like selling a flag to human beings.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it was definitely been a journey. I have been in some pretty advantageous positions, though. I'm not gonna lie, I'll be totally honest about it. I went around to my personal network, told them what I was gonna try to do. Um, and I got a mixed bag of one time, no strings attached investments that was helpful, but wasn't gonna put it over the finish line. I secured some business loans from a personal network that were at a really good rate because they're related to me. There were that was an advantageous position to be in. It wasn't a lot of money, definitely not enough to zoom this across the finish line. It was enough to hire a design firm to do all the stuff that I am not qualified to do. This was a bare bones budget approach that I went to this design firm. Because I hired this design firm, we have that really nice looking grim. We have the concept of how that grip slips over the rigid housing, the complicated part that I was never going to be able to do. The port cover for the flag handle, I was never gonna be able to design that. And when I say design, I mean these guys delivered the CAD files that I need to reproduce these things. Basically, they wrote the recipe, and then at some point they handed it back over to me. We put a stake in the ground, got back all the accounts receivable, and I just took it from there.
SPEAKER_01:And your expertise is electrical engineering, wireless engineering. There is a big jump to industrial engineering, which means making a product look beautiful, making it ergonomic, mechanical engineering to actually be able to inform all these different products.
SPEAKER_00:So we had meet like I was the project, not the project manager. There was definitely a project manager, but I was like in every single product design meeting, they had the owner of the project and part of the user base, part of the customer base. They said that was one of the reasons they thought I was going to be successful because they they designed a lot of products and they don't get direct feedback from the people that are going to use the product that they're designing. So they had we had that advantage because I'm a referee and this is where we wanted. I love talking about the things they came up with. The flag handle is slightly elliptical because the most ergonomic and comfortable shape is actually slightly elliptical. So they made that in straight up tube. You have to situate your hand a little bit and just tiny details that I've never thought about that they came to me and they were like, Yeah, we're thinking about doing this. This is gonna really, this is gonna really feel comfortable to hold. They pioneered some of those things designing the receiver, getting everything situated with the antenna, button, and battery, and making it gasketed so it's waterproof. That early design firm really, once they were giving me some of the sketches and drawings, I was, oh yeah, this is nice, this is gonna be good. And as we were prototyping, it was really looking good. If at that point it was looking garbage, I would have been very dismayed, but it was looking pretty good. That's part of what kept me going. But yeah, part of saving money was I was like, they wanted to do everything, and I was like, no, I don't, I'll do the electronics. The tech and the radio stack I was using, they weren't sure about. So they were like, before we continue this, you should validate that the communication across the distance you want is gonna work. So I did a validation study for them. If I gave them that, they gave me back some things. So there was definitely a collaborative effort that I was the electrical engineer on the product, and they were the mechanical industrial designers on the product too. That was the design phase, and that was back in 2019, 2020. And then it's just been like supply chain procurement as well. I have all these CAD files and I'm prototyping like crazy. The little millimeter off here, this thread isn't quite so good. Just little iterations on every single part and piece on these things has been iterated. I think only one part has been like the same. And actually, I no, that's a lie. That's a lie. Every single part has been different. The shaft was re-engineered, everything that went into it from that first base sketch has been very different besides kind of that grip, the outer mold. And I changed that one too. So it's really just the grip, honestly. Yeah, that's been the same.
SPEAKER_01:So about five years, five and a half years to really get it to market. Because now we're again, you did a Kickstarter, which was an interim step, and now we're selling it retail. But I want to talk a little bit about that grip more because again, I've used the Irvicom flags. It's plastic, it's pretty big. What is it about that grip that you really wanted to have that was so important to you into this final design? I honestly, and I'll just say, I feel like the grip that you developed for this flag is the favorite grip that I've ever had for any flag.
SPEAKER_00:It's so nice, and yet it's still it was at that moment. I saw it come in the mail. I opened it up and it blew my expectations coming from the development process where my expectations were constantly being shattered. The grip coming in at really good, like the most customer-facing part, the thing in the pictures and the glamour and all that. I was like, Oh, yeah, this is good. The herbalcom handles are just doing a lot. I was impressed by the early models that mechanically spun within the handle. I don't know if you remember that, but this was like 2015. The their early models, the shaft seemed to go all the way into the handle, and then it had a bearing, a mechanical bearing that it's not just like the cloth spinning on a free soul, the whole shaft acted as an axle that it spun mechanically on this thing in the flash. That I was I thought that was cool, but I was awesome. Was it not working the way before? Like the when you have this like a loose tube that's not connected to the shaft, that also works. I was impressed. Later models don't do that anymore. Plus, they're huge, right? They're like eight inches long. I the handle is like eight inches long, and I'm a five foot seven guy. That's poking into the ground at some point. When I was using it on that first game, the grip I found myself using was very much near the top, and the handle became just a counterbalance, just seemed like a big waste. I know that the yeah, obviously the radio is in there and the battery is in there. A nine volt battery, by the way. This is too much for what we're trying to get at here. I'm sure in the early 2000s it was really cool, but I that was then and this is now, and just like you need to make this really good to hold for referees to use and look at. So, yeah, the handle needed to be. I wanted to shorten it up. I wanted to make it so you really felt comfortable holding it in the handle and not just near the top. Just annoying things that I was just like, this can definitely be improved on. People are gonna appreciate this.
SPEAKER_01:So that's that's was there ever a particular in this journey? So this five or six year journey that you were on, which and I recognize that you got loans and some people made some investment, but I know that you've poured your own personal cash into this. I know from another number of other investors, like you're taking your savings, yes, and your hard earned cash, and you still gotta pay rent and you've got bills to pay, and you've got a life you're trying to build, and then you're taking this very large chunk of your cash. And you're investing in this. Was there ever a particular time, like a significant setback or failure that you were like, okay, I'm giving up. I'm done. She didn't give up, but you were right on the edge of I don't know if I can do this anymore.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Before I got used to what this process was like, I wasn't emotionally ready. Developing your own products is witnessing the death and rebirth of your entire future in 15-minute intervals, boards would come in. And like you said, I tried to make this my most expensive hobby. Or as far as the hobbies that that I partake in, they're not all 100% free. And I was just like, if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna do this, it's just gonna be my like expensive hobby that I do in my free time. And I tried to do it with a slow burn. Like I would do it, I would poke at it in my free time, do it on weekends. Prototyping was all on my own dime, which I would spend a couple hundred dollars on some boards, some prototype boards, like three or four. Because that low a quantity, it's more expensive, right? So you spend, you want to see if your design works, spend a couple hundred bucks to prototype that and then it comes back and you find a flaw, or you flash your code and the lights don't light up, nothing's happening. This sort of like we've had the dead device that sucks. Like the dead device is just like I'm I have a traumatic you plug it in and nothing happens. There were moments like that where I was just like, I clearly don't know what I'm doing. Clearly was in over my head. I took a couple deep breaths and I'd poke at it again. I'm like, what could be going wrong? It's just troubleshooting. My relationship with troubleshooting, it sucks, but it's gotta be done. You think of a couple ideas, maybe this is it, maybe this is it, get it, and you grind, and then it does work. And then it all comes back. And then you're like, okay, but if it works now, then all it takes is some troubleshooting. So there is definitely an emotional roller coaster that goes into it. Of course, let's make sure we're not risking a couple hundred dollars at a time. Maybe let's try and break that down. You adjust your strategy, you move on. You just gotta take it on the chin sometimes. And that's what I've been just minimizing the number of times that I have to do that. It does get better. You get familiar, you understand what goes wrong. I have made sure that device doesn't happen as much as possible. Optimize is part of it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I think there's a reason why many people who start their businesses are gray-haired, older people like me. They may have more cash savings. You're a young man, right? You're in your 20s, if I'm not mistaken. I'm 31. If you're 31. Because you started this, you're 27 years old, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I was particularly I made my business, the RareBit LLC, in 2019. Uh two years out of college.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So it's rare that someone can do something that takes the amount of investment you do. The investments are tens of thousands of dollars. Yes. Especially when you're prototyping those molds for those handles. Those are outrageously expensive and a really high per unit cost because you're not dealing with right now thousands of units. You're dealing with 10 here, 25 here, 50 here. It's not the real scale, you know, starts to get when you get in those thousands. And then there's the initial purchase of the mold as well, which are very expensive, extremely expensive. Again, many thousands. And that is a big investment for our community, which is not outrageously big. Let's be honest too. Like you and I have talked about market size. There's 110,000 certified referees in the United States at the grassroots level, but then there might be 5,000 referees who are at the NCAA, N ECSR referees. How many of those every single year need these buzzer flags? So, what you've created, you've created an amazing product, but it is a niche market. And so I think it's important that people in this niche market recognize the time, effort, energy, and investment that you've put in to make a superior product at a more palatable price point. I do want to talk about one critical thing, though, before I forget. One of the big issues that I've had with comms in particular, especially when you're using those cheap commsets, is you may go like into the city and I'm in the inner city, and all of a sudden there's interference or issues with the connections. What did you do? What kind of engineering did you do, or what did you think about from a wireless engineering connectivity standpoint to make it reliable and also make sure it has proper range? It's got good range from one side of the pitch to the other. And I'm sure you have to build capabilities to go 10 pitches away if you really needed to, but what did you do to ensure that it's not going to fail in a large noisy stadium with lots of signals?
SPEAKER_00:It's not super clever outside of the box solution. I will speak to some good timing on some Bluetooth specs that were developed by the Bluetooth special interest group. They make the specs. And in 2017, we had Bluetooth 5, and with Bluetooth Bluetooth 5 came some range uh extension capabilities that is that was not otherwise realized in the typical Bluetooth use case. I think everybody thinks of Bluetooth, they think of their headphones. Your phone is in your pocket, that's on your person. That's what a lot of Bluetooth stuff was developed for. It wasn't until 2017 that they published the specs. And then if you know anything about the industry, it takes about two or three, sometimes four years after specs are published for consumer products to show up with that technology because the chipmakers got to make the chips, the firmware engineers have to write the firmware, and it's just this whole process. So I had some good timing when I was researching this. Um the range extension was best suited for those that didn't need a lot of data because it they basically uh made a way that you could trade off data rate for distance. Like I was saying before, this is not a lot of data. And that's usually the difficulty of these consumer electronics, especially wireless, is the information you need to get out to somewhere else. And this product just doesn't have a lot. So what I was able to do is put the range extension capabilities on there and beef up the signal. When you're pressing the button, that is that only at that moment is it using the most, it's draining the battery the fastest because you are pushing a lot of electricity through that radio. Let's get a power amplifier on there, crank it all the way up to the maximum strength. The clever part of the firmware engineering is the battery is not doing that all the time. The radio is not doing that all the time. So when you're not sending that page, it's conserving battery. But go ahead.
SPEAKER_01:I want to talk about that battery. Because again, one of the annoying things about being a referee is one of the tools you're using, dying. My Apple Watch. In my third game, my watch. But your flags, how long does the battery last? Are you able to do multiple games in a day?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think the shining sort of beacon was a tournament. So I really wanted them to last for two days, like multiple games for two days. So you don't have to worry about it for the tournament. It's right now, exact specs on the battery is a little bit tough because there's a lot of variation between the batteries right now. And I think that's helping us all keep it affordable. So I've been saying like 12 to 16 hours of on time. And then around that range, you'll start to get the red blink. And then you've got about, I would say, one game left. As soon as you start with the red, the 10% left. Right. But other than that, if you're paging the referee a couple of times in a game and you're ref in six games a day, it's not going to die in the end.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. It's just not the 12 to 16 hours, very similar to a comms set, electronic comms. And then the other thing I would say too is that you mentioned the herboComs having a nine volt battery. Not a lot of people bring an extra nine volt to the field. I mean, why not? These actually charge via USP C and everyone's got a USB C now, with whether you have Samsung or iPhone, whatnot. So you could charge it on the go, on the car, on the way to the game, or use a backup battery pack. I haven't had any issues with battery life at all. They've been fantastic for me, which has been great. We've started to sell them. I know for me personally, as one of your retailers, we sold out within 24 hours. I thought it was 24 hours. I know we're getting some more in in a couple of weeks. But has there been any particular bit of feedback from a referee that they were just like really thrilled or really excited? Is anything that's come back now that you're like, okay, it's working. Okay, they like it. Like anything in particular that people are saying?
SPEAKER_00:I really, yes, I have. People message me all the time, whether it be on Instagram or sending me my email addresses on the website. So they find that, they they let me know. And I think this latest firmware effort that I put out, that's that's been the accumulation of a lot of testing, a lot of failsafes, and the failsafes built on the failures. A lot of those, like that first uh Kickstarter that I did with the light sets, I called them light sets for a reason because they weren't even interchangeable. They were locked in per three devices. I didn't even make them universal yet. Um, and those had issues straight up. The folks who bought those will tell you they had issues. I'm getting feedback and I'm improving. And the feedback as of late has been, hey, these things are awesome. They work great. I've been using them every game and they're working great. And that's when I'm like, okay, so this is all I think they usually message me with some other bug with the receiver not telling you they're the battery's done charging. Some receivers do, some receivers don't. There's a bug with that. If it's working in a game reliably, consistently all the time, that makes me smile. That makes me like, okay, yeah. Because there was one, and I will shout out to my buddy Justin. He has been helping me with this, both on a firmware aspect and just giving me feedback. He gave me the dreaded email one time and he was like, Hey man, your flags fell apart on me in the middle of a game. Not this was a long time ago. Just like he stuck with it. We went back and forth on what the issue was. I replaced his set, better working, and then his set was working. You know, it doesn't come without its failures. Fortunately, that only happened to somebody once. Um, but as of late, the shift into sort of like they just want to know some details, or they just want this little quirk is happening. But in the game, these things are great. Everybody loves them, everybody's asking me, they want one. So that's the last six months of feedback.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I have to tell you, I'm literally tearing up. I get so excited about these things. I know what it means to you. I know what it means to your family and your friends who have seen you pour so much of your heart and soul into this. I know what it means to the referees to actually have something that works, that feels good, feels right, enables them to be at their best all the time. So, one last question for you, Sam. I think the flags are amazing. I think grip is the best I've ever felt. A weight is right, it's ergonomic, all these things, but it's also developed at a price point that makes this accessible for lots of different referees, even if you're not doing college and pro matches. Was that an important thing for you when you were developing these flags? Yeah, extremely.
SPEAKER_00:That was probably the number one thing. The inspiration was like, you know, for what we're getting, this glorified garage door opener versus how much it costs. So it was definitely the price. And we set out to do that. After talking with a lot of different people, some of whom were in Europe, it was just a different conversation because they don't really know that American referees supply themselves. You can buy them in Europe, obviously. But if you're a referee in Europe and you don't have 200 bucks to shell out or whatever it is in euros or pounds, you can go and get them. There's a lot of community resources, whether it be hand me downs or whatever, like you can get them. The concept of referees supplying their own gear is pretty American, I would say. So what ends up happening is this type of product is pretty well out of reach for a lot of American referees. And it's the price. Like 100%, I did market research on this, and if buzzer flags like Irvocom were less than X amount of dollars, would you buy one? The needles on the pie chart just went zoom right to the other side. So it was like, this is why a lot of people are like, for what we're getting, it's just not worth$800. That's a dozen games at least. So your road back to making back that investment is a long one. And I think the higher level you're up and coming in your country, and you want to make sure you're not leaving your AR hanging for sure. You and you make an investment. But for grassroots referees who are interested in entering that sort of next level, they want to get their regional badge or something. They're looking at it. They started out like I was 16 when I started, but maybe they're interested when they're 18 or 19 and they just want to show up professionally, they want to enter that next level. The road back to making back that investment, I want it to be attractive, to be shorter than it would be for overcoms. And in even in the gift giving season as well, if you've got parents who support you on this journey or mentors or whoever that support you on this journey, they're just going to be a lot more likely to gift something in the realm of like$400 to$500 or whatever it is, rather than upwards of a thousand. So it's a lot easier.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. You've done an amazing thing, man. It's definitely brought it a lot closer. I have some referee buddies, grassroots referees, but they work those adult matches. They do some other adult amateur and they're starting to get into college. They've all told me, oh, yeah. I know what San is bringing me this year. If I have them in stock, we'll see. But I think it's a wonderful thing that you've done. You've developed a phenomenal product that adds value to the referees, that enables them to be more efficient on the pitch, more responsive on the pitch. I think the design is gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. And I'm thrilled that you've been able to do it. I hope someday it's a full-time gig. I know you still have a full-time gig, as many of us entrepreneurs do, but I think it's wonderful we've done at Rare Bit. And I'm allow me to just say thank you again. Thank you for your partnership with Refsneed Love2. And I'm looking forward to selling the next big batch of flags when they come our way. Yeah, absolutely. Sam, thanks so much for coming on the pod, my friend. Thank you, David. Much appreciated. Outstanding. I hope everyone enjoyed today's pod. Please support the refsneed love to store online. The RareBit flags will be on the site again in a couple more weeks. We're just waiting for our next stock. I didn't expect the first ones to sell out in 24 hours. Yeah. Hopefully, this next batch will be there a little bit longer if more people have a chance. But again, we're building and uh next order will be bigger as well. Again, we love everyone. We appreciate your feedback. And I just encourage you, please support people like Sam. Please support people like Leland with Piro, the people who are building products for you. Me and my friend Paul developed our referee scorecards. Again, they're made by referees for referees because we care about you. And as always, I hope your next match is red card free.