Our story begins on a local pond which we consider our home ice. An annual meeting place for a group of friends who share an unquenchable desire to play the game of hockey in its purest form.

The games, always short-lived due to the darkness that the Canadian winter brings, are on rare occasion extended by fortune of a clear sky and a luminescent moon. On one of those nights, as the game was winding to an end, our group gathered around the fire to share laughter and boast about what had transpired on the ice. After losing nearly a bucket of pucks due to low light Derek Chaisson and Rick Richard, Night Puck Technologies Co-Founders complained about the lack of visibility. After ruling out generators and other methods of providing some light in the remote location Rick turned to Derek and suggested “Why don’t we put some lights in the puck?”  A few weeks later a primitive version of the ‘Night Puck‘ emerged on that same pond.

Just like the game of pond hockey, the development of Night Puck became an annual challenge. Each year incremental improvements to the design and electronic layout were implemented and tested on the pond. As development continued, an interest in testing our product outside of the small group arose.

With certain timeliness, a grassroots entrepreneurship competition, Google’s Startup Weekend was taking place in our home town of Saint John, New Brunswick. Under the guidance of respected family and friends in business, Derek and Rick entered the 52 hour Startup competition. After building a business plan and prototype in the short amount of time allotted to the groups, our team was fortunate enough to gain validation from NHL’ers who happened to be in town for a media event. Validation from the elite players who had reviewed the inaugural prototype pushed the Night Puck idea over the top to win Saint John’s first ever Startup Weekend.

After pursuing the original light up puck for two years, our team of two decided to pivot our focus to the analytics market. Extrapolating the design and knowledge we developed in the original light up puck in combination with sensory technology now abundantly available lead our team to develop ‘iQ Puck‘, a digital player development device.