Stix started in a hockey rink.
A friend of founder Joshua Marshall — a professional goaltender coach in Canada — was drowning in data. Ten-plus goalies. Detailed tracking across every session. Numbers that added up to nothing he could act on. He asked Joshua for a dashboard that could tell a story.
Building it raised a question. If hockey goaltenders at the professional level were working with raw, uninterpreted data, what were soccer goalkeepers working with?
Joshua knew the answer from two directions. As a goalkeeper in his own youth, he had almost nothing — no goalkeeper-specific coaches, no camps, no specialized training, and certainly no data. His son, now an academy goalkeeper, has access to all of it: specialist coaching, dedicated camps, technically advanced training environments. What he doesn't have is data.
A generation of development has passed. The coaching infrastructure has caught up. The analytical tools haven't.
Stix is the tool that should have existed for both of them. The Starting XI is what happens when the tool that should have existed finally does.