Chris O'Dowd is the co-founder and CEO of WIN Reality, an Austin-based virtual reality training platform for baseball and softball hitters. A former professional catcher who played six seasons in the minor leagues after starring at Dartmouth, he built WIN Reality with his father, longtime MLB executive Dan O'Dowd, to close the gap between practice speed and real game speed. The Meta Quest-based product lets players face game-speed pitching from a library of thousands of real pitchers, and is now used by youth players, more than 200 colleges, and a majority of MLB franchises. The company raised a $45M+ round led by Spectrum Equity in June 2022.
WIN Reality is an Austin-based sports technology company that turns the Meta Quest headset into a virtual batting cage. Founded in 2018 by former Colorado Rockies GM Dan O'Dowd and his son, ex-pro player Chris O'Dowd, the company lets baseball and softball hitters take game-speed reps against a library of nearly two million real pitches from more than 7,000 pitchers - plus AI swing analysis through a phone. Its mission is to democratize professional-grade training, putting the same tools used by most MLB franchises into the hands of youth, travel-ball, high school and college players.