On August 11, 2019, Jack Rasmussen was getting changed before his workout when he got news that reduced him to tears.
After 10 resubmissions over four years, the Baltimore native finally got the patent he wrote when he was just 19 years old approved. It was for an shoe sole with layers that allow for greater flexibility.
Rasmussen knew that once he was awarded his first patent, it would finally lend him credibility. It also validated the past decade of Rasmussen’s roller-coaster journey developing his novel technology.
With this patent secured, he could no longer be dismissed by friends, family, or prospective business partners as a flailing college dropout.
But taking a leap like leaving school and pursuing his own shoe business wasn’t out of the norm for Rasmussen.
“That’s just kind of my genetic makeup,” Rasmussen said. “I’m not bragging, but I don’t think anyone’s ever questioned the amount of balls I have for anything. I’m just a person who just kind of goes for things. If it doesn’t work out, it’s okay, but I’m not going to not try because I’m afraid it won’t.”
It’s not hard to tell where Rasmussen gets this daring nature from. His father, Jeff, is the one who inspired him to pursue this flexible shoe sole technology in the first place.
Ten years ago, they were watching an NFL game together and former running back Jamaal Charles went down untouched with a knee injury. The random nature of this play prompted them to start thinking of ways to help athletes suffer fewer non-contact lower extremity injuries.
The injury-causing link between athletic cleats and the playing surface has been established for several decades. Simply put, when the cleat and playing surface don’t give, the athlete’s ankle or knee does.
So Jeff, who works in advertising, floated the idea of cleats designed to reduce the risk of non-contact knee and ankle injuries by allowing for flexion. That conversation planted the seed for them to eventually co-found Caddix in January 2020 — a shoe company providing cleats specifically created to reduce stress on your lower extremities.
But the company’s inception was hardly a natural evolution.
Immediately after graduating from Catonsville High School in 2013, Rasmussen bought a one-way ticket to San Diego. He worked at an LA Fitness, surfed at Black’s Beach, and did a lot of hanging out.
Then, he moved to Utah to work as a housekeeper at Zion National Park. Outside of an extremely short stint at community college, he hadn’t taken a college course to date.
With many friends and family already uncertain about his prospects, he left them in total disbelief when he quit his job and came home to go all in on this flexible cleat idea in 2014.
“Everyone called me delusional because I didn’t have experience in anything and I never had a job,” Rasmussen said. “My GPA in high school was embarrassing. I didn’t get into college. Business-wise, I had nothing.”
Blocking out the doubts from his loved ones, Rasmussen started learning whatever he could about biomechanics, physics, and anatomy. His first purchase in this pursuit was Biomechanics for Dummies, and he completed all the initial testing in his garage.
He combined quick-hardening caulk with fluid dish soap to create a transparent rubbery surface that acted as a mold for the shoe soles he was testing. This allowed him to create a cast of each cleat sole that could be replaced with the rubber version.
Rasmussen was essentially living in his parents’ garage trying to figure out the way cleats worked — how they spin and give and rotate and interact with real versus artificial grass.
He read all sorts of dissertations and extensive studies that, by his own admission, he wasn’t mentally equipped for. In his early design stages, he was simply throwing ideas at a wall until something stuck.
“I don’t even know why they have Biomechanics for Dummies,” Rasmussen said. “It’s different when you start from scratch. Anything has to go to make it work. You can’t be specific and picky about what you want to read and what you want to look up. It has to be every single thing you can get your hands on. That’s how I approached it.”
At the same time, Rasmussen was juggling his own athletic career as well.
He played junior college basketball in 2014 before a chest injury forced him to quit. His mother still wanted him to go to school, so he had to figure out how to get his tuition paid another way.
So when he was 23 years old, he decided to pursue football for the first time in his life.
He started watching as many YouTube videos as he could about how to punt. He taught himself well enough to earn All-American honors as a punter twice at Western New Mexico University (WNMU) while pursuing a degree in sport and fitness administration/management.
Rasmussen also happened to share the same chiropractor as former Baltimore Ravens punter Sam Koch. He got in touch with Koch through that mutual connection and received advice about how to improve his technique. Rasmussen routinely sent Koch his game film and got feedback through email.
And that was just one of several unlikely connections that became key for Rasmussen.
Rasmussen first met the final piece of Caddix’s three-person team in summer 2022 at WNMU — director of social media Grant Patterson. But the two were hardly close at first blush.
“To be honest, I completely dismissed him,” Patterson said. “The coach introduced him to me like, ‘Hey, this is our punter, Jack,’ and I was a quarterback so I said hi to him but kind of just blew him off at first.”
Patterson previously attended junior college, got stuck due to COVID-19, and then transferred to WNMU. Having grown up playing football in California his whole life, it was a seismic shift navigating a town in the “middle of nowhere” up in the mountains.
But living in a small town and being on 8-, 12-, and 16-hour bus rides made it inevitable that Rasmussen and Patterson would interact.
They eventually started speaking more and bonded over mutual interests before a much deeper conversation strengthened their connection in a way they couldn’t have predicted.
On one particular bus trip, Patterson and Rasmussen sat in the front of the double-decker bus with a group of six or eight other players talking about college life, relationships, and the struggles of being a collegiate athlete.
The head coach overheard some of the conversation from below and walked upstairs to join the discussion.
“He told us a story about how him and his wife started dating, eventually got married, and just [developed] their faith so it was really a powerful conversation,” Patterson said. “It’s just one of those things when sitting on the bus for eight hours you kind of fall into deep conversations sometimes.”
This budding camaraderie tempted Rasmussen to eventually share his idea for a shoe, and Patterson happened to need some internship hours for one of his marketing classes. So Patterson approached him and asked if he could help with social media marketing.
Patterson didn’t need much convincing, considering how much respect Rasmussen commanded from his teammates in a short time.
By the time Patterson transferred to WNMU, the team hadn’t put together a winning season in 30 years. Being a smaller Division II team limited the school’s athletic funding, so the facilities were “subpar” to add to the complete absence of a winning culture, he said.
The head coach at the time was hellbent on simply getting as much talent in the building as possible, so WNMU became a hub for transfers who couldn’t get much playing time elsewhere.
Rasmussen was a bit older than most of the other players, so he embraced the chance to be a leader and unite the team upon his arrival. His immediate injection of confidence helped him become one of their most respected leaders in just a few weeks of playing together.
“I don’t want to start a war against punters, but usually they’re not Jack’s height and weight. Like he was 6’4″ and probably 220 at the time, stout-looking guy tatted up, and he seemed very in his element in the middle of nowhere in that town,” Patterson said.
Patterson was impressed with Rasmussen’s confidence and vision, so he was on board with Caddix from the start. Plus, he and many of their teammates tried the Caddix cleat on themselves to be certain they enjoyed the shoe.
While earning the trust of a friend and teammate to attach his name to this product was encouraging, the ultimate validation for Rasmussen was hearing from one of the top experts on this subject that he was onto something huge.
As a longtime member of the NFL Foot and Ankle Committee, Dr. Kirk McCullough has helped advance testing with biomechanical engineers at the University of Virginia on existing cleat technology and shoe wear and the potential for injury resulting from its contact with certain surfaces.
They have developed testing modalities — including things like the BEAST and the Flexionator — to test existing cleats that are out in distribution and developed protocols to where Adidas, Under Armour, and Nike send them their shoe rollouts before they’re released.
Their shoe lineup for the subsequent season would undergo testing and considerations for how to improve traction, flexion characteristics, patterns, and general design.
“The question was always, could we create a holy grail of something that would allow for efficient traction, but at the same time would have a release point to where if there was too much traction, something would give so that it wouldn’t simply just be ligaments, bones, or other structures within the athlete’s ankle or leg that would give,” McCullough said.
McCullough had been approached in the past by companies attempting to develop a state-of-the-art cleat designed to lessen injuries, but they all failed because they couldn’t keep the cleat and plate together.
So when Rasmussen reached out and demonstrated he was able to successfully develop this concept, McCullough jumped at the opportunity and joined on as Caddix’s medical advisor.
With his team assembled, a prototype developed, and $60,000 raised through friends and family for proof of concept and feasibility studies, the foundation for the company was well-established.
To advance his business, Rasmussen was connected with Portland, Oregon-based footwear design consultancy i-generator through a mutual friend in March 2020. But even with this mutual connection, the consultancy had misgivings about Caddix.
“We didn’t know how to incorporate this tech into a shoe without compromising stack height, weight, performance, and the feel of certain materials so it was such a novel concept that they were reluctant to admit that it might work, and rightfully so,” Rasmussen said.
Those involved in the meeting were open about how many roadblocks Rasmussen would have to face.
Peter Ruger and his partner Michael Stezin were concerned that the shoe’s unique measurables would make it ineligible for use in competition.
Regardless, i-generator proved instrumental in implementing the functionality of Caddix into a traditional design that didn’t clash with typical manufacturing protocol.
Ultimately, Caddix’s patented SmartStud technology has set it apart from its competitors.
“Rarely do people ever have a completely flat, efficient engagement with the surface,” McCullough said. “Instead, they’re tilting one way, leaning another. And when you have a cleat that can adjust in certain situations, that allows for more traction because the cleat can give the traction it needs to on a cut and on a turn.”
In total, Rasmussen has nine patents — five of which aren’t studs.
They encompass the construction of Caddix’s technology. That includes how they’re made, how it attaches to the sole, the bowl that the stud sits in, the flexion point, and the material that the flexion point is derived from.
The company’s bold marketing also helps it stand out from the rest of the field.
For instance, the first viral video Caddix produced — showing people riding around Baltimore with Caddix cleats draped on their dirt bikes — provided a lot of visibility for the company.
Caddix works with around 100 athletes at the collegiate and professional levels. The athletes aren’t paid to wear the company’s cleats.
In fact, Caddix is willing to give cleats away for free just to get athletes to experience the footwear.
“Injuries limit opportunity,” Rasmussen said. “Sports is a vehicle for opportunity and success and a different perspective on life. If you limit the vehicle for opportunity because of injury, that’s wrong. I want to maximize opportunity. I want to maximize the experience within sports with these kids who have nothing but sports.”
While the Caddix cleat is marketed toward football players, soccer athletes, and lacrosse players, the company hopes to one day have a foothold in every cleated sport.
To date, Rasmussen has raised nearly $5 million. Notably, he has received investments from former Baltimore Ravens Todd Heap and Dennis Pitta — who also serve on the company’s advisory board.
Their investments are funding Caddix’s first year production run of 3,000 men’s football cleats and 3,000 women’s soccer cleats. He reinvests his profits back into the business.
Caddix has been worn by current Indianapolis Colt and Baltimore Raven Super Bowl Champion Joe Flacco, Kansas City Current defender Kayla Sharples, and former NFL punter Pat McAfee.
“I had one poster and I had one jersey my entire life and they were both Todd Heap,” Rasmussen said. “It’s very much a dream come true to be able to call these guys and talk to them openly about things. They have that invaluable insight in the locker rooms that I never got.”
Looking ahead, Caddix aims to expand its roster of athletes — with a particular focus of making an impact on women’s sports. The company is targeting more National Women’s Soccer League players moving forward.
Caddix’s product offers a solution to the issue of female athletes suffering lower extremity injuries, especially anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) ones, at a disproportionate rate to their male counterparts.
According to the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine, female athletes are 2 to 8 times more likely to suffer an ACL injury than male athletes in comparable sports like basketball, soccer, and volleyball.
In short, this is due to a combination of body mechanics, hormone levels, training style, and movement patterns that create the perfect storm for lower extremity injuries in female athletes.
Caddix offers a narrow heel cup, more arch support, and a wider toe box that will fit a woman’s foot better than the average cleat. It also provides more padding for comfort, and the SmartStud technology reduces rotational force to help take some of the load off the user’s knees and ankles.
So Caddix is looking to be a mainstay in as many facets of the sports world as it can be. But the company stresses the potential of its unique technology extends far beyond athletics.
“Short term, the goal is to be entrenched in the markets that we’re in so football, women’s soccer, and lacrosse,” Patterson said. “Mid- to long-term, the goal is to get into every cleated sport. The end goal is to find innovative solutions in all footwear and all shoe surface interfaces. So cleats, court shoes, army boots. I don’t see any limitation to how far we can take this thing.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that Rasmussen and Patterson attended Missouri Western State. They actually attended Western New Mexico University. The article has been updated.
