Anthony Gonzales

Post-pitch story

Anthony Gonzales came to The Pitch with FITGuard, a smart mouthguard with built-in sensors that lit up when a young athlete took a hit hard enough to risk a concussion. It was an easy idea to root for, and Gonzales kept pushing it for years. The parent company became Force Impact Technologies, moved to Gilbert, Arizona, and appeared at TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield. It raised several million dollars over its life from investors including Avnet and ISBX, plus friends and family, and ran pilots with youth sports programs. As late as 2021, Gonzales was still CEO and talking publicly about helping athletes and coaches track how hard and how often players were being hit. But hardware is hard, and youth sports budgets are tight. Business databases PitchBook and Crunchbase both now list Force Impact Technologies as out of business, with PitchBook dating the closure to April 2022. No sale or acquisition was ever announced, so the company appears to have simply wound down after close to a decade of fundraising and testing. We couldn't confirm what Gonzales is doing today. FITGuard is a reminder that a good mission and real early traction don't always add up to a business that lasts — even when the problem it set out to solve, head injuries in kids' sports, is still very much with us.