5 Fitness Tech Startups Moving You And The Industry
8 MINUTES
July 5, 2023
In 2022, fitness apps generated about $16.6 billion in revenue and are expected to grow to over $30.2 billion by 2026. More and more people google “fitness apps” each year.
We researched fitness tech companies that make personal training and fitness more accessible and easy to engage in.
Meet our selection of 5 fitness tech startups
1. Strava
Company’s website: https://www.strava.com/about
Engineer, Co-Founder: Christopher Donahue
Co-Founder: Davis Kitchel
CEO & Co-Founder: Michael Horvath
Lead Investors: TCV, Sequoia Capital, Jackson Square Ventures, Madrone Capital Partners, Sigma Partners.
Total funding amount: $151.9M
Founded in 2009, Strava has become one of the most popular apps and sports communities that unites over 100M athletes in 195 countries worldwide.
With Strava, you can track, measure and share with other athletes 30 different activities like cycling, running, swimming, and many others. It’s actually a social network with friends and followers who share their achievements, comment and encourage each other.
Strava cares not only about its athletes’ results but also their safety. The app has a special function called Beacon that allows you to share your location with anyone you trust and want to get your back.
In May 2023, Strava partnered with Nike to share athletes’ activity and expand their community across Nike Run Club, Nike Training Club, and Strava platforms.
What we like the most about it:
Strava is more than just another fitness app — it’s a community of like-minded people who inspire each other by sharing and competing with their results. Thus, you’re never alone, even if you train alone.
In July 2022, the company launched Strava Community Hub — a safe space for sharing and discussing ideas and consuming high-quality thematic content.
For example, the last question raised was about adding the Ukrainian language to the app.
2. Ergatta
Company’s website: https://ergatta.com/
Co-founder: Alessandra Gotbaum
Co-Founder & CTO: Prasanna Swaminathan
Co-Founder & CEO: Tom Aulet
Lead Investors:Advance Venture Partners, Greycroft, Techstars.
Total funding amount: $35.3M
Hoist the sails! Ergatta is an entire rowing machine together with its digital content at your home. This cutting-edge fitness equipment brings your home training to a whole new level.
Ergatta merges technology, human resourcefulness, and design, emphasizing that it is “designed for your living room”. It provides live and pre-recorded exercise routines, which are meticulously tailored to match each user’s profile and personal fitness goals.
In 2022, Ergatta started its foreign expansion by gradually entering the UK, Germany, and Canadian markets.
Tom Aulet, Co-founder and CEO of Ergatta:
“Our expansion into Canada is a great example of Ergatta’s unwavering commitment to its customers.”
“Our mission is to provide consumers who have grown tired of the age-old exercise class with a new kind of workout experience that doesn’t feel like a chore, and for years we have received consistent requests to have The Ergatta Rower available in the Canadian market.”
What we like the most about it:
Ergatta game-based fitness equipment and workouts activate the full body, engaging 86% of your muscles in a single movement.
Here is what people say about their experience with Ergatta:
“Saved me from knee surgery. My doctor is amazed….it has been easy on it, so the perfect exercise, but strengthened it so much that surgery is no longer warranted.”
“Joggin is too painful, cycling hurts the lower back and an elliptical is absolutely boring, so I figured I would try rowing. One month in and I have logged over 250k meters and I’m absolutely addicted.”
3. Peloton
Company’s website: https://www.onepeloton.com/
Co-founder & Chief Product Officer: Tom Cortese
CEO & President: Barry McCarthy
Lead Investors: TCV, Kleiner Perkins, Wellington Management, Fidelity, True Ventures, L Catterton, Tiger Global Management.
Total funding amount: $1.9B
In 2012, Peloton started as a cycling equipment provider and introduced its first Internet-connected stationary bicycle with a tablet in 2014.
Today, Peloton produces various equipment and software for it: bikes, rows, treads, AI-powered personal trainer, app, and accessories. On the Peloton app, you can also find exercises without the equipment needed, suitable for you, for example, pilates, cycling, yoga, running, and many others.
Peloton has recently introduced its new gamified fitness experience — Lanebreak Tread. It combines gamified fitness content and music for immersive cardio workouts on treadmills. Everyone in the media calls it a “Guitar Hero for your exercise bike”.
What we like the most about it:
Thanks to its gamification focus, Peloton causes fitness addiction in people who hated it before.
In her latest review of Peloton Lanebreak, the writer Victoria Song wrote that their new in-app game had turned her ‘into an immersive fitness believer’. She noted that she hated treadmills before, but after testing Lanebreak, she changed her mind:
“But in Lanebreak, I was less focused on the numbers because I could see the hill I was on and how much was left before I could enjoy a downhill. I could see myself progressing through it irrespective of time. It’s a deft, psychological sleight of hand — but it works! It truly works!”
4. WHOOP
Company’s website: https://www.whoop.com/
Founder & CEO: Will Ahmed
Co-Founder & Chief Hardware Engineer: Aurelian Nicolae
Lead Investors:SoftBank Vision Fund, IVP, Foundry Group, Bose Ventures, UAE71 Capital, Two Sigma Ventures.
Total funding amount: $404.8M
Founded in 2012, WHOOP is a fitness and health wearable band for tracking recovery, training, sleeping hours, and health and providing tailored recommendations.
The company claims to provide the most comprehensive fitness and health feedback for optimizing further performance.
WHOOP measures:
1. HRV and resting heart rate for modifying lifestyle and training.
2. Daily training activities for better understanding when it’s time to rest or exercise.
3. Sleep hours, cycles, and quality to know how much sleep you actually need.
4. Skin temperature, blood oxygen levels, and more parameters to track your overall progress.
In April 2023, WHOOP released a new Strength Trainer feature for measuring muscular load.
It tracks weight and reps and sets for a complete picture of your training efforts. With this development, they went further than such giants as Apple Watch and Google.
What we like the most about it:
WHOOP calls itself “the only wearable that’s truly wearable”. It can work not only in the form of a band but also it can be taken out and put in their WHOOP Body garments like boxers, bralettes, leggings, and performance tops.
Also, WHOOP has a podcast with interesting and educational topics. For example, its latest episode was about answering “Listener Questions on HRV, Fasting, and the Impact of Vices on Performances.”
5. Train Fitness
Company’s website: https://trainfitness.ai/
Founder: Andrew Just
Lead Investors: Relay Ventures, Calm/Storm Ventures.
Total funding amount: $3.5M
Train Fitness is an AI-powered automatic rep-tracking and exercise-detecting app enabled using your Apple Watch.
By using AI and the motion of the Apple Watch, Train Fitness can track more than 100 exercises for further improvement of your training.
Here’s how it works:
1. AI algorithms identify the specific workout you’re engaging in by tracking the motion of your wrist.
2. The app provides stats & analytics about your performance, progress, and ways to improve it.
3. You can join an in-app community of athletes, share your results, and challenge others.
In June this year, Train Fitness raised $2.5 million in seed funding led by Relay Ventures.
The company plans to focus on product development — expand the number of tracking exercises from 160 to 250 and achieve 99% accuracy by the end of 2023 (now 96%).
Simon Sokol, VP of Relay Ventures, one of the lead investors:
“There are some direct competitors [to Train Fitness], such as FitBod, providing workout programs, but it relies on manual inputs, which is inherently flawed.”
What we like the most about it:
With Train Fitness, you don’t have to enter any data manually.
Andrew Just, Train Fitness founder and CEO:
“If you consider going for a run or a bike ride, you just press ‘start workout’ on your GPS, or your watch, or your phone and the rest is taken care of.”
“That experience of totally automatic hands-free tracking was one I wanted to try and replicate in the anaerobic space.”
Wrap-up
Fitness and training are not about “harder, better, faster, stronger”. It’s about being smarter, healthier, more efficient, and more accessible.
With more scientists asking themselves how to live longer and looking for some solutions in medicine, we think it’s better to focus on your body here and now. Solutions of fit tech companies we’ve reviewed will definitely help and support us.
At Startup Soft, we’ve already been lucky to work with tech companies from the health & fitness industry. And we would be glad to do it again!
So welcome — we’re always ready to find like-minded talents to enhance your in-house team.
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