A New Startup - FitRate from TLV-Generator line of startups

By: Avi Weiss, 18.1.18, 07:00
 
Since the establishment of  TLV-Generator, the world's fastest growth program for entrepreneurs, launched in January 2017, several of the "graduates" of the generator have been revealed, including the successful Crazy SOB (here, here, and  here), which deals with recipes and automatic conversion to shopping lists, Umatch Analytics in the AI ​​field (here) and some of the generator's internal developments developed for the projects that entered the generator: api.all (here) and CoFoundWith.me (here). More start-ups will soon be revealed as the projects developed under the program become  ripe for exposure.

The generator's own internal developments, which are projects in their own right, and in particular the development of api.all, allowed in the second half of 2017 the shortening of the process of launching ventures from a raw idea to a working product (Minimum Viable Product or MVP), including user and customer data, to just 90 days, instead of the 120 days required at the start of the generator in January 2017, and to provide a working prototype within the first 30 days.

Here we are revealing FitRate, a sports venture whose co-founder is Ian Kaplan (who is also the CEO of the project, along with co-founder Scott Renwick). FitRate is currently in beta and is free to download and use through the Apple and Google app stores.
 
Ian Kaplan: "I have been involved in sports for years, and at the same time I am a serial entrepreneur, had my own cleantech startup, was part of a startup in the field of digital health, and have been exposed to the world of developing mobile applications for health and fitness.

From my experience and that of others, I learned that the main problem with fitness, for the vast majority of the public, is how to persevere. This problem is true in many areas, such as diet, but I'm focusing on fitness.

I noticed, and studies support, that if you engage in fitness with another person, it's more fun and it spurs you on. So I thought about how to convey this insight and experience to people who do not have a partner for fitness training, for whatever reason, to find a solution to the question: how can this (i.e. exercising alone) be turned into a social experience? And how can they encourage each other even when alone? The motivation behind this is very clear: alone, people often quickly lose interest.
 
If fitness can become both a part of the individual and part of a community, it can change that reality. I noticed that YouTube has a lot of fitness coaches who demonstrate exercises, each from a different point of view and with different training styles, but none of this is personal, does not provide personal training. So I got the idea to build a personal training program, based on these video tutorials, with personalization that takes into account the person's location, situation, and level of ability, at that moment.


I saw that this was a new idea, that no suitable solution had yet been found. The field in which I was involved in the startups I was in, was in business development, and I myself am not a programmer, so I looked for a solution to how to implement my idea. I checked several directions, including 'outsourcing' for development, but it did not go well. Until I ran into an article about TLV-Generator and turned to the generator with my idea.


The first version of the product I've dreamed of is already out there with users. This is more than POC, although the product still does not have all the functions that I plan to introduce into this solution. I am currently looking for partners for cooperation and investment in order to continue developing this project to its next stage.

I promote my solution using a B2B2C strategy. FitRate is actually a white label platform, which any gym, any coach or trainer, can turn into a branded system under their own name, using specific videos belonging to or chosen by the same trainer or gym, and with the ability to share and build a community around the system. The system provides end-users with the ability to receive a personal plan relevant to their personal situation and location.


This solution is suitable for those who are involved in instruction and training, as well as equipment companies in the fitness and sports fields. With FitRate, they can now sell their equipment or services bundled with a branded app under their own name, with the appropriate videos, to help their end users build workout programs using their fitness equipment.

In the next version, we plan to combine BI and 'wisdom of the crowds' capabilities, and then AI, to gain insight into the actual use of the system. The goal: To make sport an integral part of everyday life for all of us. The combination of videos and personalization will provide a new level of service, constantly updated and refreshed, according to the personal progress of the end-users.

During the initial run of the system, we saw that fitness trainers were interested in using the system with their logo, name, and videos they have produced or chosen as a priority. This platform is flexible, because it is in the cloud, and can be adapted to any need. And we added a unique ability to the system so that that anyone who downloads the application - not just trainers and gyms - answers just six short questions that help the system build for them a personalized workout program using videos already loaded in the system's video library.

Once the user has begun their workout, they can change the difficulty level of each exercise and each workout if he or she feels it is not at the optimal level at that moment. There are also plans  to build on the current level of usage of "wisdom of the crowds". Already, each video can be rated by the users, and in the future the system will learn alone whether the level of difficulty in the video is easy, medium or difficult, based on the feedback of the trainees, and not only from the video producer's definitions.
 
My dream is to see people in any gym or any open place able to exercise. My goal is that there will be no need for the user to even have to define which equipment is available to exercise on. The system will identify the environment and potential workout equipment on its own and will provide an automatic training program according to this identification. This ability to identify objects and its location from photos taken from the smartphone already exists.

Even if there is no fitness equipment available, you can use anything - table, wall, bed, stick - to perform more complex and interesting training, anywhere. Whether in a hotel, university, workplace, school, or friends' home.

I'm not sure that all the necessary technologies are fully ready for application in my ideas, but they exist and that's the direction I'm going to. In my estimation, it will take another year or two for me to realize all my ideas in this field. Some of the solutions will use wireless technologies such as BLE (Bluetooth), which will be connected, for example, to the fitness equipment, which can be used to identify the equipment automatically instead of manually or through object recognition using the phone's camera.


In addition, according to my world view, the whole world is our gym. Weight training, for example, can be done anywhere and get results everywhere. Even those who do not have a gym, can get fit. My goal is to change getting fit from being an intimidating, boring or bothersome activity to being simple, fun and easy to do.

In 2014, the trend of fitness applications around the world and in Israel took off, and many applications became available, but almost all suffer from the same problem: limited user persistence or "stickiness". If they are not dynamic, personalized, applications, there will be no persistence and people will quickly stop using most of the applications that were released because they do not suit the individual person and the environment in which s/he specifically is located.
 
For fitness activity to become a lifelong practice, you need full personalization that also takes into account the environment in which these personal fitness exercises are performed. This approach is new to the market and I believe it will lead the fitness field in the coming years and we will be the leaders of this trend.

The motto that guides us is very clear: All your world is your gym ".

Ariella Swed, TLV-Generator CEO, said: "Ian has come to us as an experienced entrepreneur who knows exactly what he wants and needs. He came to us at the end of 2016, when the TLV-Generator was just an ide,a for his first steps, so he did not enter the full runway of the generator.

Ian asked us to develop the product and see how its potential customers use it, starting with fitness trainers and fitness centers.

We did a process of focusing his ideas and developed the system at the promised speed and delivered the POC, including the possibility for end customers to download the app from the stores of Google and Apple. This is to accumulate enough user data and see the feasibility of its idea.

Now that the system is working smoothly and to the satisfaction of the entrepreneur, Ian intends to move on to the next stage, and we will help him with this as well, for as long as he requests."