This article was originally published by SportTechie.
SportTechie’s Startups series looks at companies and founders who are innovating in the fields of athlete performance, fan engagement, team/league operations and other high-impact areas in sports.
World’s Shortest Elevator Pitch: “We’re an aggregator of lab tests and a platform that helps you get results you can understand and apply.”
Company: Fitnescity
Location: Los Altos, Calif.
Year founded: 2017
Website: fitnescity.com
Funding round to date: Pre-seed round ongoing.
Who are your investors? A few angel investors, pre-seed funds and Techstars Sports.
Are you looking for more investment? Seed round starting in January.
Tell us about yourself: Laila Zemrani, co-founder and CEO.
“I was born and raised in Morocco. I am an engineer by training. And then I came to the U.S. a few years ago for grad school. I went to MIT and worked a little bit in corporate strategy: office of the CEO kind of jobs for about three years.
“And at the same time, I was basically trying to get Fitnescity off the ground. I had this idea that I was really passionate about: a mission, which is basically helping people better understand their bodies. I knew that I was going to be in the space; I just did not know the model.
“It's a space that I’m very passionate about: the quantified self. I've been an early adopter and advocate for many years. I've been using all sorts of wearables and sources of data collection and running a lot of self-experiments, which I was sharing on my website, on Twitter. So I was basically sharing, ‘I did this type of, let's say, training or diet, and then I collected, let's say, my glucose for three months every day or something’—just for the purpose of self-experimentation, because I’m really curious.”
Who are your co-founders/partners? Çağatay Demiralp, co-founder. “He's the technical mastermind that built the entire infrastructure of the company. He has a Ph.D. in computer science, more specifically, in data visualization. A lot of it was in the medical field. And then he did research after that at MIT and Stanford and really focused on building visuals that communicate the information that we're trying to communicate in a way that is user-friendly and actionable. And really just building the entire accurate architecture actually of the platform.”
What problem is your company solving? “I was collecting a lot of data and using a lot of wearables. I realized that almost none of them really gave data that was rich enough to actually act on it. Some of them do, like sleep, for example, which is very important, very actionable. But it's pretty rare.
“I mean, I always say one number or one data point is better than none. But the problem is that you can only do so much with one or two numbers. In order for the data to be actually actionable, it has to go a little bit beyond that. The human body is more complex than just the number of steps that you walk or even your heart rate or how many hours you've slept.
"While doing all sorts of experimentation on spreadsheets and looking at my diet—what I eat, how I sleep, how I train—I started to use lab tests a few years ago. I was doing it in New York, and I would just walk into a clinic, Mount Sinai actually, and then do everything that they have. ‘Whatever you have, I'm going to just do it.’ And then I'm going to add it to my spreadsheet and then start to learn more.
“For me, it was really eye-opening, because the amount of data that you get cannot even be compared [to wearables]. I call it ‘a window into our body’ because that’s really what it is. At just that clinic, I can test for pretty much anything from a detailed body scan about my body composition, learn about body fat, fat mass, fat-free mass, visceral fat, the more dangerous kind of fat, my metabolism, how many calories I need, my vitamins, what I'm missing in my diet, hormones, recovery, glucose, cholesterol. Really, the data points are really almost limitless.
“I realized that, if wearables—which are, I think, a good start—became a $50 billion consumer product, then lab testing, which sounds intimidating, very medical, actually has the potential to be even bigger because it's really a lot of information. The only problem is that it's not an attractive world. It's not something you want to wake up and do as a consumer. The second problem is that most people don't know how to interpret that data. You end up with results, where you almost feel like you need to get a second degree just to be able to actually apply it yourself.
“We built this platform called Fitnescity that solves these two problems. The first one is we're an aggregator of tests. Actually, I went back to Mount Sinai, and I just asked them to be a partner. That's how it started. We help you directly and easily find a test that helps you solve a specific problem, as opposed to wandering around trying to understand where you should go and what you should test for. And the second thing is we serve as a 23andme- kind-of-platform and environment that helps you get results that you can understand and apply.”
What does your product cost and who is your target customer? “Our average cost per test is $150 right now. In terms of the target customer, today about 25% of our customers are athletes—what we call serious athletes, so that could be anywhere from someone looking to improve their performance in running a marathon all the way to world-class professional athletes.
“The bigger part, 75%, which is very interesting, are actually just regular, what I call, fitness consumers—people who are looking to actually improve their health, their wellness, their performance. They're not necessarily athletes by profession, or even hobby, but they're just looking to better understand their body and make the right decisions, as opposed to just randomly pursuing a diet or something.”
How are you marketing your product? “The way we've done customer acquisition is kind of unique. We realized that in our space, there's a little bit of education that goes into this, of course, but at the same time, a lot of the tests that we offer have very specific keywords. And so the vast majority of our customer acquisition has been organic—people basically are searching and finding us online, on social media, or on one of our articles.
“Today, we’ve built about a 20,000-people waitlist, just organically. Just people looking up things like: How do I decrease my body fat? Or what's the best way to measure it? Where do I go? Or how do I know the number of calories that I need? Or what’s my ideal Vitamin D? Or something like that.
“That's how we built our initial audience, and then it's trickled from there. We started out in New York City, and from there, we replicated it and created a waitlist outside of New York, covering every state. The product is mostly available right now on the East Coast, in the New York area: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut. But it is going to be soon available in other places. We started few of them in beta, especially in the Midwest, given we were in Techstars. But we will be launching new locations—hopefully a lot of them are going to be live by early next year.”
How do you scale, and what is your targeted level of growth? “The way we scale is by geography. That's how our model is based. For example, Mount Sinai is one of our biggest partners, but we also have a lot of our other partners just in New York. We go to other states, and then we build these partnerships. Then we go and basically replicate our secret sauce in every new market.”
Who are your competitors, and what makes you different? “There are two alternatives, basically, for someone who wants to learn more about their health. A very non-direct competitor, but a lot of our customers are also using wearable devices. So a lot of our customers are already using something else, and then they realize that they can actually learn more just by taking these tests from Fitnescity. It's competition in the sense that we're competing for being the tool that actually gives you more information about your body. Are you going to buy a device for $150? Or are you going to get a Fitnescity test?
“The other competition is basically the labs that we work with, although we don't really see them as competitions—we partner with them, so that we can further sell their [tests]. The other alternative is that you could also go somewhere like Qwest Diagnostics, which is our official partner, and then get a test there. Our biggest competition is basically other sources of data.”
What’s the unfair advantage that separates your company? “The first is knowledge of the space; this is a space that I personally have deep experience and expertise in. And then on the technical side, my co-founder has the technical part. A big advantage for a business like ours is basically the growth. When you think about it, we're sort of like a marketplace in a way, in that we connect labs with customers. That's not the best way I use to describe the company, but that's, in essence, what it is. So we have this two-sided platform where we work with labs and we work with customers.
"The reason why I mention it here is that, the more you grow when you have that kind of model, the harder it is for another company, or someone else, to actually enter that space and then compete there. For example, we signed a partnership in the Midwest with Franciscan Health. That's one of the largest health systems, and they have tens of locations, actually.
“By quickly covering pretty much all the landscape right now—Qwest is our partner everywhere—and at the same time building our customer base, we are kind of like a pioneer in this space. Our goal is to really grow fast in this space, so that as a marketplace kind of model, we reach that scale where it's hard for other competitors to do so.
"The third part, I should say, is our algorithms. I touched on the technology, but also a very important component of the business is not just giving people access to the test and the results but also the ‘what's next.’ The earlier you figure out how to actually turn the data into insights, and how to build that platform that solves that problem, the more advantage you have.”
What milestone have you recently hit or will soon hit? “I'll talk about future milestones because that is really where our attention is focused right now. For Q1 of 2021, our goal is to basically cover the entire East Coast and Midwest in terms of being able to access Fitnescity tests. And then, from there, in Q2 2021, we're going to make sure that we are covering the South and then part of the West of the United States. And then H2 is going to be the West—California and Texas are our biggest markets and our biggest waitlist. So eventually covering, in short, all the United States by the end of next year."
In what ways have you adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic? “COVID-19 has been interesting because it really created this environment where, for the first time, people are actually worried about their health and thinking about their health before they're actually sick. It’s kind of tragic, but we've been advocating and talking about it for a long time. But when you think about it, when people don't have an imminent threat, they're just not going to think about it. If I tell you, ‘Oh, you have to be careful because you don't want to get high cholesterol by age 70,’ it sounds like a very far away threat. And that's not something that's going to make you act.
“But what happened with COVID-19 is that lifestyle, nutrition and health in general has become so important. And the threat, just the virus itself, is so present, anybody can get it anytime, which is very scary. But I think it is the first time in history where people are actually being proactive about their health and being careful. We saw that actually on our waitlist—it was an immediate spike.
“And the second thing is that we just happen to be in lab tests—even though it's Vitamin D, cholesterol, it's body fat, but it has put that idea in people's minds. We recently launched at-home tests with Qwest Diagnostics where we mail you a kit. I think what COVID-19 did is really just educate the general consumer everywhere on the idea of at-home tests. I remember before COVID-19, I was talking about a partnership with Qwest for at-home tests, and people would be like, ‘What is at-home testing? Is somebody coming to visit me?’ They know that there's a box that we can mail you that you can actually collect a sample except that, for us, we do it for general health and we do it for athlete performance. COVID-19 is really a national awakening about the importance of being in control of your health.”
Beyond the pandemic, what obstacles has your company had to overcome? “The life of a startup is really full of obstacles. Something that I've been really working on recently is just building a team. And I think it might sound like not a big obstacle, but I never actually realized how hard it is, until now. We're at the stage as a company, where I really am looking to hire people that are of the caliber that I really want. Before I used to hire more junior people and select among a large number of CVs from schools and things like that. But right now, we're trying to be at a stage where we can attract the type of people that we really want and who are going to really build the company.
“Someone that is really an accomplished professional, they also are betting on you as an entrepreneur and as a company. And so it's actually hard, first, to identify the talent, and once you identify them, it takes a lot of relationship building and a lot of selling, all throughout the process. And I actually have been turned down by candidates for the first time. That's actually, in a way, good—it means that you’re trying to attract the kind of people that you really want and that are actually going to really propel the company.”
What values are core to your brand? “The first one is really striving for excellence and for being a better version of yourself. That’s a value we care about as a company internally but also as a brand. Because the reason why people buy our test is because they're trying to be better. They don't want to be the person who is just reading about some random diet on a blog and then just trying to do it without actually knowing the reasoning behind it. They want to actually be a better version of themselves.
“Another one is more internal, and it’s about attention to detail. That’s something that we really care about because we think that it really takes a lot of craftsmanship to build a good product and really get the customer experience right, especially when you're creating a new product like this. It takes a lot of iteration. I can't even remember how many times I manually iterated on the product and on the process and fulfilled orders manually, myself, just so I can see how we can improve the customer experience, improve the product, improve the platform.
“And then the third one is really about integrity and doing things right. I don't believe in shortcuts. I believe in treating employees fairly, treating customers fairly and doing things right, especially in this space, where it's a little bit on the medical side.”
What does success ultimately look like for your company? “Success for us is really being the company that helps people achieve this vision of knowing what's going on in their bodies. I know it sounds simple, but nobody has done it yet.
“The human body is kind of like a black box. It's kind of surprising, almost tragic, today that if you drive, you probably know more about your car than your body.”
What should investors or customers know about you—the person, your life experiences—that shows they can believe in you? “I would say persistence. I think this always comes up a lot when describing me as a person. I'm the most persistent, pushy person you ever want to deal with, to be honest. I think it has some advantages. I was born thousands of miles away from here. It takes actually a lot of persistence just to get to the level where we are—where I am as a person, as a company.”