health and fitness
A new year offers a fresh start, and as COVID concerns persist, staying healthy is at the top of everyone’s mind. But lots of people have trouble meeting their fitness goals; according to one study, 73% of people abandon their New Year’s exercise resolutions before hitting their target.
Masters, a new fitness app that launches today, is betting it has the formula to keep people committed to their workout regimens: training with pro athletes.
The Los Angeles-based startup offers anyone the opportunity to train with world-renowned athletes like former NBA sharpshooter JJ Redick, WNBA All-Star A’ja Wilson, and Olympic snowboarding champion Shaun White. Now available on iOS and slated for Android release later this year, Masters allows users to chat with the pro athlete leading their fitness program—a feature that founder and ultrarunner Greg Drach believes will encourage lasting fitness routines.
“Pro athletes actually calculate this idea extremely well because they don't train just to train—they train to be able to perform and succeed in their specific disciplines,” Drach told dot.LA. “There's a lot of research to show that if you model your routine after somebody who's been successful, then you're more likely to establish healthy habits for yourself and remain engaged over a longer period of time.”
Drach is no stranger to fitness success. Together with Christian Dörffer, he created Midnight Runners in 2015, a group that hosts weekly running events in over a dozen cities around the world, including L.A. The inspiration for his new venture came from the social component of the urban running community that Midnight Runners helped foster.
“Many people have found their friends and loved ones from those communities that are now spanning five continents and 15 global cities,” he said. “We just derive so much joy from seeing all the benefits that people have when they're actively engaging in training and fitness.”
Alongside its launch Wednesday, Masters announced that it closed a $2.7 million seed funding round led by Sweet Capital; the round also included participation by several of Masters’ athlete-instructors, including White and Wilson. Drach said any new money raised would focus on further enhancing the training experience for subscribers, adding more training programs in existing sports, bringing on new athletes in new sports categories, and building out the app’s personalization and community features.
Similar to fitness tracking apps like Strava, Masters offers a gamified interface that displays metrics such as total time trained, daily streaks, and milestone badges. Though the programs vary by athlete, user fitness level, and fitness goals—for example, some are focused on cardio, while others are centered around strength training—each is built around a training regimen of three-to four hours per week, with programs lasting between 28 to 30 days.
“There are lots of great training apps but they are all too specialized in my opinion,” according to Olympic skier and Masters instructor Gus Kenworthy. “My training doesn’t just involve lifting weights, riding a bike, or meditating—it’s so much more than that. Masters is really the first training app I’ve seen that gives people access to holistic programs.”
Masters subscriptions run monthly ($39.99), quarterly ($79.99) or semiannually ($99.99). The app’s athletes-slash-instructors dole out the week’s exercise routines every Sunday—a steady enough clip to encourage regular exercise, Drach believes. “There's something to be said about committing to your training, and that's really something that we're also trying to communicate,” he said.
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A self-identified "poor-hippy kid," Sadie Lincoln is the co-founder and CEO of barre3, a fitness company focused on teaching people to be balanced in body and empowered from within.
Sadie was climbing up the ranks, working alongside the founder of 24 Hour Fitness for over a decade, and realized she was in a crisis when she got pregnant with her first daughter. Despite being financially successful, happily married and living in the dream house she always wanted, Sadie said she and her partner were not feeling satisfied. "We both felt so empty. We just looked at each other and we're like, is this it?"
The couple decided to sell everything they had and move to Portland with their two young kids to pursue their dreams of launching their own business. They opened her first barre3 flagship studio in 2008, and 13 years later, the company has grown to include more than 175 franchise studios powered by female entrepreneurs, plus an online-workout subscriber base in over 98 countries.
What inspired barre3 was personal for Sadie. The traditional approach to getting in shape was failing her. Her body hurt. She never felt good enough. Then she said she had an epiphany. "What's not good for us is our relationship with fitness and how we've been conditioned to exercise to be something other than we are to be worthy and to belong." barre3 focuses on body positivity, self-empowerment and redefining what success in fitness means.
We'll chat with Sadie about how she managed to start her business with kids (and why childcare is part of their business model), how embracing her unconventional upbringing allowed her to dream big and be a risk-taker, and why she's committed to empowering women to feel good in their bodies and live a truly authentic and fulfilling life.
"We we often say we're not a fitness company, we're an education company. It's about learning about your body, developing a growth mindset, seeing exercise as a practice versus a destination. Learning...every day." -- Sadie Lincoln
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Los Angeles is adding another player to its roster of packaged health food startups.
Irvine-based Longève Brands, a startup selling fake meat crumbles made of pea protein, closed a $5 million seed round Wednesday led by Wavemaker Partners and Springboard. The company's line of faux-meat products includes "Protein Crumbles" that resemble ground meat and can sit on pantry shelves instead of needing refrigeration.
Longève was co-founded in 2020 by Cie, a California-based venture studio whose portfolio includes Titan School Solutions, a software for schools to track food inventory. It was acquired by LINQ in November for $75 million.
Unlike others in the meat replacement consumer goods market, Longève Brands CEO Douglas Kantner said that his product is less processed and preservative-free.
The plant-based meat market was worth $939 million in 2019, up 18% from the year before, according to the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit promoting alternatives to meat and dairy.
The market has gained momentum in recent years after Impossible Foods and El Segundo-based Beyond Meat were picked up by fast food chains like Starbucks, Carls Jr. and others. But Kantner doesn't see those brands as competitors because "they are making burgers and sausages. We are providing a shelf-stable, clean label product that can be used in a variety of dishes."
"Our real competitor is meat from animals," Kantner added.
Longève will use the funding to build brand awareness, hire and add more plant-based foods to their line of products, which are stocked in U.S. retailers Erewhon and HEB and in grocery stores across Mexico, Australia, Southeast Asia and the United Arab Emirates. It finds a natural home in Southern California, a hub for nutrition consumer packaged goods — from meatless burger brand Beyond Meat in El Segundo to downtown's Califia Farms.
"If your recipe calls for one pound of ground beef, you take three ounces of this stuff, reconstitute it with water and it kind of poofs up," Cie co-founder and CEO Anderee Berengian said. "It's ready to take on the flavor profile of whatever spices and ingredients that the chef wants to add."
RezVen Partners and Alumni Ventures Group also participated in the round.
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