San Francisco-based exercise app Fitmob has raised $9.8 million from Mayfield Fund, Sillicon Valley Bank and prominent individuals, according to a press release. Fitmob also released its beta app earlier this week.
“Fitness is a passion of mine, but the current model is broken – with 30 million Americans wasting billions of dollars per year on memberships they don’t use, and hundreds of thousands of personal trainers underemployed,” CEO Raj Kapoor said in a statement. “It was time someone created an easy way to bring fitness and community together, and provide amazing neighborhood workouts on a simple, pay-as-you-go model.”
To use Fitmob, users access a list of indoor and outdoor workouts led by trainers in the user's city. The more workouts the user attends, the cheaper the workouts will be. Each workout session costs $15 if the user chooses to go once a week, $10 if the user chooses to go twice and $5 if the user goes three or more times per week. The service is launching in San Francisco, with additional cities and neighborhoods to be added within the year.
Every week this total resets, so if a user goes more than three times between Monday and Sunday of the first week, they're charged $5 per workout on Sunday, but the next week if they go twice, they're charged $10 per workout the following Sunday. People have up to 12 hours before a workout to cancel, and if they don't they will be charged a $5 flake fee, a portion of which will go to local charities that include their neighborhood parks and recreation organizations.
For the first week, users can go to as many workouts as they want for free, and after that week, whenever a user is unsatisfied with a workout, they are offered a 100 percent money back guarantee.
Trainers in San Francisco currently offer classes at three locations focusing on strength, cardio and yoga fusion.
While many companies have created methods to make the gym a more appealing option, Fitmob isn't the only app to offer a complete alternative. While DailyBurn started out creating data-centric smartphone fitness apps, the app and website now provides users with exercise clips that they can use to exercise anywhere the choose. Another app, Pact, formerly GymPact, focuses on getting people to commit to workouts by charging them if they don't make an allotted number per week, but pays users if they make good on their promise.
The company was formed by photo printing company Snapfish cofounder Raj Kapoor and search personalization company Ness Computing cofounder Paul Twohey.
