The Opportunity

Everyone has the potential to make exercise a habit.

Sadly, most people fail because they don’t measure their habit and aren’t held accountable.

50% of people stop exercising after 6 weeks or less.

Getting motivated to exercise is tricky because the short term reward is too small compared to the effort required; therefore, if people rely on willpower alone, they will likely choose to not exercise today.

People fail because they don’t measure their habit.

Exercise trackers measure things like heart rate and calories burned, but fail to motivate people to exercise in the first place. Making exercise a habit should be Goal #1, and exercise habit the thing to measure.

People fail because they aren’t held accountable.

Being held accountable is highly motivating, but holding people accountable is not easy because results have to constantly be shared and compared to some (usually unclear) criteria that determines success.

The Product

RocketJourney is an app with a gameful design to help users measure and sustain their habit.

Users just have to follow 3 simple rules:

The goal is to exercise at least 3 days per week to increase your streak.
You have to get your 3 days of exercise before Sunday night. If not, you’ll lose your streak.
You can earn cheat days to maintain your streak on lazy weeks.
Incentives:
(1) (3) provide positive reinforcement,
(2) triggers a sense of loss aversion.

Users automatically advance in the game every day they exercise.

To verify their exercise activities, users have to connect with tracking apps/devices or check-in softwares/beacons. From that day forward, users automatically advance in the game by using that verification method and meeting the required criteria.

Users can form groups to hold each other accountable.

Exercise habit is something that applies to everybody, regardless of fitness level or type of exercise. This attracts groups of friends to compete on who can sustain the longest streak, keep track of challenges and bets, and support each other.

Go-to-Market Strategy

The best way to distribute this product is to partner with fitness clubs.

We offer the product, they promote it.

There are 200,000+ fitness clubs serving 162+ million members worldwide.

1 out of every 5 Americans have a fitness club membership (57M people). Other interesting markets include: Germany (10M), U.K. (9.7M), Brazil (9.6M), Canada (5.6M), France (5.4M), Italy (5.2M), Spain (5M), Japan (4.1M), and Mexico (4.1M).

RocketJourney helps fitness clubs increase member retention.

Every year, fitness clubs lose on average 40% of their members. Most members stop renewing their memberships because they lose motivation and stop visiting their club frequently enough to justify the expense. RocketJourney motivates members to continue visiting longer periods of time, and therefore continue paying their memberships.

Clubs can integrate to RocketJourney for free.

When a club integrates, its members become able to automatically advance in the RocketJourney game every day they attend the club. To integrate, a club has two options:

Integrate its software with the RocketJourney API.

Members have to:
Check in like they normally do.

Ideal for:
Clubs with automated check-in system.

Place a bluetooth beacon inside the club.

Members have to:
Open app inside the club.

Ideal for:
Clubs without automated check-in system.

Once integrated, fitness clubs promote RocketJourney to their members.

Clubs have great ability to promote RocketJourney because they collect members’ email addresses and contact information. Additionally, clubs have an incentive to promote RocketJourney on an ongoing basis to every new member because the first weeks of membership usage are key to long-term retention.

Users help us convince their clubs to join RocketJourney.

In RocketJourney, users can request their clubs to join. We use these requests as leverage to approach and convince these clubs to integrate. This means we could motivate a specific club to integrate by running user acquisition campaigns targeted at its members to get a few of them to download the app and request their club.

The goal is to develop a worldwide network of fitness clubs.

Our goal is to partner with as many fitness clubs as we can to acquire as many users as we can, until we hit a tipping point in which clubs that haven’t integrated realize they have to integrate because a lot of potential members prefer to join a club that allows them to advance in the RocketJourney game.

The Business Model

We will sell premium functionality to fitness clubs.

Fitness clubs will pay a subscription to get access to the premium features of Control Center.

Control Center is a freemium web application we offer to fitness clubs.

The free version helps clubs integrate to RocketJourney, promote the app to members, and offer support. In other words, it facilitates the adoption and proper functioning of RocketJourney at the club.

The premium version will help clubs manage member retention more effectively and offer exercise plans to members via RocketJourney.

Clubs will be able to manage member retention more effectively.

The premium version of Control Center will calculate the probability that members will continue paying their memberships based on attendance patterns, exercise activities, Net Promoter Score, and other data obtained via RocketJourney. It will also provide prescriptive tips to help managers prevent high-risk members from cancelling.

Clubs will be able to offer exercise plans to members via RocketJourney.

The premium version of Control Center will allow clubs to create exercise plans and offer them to their members via RocketJourney. Clubs will also be able to promote their personal and group training offering via RocketJourney. This will help clubs increase revenue, and it will help their members stay motivated.

This business model is part of a larger monetization plan.

By developing a strong network of fitness clubs and converting a significant fraction to paying customers, we will be able to create a sustainable software as a service business model. Nevertheless, the most lucrative opportunities exist in the future, when we start monetizing our user base. Please ask us about it when we meet.

Our Competition

RocketJourney is first in a new category.

We offer fitness club members a unique experience that no other app offers.

We compete indirectly with White Label Apps.

White label app providers offer custom branded apps, usually focused on membership management and class scheduling features. On the other hand, RocketJourney offers an open, centralized app, focused on gameful motivational features.

This means that fitness clubs don’t have to choose between paying for their own branded app and integrating to RocketJourney for free; they can do both and offer both products to members.

We partner with Club Management Softwares (CMS).

CMS providers offer software to help clubs manage memberships and payments. We do not compete with CMS providers; we partner with them by convincing clubs to integrate to RocketJourney, so they request their CMS provider to integrate with the RocketJourney API.

Pilot

Users love RocketJourney.

Users are telling us that RocketJourney is playing a big role in helping them get the habit.

More than 4,000 Sports World members have installed RocketJourney.

The first fitness club to integrate to RocketJourney was Sports World, the largest high-end fitness club chain in Mexico, with 50+ locations across the country. To date, 4,000+ Sports World members have installed RocketJourney and have formed 1,200+ groups among them.

RocketJourney has outstanding user retention.

1 out of 2 people who download RocketJourney keep coming back to the app after 8 weeks. This is exceptional considering that most apps lose most of their users after just 1 week. Also, we consistently receive very positive feedback from users, for example:

We recently began a successful expansion to more fitness clubs.

We started offering RocketJourney to more fitness clubs in Mexico at the start of Q3 2017, and we have found great interest. 30+ clubs with more than 250 locations combined, have now integrated or are in process of integrating to RocketJourney.

Next Steps

We are ready to scale.

Now that we’ve achieved product-market fit, our focus is to grow our network of fitness clubs.

To become a strong defensible business, we need network effects.

We have to be the first company to develop a network of fitness clubs around a centralized consumer app. To do that we have to invest heavily in product development and sales & marketing.

RocketJourney will become the winner of the fitness app market.

There are many successful fitness apps, but no clear winner. Part of the reason is that most fitness apps focus on a specific niche like runners or people who exercise at home. RocketJourney breaks this pattern because its core theme is exercise habit, which applies to everybody.

In the long-term, our company could expand to more habits.

The principles and mechanics that work to help people make exercise a habit, can be applied to other habits, such as eating healthy, reading, saving money, etc. The fitness market alone can make RocketJourney a huge company, but it would make a lot of sense to expand by going for new markets.

Many companies will be interested in buying RocketJourney.

The fitness tech industry has seen 98 M&As and IPOs since 2013. If we are able to develop a strong network of fitness clubs and active users, many companies will be interested in buying RocketJourney.