Short & sweet...
I’m the Co-founder & CTO of EveryMove with my new friend Russell Benaroya. EveryMove will change how people think and act in terms of physical activity and their overall health.
Long & spicy...
It has been nearly 18-months since my last (and first) big entrepreneurial endeavour ended. In August of 2009 we shutdown Sampa for good. I had more than one idea since Sampa. Heck, I probably had two dozen ideas, maybe a hundred. Several of those I pitched to many friends and investors. I was mentally tired, so I decided I should stop trying to build a new business and give my brain a break and not be the boss. I joined Conceivian in early August of 2010. After six months there it became clear I needed to get back at building my own thing. I’m not getting younger and you get just one life to play around, and I didn’t want to regret not having built the next big company.
A few days before my last day at Conceivian I sent an email to a handful of friends telling them I was moving on and for them to let me know if they knew of any opportunity. Less than 30-minutes later I’ve got an email from Andy Liu saying he needed to talk to me.
I spent about a month talking to Andy and Russell Benaroya about this idea of how to impact people’s life and change their behavior towards physical activity. It’s not a surprise to anyone that as a society we are becoming more sedentary than ever, and that has tremendous long term implications on our health, on our kids health, on our academic and work performance, and on the cost of health insurance and health care.
Initially I was not so interested on their pitch to me. My two reasons were: I don’t understand the health care industry and I don’t know how to modify people’s behavior towards being more fit and healthy. But Andy is a great entrepreneur and investor, and he and I have been trying to do something together since I was done with Sampa, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and kept listening.
The Pilot
Russell Benaroya had worked with Premera Blue Cross to fund a pilot study with Premera’s own employees. It was a 6-week pilot where people would log their physical activities, earn points and compete in a team against other teams at Premera using the simple prototype we built. The Pilot was just finishing when Russell, Andy and I started talking about me joining them. Russell was conducting two focus groups with 20 individuals each who participated in the pilot test to understand their reactions and feedback. I sat in the back of the room making notes and observing everything.
Half-way through the focus group I was blown away by many of the findings and discussions. I won’t disclose them here because that’s our customer development secret, but I can tell you I was moved! I knew I could make a difference on these people’s life. I know I can build a software product that will dramatically improve their health. I was sold!
Next morning, we met for coffee and I told them I was very excited about the opportunity. After a week (or two) of negotiations, we were a team. Russell Benaroya is the CEO, and I’m the CTO.
Russell and I have very complementary skills. He has actually been in the health industry for the last six years. You can see his background on our website (BTW, sign up to get some emails about EveryMove).
I come from a tech-consumer background. Together, we are putting together a business and product vision that could revolutionize the life of millions (tens of millions? hundreds of millions?) of people, and that’s big!
But, what is EveryMove?
We are not ready to publicly disclose what we are building (read: we are still figuring it out). I can tell you is not a fitness tracking application (there are hundreds of those), it’s not a fitness game (probably a 1,000 of those) and it’s not a support forum or content website. It’s different. There is nothing like it out there. We are actually looking at building something that will nicely integrate with existing fitness and health services out there, from RunKeeper to Fitbit, from Weight Watchers to Spark People.
What EveryMove will do is make you be more fit and healthy; and by “you” we mean the average person, not the person that is already an avid runner or cyclist; and by “fit and healthy” we mean fit and healthy.
Why this is big?
You know how you use email instead of paper mail? You know how you save your pictures on your computer instead of shoebox? You know how you buy airline tickets online instead of a travel agent at a shopping mall? Yeah, the entire health industry is about 15-years behind that. Pretty much every aspect of health care, from diseases to forms, from fitness to food and diet still doesn’t have a meaningful bridge to the online world -- yet.
I hear people talking about how big the Travel industry is ($800 billion according to some) and how they are going to disrupt the incumbents, yada, yada, yada. Well, the Health care industry is actually over $2.5 trillion and this industry is still running Windows 95 on 386 machines! Talk about a disruption waiting to happen. The only industry that is as big and as behind on technology adoption is education.
I’m excited because this is not only a big vision with a big financial potential, but also with a big and meaningful purpose. That’s big! Stay with me and enjoy the ride.
I’m the Co-founder & CTO of EveryMove with my new friend Russell Benaroya. EveryMove will change how people think and act in terms of physical activity and their overall health.
Long & spicy...
A few days before my last day at Conceivian I sent an email to a handful of friends telling them I was moving on and for them to let me know if they knew of any opportunity. Less than 30-minutes later I’ve got an email from Andy Liu saying he needed to talk to me.
I spent about a month talking to Andy and Russell Benaroya about this idea of how to impact people’s life and change their behavior towards physical activity. It’s not a surprise to anyone that as a society we are becoming more sedentary than ever, and that has tremendous long term implications on our health, on our kids health, on our academic and work performance, and on the cost of health insurance and health care.
Initially I was not so interested on their pitch to me. My two reasons were: I don’t understand the health care industry and I don’t know how to modify people’s behavior towards being more fit and healthy. But Andy is a great entrepreneur and investor, and he and I have been trying to do something together since I was done with Sampa, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and kept listening.
The Pilot
Russell Benaroya had worked with Premera Blue Cross to fund a pilot study with Premera’s own employees. It was a 6-week pilot where people would log their physical activities, earn points and compete in a team against other teams at Premera using the simple prototype we built. The Pilot was just finishing when Russell, Andy and I started talking about me joining them. Russell was conducting two focus groups with 20 individuals each who participated in the pilot test to understand their reactions and feedback. I sat in the back of the room making notes and observing everything.
Half-way through the focus group I was blown away by many of the findings and discussions. I won’t disclose them here because that’s our customer development secret, but I can tell you I was moved! I knew I could make a difference on these people’s life. I know I can build a software product that will dramatically improve their health. I was sold!
Next morning, we met for coffee and I told them I was very excited about the opportunity. After a week (or two) of negotiations, we were a team. Russell Benaroya is the CEO, and I’m the CTO.
Russell and I have very complementary skills. He has actually been in the health industry for the last six years. You can see his background on our website (BTW, sign up to get some emails about EveryMove).
I come from a tech-consumer background. Together, we are putting together a business and product vision that could revolutionize the life of millions (tens of millions? hundreds of millions?) of people, and that’s big!
But, what is EveryMove?
We are not ready to publicly disclose what we are building (read: we are still figuring it out). I can tell you is not a fitness tracking application (there are hundreds of those), it’s not a fitness game (probably a 1,000 of those) and it’s not a support forum or content website. It’s different. There is nothing like it out there. We are actually looking at building something that will nicely integrate with existing fitness and health services out there, from RunKeeper to Fitbit, from Weight Watchers to Spark People.
What EveryMove will do is make you be more fit and healthy; and by “you” we mean the average person, not the person that is already an avid runner or cyclist; and by “fit and healthy” we mean fit and healthy.
Why this is big?
You know how you use email instead of paper mail? You know how you save your pictures on your computer instead of shoebox? You know how you buy airline tickets online instead of a travel agent at a shopping mall? Yeah, the entire health industry is about 15-years behind that. Pretty much every aspect of health care, from diseases to forms, from fitness to food and diet still doesn’t have a meaningful bridge to the online world -- yet.
I hear people talking about how big the Travel industry is ($800 billion according to some) and how they are going to disrupt the incumbents, yada, yada, yada. Well, the Health care industry is actually over $2.5 trillion and this industry is still running Windows 95 on 386 machines! Talk about a disruption waiting to happen. The only industry that is as big and as behind on technology adoption is education.
I’m excited because this is not only a big vision with a big financial potential, but also with a big and meaningful purpose. That’s big! Stay with me and enjoy the ride.
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