Outdoor Fitness Class Marketplace

During Covid, I gained weight. My best friend was the opposite – he would run every morning at 6 am. One day, I asked to go running with him, but only if he let me pay him, since I would be slowing him down. I paid him 4 dollars that morning, and he went running with me, adjusting to my pace and teaching me breathing techniques. We started doing that every day. His infectious love for running spread to me, and slowly we formed a small group of runners.

I spent the past two years designing and developing a marketplace app that allows freelance fitness coaches to create outdoor classes. Coaches can charge a small fee between 2-8 dollars per person, and can designate an outdoor location and activity for all members to participate in. The app takes a fee between 10-15 percent and provides customer and tech support. I spent one year with Sling health funding to further design and build the app, and until the app is fully ready, I’ve been using simple tools such as google forms, excel, stripe, airtable, and zapier to validate demand. I have two growing youtube channels, a tiktok account with over 25K likes, and a blog with tens of thousands of impressions.

My goal is to launch this fully-functioning app with my existing users in St Louis, and slowly expand to other cities, with ambassadors who are users of the app in each major city. I hope to create a strong culture of fitness enthusiasts who are all excited by the prospect of group fitness classes in a cohort.