Vint achieve $1.8m seed round


    Those movie stars huh? How annoying is it that they always look so perfectly in shape for every role they play? It’s those personal fitness instructors isn’t it, I bet if we could afford them we’d look just as good, no better, than those stars of stage and screen. After all it’s all Photoshop and soft focus lenses right. But of course we can’t, that would be really expensive wouldn’t it, and how would you even go about finding one?

    It’s about this point I should stop asking rhetorical questions and introduce you to Vint. If you’ve ever thought the above, or are just curious about a startup that has closed out a seed round then read on.

    Hailing from Sweden, the four person team behind Vint have huge pedigree. CEO Louise Eriksson formerly founded Scandinavia’s largest B2B ad network, AdProfit, while Arvid Janson was co-founder of Psykologifabriken and Hoa’s Tool Shop. Magnus Hult and Leo Giertz were both co-founders of the digital gift cards app Wrapp, plus individually Magnus was one of Spotify’s first engineers and Leo a developer of Spotify’s first iOS app. Those are not bad CV’s to have.

    Coming together they have developed an iOS app, currently only available in Stockholm, that connects personal instructors with eager fitness enthusiasts and professionals. The reason the app is only in the capital of Sweden right now is because the team have been vetting the trainers allowed to advertise their services through the app so they know the quality of the coaching will be high. They have a big vision for Vint, they envision it being used by complete beginners all the way up to professionals needing expert advice. Licensed instructors teaching specific courses down to enthusiastic amateurs encouraging novices, there’s a vast market for personal trainers at all levels and Vint want to get in at the ground floor.

    Together they have just secured a $1.8 million seed round lead by Nordics VC Creandum and also includes DN Capital, Kima Ventures, GP Bullhound, Edastra, and angel investors Richard Båge, Bryan Johnson, and Mathias Ackermand. Interestingly David Giampaolo, co-founder of the global gym chain 24 Hour Fitness and investor to the work-out concept ZUMBA, also joins the round. Perhaps he views Vint as the next successful work-out concept.

    Vint plan to use the funds first to expand the reach of their app across Sweden and take on many more instructors to their service before they look up and seek to expand to new markets, the first of which they have said will be the US. You can certainly understand why, they say that the total training and fitness market in Sweden is $600 million, while the U.S. market is valued at $40 billion. It makes sense to follow the money doesn’t it.

    They better not dawdle though, fitmob are already doing something similar in the US and I know they aren’t the only startup in the Nordics looking to match personal instructors with clients, this is an idea whose time has come and it will be interesting to see which company reaches the top.