The fitness industry is booming. Whether you’re into Peloton, Planet Fitness, ClassPass, or Curves, there’s a brand ready to serve your workout needs. According to one study, this industry is expected to grow 171% in the next five years. COVID-19 ushered in a new era of online fitness options, and that virtual workout market is expected to grow even faster, as much as 33% per year over the next few years.

Ostensibly, it’s never been easier to access fitness training than it is today, and yet the numbers tell us there’s a chasm between resources and reality. In 2018, The Lancet Global Health reported that more than one in four adults worldwide leads a physically inactive life. That number jumps to 75% in some countries. This sedentary lifestyle leads to a host of predictable-but-deadly health outcomes like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. It also puts a hefty financial strain on already resource-strapped health systems. In other words, getting communities active isn’t just a nice-to-have; it can have massive global health and financial implications.

One resource for helping people stay active is the local, independent fitness studio. These are often small businesses that cater to a specific population and offer personalized, specialized group classes. Unlike massive national chains, these boutique environments offer consumers the chance to connect with instructors and brands with unique methodologies, building the kind of relationship over time that keeps them accountable to their health goals, often seeing better results.

But there are a couple of challenges that have kept small and medium-sized fitness studios from having their full impact. Namely, they’re expensive and geographically specific — the top classes are only available in large cities. Also, because of their relatively small size, many have struggled to make the leap to digital, which further limits their reach and impact. They simply lack the technical resources needed to compete against enterprise companies and digital giants.

Alexandra Dantzig and Erin Frankel saw these challenges firsthand and knew that by building an online marketplace for boutique fitness brands, they could solve problems on both sides of the equation, helping companies transform to digital while opening up access for consumers.

Alexandra Dantzig and Erin Frankel met while taking a barre class in New York City. Or was it Yoga? Or a HIIT class? They can’t remember now because they’ve gone to so many classes together it’s become a blur. They were young executives — Dantzig in finance and Frankel in media — and these classes were their way of staying sharp physically and mentally.

Then one day, their perspective changed. They were attending a friend’s wedding out of town and decided to squeeze in a workout at the hotel gym. They looked at each other, and then at the sad excuse for a workout facility, and they started to work the problem like entrepreneurs. Why, they wondered, was it so hard to get access to top tier fitness classes while on the road? Brands like Peloton and Daily Burn were paving the way for virtual fitness, but what about the thousands of excellent small studios where people could connect with an instructor and their unique style and brand? Could a virtual platform for boutique fitness brands make their services more affordable and accessible?

That conversation could have ended at the wedding, but when the two returned to New York, they decided to discuss it again over coffee. That day they realized that they had complementary skills that aligned uniquely with the challenge. Dantzig had worked in finance for 10 years and part of her job was building digital platforms for various brokerages that wanted to have a foreign exchange offering. For her part, Frankel had a background in video production, working first for CNN and then NY1. She then was an early employee at a marketplace startup that was acquired by Constant Contact.

They had the skills to build a video-based marketplace platform, and they knew the challenge inside and out, so they took the leap. In 2018, they beta launched JetSweat as an iOS app. Once they developed the mobile experience they expanded to the web platform in 2019, and after refining the multi-platform user experience in 2021 they launched their enterprise white label solution for studios.

When asked about early inflection points when JetSweat began to take off, Frankel says,

“It’s not about one moment. It’s about execution. It’s about solving a real pain point for real people.” For JetSweat, that process took around two years of signing studios, creating content, validating their ideas, and then doing it all over again.

They started the business B2C, making it easier for consumers to find and take part in boutique fitness classes online. But they morphed into a B2B model, selling a turnkey suite of services to fitness brands, from online scheduling and payments to two-way live-streaming to personalization — so they can up their game and find new customers.

For the consumer, JetSweat is about personalization and access. When a user logs on, they’re guided through an intake form that captures a few health data points. Then they’re offered more than a dozen filters that help them get granular with their fitness goals. What body part do they want to work on today? What equipment do they have available? Do they have any physical limitations? As people use the platform, it tracks their progress in real time and shows dynamic calorie burn.

The user’s health data and their personal goals drive a discovery engine that then introduces them to unique fitness brands on the JetSweat marketplace. Boutique fitness studios are as varied as clothing brands, and smart consumers like to be able to shop and compare and fall in love with their favorites.

On the B2B side, JetSweat is a virtual fitness studio in a box. They offer all of the administrative support and tools necessary for a fitness business to upgrade their tech stack, improve the user experience, and scale virtually.

One of JetSweat’s biggest value drivers is its high-quality video content, driven by Frankel and her team of videographers. They are able to deploy their team to create custom content for studios in a range of markets. And it’s not just filming a class so the virtual consumer is watching from a distance. It’s content created specifically for home users. The video, shot in 4K with three to four cameras in the room, includes the instructor plus a couple of people doing the workout as proxies for the at-home participants, without any special equipment. They’ve produced more than a thousand of these videos, and 90% of the video content on JetSweat is produced in-house, giving the site a consistent quality.

Another key offering has been JetSweat’s recent rollout of a two-way interactive livestream interface.

“Most people use Zoom, but we launched a two-way livestream service that is native to the JetSweat platform,” says Dantzig. “You can see and interact with your instructor. Instructors can use this feature to correct a participant’s form or to give someone a shout-out of encouragement. That helps with building community, which then helps boutique fitness brands take their classes to the next level and compete against the Pelotons of the world.”

Fitness brands can choose to be a part of the broader JetSweat community through its marketplace, which, for $20/month, offers users a choice of 40 studio brands and 800 videos. Or they can white label the technology and create their own walled garden where consumers subscribe to a single branded experience built on JetSweat’s technology.

High-quality, personalized fitness classes used to be a high-dollar luxury that only the lucky few, living in big cities, could afford. At $20/month, JetSweat breaks this paradigm without sacrificing on quality, opening up the best fitness offerings to anyone with an internet connection. Boutique fitness brands aren’t a panacea for the world’s pandemic of inactivity, but they are a powerful tool in the toolbox, and we’re proud to back a startup that is scaling that tool for the benefit of all.

We’re also excited to back Dantzig, Frankel, and their team because their marketplace approach is solving problems on both sides of the equation. Not only are they helping consumers stay healthy, they’re keeping fitness brands in the black. COVID-19 forced many in-person fitness classes to go online, and some small and medium-sized studios struggled to make the leap. Many shut their doors. JetSweat makes that upgrade easy, so great wellness brands can stay in business and keep focusing on their clients.

We’re proud to back JetSweat because they’re growing quickly and positioning themselves for scale. There are 30,000 users on the marketplace platform with 40 studio brands representing hundreds of studio locations from the United States to Australia. Their newly-launched enterprise white label platform has begun accepting studios and is ready for rapid acceleration this year.

We’re excited to back this startup because their data-driven approach will create a virtuous cycle for health and wellbeing. As more users create more data around health goals and progress and preferences, it will power greater personalization, which will help consumers create healthy habits.

Finally, Dantzig and Frankel could have taken an easier road, licensing content and using a third-party tech platform. But they wanted to build it from the ground up in order to offer a purpose-built experience. Their emphasis on quality has become a benefit for consumers and businesses on the platform, who enjoy the higher level of services. But it also serves the health of the startup itself, making it considerably more defensible in a crowded market.

Join us in welcoming Alexandra Dantzig, Erin Frankel, and the JetSweat team to the StartUp Health portfolio.

Contact the JetSweat team via email.

Passionate about Type 1 diabetes? If you’re an entrepreneur or investor, contact us to learn how you can join our T1D Moonshot.

Investors: Learn how you can invest in Health Moonshots through the StartUp Health Moonshots Impact Fund.

Digital health entrepreneur? Don’t make the journey alone. Learn more about the StartUp Health Community and how StartUp Health invests.

Sign up for StartUp Health Insider™ to get funding insights, news, and special updates delivered to your inbox.

Follow us on social media for daily updates on Health Transformers: Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.

Stories From StartUp Health’s Global Army of Health Transformers

StartUp Health is investing in a global army of Health Transformers to improve the health and wellbeing of everyone in the world.