(Ep 42) FUTURE -> Rethinking fitness with 1-on-1 remote personal training 💪

Rishi Mandal | Co-Founder & CEO

Feb 09, 2021

Hey friends,

Back again with another edition of The Founder recap - this is Episode 42. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less.

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Mission control:

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And who am I?

I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself.

Let’s get it.

This Week’s Episode (Ep 42) 💪

Guest -> Rishi Mandal, Co-Founder & CEO of Future

Mission -> Future is on a mission to democratize access to elite level personal training and help reverse the health crisis in America.

Episode available on -> Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Website

In this episode we talk with Rishi about…

👶 The origin story of Future, 1-on-1 remote personal training

🌎 Building and selling Sosh, a recommendation engine for culture

🚨 Analyzing the health crisis in America and where we go from here

😟 The 5 core drivers of health and why 99% of people are mismanaging them

📈 What makes Future more effective than all other fitness solutions

🔨 Brainstorm of the week -> Cameo for business, future of retail & analysis driven sports broadcasting

Summary 🔍

What is Future and how did Rishi get started?

Rishi is a second-time founder, having previously launched Sosh, a recommendation engine that curated the must-do activities in a given city.

Sosh was beloved by millions as a concierge on the cutting edge of culture and sold to Postmates in 2015.

After selling Sosh and completing his earn out at Postmates, Rishi spent some time as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR) at Khosla Ventures.

During his time at KV, Rishi explored several ideas for his next company, but kept coming back to the massive health crisis in America as something he needed to help solve.

“As we met brilliant people working on problems in health, I started to get a broader picture of health in America. I remember hearing at the time 70% of Americans are obese or overweight. I was like, there’s just absolutely no way that’s true. Out of any 10 of us, that 7 of us are obese/overweight…There’s just no way.
And it turns out that was the CDC stat at the time and so it absolutely was a good picture of where we were. And once you appreciate that that’s where we were, it absolutely becomes these unsurprising logical conclusions that the majority of us live with chronic conditions. That 80% of us will die of one of those chronic conditions. Things like heart disease, hypertension, diabetes definitely will kill most of us.
And all of this is, let’s say terrible and alarming, but I think what really got my attention was not that the quality of life was low and life expectancy was unremarkable in our country, which did come as a shock. The real thing that got my attention was that no matter how many people I talked to, how many papers I read, how companies I looked at, I couldn’t find a single person who was predicting that these trends would somehow turn around and improve. Every single person was predicting these will only exacerbate and that these are monotonically increasing trends.
Once you really face that set of problems and you go spend time with people and talk about them, it is so fundamentally, physically alarming that I couldn’t sleep at night and I was just thinking about it all the time.”

These discoveries led him to go all in on Future.

Future is revolutionizing fitness by enabling remote, 1-on-1 personal training.

New members are carefully matched with a world class trainer who creates personalized workouts each week. While the trainer isn’t physically with you in-person, Future’s app enables continuous dialogue through text and pre-recorded voice notes intermixed throughout your workout.

As you’ll hear in the conversation, Future’s retention and Net Promoter Scores are off the charts, signaling low churn and high customer loyalty.

Users love the accountability they get with their coach and the personalization of tailored workouts that don’t break the bank.

Future raised a $24M Series B in October 2020 led by Trustbridge Partners to expand and scale their offering.

🚀 Here’s why I’m a fan and excited about Future 🚀

I love the approach that Future took to solve this problem. They looked at exercise habits and deeply investigated why certain people do and don’t stick to their routines and goals.

For the average person, one will often start out with high energy and passion around fitness in January and then quickly fall off by February or March.

Why does this happen?

Instead of trying to guess, Future analyzed a different contingent of people that never fall off their routines - professional athletes, celebrities and business executives. What do they do that the majority of people don’t that allows them to maintain fitness year round?

The answer -> they outsource their fitness to experts.

Most athletes, celebrities and business executives hire world-class coaches that control their fitness plans and exercise cadence, taking all the guess work out of the process. It’s harder to fall off or cheat when you have someone responsible for making sure that doesn’t happen.

Now you may be thinking, “Well that’s great for athletes, celebrities and business executives, but they all have millions of dollars to pay for training. I can’t afford that.”

And you’re right!

Previous to Future, there was no way to get access to a world-class coach at a price point that an average person could afford. That was what Rishi and his team had to figure out.

Why is it exciting?

Because if they do figure it out (and I think they have), they will democratize access to world-class coaching at scale, enabling millions to achieve their fitness goals.

Rishi’s Startup Manifesto 📜

What’s a Startup Manifesto?

During each episode, I ask all of my founder guests this question:

If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?

Here’s what Rishi had to say:

Be able to identify what the uniqueness is about your company and figure out how to lean hard into it. For Future, our point of uniqueness is the 1-to-1 connection and intimacy we offer to users. Community is something that members request and it’s tempting to chase and build it because it’s something that’s worked in other places, but our laser focus has to be to build intimacy between two people that never meet in person. We have to lean super hard into that. If you’re building a company, look for that one truly unique thing and go all-in on it.
Build in phases and stages. Don’t try to boil the ocean. Understand which thing/decision you can solve today that will unlock some amount of security for you. Just try to solve one at a time.
The plan is always useless, but planning isn’t useless. Sometimes as an entrepreneur, you feel a little silly making a 12 month or 5 year plan because you don’t really know what’s going to happen. However, the exercise of building the plan allows you to ask questions about what needs to be true to succeed. The fact that you had to sit there and think through those questions gives you frameworks to think about how to make better decisions.
The team you build is the company you build. Once you build a team that is high potential, optimistic and can work independently to solve problems in the fog of a startup, then you have built something that can withstand bumps in the road.
The point of a company is to prove or disprove a thesis; it’s not to wander in the forest and ask what your business could be. The greatest companies start with a thesis. For Future, this 1-to-1 interaction is an unlock that we are trying to prove. If you have a strong thesis that you believe in and build a high quality team that works honestly and hard, you will only be better off.

What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔

After reflecting on my conversation with Rishi, here’s something that really got my wheels spinning:

The power of 1-on-1 coaching 👍🏽

The Future team was kind enough to send me a free month of their coaching product to try out.

I’m 8 days in and I don’t think I will ever go back.

For context, I’m someone who has been working out consistently for the last 10 years. I haven’t gone more than 7 days in a row without some kind of workout during that period.

That means I have a regular cadence and know what I’m doing.

To me, the fact that I’m “advanced” at working out and still this bullish on using Future means they are building something special.

I’m so bullish that I would invest as an angel investor today if given the chance.

Here’s why…

An accountability partner that matches my personality - You don’t need a coach for the days you are super amped about working out. No one does. You need a coach to help you get through the days that you want to skip or cheat your reps. What Future has done is provided an accountability partner that you can trust and rely on. Additionally, Future goes above and beyond to make sure that your coach is matched based on your personality and interests so that you enjoy talking with them. That means you’re getting a friend who also doubles as a world-class trainer - someone you don’t want to let down.
The workouts are personalized weekly - Even if you know what you’re doing in the gym, you’re likely not creating brand new workouts every single day - that’s a lot of work. If you’re like me, you create a plan for your workout days and then cycle through that for 3-4 months until you get bored. Then, you find something new online, create a new plan and repeat. With Future, each Sunday my trainer Alex uploads a week’s worth of new workouts. He’s customized them specifically for me based on my goals, progress, injury areas, travel schedule, etc. In the past, I worked out 4-5 days/week, but with Future, I told Alex I wanted some form of movement every single day. He mixes in yoga, lighter HIIT and cardio on my “off days” and then dials up the intensity on my “on days.” I love the fact that I have someone who is analyzing my data and customizing a plan specifically for me.
They measure you with an Apple watch - It’s tough to know where to go if you don’t know where you’ve been. In fitness, if you’re not measuring your progress and workout metrics (calories burned, heart rate, weight, etc.) it’s tough to know if your workouts are or aren’t effective. Future sends you an Apple watch that automatically integrates with their app and tracks each workout. Your coach can analyze the data and know where to make adjustments in your plan moving forward.

If you can’t tell, I’m a massive fan of this and want to introduce world-class coaches in all phases of my life where possible (e.g., recovery, personalized nutrition, therapy, relationship therapy, executive coach, financial planning, etc.).

It’s arrogant to think that you are better off trusting your own knowledge in every area than collaborating with trained experts. As Future proves out the model of 1-on-1 remote coaching, I’m excited to see other companies follow suit in different disciplines.

Wrapping it Up 📕

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Till next time ✌️

Kallaway