Startup Spotlight: Cadoo

Startup Spotlight is an interview series where we ask health, fitness and wellness companies to share their wisdom from their own journey to success and also where they see fitness data going in the future.

In this Spotlight, we connected with Colm Hayden, founder and CEO of Cadoo, the motivational fitness platform that helps people reach their fitness goals using financial incentives. Colm explains how he came up with the idea after discovering how betting on fitness challenges in high school with friends created an extremely motivating environment.

What does Cadoo do:

Colm Hayden (CH): We help people reach their fitness goals using financial incentives. We are the most motivating fitness app on the internet.

How did you come up with the idea?

CH: I started betting on fitness challenges in high school with friends who ran track. The money on the line gave us an extremely motivating environment, and I wanted to recreate that intense experience in an app.

How did you turn your idea into a company?

CH: I would constantly pitch the idea to people looking for someone to work with me. Tim Parsa, who was working on AirTM at the time, decided to invest and work with me day to day on bringing this idea into reality.

How are you using health data?

CH: Health Data is vital to our business as it is what verifies all of our challenges on the app. We track running, walking, and step challenges at the moment.

How do you see the future of our space?

CH: Post-covid, everyone uses more than one fitness product. The only way to have an excellent overview of your fitness is to have all of your fitness devices connected.

Anything else we should write about?

CH: Cadoo currently has over 2 Million dollars in transaction volume on their challenges, with the top users on the app spending over $10,000 each.