Startup Spotlight: DEFIT

Startup Spotlight is an interview series where we ask health, fitness, and wellness startups that use Terra, 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 Kevin Serou, founder and CEO at DEFIT, the Web3 lifestyle app with inbuilt Game-Fi and Social-Fi elements.

Their primary goal is to make physical activity more fun, appealing, and rewarding. Nurturing healthy habits and driving long-term adherence to a balanced and active lifestyle by disguising effort via token rewards and NFT gamification.

How it started?

I did my first Ironman triathlon in 2013 and I've been hooked ever since. It literally changed my life on so many levels for the better. While the tremendous sense of accomplishment when crossing the finish line is uplifting, it is the journey and lifestyle that comes with it which matters the most. But preparing for such an event requires dedication, discipline, and consistency. And while some may find the motivation needed from within, some others need extra motivation. It is here that DEFIT comes into play. Enhancing fitness gamification via blockchain technologies and rewarding its community for leading an active lifestyle. Creating a new segment called Move-To-Earn at the intersection between wearables penetration globally and cryptocurrency adoption.

It all started with just a few hand-drawn wireframes during my lunch break at work.

I've been a user of many web2 fitness apps for years; Garmin connect, Strava, and Training Peaks to name only those. While achievement badges and other segment KOM were fun for a while, I didn't find it really sticky and thought there was a great opportunity here to pioneer into the Fitness Web3 space. A few months later I tendered my resignation and went on full-time building a community of early adopters proving the appetite for such a product. Fast forward 1 year later we are a team of 8 and established as a Top10 project leading the Move to Earn trend globally.

Though cryptocurrencies have been here for over a decade now, blockchain technologies still suffer from a lack of awareness and widespread lack of understanding of how it works.

People tend generally to fear what they cannot fully comprehend. It requires extra effort to educate our main stakeholders, partners, and potential investors, and to overcome some technical challenges to facilitate adoption and provide a seamless experience to our users transitioning from web2 to web3. Yet we've seen recently in the news a number of large organizations such as Meta, eBay, Stripe, etc. making significant steps in the space signaling we are closer than we think to a breakthrough leading to mass adoption.

DEFIT has no interest in profiting from users' data

That is something new generations, and myself personally, have been more and more concerned with over time. Each recorded fitness activity includes thousands of data entries and precious information. Ultimately we believe our users should own these data and decide whether or not to share it with others, eventually getting rewarded if they choose to do so. DEFIT only uses its community data in order to develop and enhance its reward system and in-app gamification model.

Health data are overwhelming

The average user is recording and uploading millions of data without really being able to make any sense of it. Hiring a coach to analyse them and develop a structured training plan is one way to deal with it, developing advanced AI algorithms is another, we at DEFIT chose to do it through gamification. Creating an innovative game play that disguises effort and dispenses with the need to deep-dive into complex health data analytics. Get fitter and healthier just by having fun and earning rewards.

‘I am extremely bullish about the bright future of the web3 fitness space'

We are only a handful companies worldwide to pioneer and lead the move-to-earn segment trend that emerged in early 2022. What's fascinating is that we are all coming-up with a different approach and model. While there is of course some sort of competition between us, at the end of the day we're all united behind the same purpose and goal to nudge millions toward a healthier lifestyle and tokenize the sport and fitness industry.

‘We're really excited about this partnership with Terra'

We're really excited about this partnership with Terra and our collaboration over the last few months. Allowing us to really focus on our core technologies while facilitating and simplifying the integration of the world's most popular tracking apps and connected wearables. Our first two game modes Free-To-Play and Club-Member will go live this July! In the meantime, we're working with a very talented and famous French artist to finalize our incredible BabyFit NFT collection which will be launched shortly after creating a whole new game experience as a Web3 player. We invite you all to give us a follow on Twitter and join our awesome discord community to stay tuned and embrace the journey into web3 with us.

How to learn more about them: Website / Twitter / Discord / Telegram / LinkedIn