Startup Spotlight: The Breakaway

Startup Spotlight is an interview series where we ask health, fitness and wellness companies 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 Jordan Kobert, co-founder and CEO of The Breakaway, the motivational coaching app for digital fitness. Jordan explains how he combined his passion for cycling with the explosion of fitness data to construct a platform aimed at helping millions improve their performance in their own fitness journeys. Breakaway is also a fellow Y-Combinator company.

What does Breakaway do:

Jordan Kobert (JK): The Breakaway is a motivational coaching app for digital fitness and we're starting with cycling. We make improvement simple, challenging, engaging and most importantly, personal. We do this by syncing data from the platforms athletes use and providing challenges and workout recommendations to improve specific skills and level up across 12 skills, and 8 levels of gameplay.

How did you come up with the idea?

JK: I've been a cyclist for over 30 years (did my first century at age 10) and was an early Strava user (#30) and employee. Through my own fitness journey over the past few years across platforms like Peloton and Zwift, I saw that there was more and more data and less and less direction. I had some success in building fitness through feedback from the world's best coaches and athletes and started to think "what if we could productize this to help millions improve?"

How did you turn your idea into a company?

JK: A lot of late nights, long weekends and hacking with some ex-Strava colleagues and a few engineers we knew. That was the start. We got into YCombinator about a month after we finished our first version of the app. YC definitely accelerated our path.

How are you using health data?

JK: We sync data from multiple cycling data sources today and use that to analyse, assess and motivate our users.

How do you see the future of our space?

JK: I think fitness data evolves like banking data - with data being ultimately portable and various companies building solutions to help serve customers and make the most out of their data. We are increasingly seeing a siloed world of fitness data and that will change. Users will want their data portable and they'll layer on solutions that fit their needs. We're in the early stages here and it's exciting to think about what will be built.

Anything else we should write about?

JK: I and my co-founder were among the first 10 employees at Strava and we lived through what I referred to as "Digital Fitness 2.0". It's amazing to see what's happening now in 3.0...lots of similarities, and some new trends. Exciting times!