“Nobody wants to see numbers they don’t understand.” — Alain Ritchie, Motivo Founder

The sports industry has long been the breeding ground for wearable technology. It is here that there is the greatest demand for the data, a need for it to be analysed and fed back in order to squeeze out that extra bit of performance. So it’s not surprising that Motivo, an app for training on a stationary bike, should find itself at the leading edge of the wearable trend.

Building the business

Motivo’s story follows the familiar narrative of the entrepreneur. Alain Ritchie and his partner Daniel Bachini were avid cyclists training for L’Etape du Tour, a bike race for amateur cyclists following one of the mountain stages of the Tour de France. They both owned a turbo trainer — a piece of equipment with a resistive flywheel used to train on your road bike indoors — but weren’t sure how to get the best out of it.

“I’ve got all these online training plans, I’ve got all these bits of paper that I’ve written on or printed off I’m trying to follow these workouts with a scrumpled up bit of paper, not really sure what I’m supposed to do.” said Ritchie. The only real alternatives at the time were full virtual reality systems, which most people couldn’t afford to devote space to or simply couldn’t afford. “It sort of dawned on us that actually we’ve got this incredibly smart piece of technology in your hands, you can stick it on your bike and you can see what you should be doing.”

Motivo originally was to be a simple virtual guide to using a turbo trainer, but wearable technology and the prevalence of biometric sensors grew quickly. “Even in the space of our product development we were like, well actually we can do these things that we didn’t think we could do. So we could start to build our scope. Which is why we now support things like heart rate monitors and power meters speed and cadence sensors and how it all fits in to providing a really personalised workout experience.”

A workout with Motivo is like having a seasoned coach stood behind you giving you instructions, telling you when to push harder and when to ease off. Taking advantage of the iPhone’s connectivity, users can wear heart rate monitors and install speed and cadence sensors on their bike and receive real time feedback on their performance from their screen. You only have to look at the reviews on the app store to see how Motivo has transformed the turbo trainer for many cyclists.

The app operates on a subscription model, offering 6 workouts for free before charging £5.99 per month for continued use. “Prior to the most recent launch, it was sign up and get 3 free workouts and then you go into subscription status. But what we found was that 3 free workouts wasn’t enough to give people a taste of whether they wanted it. We upped the freebie allowance so now you’ve got 6 workouts before you have to make a decision and that gives people a better understanding of whether or not it’s for them.” The increase seems to have worked. Ritchie reported that 60% of people who reach the end of the free time go on to subscribe for at least a month.

Though Motivo is a niche product born out of a shared passions and a desire to , Ritchie was always going to turn it into a business. “Absolutely it was something that we wanted, but that we definitely saw as a marketable function, something that would be beneficial to other people and could effectively make money.” Because of the personalised nature of the workouts, Motivo has eliminated the need for expensive coaches. All the workouts are developed with a coaching partner — BlackCat Cycling — giving them a degree of trustworthiness that is often missing from training plans discovered online.

Wear your heart rate on your sleeve

Heart rate, speed, cadence — the data Motivo collects about each workout a user undertakes is rich, but Ritchie is quick to point out, “One of our focusses is on removing the complexity of the data that you are collecting and removing the fact that we were just displaying data and actually turning it into something useful.” Motivo’s realtime feedback is a buck in the trend of many wearables which are geared around reviewing data at the end of the day. Rather than just informing the user whether or not they met their goal, Motivo actively helps them to achieve it.

In a world growing increasingly data obsessed, the sub-culture of cycling is already much further down the line. However, Motivo is not trying to pander to this trend. “A lot of what we’re doing is about removing the risk of paralysis by analysis and turning the data into something that is genuinely understandable.” It seems easy to take this philosophy at the heart of Motivo and apply it to the wider wearables industry. “You look at the Fitbits or the Fuelband or anything like that where you’ve just got it on and it just tells you stuff like your sleep pattern, stuff that you wouldn’t normally know. But it’s something that people find interest in. It’s then the case of making sure that people don’t get overwhelmed by what they’re seeing and get a benefit out of it.” This is what Nike try to do with their proprietary NikeFuel, and while this does simplify a large amount of data, what insight does it actually provide?

As wearable technology continues to evolve it looks like we’ll witness another battle of ecosystems as each wearable device connects to its proprietary app. Motivo however, with the advantage of being engineered application first, is an extremely open platform. Users can connect whatever device they own provided it uses Ant+ or Bluetooth technology meaning that dozens of hardware manufacturers are supported. For Ritchie, it’s a no brainer, “Anyone that provides a sensor that connects to our app is fundamental to providing the best user experience.” Motivo work closely with the manufacturers, something missing from other companies in the wearable space. It’s a relationship that depends on both sides creating excellent products. “It’s good to keep those relationships and work with those suppliers to shape what they’re doing. The more people we can tell about their product, the better it is for their business. And if we can give a great experience then the better it is for them.”

Again, because most players in the wearable industry are hardware first, there are few differences in business models. Consumers pay a premium for the wearable device and then enjoy an app for free. Again, Motivo flips this on it’s head by charging for the synthesis and analysis of the data from wearable devices. If the wider wearables industry was more open, there would be a definite opportunity for third party applications to adopt this business model.

Accidental Pioneers

From a niche product we can take some important lessons that can be applied to the wider wearables industry. Moving away from closed ecosystems to a more open, collaborative arena where hardware and software can be interchanged so users can get the data they want, presented and analysed in the best way for them.

Alain and Daniel are classic entrepreneurs, creating a great product to solve a problem they faced then scaling it up to a wider audience. But because of the lessons for the wearable industry that can be taken from their small product, I think we can call them pioneers.