Movement Reimagined: Why We Invested in Spyn
By Vijay Reddy, Partner, and Rajeev Madhavan, Founding Partner at Clear Ventures
An Operating System for Fitness Studios
Clear Venture’s investment thesis of operating systems for “X” focuses on building large vertical software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies aimed at underserved markets. Clear portfolio company Spyn is a good example. The company aims to empower health and wellness providers through computer vision and artificial intelligence.
Founder Gopi Prashanth says the idea for Spyn emerged when trying to help his son improve his cricket game. With few options in the Seattle area where they live, he recorded videos of his son’s cricket strokes, sent the videos to coaches abroad, and asked them to annotate with comments. With his computer-vision engineering background, he quickly realized he could create a machine-learning model that would provide feedback in real-time and improve the coaching experience by eliminating geo-temporal barriers. Gopi reasoned, “If I can do this for cricket, why not for other forms of body movement?”
Gopi explored the development of a mobile fitness app that applies advanced computer vision algorithms to analyze a user’s movement. The “Spyn” sessions identified areas for form improvement comparing them to that of the instructor in real time.
According to Clear Partner Vijay Reddy, Gopi’s expertise most recently as Director of Technology at Amazon Go, working on various computer vision and artificial intelligence initiatives, and his prior experience as a video game and search engineer at Yahoo! and Microsoft caught their attention. And since Gopi had already used machine learning to solve one of the biggest inefficiencies in retail with the check-out-free experience at Amazon, Vijay was convinced applying AI and computer vision to the fitness category might disrupt the entire industry.
Vijay met Gopi when Gopi was Vice President of Engineering at Landing.ai, and building the company’s computer vision system. At Intel Capital at that time, Vijay invested in the seed round at Landing.ai. and stayed in touch and met again when Gopi pitched the idea for Spyn. Vijay says that Gopi has been referred to as “one of the unsung heroes of AI” by Andrew Ng, considered the godfather of AI and machine learning.
According to research from Allied Market Research, the global online/fitness market size was valued at more than $7 billion in 2022, estimated to reach nearly $60 billion by 2027.
Trainers were already using platforms such as Zoom and WhatsApp, and most providers were moving toward virtual training because of the cost and convenience of virtual vs. in-gym sessions, and access to top-tier trainers regardless of geographic location.
“During COVID, everyone got accustomed to virtual training. On-demand content providers are a dime a dozen today with hundreds of providers in the U.S. providing an on-demand video management platform for training. From Peloton to Tonal to Mirror, everyone is gunning for the same clientele,” explained Gopi. “So, we decided to apply computer vision and AI to enhance the live virtual training experience for movement experts.”
According to Vijay, Spyn wants to do for the training world what Toast has done for the restaurant market with its all-in-one digital platform. Beyond just including the computer vision piece, Spyn is creating a vertically integrated platform for hybrid/virtual studios, integrating all the trainer pain points from scheduling to invoicing and payments, analysis and feedback, documentation, and to virtual live workouts, content creation, hosting, and management.
Spyn tightens the trainer-client loop and revolutionizes the way live/virtual training is administered worldwide by enabling computer vision assisted with asynchronous as well as real-time feedback.
Aimed at both end users and businesses, Spyn, just coming out of stealth, and exclusively invite-only offers a virtual training and management platform that already has over half a million minutes of usage, over 15,000 virtual training sessions, and is being used by yoga, dance, meditation, kickboxing, and fitness studios across three continents.
“We are breaking geographical as well as temporal barriers by going all virtual. That’s the thesis of Spyn. We are going to be the best movement training platform available for live and on-demand virtual content.,” explains Gopi.
Learn more at Spyn.
About Vijay Reddy
Vijay is a Partner at Clear Ventures, where he focuses on early-stage technology investments in AI + X”, or AI applied to a specific industry or function. Prior to joining Clear Ventures, Vijay Reddy was Partner at Intel Capital where he has been an early backer of leading AI and DeepTech companies including four unicorns and two IPOs that have raised in excess of $3.5 billion of capital and are currently valued in excess of $20 billion.
About Gopi Prashanth
Gopi is the founder of Spyn Inc. and has extensive experience in computer vision, AI, and large-scale distributed systems. He has innovated in the space of brick-and-mortar retail at Amazon — first at Amazon Go and then Dash Carts, and has been responsible for directing high-performing teams of over 800 personnel across the world. He has incubated, built, and scaled multiple complex systems from proof of concept to production. He holds a Masters in Computational Engineering from Mississippi State University and a B.Tech in Aerospace from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.
