ClassPass: $85 Million Closer to Being the Largest Fitness Aggregator in the World
ClassPass has that elusive quality that all startups crave — the ability to get people really excited:
- In 2015, CrunchBase said ClassPass, “May Be The Next Uber.”
- In 2016, Forbes put ClassPass on their list of the “Next Billion Dollar Startups.”
- In 2017, the Wall Street Journal featured ClassPass in “The Fitness Shift That Should Worry Every Gym Owner,” and Deloitte put ClassPass number two on their Fast 500 North America list.
Here we are in 2018, and ClassPass just announced an $85 million Series D, bringing its total funding to $255 million.
Clearly, ClassPass is something special.
We’ve known that for a while now. In fact, Techstars and ClassPass go way back, to when founder Payal Kadakia joined Techstars Class 15 in New York in 2012 — prior even to the company’s official launch in 2013.
“The community at Techstars made me feel okay with saying I’m a dancer, I’m a woman, and I’m going to build a massive company.” — Payal Kadakia
Since then, Payal and ClassPass have done amazing things. From switching business models to rebranding, the company has proved wildly adaptive, changing and growing and inspiring people to write the kind of headlines you see above.
The goals just keep getting bigger: after launching in 10 new U.S. cities last fall, ClassPass is now planning to grow into 20 international countries and another 10 domestic cities by the end of 2019 — and increase the density of its studio offerings in existing markets. Big picture, ClassPass aims to be “the largest fitness aggregator in the world.”
The headlines for 2018 are pretty great, too:
