Fitness
The Netflix of fitness: this online tool may just change your life
Currently making waves in Silicon Valley, Let's Do This is a endurance events website set to completely alter how we engage with sport.
If there were ever a Wonka-style golden ticket for start-up companies, then Y Combinator, a tech accelerator that annually handpicks just 100 emerging tech firms out of 100,000 applicants to spend three months working with the brightest minds in Silicon Valley, would be it. No doubt.
Since 2005, it's laid the foundations for the likes of Airbnb, Dropbox, Reddit and other brands millions of people now engage with on a daily basis - and right now, there’s a UK firm it's helping to cause a stir.
The app is on the way
© Let's Do This
“We’re only the third ever sports company to take part in the programme,” says Sam Browne, co-founder of Let’s Do This, a website hoping to do for the fitness event industry what Airbnb has done for the travel sector.
“I thought it was a wind-up when we got the interview – but then I was flown out on a 10-hour flight for a five-minute grilling.” Thankfully, the interview was a success, and nearing the end of the company's three-month San Fran odyssey, Sam reveals how they're about to turn the world of endurance racing upside down.
Finding an event is now so much easier
Thanks to cutting-edge tech, an accessible interface and a hefty research team, Let's Do This makes finding events in your area simpler than ever. “Since we’ve launched it now takes users 50% less time to find cool events near them,” says Sam. “It also takes the faff out of the booking and registration flow, which takes ages and can include irrelevant questions when booking with separate sites, whereas we’ve built integration with the vast majority of booking providers. You can now book over 90% of running events in and around London straight from the site."
It's the Netflix of fitness
Let's Do This is a game-changer
© Let's Do This
Led by Olly Freeman, former world number four triathlete who went on to get a starred first in computer science from Cambridge, Let's Do This uses a special user algorithm based on Netflix’s own, as fellow Cambridge alumnus, Sam, explains:
“Netflix have done such a good job at knowing their audience - and it’s something we’ve spoken to the head of Netflix about – that they’re really good at serving you up what’s specific to you, and our algorithm is very similar to theirs.
“We analyse your fitness tracking, We analyse your fitness tracking, your data, your social graph, the types of people you’re running with, we know the gang you go and do a 10k on the weekend with, we know who you’re going to run that ultra-marathon once a year with. We can start stitching together the hopes and dreams of that collective group, which no company has done before. We have 84 different data points for each user and know what you’re going to like. Races are just the start.”
You can read and write reviews for events
Hotels, movies, restaurants, even jobs – it seems every major industry bar fitness events has some sort of aggregator or reviews hub right now. Which Sam is keen to address: “The endurance events market has been left behind with regards to users leaving reviews. We’re looking to build more social integration, making it very Airbnb-based.
“All reviews are based on personal preference - such as who you are, what your goals are - so there's no point in somebody doing their first 5k and reading Mo Farah’s review of a course, just as there’s no point sending an athlete who wants to run a marathon in under 2hrs 20 the review of a first-time runner. We can connect athletes at similar levels."
We analyse your fitness tracking, your data, your social graph, the types of people you’re running with, we know the gang you go and do a 10k on the weekend with, we know who you’re going to run that ultra-marathon once a year with.
There are some huge perks
Your next sporting event could be a click away
© Let's Do This
As well as offering the cheapest race deals (“we’ll always have lower prices, guaranteed”, says Sam), the other major benefit of booking through Let’s Do This is that you're automatically insured: "If you have a big niggle or injury a week before a race and can’t compete, get in touch and we’ll give you a refund," says Sam. "This idea was suggested to us by Andy Phillips, who set up Booking.com. He saw how much people loved the late cancellation option on their rooms and said it could apply to races, too."
You get one-on-one advice from sporting champs
“We’ve got a team who live and breathe sport,” says Sam, whose staff includes former Team GB gold medallists and European champions in various sporting disciplines. We work really hard to give users one-on-on advice and get the most out of their programme. We’re a very tight knit unit - during our time in San Fran, we live together, work together and for an hour a day we train together."
They have ‘forward-looking’ social media
The social network is community driven
© Let's Do This
“We recently signed 20,000 people in a week up to our service. People are taking to it because there is no other forward-looking event that a social network has been built around. Facebook is about memories and live updates, Instagram is about what you did, but Let’s Do This is about your goals, your hopes and dreams, your desires and experiences you have coming up on the horizon. We’ve quickly found the biggest driver to be attendees inspiring their friends, and we want to reward this.
It’s not come without hard work
Left to right: Neil Lock, Sam Browne and Alex Rose of Let's Do This
© Let's Do This
To win over race directors early on, Sam competed in 8 to 12 races a week over five months: “The only way I could people onboard was to turn up at their race, run it and input the details in our website in the background. Thankfully we now have most major race directors from Rat Race, Ironman, Spartan Race, Tough Mudder and more on the platform, and we receive roughly 30 requests from event organisers every day."
You’ll be able to compete anywhere
Going abroad for a work trip? Stuck for things to do on a holiday away with friends? Sam hopes to have the answer: "If you go to a new place, or a new country, we can alert you to events near you, be it a skydive, race or whatever. We also want to create ‘calendar inspiration’. We know where you’re going to be in three weeks’ time, and we can point an epic experience near you. We’re also going to be building an app, and push notifications will be a big part of that.
"There are so many epic events to find around the world but they are so hard to find and sometimes impossible to book, so that's where we come in. The whole drive of the company is we want to make every weekend epic."
For now, see what your sporting event this year could be by clicking the story below
