This is a Title III deal, which means that all investors -- regardless of net worth or income -- can invest.
ShapeScale is a weight scale that digitizes your body in 3D, so you can see exactly how your body is changing over time.
It creates a photo-realistic 3D model of you that shows exactly where you've been gaining muscles or losing fat. Partnered with its app, you can track which exercises and diets are working for you and optimize your fitness.
MISSION
Billions of people exercise and go on diets because they want to stay healthy or transform the way they look. But there’s no way to truly see the changes as they’re happening.
ShapeScale is solving that problem by partnering its 3D scale with an app that shows you how your body is developing at a glance. It helps you understand your body and shows you the changes you've been working for—even if the mirror doesn't.
STATS
- Its initial marketing and product video went viral on Facebook with 5 million views
- 40,000 people are on the wait list for the product, with sign-ups growing at 1,000 per day
- Funded by Y Combinator in June 2015
- Built first working prototype in 3 months and ran pilots
- Built 5 prototypes iterations since then
As investor and YCombinator Partner Michael Seibel said, "The ability to see yourself in photorealistic 3D gives us a peek at how other people see us. It’s like a better mirror that shows me a really good and unbiased picture of myself. It’s much more powerful than just getting measurements. Because measurements alone do not tell you whether you feel better or worse. ShapeScale has a chance to completely change the way we exercise, eat and also dress."
Shapescale works like most scales do: just step on. But the similarities end there. Shapescale scans your body in 360 degrees and creates a 3D rendering which you can access via the app. You'll be able to see exactly how your body is developing in different visualizations and get personalized fitness tips:
- Using its dashboard, you can see your measurements, weight, muscle and fat percentage all in one place.
- Its "heatmap" shows you where you've been losing fat and gaining muscles.
- And its timelapse feature allows you to create timelapse videos of your progress that you can share with your friends.
The company is launching pre-order sales this year, and expects to start shipping its product in 2017. The launch price will likely be somewhere $199 and $499.
For its first year, it plans to sell ShapeScale mostly through online channels, followed by specialized retail channels in 2017.
ShapeScale comes with a freemium app. At its free tier, users will be able to set their goals and monitor their progress. At the premium level, users will receive tailor-made exercise and nutrition plans among other features.
Beyond that, the company believes there will be many other revenue opportunities such as paid product placements, e-commerce (tailor-made clothes, virtual dressing rooms, etc) and VR solutions (3D avatars for online experiences). The company has also been contacted by several insurance companies that are curious if they can use the information for underwriting purposes.
THE MARKET
Nearly one-third of U.S. smartphone owners—about 46 million unique users—accessed apps in the fitness and health category in January 2014, an 18 percent increase in users compared with the same month a year earlier (Source: Nielsen).
The annual smart wearable healthcare market volume will grow from $2 billion in 2014 to $41 billion in 2020, a compound annual growth rate of 65 percent (Source: CDW Healthcare).
Over 80 percent of consumers said an important benefit of wearable tech is its potential to make healthcare more convenient (Source: PwC).
Today, 1 in 5 Americans own some type of wearable technology (Source: PwC). It's a trend that is only set to increase over time.
ShapeScale says that it won't capture the entire wearable market from the get-go, but it's a good starting point, as consumers of fitness trackers and smartwatches are already conscious about improving their health.
It believe that, in the grand scheme of things, it will exceed the reach of the wearable market. ShapeScale and its successor products stand to replace every scale and mirror across households in the developed world and emerging countries alike.
COMPETITION
There are a number of competitors. Its biggest competitor, based on surveying thousands of potential users, is the mirror. To date, the mirror and traditional "before and after" photos have been showing everyday people results on their progress in fitness or general change in appearance.
On the high-end spectrum -- relevant to mostly fitness buffs -- there are a number of other methods to measure fitness progress, namely:
- Girth Measurements
- Skinfold Measurements
- DXA Scans (bone density measurements using expensive equipment)
- Hydrostatic Weighing
All of these methods tend to be tedious and often prone to human error. More importantly, none of these offer visual aids of where exactly the body has been changing.
There are also some more recent competitors such as "Naked Labs" and "Fit 3D" that focus on their user's body shape exclusively.
ShapeScale captures a photorealistic 3D model instead of a just a 3D model. It not only creates a more accurate and realistic model of its users, but also provide them with nutrition and exercise advice to achieve their health goals. ShapeScale is able to do so because of its unique rotating mechanism that allows for close proximity and high precision of the 3D sensor.
With respect to fundraising, at the end of this year, the company is planning to raise additional capital at a higher valuation from institutional investors.