Masters, an app for training with celeb athletes, closes a $2.7M seed funding round
Summary
Yes, of course, there have been individual celebrities who made their own fitness app but these have limited appeal and amount to a side-hustle for the celeb.Now a new startup in beta since 2021 hopes to become that platform where elite athletes can train mere mortals such as myself.Masters (see what they did there?) In addition, a number of athletes also threw in some angel cash, including Shaun White, Bam Adebayo, Kai Lenny and Aja Wilson, as well as professional tech angel investors including Anton Gauffin, Jakob Joenck, Henrik Kraft, Greg Tseng, Prerna Gupta, Hank Vigil, Janis Zech and Andreas Mihalovits.The company has signed-up world-famous athletes such as X Games and three-time Olympic snowboarding champion Shaun White; World and nine-time U.S. champion in 3,000 meter steeplechase, Emma Coburn; surfing world champion, Kai Lenny; soccer superstar and Golden Ball winner, Ada Hegerberg; and two-time Wimbledon tennis champion, Petra Kvitova among many others.Greg Drach, CEO and co-founder of Masters said: The future of learning is learning from the best, and in that same vein the future of training is training with the best. Our goal is to translate those winning methods into actionable programs that anyone can adopt.Masters is live now as an iOS app, with each course being cohort-based, meaning that those participating are doing so alongside peers who are on the same journey. Each course is presented in high-quality video.The startup was founded in 2021 by Greg Drach and Christian Dorffer the founders of Midnight Runners, urban running communities, along with Daniel Taschik, the former CTO/co-founder of Dubsmash, the video-sharing app acquired by Reddit in 2020 and shut down by same last year.Riccardo Zacconi of Sweet Capital commented: I always wanted to know what the best professional athletes do to reach the top. Masters has managed to distill their routines into tangible programs that anyone can do, and theyve struck a powerful chord with a lot of people.Capital from this round of funding will be deployed by Masters to sign new athletes, launch an Android app and improve the product.Dorffer told me: People love to follow their sports idols on TV, social media, print and audiobooks Masters represents a brand new publishing format, we call it interactive training documentaries.