Meet The Columbia Grads Who Just Raised $60 Million For Their Home Fitness Product

Home fitness company Tempo, cofounded by 30 Under 30 honorees Moawia Eldeeb and Josh Augustin, announced today that it has raised $60 million in a Series B round. The round was led by Norwest Venture Partners and General Catalyst, joined by previous investors DCM, Bling Capital, SignalFire, Founders Fund, and Y Combinator.

Tempo Studio is a home fitness system that includes a weight set along with a 42-inch HD touchscreen display for streaming classes, lessons with a personal trainer and technology that uses 3D sensors and A.I. to analyze the user’s motion and provide real-time rep counting, posture feedback and weight suggestions.

“App-based services lack the necessary equipment, while pricier Internet-enabled devices often do little more than stream videos,” Eldeeb, cofounder and CEO of Tempo, wrote in an email. “Through its A.I. technology and all-in-one design, Tempo transforms any room into a complete fitness studio, enabling you to hit fitness goals on your terms with premium equipment, expert-led classes, and personalized insights.”

The large investment in the home fitness company comes amid a deleterious second wave of the coronavirus, with the virus having particularly detrimental effects on the brick-and-mortar fitness studios. Just over a month ago, 24 Hour Fitness filed for bankruptcy and closed 100 gyms citing the virus’ “devastating effects”, while its competitor Gold’s Gym filed for bankruptcy in May (two weeks ago German fitness company RSG Group GmbH won the bid to buy it for an estimated $100 million).  

At the same time, home fitness companies have flourished. A month ago, athletic apparel company Lululemon purchased home fitness startup Mirror for $500 million, while the shares of fitness platform Peloton have more than tripled since the pandemic was announced in March.

For Tempo, since announcing pre-orders in February, sales have been up nearly 500% and on track to exit 2020 at a $100M run rate.

The company currently sells its flagship product, Tempo Studio for $1995, and charges a separate $39 per month membership fee which gets users access to the AI-powered training built into live and on-demand classes.

Holly Maloney, Managing Director at General Catalyst, wrote in an email that due to Tempos’s mix of complete privacy and a perfected source of real-time motivation, she believes the fitness company is the closest thing a user can get to having a personal trainer in their home.

“We felt like their use of data, 3D sensors and AI to provide personalized weight recommendations, performance tracking, and form/stability feedback really set them apart from other at-home solutions already available,” Maloney wrote. 

Eldeeb moved to the U.S. from Egypt with his family when he was in third grade and initially skipped school to work at a pizza restaurant to help his father pay rent. When the family’s house in Queens burned down, they ended up placed in a shelter and living on food stamps. Eldeeb started going to the gym more often, initially to play ping pong, but trainers working there motivated him to take fitness more seriously. He graduated high school, became a personal trainer and used the income to pay for his tuition, as a computer science student at Columbia University. It was at the school that he met his cofounder Josh Augustin (CTO of Tempo), who was studying computer vision and robotics.

“Josh was actually my client during my days as a personal trainer at the on-campus gym at Columbia University,” Eldeeb says. “We discovered that my passion for fitness and his passion for computer vision blended together well.”

The two of them initially developed SmartSpot, a computer vision-augmented smart screen sold to gyms around the world, and were accepted into the Y Combinator W15 class. As the idea matured they bounced around a few names (including Pivot which is how they’re listed in the 30 Under 30 profile), ultimately settling on Tempo.

The San Francisco-based enterprise, which counts 60 full-time employees, had raised a $17.5M Series A announced in February of this year. With the latest $60 million Series B, the total amount of equity financing in the home fitness company has grown to $77.5 million.