Startup Spotlight #5: Recover Athletics

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I got the chance to speak with Nicholas Stewart, co-founder and CEO of Recover Athletics, about what he’s working on at his startup, and any advice he has for emerging entrepreneurs.

Recover Athletics is the injury prevention app for runners. The platform allows runners to create personalized recovery plans generated from training and biometric data collected directly after any run or workout. So far we’ve helped democratize access to best-in-class physical therapy for over 3,000 runners.

Startup Spotlight: Recover Athletics

Problem: Every year 75% of the distance runners in the US sustain an injury that requires them to temporarily abandon the sport or spend time and money on a physical therapist. Many PT’s require a physician’s referral and the average injury costs $400-600 to fully rehab, which deters many runners who need help.

Market: There are 18M committed distance runners in the US alone, and an equal number in the EU. More broadly, there are 8M high school athletes and roughly 500,000 NCAA athletes who could also benefit from seamless help with injury prevention!

Solution: The Recover app allows athletes to instantaneously create a personalized injury prevention plan composed of proactive physical therapy workouts.

Team: Our founding team met in high school on our track team! I reunited with Nick Kafker and Stevie when we moved back to Boston after I graduated from Yale. We quit our full-time jobs and joined forces to start the company a year ago.

Recent Success:

Stewart: Getting runners excited about our team and mission so that they organically spread the word about Recover. Over 50% of our new users come from referrals!

Recent Struggle:

Stewart: Making the decision to deploy a paywall. We’re passionate about helping runners stay healthy so it felt wrong to charge people for using the app, but we needed to do this to better understand our audience and inform the product roadmap.

Founder Advice:

Stewart: Stay super focused early on. It’s easy to get distracted by all the different experiments you could run to determine the long term product roadmap. When you haven’t built much it’s especially easy to do blue-sky thinking and get sidetracked by shiny ideas. Stay focused on your original vision and work hard to get paying customers ASAP.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Stewart: Here are three founders you should check out next!

• Matt Czarnecki, Founder of Verb Energy: We make delicious energy products that we sell via text message and online.
• Katie Diasti, Founder of viv: viv for your v is a mission-driven startup providing womxn with earth-friendly period care products delivered to their door.
• Ameet Kallarackal, Founder of Fisherman: Fisherman’s Automated Site Technology (FAST) is revolutionizing web development by creating faster, cheaper, and more effective business websites.

Want news on the hottest startups delivered to your inbox weekly? Subscribe to my mailing list, Founder to Founder (F2F): f2f.substack.com. Check out my latest F2F story: Startup Spotlight #21: Holdette.

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