They don’t call it the cult of CrossFit for nothing…
After leaving Twitter as CEO in July 2015, Dick Costolo hit up the fitness scene, joking that when he started CrossFit, he couldn’t do one pull-up. Now, he said he’s up to 152.
His passion for fitness went a step further on Jan. 19, when Costolo announced plans to develop software for a new personalized fitness platform in partnership with Bryan Oki, co-founder of Fitify.
The announcement shared that the fitness platform, “will go beyond measurement to motivate and drive improvement and make the road to personal transformation fun and social. For wellness professionals, from fitness coaches to physical therapists and nutritionists and more, our platform will be the easiest and most flexible way to extend expertise and guidance by orders of magnitude.”
The former Twitter CEO ironically shared the news first via his former company’s platform (@dickc), and in a rebuff of the 140 character limit, placed of screenshot of photos taken from notes written on his smartphone. We counted. Those notes hit well over the 500 character mark.
Costolo (right) at his CrossFit gym
Costolo’s business partner in the venture, Bryan Oki, runs a health and wellness class fitness service called Fitify, which is said to specialize in designing, implementing, and managing corporate fitness programs for start-ups and Fortune 500s.
Although no announcement was made on Oki’s Twitter account (@Bry_Oki), he did retweet congratulatory posts from other Twitter members expressing excitement over the new fitness platform collaboration.
Details on the name of the new platform have not yet been released, however Costolo hinted toward its ability to dial into connective wearables and fit trackers writing: “The fitness industry is transitioning to a world of specialized studios and programs with a multitude of connected devices and software trackers. We’ve developed a system that works within this evolving landscape, and we believe we can scale this system with technology and deliver it to a massive audience.”
Costolo ended the tweet with a tease to more information on the fitness platform being released shortly, along with an announcement of his joining Index Ventures as Venture Partner.
