Let’s Do This, an online marketplace for endurance sporting events, announced a $15 million Series A round, led by the EQT Ventures with participation from existing investors NFX, Y Combinator, Richard Oldfield, and Paddy Dear.
University of Cambridge graduates Alex Rose and Sam Browne, wanted to solve their own challenges and annoyances when it came to finding and registering in sporting events and races.
Let’s Do This has information about 30,000 races around the world, of all types and distances, with hard-to-find details and exclusive booking perks for its members. These include free cancellation protection, which lets people pull out of a race if they’ve got an injury or simply cold feet.
Beyond facilitating and fail-safing the registration process, Let’s Do This also wants to encourage people to live healthier, more active lives. In fact, the company’s recent $5 million seed round, led by NFX, earned investments from professional athletes such as Usain Bolt, Serena Williams and Paula Radcliffe.
Serena Williams commented on the latest funding: “I’ve seen first-hand the incredible impact these events can have on making people fitter, healthier and happier. I love that Let’s Do This is not only making events like these more accessible, but also helping to support athletes of all different fitness levels. Women are especially less likely to participate in marathons and obstacle races, so it’s really important there’s a platform encouraging people to step out of their comfort zones and make a positive difference in their lives.”
With the fresh funding, Let’s Do This will expand the team across its San Francisco and London offices. Lyle Fong of EQT Ventures will join the board.
“Lyle and EQT Ventures will be crucial to ensuring we achieve our mission of inspiring more epic experiences than any other community on the planet. We couldn’t be more excited for them to be joining the team,” said Sam Browne, co-founder and CEO at Let’s Do This. “I’ve spent a great deal of time with Lyle over the last 12 months and his deep product expertise and clear vision for how we can fundamentally improve people’s daily lives will take us to the next level. We’re fanatical about ensuring anyone joining the team shares our intensity and long term commitment to our mission; Lyle and the whole EQT Ventures team have consistently shown us that they live by these same values.”
“Perhaps not surprisingly given the space, the Let’s Do This team is one of the most hyper-competitive and driven teams I’ve met,” said Lyle. “They are tackling a rapidly growing $30bn market for endurance challenges, which has generally been low-tech and fragmented. Sam, Alex and the team attacks this problem with the same mentality and determination as they do when they were winning world-class events. I would hate to have to compete with them!”
