一家健身公司如何贏得千萬投資
On a recent Monday, PayalKadakia placed her hand on a ballet barre, lifted her right arm, and pulsed her fingertips skyward. Clad in all black, hair pulled back, she moved with the grace of a woman who points and flexes her feet as effortlessly as most people text.
不久前一個週一，帕耶爾·卡達奇亞左手輕扶芭蕾把杆，右臂擡起，手指尖指向天空。她一襲黑衣，頭髮後梳，輕巧地用雙腳點地又收回，像大多數人描述的那樣，舉手投足之間充滿了女性的優雅。Airy, mirror-walled spaces like this Avant Barre classroom in downtown San Francisco feel like home to Kadakia. As a founder of ClassPass, a monthly subscription service for fitness classes, she finds herself in them often, talking with studio managers, meeting ClassPass users, and, of course, working out.
這個四面都是鏡子的寬敞房間位於舊金山市中心，是健身公司Avant Barre的教室。對卡達奇亞來說，待在這樣的地方舒適自在極了。作爲提供每月健身課程預訂服務的ClassPass公司的共同創始人，她經常在這些房間中與健身房經理暢談，會見公司客戶，當然，還有健身。
“I basically live in workout clothes,” she says later over a mug of green tea.
她隨後捧着一杯綠茶，說道：“我基本上每時每刻都穿着健身服。”
But Kadakia, 31, is not an exercise enthusiast in the mode of Jane Fonda or Tracy Anderson. She doesn’t care if the users of ClassPass end up with trimmer thighs or carved-out midsections. She simply wants people to break away from their desks and devices and do more life-enriching activities. If they happen to work up a sweat, that’s icing on the proverbial (perhaps gluten free) cake.
31歲的卡拉奇亞並不是簡o方達或特雷西o安德森那樣的健身達人。她不在乎ClassPass用戶在健身後是否擁有緊實的大腿肌肉或線條優美的腰身，她只想讓人們離開辦公桌和電子設備，做一些運動讓生活更加充實，如果能出點汗就更好了。“Some people have that school of thought where fitness isn’t enjoyable, but we’re making it enjoyable, I think, by making it more fun, challenging, and engaging, rather than this boring thing that you have to do,” she says. “It’s about using technology and data to change this experience.”
她表示：“有些人抱有成見，認爲健身很乏味，我們要做的是讓它更有趣、更有挑戰、更吸引人，讓它變成一種享受，而不是必須完成的枯燥動作。藉助技術和數據，我們正在改變這種體驗。”Here’s how ClassPass works: subscribers pay $99 a month to be able to take classes at dozens of different fitness studios in a given city, like New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco (ClassPass plans to expand to more metropolitan areas next year). The company receives a bulk discount on classes—some of which can go for upwards of $35 each—from their providers in exchange for helping them reach new customers.
ClassPass的運作模式是：用戶每月支付99美元，就能在紐約、洛杉磯和舊金山等特定城市的數十個健身中心上課（該公司計劃在明年擴大可選城市範圍）。作爲幫助健身公司找到新客戶的回報，ClassPass能夠獲取這些課程的批量折扣，部分折扣甚至高達每人35美元。“We’ve gained a lot of fans of the studio who would never have tried it because it wasn’t in their neighborhood or it didn’t seem accessible for them,” says NiniGueco, founder of San Francisco’s Avant Barre, which opened in June. She chose to work with ClassPass over group discount providers like Groupon and Living Social because Kadakia’s company “attracts the right individual, someone who is actually looking to discover classes.”
位於舊金山的健身公司Avant Barre創立於今年6月，創始人尼尼o格列柯表示：“我們的健身中心增加了許多粉絲。由於健身房不在他們的社區，或者看起來不能隨便進入，他們原來可能根本不會進來看看。”她選擇了與ClassPass在Groupon和Living Social等團購網站上進行合作，因爲卡達奇亞的公司“能吸引到真正對健身課程感興趣的合適客戶。”There are limits: a ClassPass user can visit the same studio up to three times per month, and some studios block users from signing up for classes that regularly sell out. But by giving people easy ways to mix up their workouts—say, boxing one day, aerial yoga the next—the company hopes to displace standard monthly gym memberships as the default option for exercise. Kadakia likens it to “the Pandora of workouts.”
這種合作也有其侷限性。比如，一位ClassPass用戶每月最多隻能去同一家健身房三次，還有一些健身房禁止用戶選擇那些往往會售罄的課程。不過，通過給人們提供方便的混合健身方式，比如今天拳擊，明天空中瑜伽，ClassPass希望取代作爲健身房默認選擇的月度會員制。卡達奇亞把它比作“健身的潘多拉魔盒”。“We want people to use it,” she says, as opposed to gyms whose membership rosters are rife with clients who pay but rarely go. “The No. 1 metric that the whole company stands behind is our reservations number. We obviously need to hit our business metrics, but if the number of classes people are going to starts declining, that’s bad for us.”
一些健身中心擁有大批付費卻幾乎不鍛鍊的會員，與它們相比，卡達奇亞說：“我們希望人們多多使用我們的服務。我們公司最重要的業績指標是預訂課程量。當然，我們需要實現盈利目標，但如果預定課程量開始減少，那對我們來說不是個好消息。”Last year, ClassPass facilitated 50,000 class reservations; this year, they’ve done more than one million. In September, they announced $12 million in new funding, in addition to the $2 million in seed funding they raised in March.
去年，ClassPass完成了5萬次課程預定，這一數字今年超過了100萬。今年3月，公司得到了200萬美元的種子基金，9月又宣佈獲得了另外1,200萬美元的注資。“I was sort of surprised that they weren’t being swamped by more investors when I got in touch with them,” said Fritz Lanman, who sold his mobile recommendations company Livestar to Pinterest in 2013 and led the ClassPass’ most recent financing and invested in their seed round. “They’re improving people’s lives, literally. Not many companies can say, ‘We’re making people healthier and happier.’”
弗裏茨o朗曼是ClassPass最近一輪融資的主要投資者，他也是該公司種子階段的投資人之一。他說，“與他們接觸之後，我感到有點吃驚，因爲他們居然沒有被更多的投資者包圍。他們在真真正正地改善人類的生活。沒幾個公司敢說：‘我們正在讓人們變得更健康，更快樂。’”朗曼曾在2013年將自己的移動推薦公司Livestar賣給了Pinterest。ClassPass was born out of Kadakia’s frustration with finding an activity of her own. While working in the digital strategy and business development division of Warner Music in 2011, Kadakia—a dancer since the age of 3—spent an afternoon tumbling down an Internet black hole, searching for a ballet class to attend that evening.
ClassPass的創立緣起於一次讓人沮喪的經歷，那一次，卡達奇亞怎麼也找不到自己想要的健身課程。2011年，卡達奇亞是華納音樂（Warner Music）數字戰略和商業發展部的一名職員。從3歲起開始學舞蹈的她，花了一下午在網上搜索當晚的芭蕾課。“It was the most miserably frustrating thing,” she says. “A class is an hour and it took me an hour to find it.”
她說：“那件事太讓人鬱悶了。一堂課不過一個小時，但我花了一個小時才找到它。”Later that year, Kadakia founded Classtivity, a kind of OpenTable like system for reserving spots at fitness classes. While trying to market the company, she met her eventual co-founder Mary Biggins, who previously built marketing campaigns for brands including the National Football League and Disney DIS 0.36% . Together, they tweaked the company’s model and at the beginning of this year relaunched as ClassPass.
當年晚些時候，卡達奇亞創立了Classtivity，這是一個類似於訂餐網站OpenTable，供用戶預定健身課程的平臺。在做公司推廣時，她遇見了後來的共同創始人瑪麗o比金斯。比金斯曾爲美國橄欖球大聯盟（National Football League）和迪斯尼（Disney）等品牌設計營銷活動。兩人合作調整了Classtivity的運營模式，並在今年年初將其更名爲ClassPass後重新推出。With more than 1,000 classes currently in their system, ClassPass is kind of a golden ticket for workout fiends. But Kadakia has visions beyond “living the sweaty life,” one of the company’s unofficial mottos. Down the line, she envisions offering things like cooking classes and music lessons, and she sees ClassPass as a lifestyle rather than a fitness brand.
目前，ClassPass系統中有超過1,000門課程，這給健身愛好者提供了很大的方便。但卡達奇亞的設想不止於“出點汗的生活”——這是公司的非官方口號之一。接下來，她想提供烹飪課、音樂課等類似服務。在她看來，ClassPass是一個生活品牌，而不是健身品牌。“We’re not trying to be Nike,” she says. “It’s about evolving into new products that are going to make people’s lives better.”
她表示：“我們不想成爲耐克（Nike）。我們將會加入新產品，讓人們的生活變得更好。”Kadakia practices what she preaches: she is the founder and artistic director of the Sa Dance Company, a South Asian dance troupe based in New York, where ClassPass is also headquartered. Launching that group made her realize how rare it was for young professionals to partake in healthy hobbies (i.e., those not based around alcohol).
卡達奇亞說到做到：她是Sa Dance Company的創始人兼藝術總監，這是一家位於紐約的南亞舞蹈團，而ClassPass也在紐約設立了分部。創建這家公司的歷程使她意識到，並沒有多少年輕上班族在追求健康的業餘愛好（即不是圍繞喝酒展開的活動）“I woke up every Saturday morning and I would go to rehearsal, and everyone else would be going to brunch and getting drunk,” she says. “I was like, ‘I’ll meet you later, but I want to go do something I care about first.’”
她說：“每個週六早晨，我起牀後就會去鍛鍊，而其他人則會去吃早午餐，喝酒。我的行爲就像說：‘我待會兒再來見你，現在我得先去做我最重視的事。’”She considers herself lucky to have a career and a passion project, and hopes ClassPass will help other people find their mind-body cocktail of choice, too.
卡達奇亞認爲自己非常幸運地擁有一份事業和充滿激情的生活規劃，她希望ClassPass能幫助其他人也實現精神和身體的平衡。“It’s about empowerment, enrichment,” she says, citing Oprah Winfrey’s mantra, “live your best life.” (She considers Winfrey a business idol, along with Steve Jobs.)
她表示：“這一切都是爲了賦予你權利，讓你的生活豐富起來。”她引用奧普拉o溫弗瑞的口頭禪說：“過最好的生活。”（溫弗瑞和史蒂夫o喬布斯是卡達奇亞的商業偶像。）“We require you to commit and have an experience,” Kadakia adds. “We want you to find that thing that will make your life better.”
卡達奇亞補充道：“我們邀請你參與進來，體驗一下。我們希望你能找到讓生活變得更加美好的那件事。”
