ShapeUp Club is a startup out of Stockholm which has been making waves recently with a lot of under-the-radar growth. Originally built back in 2008 as a side project, it’s morphed into an interactive calorie counter on iPhone, Android, and web. You get a personal weight loss plan, can track nutrition, exercise and weight. Ok, so it might not sound original set against the likes of bigger players like MyFitnessPal… but… the app has registered 4 million downloads, with 450,000 monthly active users and a growth rate of more than 10,000 new installs per day (they claim). So not bad with very little active promotion, and for a startup that is entirely bootstrapped.
While developers Tove Westlund and Martin Wählby founded the company in 2008, now two seasoned executives have joined up to take the company to the next level.
Henrik Torstensson, formerly a senior exec with global music service Spotify, and Marcus Gners, from at teen girl gaming giant Stardoll, are now joining the company in the roles of CEO and Deputy CEO. Both have a history as advisors to the company, with Gners having been involved for over 3 years.
The startup claims the average users loses about 9 lbs after using the app regularly.
Their claimed ‘secret sauce’ is that after taking weight, height, age and daily activity level, ShapeUp Club calculates a personal weight loss plan for each user. The user then tracks what they eat and how much they exercise, using a calorie bar to view how many more or fewer calories they should eat each day to reach their target weight.
ShapeUp Club is also connected to the Runkeeper Health Graph API and allows users to import their RunKeeper and Withings data into ShapeUp Club, as well as upload their nutrition information from ShapeUp Club into the Health Graph.
One of Stockholm’s more buzzy startups, ShapeUp Club in the same new wave of companies such as Tictail and others.