About 80 percent of the U.S. adult population, aged 18 and older, fails to exercise enough each week to meet federal guidelines, according to the most recent available data from the Centers for Disease Control’s Healthy People 2020 study.
That means a majority of us are pretty lazy, ‘Murica.
The guidelines only call for moderate to light aerobic physical activity for 150 minutes each week, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity each week, including strengthening exercises twice weekly. As the numbers show, the older we are, the worse we are at staying fit.
Buddy Tech founder and CEO Pedro Ast wants to change all that with an app that helps athletes keep up their game after high school or college.
Specifically, the Miami, Florida startup makes a mobile app called Bvddy (like “Buddy” only spelled with a “v”) that matches athletes in a given sport with others who have similar skill levels and are looking to play at the same time in a mutually convenient venue.
The Bvddy app, newly available on Android today and iOS, asks users to identify the main fitness categories that interest them, from “The Great Outdoors” to “Weight Loss” to “Leagues.”
It then helps athletes, or would-be athletes, book dates for fitness activities, including traditional stuff like basketball, tennis, soccer, running or golf, as well as activities loved by enthusiasts that are not necessarily mainstream, like kite surfing, mixed martial arts or dodgeball.
Bvddy CEO Pedro Ast
“Bvddy is purpose-built for matching up grown-ups around physical activities,” Ast says, “and it feels something like a dating app in use.”
Players rate each other, which encourages users to be honest about their fitness, proficiency or how experienced they are in a given sport.
The company recently raised $1.5 million in seed funding, after raising $750,000 in angel funding earlier, to support its expansion and hiring plans.
An investor in Buddy Tech, Bobby Aitkenhead with Grupo IDC, said his firm backed the company because, “Unlike social networks like Facebook, Bvddy is not just trying to connect people. They are surgically attacking the pain points athletes face when trying to enjoy the sports they love, from playing with, and against the right people, to booking your place to play or finding instructors.”