Get to know ACE startup founders & find out what drives them!

The ACE-List: We are proud and excited to introduce our awesome startup founders. The ACE-List is a regular installment where startup teams from the ACE Incubation Program introduce themselves and share a little insight into their startup journey!

Meet the founders

Lars van der Wal, Mathieu Wernsen & Mahmoud Shaarawy
Company: Gymstory
Industry: Technology Services, app, FitTech
Founded: 2018

In short

We develop an automated fitness tracker app that tracks someone’s fitness exercises automatically by connecting with fitness machines. It will be the Strava (or Runkeeper) for the gym.

Tell us more!

How did you come up with your startup idea?

From our own personal frustration that there is no good solution for a fitness tracker app: almost all fitness tracker apps need to you to fill in the exercises yourself or take some kind of action.

What is your company’s unique proposition?

We develop an automated tracker app that connects with an easy-to-integrate sensor for fitness machines. This enabling sensor is simpler, cheaper and more user-friendly than any competitor. The app is solely focused on fitness and is built from the fitness athlete’s perspective (we are our own market).

What has the shift from academia to entrepreneurship been like for you?

For me, I actually chose my master’s in Business Administration because I wanted to be an entrepreneur!

What is the best advice you could give someone who wants to start their own business?

Ask yourself if you want to give up everything else for making your business a success. If not, then you might not make it.

What are your next steps for the coming months/half year?

Getting our development going (back-end, hardware, app), validating our functionalities and finding more customers and potential investors/lenders.

Want to know more about Gymstory? Check out the Gymstory website or contact our head of growth Darya at darya@ace-incubator.nl.