Talent Hack, a platform empowering fitness creators to run a digital business, raised $17M in a Series A round led by Emergence Capital, with participation from Global Founders Capital.
While not the first creator-focused software to market, the well-funded, Latina-led startup is setting itself apart through much-needed education.
Business 101
Talent Hack’s platform provides payment processing, live-streaming, content hosting, email automations, and CRM to allow trainers, instructors, and creators to run a successful digital business.
Capable of hosting domains or embedding into creators’ existing websites, the software aims to be a seamless integration that lowers the learning curve on digital fitness tech.
Along those lines, and recognizing the need to reimagine fitness education, Talent Hack’s new funding will be used to scale its coursework and educational resources, like its Six Steps to Six Figures accelerator. Filling a void ignored by traditional certification licensing boards, Talent Hack is investing into the digital business acumen of users and reaping strong results.
- 50% month-over-month growth since launching in 2018
- Fitness & wellness creators using platform tripled in the last quarter alone
- Creators report increasing monthly revenue by 280% after switching to T/H
The education piece is a strong differentiator complementing an evolving market.
Members of the Rebellion
Talent Hack isn’t the only platform to realize the collective strength of independent fitness creators. As we covered in Issue No. 100, Arming the Rebels, startups taking a Shopify-like approach to instructors and fitness professionals are redefining fitness.
COVID changed how and where people exercised. Moreover, by unbundling the trainer from the in-person class, it helped the underpaid and overworked fitness professionals recognize their worth online.
Through greater accessibility to all-in-one tools for monetization, video production, payments, bookkeeping, and scheduling, the wellness economy has seen power traditionally held by clubs and boutique studios shift to the trainers and instructors.
And countless startups have been quick to stoke the rebellion.
- A “Patreon for fitness” model, Playbook secured $3M seed and $9.3M Series A rounds, both in 2020.
- Moxie, a platform for fitness instructors to host live/on-demand classes, raised $2.1M in a 2020 seed round, followed by $6.3M follow-on in April 2021.
- Connecting globally, MyYogaTeacher ($4M)—a platform connecting users to Indian yoga practitioners—and Denmark’s Lenus ($57M) have proven borderless scalability.
- Elsewhere, Superset ($1.5M)*, Salut ($1.25M), Curastory (2.1M), and Sutra (undisclosed) unlock high-quality on-demand and streaming video.
Takeaway: Even as gyms bounce back, trainers and fitness creators who have carved out lucrative digital businesses are unlikely to yield back their power and influence.
Instead, brick-and-mortars gyms will be forced to compete—or partner—with the creator class.
*Fitt Insider is an investor in Superset. We invest in early-stage health, fitness, and wellness companies. Learn more and get in touch here.
