Keep your resolutions and get paid with GymPact
(MoneyWatch) How would you like to get paid to keep your New Year's resolution? Well, if you're planning on losing weight and hitting the gym in 2013, you can, with smartphone app, GymPact. Join a gym, actually go, and you make money. If you don't live up to your goals, there's a penalty. Here's a look at how the free app, GymPact, works.
Rebecca Jarvis: How many of your users actually stick with their commitments?
Yifan Zhang: Over 50 percent of our January 1st users from this year (2012) are still active and exercising with GymPact a year later! On a weekly basis, we're 86 percent effective at getting people to the gym when they commit to it.
RJ: How many times a week do GymPact users workout?
YZ: Two to three days per week.
RJ: You're currently an iPhone App, any chance Droid users have something to look forward to?
YZ: Yes! We are finally opening the Android beta on January 1st this year.
RJ: What were you doing before you started your company?
YZ: I ran a fashion nonprofit I started while a student at Harvard, called Styleta.org
RJ: How long did it take to turn your idea into a business?
YZ: Quite a while! My co-founder Geoff Oberhofer and I came up with the idea for GymPact while at Harvard, but it took us a year before we actually ran a pilot with local gyms in Boston. Then it took us six more months to build the iPhone app and launch it.
RJ: What's your number one piece of advice to entrepreneurs?
YZ: Be scrappy. Figure out a way to prove out some assumptions of your business without funding, and without a tech build if you're not technical. This will de-risk your company, and let you know if this is a worthwhile idea to pursue and whether it's something you'll be happy working on years later.
RJ: If you could ask one person for advice, who would it be and what would you ask?
YZ: Sheryl Sandberg. I'm a huge fan of hers and would love to ask how she prioritizes the most important projects to work on, given a limited personal and team capacity and unlimited ideas.
For more on GymPact visit their website.
