Kleiner Perkins

Kleiner Perkins is committed to respecting and protecting your privacy; please contact [email protected] with any questions regarding our privacy practices.

© 2024 Kleiner Perkins

Welcome Future

"An ounce of prevention is a worth a pound of cure"

  • Benjamin Franklin

When we first met Rishi Mandal many years ago, soon after the acquisition of his previous company, he had his eyes set on addressing the burgeoning costs of healthcare in our country. Along that journey, Rishi met his co-founder, Justin Santamaria. As lifelong athletes, their instincts quickly led them to think about how to prevent rampant diseases related to lifestyle through regular exercise and nutrition. To them, this would be the most long-term, effective way of making a dent in our $3.5 Trillion (and growing) healthcare problem.

$100B is spent annually on “exercising” and “trying to get fit”, however, we all know our own success rate when it comes to “getting fit.” Several studies have shown that most of us quit our fitness routines within a few months of starting (source). Rishi and Justin’s simple hypothesis was that having a personal coach was the best predictor of fitness success. A coach guides, motivates and holds you accountable. After all, pro athletes and wealthy people have long relied on personal trainers to achieve their fitness goals. But for most people, the cost at $150 an hour is simply out of reach.

Enter Future. A remote personal coach (a real person!) who builds custom training plans each week, adapts it on the fly, and holds you accountable every day. All made possible by the sensors on your wrist (Apple Watch) paired with an iPhone app along with optional Airpods makes for a highly effective workout and fitness routine. All for $5 a day with the added bonus that someone can workout whenever and wherever it suits them without the need to go to a gym or buy expensive equipment.

Does it work? Future’s members span 40 states and have been buzzing over the service since early 2018. On average, members exercise 14 times per month (every other day), for an average workout time of 41 minutes. More than 80% have sustained this for over 6 months. We looked around and we couldn’t find another fitness product – whether in person or digital – that has retention this high.

One of our favorite things to look for is the number of times a user engages with a product in the last 28 days (aka L28) viewed as a histogram. Is it once in 28 days, twice in 28 days…..all 28 days a month? Consumer products like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram have L28 curves that look like big smiles in a histogram view. Many people use these products only once in 28 days, but just as many if not more use these products all 28 days. The histogram view of use ends up looking like a big smile. It is no surprise that these are some of the most valuable consumer products on the planet.

Let’s turn back to Future. We saw something better than a smile, an inverted smile. We were astonished to observe that 85% of the users engaged with their coach for 9 or more days in a 28 day period. We had never seen a product where most users were using the product for 10-20 days over a 28 day period. It supports the hypothesis that if a coach guides, motivates and holds you accountable then you will engage.

Part of what makes Future so special is all the behind the scenes stuff – the platform and technology that allow each coach to serve many more people than they could touch/impact in the real world. Future helps them build workouts, monitor progress, and say the right thing at the right time to the right person. Think of it as a CRM + workflow builder + ML assisted customer service.

We are excited to go on this journey with Rishi, Justin, the amazing coaches and team at Future. We think there is a lot more we can do with the daily trust consumers are giving us with their fitness and in the future their broader health needs.

Join Future now to experience the magic.