Moritz Fürste, HYROX Co-Founder: From Olympic Gold to Creating a Global Fitness Phenomenon

HX is a sport we call it Fitness racing we always said we want to set up a $200,000 event that looks like a $2 million event the people that get in there we want them to feel like they Olympic athletes and that's what's

happening buying a h ticket is more like buying a car if you sit in that dealership and you want to buy your BMW you don't stand up and say ah I changed my mind you made that decision before

and this is the same for H Rock it's not an Impulse of buying product if you are an HX athlete it's their sport the problem if you want is we're growing faster in participants for us

operational excellence is still number one so we wouldn't just open another event just to have another event and maximizing profit at this point it's really finding The Sweet Spot of supply

and demand and still being able to execute and you can't reduce this to the business model what we actually do is we're building a community so that's why to why we're not raising the price to

300 bucks in in New York because you want to keep the community engaged [Music] fascinating Mo listen it is such a joy

to have you in the studio thank you so much for joining us today you're welcome thanks for having me I would love to just get a really good understanding we would love to get a good understanding of what you were doing before you

started hiero and the career that you've created for yourself as an athlete ah yeah it feels hat a long time ago to be honest but um I played hockey

All My Life field hockey is a is a mediocre big sport in Germany not professional uh sport at all um it's really only amateur level especially

when it comes to financing the sport or also what you can make out of it uh so that was never really an objective for me becoming a professional athlete in the sense of because that's how I make

will make my money and provide for a family in the future it was really just my obsession and uh what I did until I was 6 15ish a little bit for fun I would

even say I played tennis till I was 14 with one of the Z brothers was my doubles partner we played German tour played a lot of tennis back then Misha Misha exactly so um his dad Alex was our

coach and he they're from the same little village in the north of Hamburg where I'm from and we played in the same club uh where I also played hockey later and that was a little bit more my the

drive I had and then my mom made me basically pick one of the two sports because uh I was not so good at school and uh she said that's it um choose and

I chose hockey because I think most of my friends were just there and I was as I just mentioned I was not really focused on on necessarily driving towards whatever Olympic aspirations I

was just happy to be with my friend three times a week so I chose hockey and it was not a bad decision obviously looking back at it now but I'm kind of odd at that point from a focus because I had five times a week tennis training

with Misha verev and and then I had two times a week hockey training with a bunch of my friends but yeah that came first so I did that and then it was really a stepbystep career I I always I

kind of and I have to say that this goes on until today it I'm not a Visionary if that's the right word really not but I'm

very opportunistic so when I see an opportunity and I feel like that's in reach kind of then I'm all in trying to achieve that so I was never thinking

about the national team for Germany ever but when the first opportunity opened where I'm like oh my God they're actually considering inviting me to like a test Camp I went there I started doing

the math I I I evaluated myself on in the list of all the players that were invited where I would see myself and then I got up every training session and I reranked myself in the and then I tried to make the team I made the team

and then I made the next team and that's how it went on and at one point yeah we started winning at all it's kind of jumping forward a lot but you mentioned that kind of being opportunistic not kind of visionary yeah in business

there's always opportunities whether it's gym chains or whether it's own brand sports gear you athletic Leisure equipment whatever it is how do you

determine between an opportunity that we must do and how exciting versus hang on a minute let's retain focus and stick to what we doing best well you're right there are a lot of opportunities and I

think it's a lot of TR and error obviously I think that's probably the very common answer I guess uh but I think the good and the best the

separation comes from having an understanding for these opportunities and really evaluating these opportunities at the right time

with a lot of a mixture of knowledge experience gut and um not being too over excited by individual subjective

opinions but making rational and um than objective decisions even for maybe emotional personal kind of opportunistic ideas that are floating around the table

because you're right I mean nowadays you you probably 100,000 more than us but you get like your 10 15 emails a day of people pitching you

whatever and figuring out the ones that you really want to talk to is very hard and um probably you leave a lot on the on the back on the line that you should

have talked to that you might regret at one point but focus is so important and uh without the focus you can't build successful businesses what was the opportunity moment for you with hro I met my part nowadays my partner

Christian who I founded the company with in 2015 when I was working part-time because I didn't want to not work I I was focusing on the Olympics in Rio and I I always knew that I wanted to quit my

career after Rio and I didn't want to have this hard cut from zero to 100% in working and 100% hockey to 0% hockey I that always felt like a night like we

have a saying in that I that I use a lot quote a lot in Germany I I always keep saying athletes die twice and I think what I mean by that is the first time finishing your career your athletic

career your sports career is really a little bit like dying it's all over nothing is as it was before your whole life changes it's like obviously you're

not dead in that sense but everything is gone you're like your whole routine the like everything you did before um you're you get up in the morning with a purpose with a reason you know exactly why and

that stops the day you quit it's all over no one there's no newspaper calling you anymore they used to call you up wanted to know everything about you and then suddenly that stops they you're not interesting in that sense anymore and

it's tough for some people and it in other in some sports it's easier to do the switch because you made a lot of money and you started investing into into things or you know you become a coach in that Sport and you make some

money there or manager but then there are these Sports and my sport is one of those where you didn't make enough money to just live off of that so you need to have a plan I wouldn't even call it Plan

B you need to have a plan a do two uh while you're playing and mine was starting working in in in advertising because I did a master's degree in Psychology and a business

Bachelor before that in in media management marketing stuff so I I was like okay let's try this agency a guy kind of Mentor for me in Germany that had an agency I called him up I was like can I do some work for for you a little

bit so I did that in the end for seven years after all um worked there and we Hamburg was trying to get the 2024 Olympics they were qual trying to get a

into this bit and uh I was working for the Ad Agency and I called the my boss back then and I was like hey if if that's my that would be my dream imagine Olympic Games in Hamburg can we try to

run the campaign for Hamburg as the bidding City and he said okay if you want to do it do it um try so I called up Christian my nowaday partner who I didn't know back then who but who was

the expert in the city for like event operations everybody knew that that he invented like one of the biggest cycling races still in Europe called the cyclassics um the he called it the

marathon of Wheels the first ever cycling race where he put every Average Joe's together with Pros in One race no one ever did that before that didn't

exist and then Jan olrick won the won the to the France in 97 and then in 98 that blew up and so he became big and and a very well-known person for event operations in Germany so I called him because I was like if we are trying to

bid for the Olympic Games I need someone who knows operations and then we sat together in a room like this and we talked a lot about that and we ended up agreeing on going into that pitch we won

the pitch against 47 different agencies from all over the world including the biggest a sports agencies you know obviously also because they L the local uh the local part of our our little

venture that we created there and then uh Germany had a referendum it took like literally 3 days and it was over because Germany voted against the Olympic Games the whole project was gone but Christian

and I met in this process and a year later he called me and said I quit what I'm doing right now um and I said oh that's crazy because I just quit and

again timing that's how things work so that was January 2017 and in March 2017 we found it sorry it's a very long answer to your question but it's I think important to understand because again

opportunistically we started and we had a few ideas of you know doing some assessments with athletes and and providing them with idea on how to optimize their branding strategies with

in in terms of Partnerships and stuff and he said and I H I have this one other idea there is this I think there is this void in the World of Sports it's I don't know

how it's called yet but it's like running and workouts together there is something I know this he was so persuasive and convinced of that and we started looking at into that and started

looking more into that and started testing things and talking to people and every everyone we we talked to was like I think you might be right so we just pursued it and what was the actual

insight there is that people wanted to run and do weights in an event situation together what was that Insight that people didn't see at that point where I'm now at least in my head the there

was no insight there was just a gut feeling that it doesn't make sense that there's running in every sort of like

variation in the world there is uh bodybuilding there is weightlifting but what are the people actually doing in the gym of course some people are doing only weightlifting some people are doing only running and stuff

but most of the people that go to the gym and by the way what I did in training as a as a field hockey player was a variety of workouts from Sprint to

longer runs to uh fast twitch training to uh endurance mixed up with interval um workouts right functional fitness and

that was the first idea the void that we saw that there is no sport for that bucket of what people do and then it hit us really in 2017 at the fibo it's one

of the biggest Fitness and bodybuilding conventions it's in Germany in Cologne 175,000 people and we were walking by a presentation of like a gym owner 80 gyms

in Europe I don't know even know where and it was saying the chart was saying 52% of nowadays gym goers call Fitness their sport that was the it was in German but

that was the translation and we were Christian and I were like what but what is the sport what is the sport they're doing and that was the first time we really

felt convinced that what we are thinking about right now is the answer to that because they don't they they made a mistake they were mistaken by calling Fitness their SP Sport fitness was the

is the training methodology or the whatever what they do but they didn't have a sport so we created then started creating that sport so for anyone that doesn't know can you explain what a h

roox event actually is in the end hiero is that combination of things that I just mentioned in hiero you have to we call it Fitness racing the so the sport vertical how we Define it how we Define

it with our partners nowadays is called Fitness racing by the way Olympic sport in 10 years 100% I promise you yeah Fitness racing will be is that Sport and hyox is the golden product at the moment

in that vertical and there will be others hopefully not too big but the HX is eight times 1 kilometer running and after each kilometer there's another

functional fitness workout uh station if you want always comparable always the same everywhere in the world 83 events from Los Angeles to Sydney comparable in

regards to time of course little race very big conversation in our in bubble little race variations just like in marathons there's like height altitude whatever so in hiero there are also some

smaller differences but in the end comparable always the same repeatable comparable you start an AG group against your AG groupers we took a little bit of the best of all worlds from Iron Man the

World Championships logic that you can qualify as winning your race in your age group whatever but that's in in a nutshell it's functional fitness and

running combined into one bucket just like when Triathlon took swimming cycling and running and put it together as a sport that's what we did now so we don't claim to invent any of

the workouts or whatever we just put it together and you put it together in an event format correct absolutely correct it's one event format we host these

events in Halls that need 13 to 15,000 square meters we set up everything there have one two three four whatever days events there so my question then is like advance of these static moments in time

I wanton continuous Revenue generation I want every day to be pumping cash from hro how does hro become a continuous money printing machine rather than like static eight times a year we have an

event and it's an events business yeah so first of all it's 83 times a year so it's uh that's a little bit well that's a bit better no it's this year it's going to be 83 events and but but the

more important thing the scale and that's the question is still fair but the scale is through event days so 83 events at the moment deliver 170 175

Event Event days of hro racing 175 event days okay and so like average how many people do a day hard to say because in in average but we are looking at 650,000

athletes this year 650,000 okay got you and then how much do you pay per one in average I would say uh it's globally speaking

€130 per person yeah €1 130 per person yeah to get me to run 8K and yeah and yeah and hid on the table Yeah because you're angry that's amazing yeah well

done now he likes it love that that's that's that's a lot okay wow what does that take then just

pure participation Revenue to from an event no you can do the math uh overall I guess no no one's that good at math

are it I mean that's incredible 130 per how did you come up with the price for that um I would say we did Benchmark it a little bit at the beginning with marathons and other competitions that

you can sign up for it's funny because the the apparently the price point in Fitness or in in sports is to a certain degree determined by the amount of time

that it takes you so a marathon that takes you in average I don't know 5 hours or whatever is particularly more expensive than a half marathon although the event you have to set it up in the

same St kind of right so we looked at half marathons because our average time is like 127 130 so a little bit comparable to a half marathon so we looked into triathlons half marathons

for pricing Benchmark and that's where we said it but of course I mean in the end um the price point is uh a very local thing to a certain extent um where

are you able to charge the most and where are you able to charge the least uh I would say the most probably us yeah and the least uh at the moment I would

say Eastern Europe uh Spain um India India really yeah and what about now with um how many like applications you get per spot I can only tell you that for the UK because we still are working

with kind of a signup logic but because of the soldout aspect in the UK and the us we now start started doing ballots there like the UK London marathon is doing it so we had can you not just open

up more capacity uh yeah but so first of all we had I think for the London event we had 70,000 applicants for 16,000 tickets

70,000 in London mhm for for 16,000 tickets so yes we can scale by adding more event days but we have to do that

in a step-by-step approach which which is not very uh uh VC optimizing uh uh Perfection but I think it's very important well the quality of what you do right is the most important if you

lose that because we still have a very big executional task in operations we have an event set up that is on nine trucks that is driving from City to City

we have this 10 times globally and it takes like 36 to 48 hours to set up the event in this convention centers with the detail that we want our overarching

goal from the get-go was and Christian my partner who is driving the uh operations part of the business mainly he is and and our colleague Jacob there

we always said we want to set up a $200,000 event that looks like a a $2 million event so we're really focused on The Branding Style on like having it it's the black and yellow and white

these are the colors that we use very pure very holistic the the people that get in there they we want them to feel like they Olympic athletes because and and that's what's happening they go into

the arena and they're like what the [ __ ] it's happening here it's it's like I never expected to be on a on a like in a theater they are like they are like the athletes right and everybody's watching

them and that's what's happened because we have uh I I told you about the 650,000 participants for this year but there are also 600,000 spectator tickets that we sell which is people watching

the event live and standing there taking pictures and cheering on like and you sell tickets for that yeah we we sell spectar tickets what's the ticket cost to come in uh depends totally depends on

the market between uh 10 7 to 20 pounds something or Euros yeah and you have concessions and everything around it as well right so you're making an event for The Spectator they can get a drink they

can so it's prop sporting yeah but the main part is the merch really yeah for us that's the the main driver we're going to get onto the merch business

separately I I calculated 85 million in like participant Revenue 650,000 at £130 um and then 7.2 on The Spectator

side that is absolutely nuts yeah there would be there would be Global hrock all Races now you would have from a business perspective we would have to deduct

several markets that are licensed market for us which is like 10% of the markets uh overall the market um that would be a market that we don't control ourselves where we have just given away a license

why would you do that in markets um mainly at the beginning growth um of course uh growing at at the beginning we knew that there will be some markets that we will probably not touch

ourselves due to executional risk now there's not a single Market that didn't grow by more than 100% from year to year so we know exactly how to start a market

how to engage with the market and how to grow the market to a level that works until we're proven wrong so that's why we started India just now the first

event on third 3rd of May in mumb Mumbai so we started India end of last year and that's just timing because we started now we do it ourselves same with China

if we started China 5 years ago we would have given it away in a license it's actually quite the other way around now we're at the moment buying back most lies and to have full ownership again you mentioned you'd like to make a €

200,000 EUR event like a 2 million how close to that have you actually got what's the production cost to set these events up and run them it's all very much depends on that's a really a big

range what causes the range uh so like for example we have an event in New York City uh end of May which we hold on P 76 incredible location Outdoors we build a

big tent over the entire p76 15,000 athletes sold out in 40 minutes at a price point of $200 and uh we have do you could you could also have the most

amazing upsell on media packages cuz I guess the other thing that everyone wants and this is kind of the feature of our age but I want 50 different angles of me doing different things for Instagram yeah 75% of the people buy

their photo package yeah of course are you kidding me and you upsell that photo package yeah yeah of course on top of the $200 price uh yeah yeah how much is

that 35 bucks it's quite a lot and 75 buy it yeah yeah totally yeah not on us all of course the really interesting thing is the pricing elasticity of that I bet if you put it to $70 you'd still

get 75% we also would sell the tickets for $250 but we don't yeah I mean it costs over $300 to book a paddle court for an hour in Manhattan at the moment so you yeah no look the thing is we

haven't spoken about that part yet because and and it's very important for us because you can't reduce this to the business model we are what we actually do is we're building a community yeah

Charlie stop just hide my calculator no but what I mean is we are creating a platform for people you the the amount of businesses that have grown

on like top of the platform that we're creating from people offering training courses for this um specifically uh

selling thousands of monthly uh um of people that that pay their the monthly fee to train like that athlete or whatever to apparel stuff uh

equipment um podcasts and other stuff on just on H rocks and and other other things we I think we really see ourselves in enabling people to work in

this space of Fitness racing now and Community is the main driver of all of that so that's why it's just my reply to why we're not raising the price to 300

bucks in in New York because you want to keep the community engaged you want to you don't want to make you don't want to give them the feeling that you're just

trying to MK them to the last bit I I totally agree you shouldn't boil it just down to numbers like Charlie was trying to do that so back to the question on cost per event

dick like it varies greatly New York I guess is super expensive where is super cheap super cheap would be in that ballpark 200k okay so 200k and so like

on a margin structure basis you're like doing what sort of margin structure you would probably say that um well of the The Good the thing is if

we wouldn't have a 4-day event we would the costs are scaled down as well big time you know so it is in it is a little bit difficult to say but you would probably say that a one-day event would

be profitable only from participant revenues with 1500 participants roughly 1,800 maybe wow so anything above 1500 is pure profit yeah on on cost level

right not on overhead level but yeah got you okay and then because you do four days then we would do four days if we see the demand was it just always this

popular no no no no no we started in 2017 we went straight into Co we came back out of covid in 20 yeah one in in Dallas a little bit quicker in Texas no

one cared so covid hits what do you do Co hits we sat there denied for a few weeks pretended to just not believing in it

not in a bad way but just in a very yeah challenging way because we are so ambitious and we just really couldn't believe it uh and then we were trying to look into Solutions and one solution

felt like and in the end the world did that because they created bubbles for the NBA for you know a lot of sports leagues in 20 end of 21 whatever but we did that in April 20120 we we were

working on a solution for this BB what they later called the bubble and sourcing tests from China we I had the first calls at 5:00 a.m. in the morning with some fabrics and shenzen or

whatever and then the last calls late at night in the US because they apparently have the best masks or I don't know so yeah we were sourcing these tests and trying to make it make it a thing that

that we can create a bubble and then they denied that so they said yeah sounds great but you can't have a 2,000 people event just because you test the people we don't allow that and then we said yeah what are we doing with the

tests and The Masks now that we have so we we rent down the bar below our office that was closed anyway we paid that dude a few bucks he was happy and then we

opened a test center and then it got from there it escalated very quickly and we ended up having 150 test centers in Germany the government providing the funds for that everybody got tested for

free and uh uh yeah hatched the business if you want um at that time but let's be honest right that say being able to Pivot like that has saved the company through the time which for Live Events

business most H wouldn't have survived without H wouldn't exist without that but to be fair we invested all of that into into the business not a single dollar ended up on on our accounts before we go to merch because that's

really interesting separately we look at the success now Harry said has it always been the successful can you take us to that first event what actually was it like when you opened and you launched and how did you

engage in it everyone talks about Community but very few people can actually build and sustain it again I don't want to bore you with everything but two bits of the story first

18th of November 2017 first ever event Hamburg Germany our hometown we obviously invited all of our friends and asked them to invite everyone I think we

sold 200 tickets had 650 people there which we thought was pretty decent for a very new thing that no one knew before uh and people liked it it was good it

was 650 people but it was good so then uh yeah that was the very first try and Taste of H Rox and that was 201 17 17 and how did you fund it you've got to

get equipment in there you've got to get the ourselves yeah the first event we found out everything till 2019 was bootstrapped and was your price point set for participation then or is it has

it changed since it changed since it changed since we I think we went up by that's probably 25 30% since then we I think we started at 69 EUR and now we're

at 99 starting point press Point whatever did you have a moment where you're like God will anyone turn up yeah of course like until the day before the event uh of course yeah that's that's

Founders Founders Fair found fear yeah and so you do the first event 650 turn up and you're like great we have some signs of product Market F exactly and then the second event the second event

had let's say 1300 people so we grew by 100% that was the growth that we saw in every single event from there since then except in the US I can talk about that in a minute first event ever in the UK

Birmingham 650 people six three four events later London 8,000 so that was 2020 how are you driving that growth well because you asked about

that the creating from the very first day we wanted and utilize mainly social media to build the community it still is

it's basically 90% Instagram because we are very bad at Tik Tok and uh nobody in our company knows anything about that so we're very bad at that um we're quite good in content creation I think that's

probably our biggest strength on the marketing side that we we do really good content and we also have a great community that is very let's say instagrammable and they also like to show that so the organic growth is crazy

was crazy from the get-go what do you think about your content is great like why do you think it's worked I think it's very engaging um I think that our team made somehow it's you know it's a new sport it's very difficult to cover

and I think no one can cover it better than ourselves we see this often times that now production companies come in and they shoot something stuff and I always feel like they don't get what we get so it's very difficult for others to

come in and and really produce something great and Al also the quality is just good we have just really good guys you know what I think is actually the best thing though about your business is like I'm so sorry to be so blunt I've never

seen a piece of hiero generated content from hiero I've seen thousands from the athletes who do it m and so that's the best thing ever when your customers are the ones singing the Praises that's why

I'm saying the organic growth and boost on on social media and the reach we get there earned is unbelievable did you ever think about doing paid influencers paid athletes was that ever a strategy

yeah we do to a certain extent yes uh there are a few that I mean whatever you want to call paid they get our merge packages and and stuff like that um we wouldn't really invest much financially

into into ambassadors because we simply don't necessarily need to um with that organic stuff that we're talking about but for example and this might be a

shock but I till this day I don't think I spent a single Dollar on digital marketing paid media none why didn't feel like it makes sense hiero is a very

explainable explanatory product you don't it's not you don't snap called taking part in hiero when you see this on an ad in Instagram so my main focus

from the beginning was rather explaining the product and leading people to the process of finding different touch points like gyms your mates in Instagram

channel uh just Word of Mouth whatever and then having good very suitable content on the website that explains what it is because I I always explain

this buying a hiero ticket if you haven't heard if if we're talking top of funnel buying a hiero ticket is more like buying a car if you sit in that dealership and you want to buy your BMW

you don't stand up and say ah I changed my mind you made that decision before you go there to sign the deal and this is the same for iro so I don't need to

invest in an ad uh that is showing six seconds where I have to convince someone in six seconds to buy something that he doesn't know it's not an impulsive buying product so we invest into

explaining the product explaining what it is and then we're happy for someone to buy that ticket in six months because we know the return on invest is so high because the the lifetime value of of our

athletes is not even defined yet because the average participant takes probably x times part in HX that was going to be my question which like how do you think about LTV of an a HX athlete and like

retention is everything in most businesses is it in this or 100% it is of course because but and this is

important because we mentioning like the hiero race or what it's a sport we are very very very strict in the term with

the term sport HX is a sport and what is the beauty about if you have a sport if you love football you will watch it every week or every Whatever Whenever

you can if you play football you always play football if you are an HX athlete it's not a bucket list event it isn't for some people maybe but for the

majority of the people it's their sport so you want to find as many opportunities as you can to train for your sport yes but also to actually do your sport and that's why the retention

and and the LTV of hirox is not defined yet because we can only I can only always give everyone the day yearly update because you know we're still but do you think then it will be like 90%

repeat if they can yeah maybe but that's not possible because the growth is too big that those that would be very very circumstantial if those 90% surprisingly

get the tickets for an event we still have a 50/50 6040 um average but yeah if they would so does that influence your ideal customer Prof profile do you want

it to be accessible to everyone to me who sees this as something that I would train to and I do use it as that Target event versus a highly trained exercise

fanatic who wants to do multiple events there is no ideal customer it's the it's really only about there let's say we we

segment our audience into different um segments so we have the let's say Average Joe athlete let's call her a she she's 45 has three kids works out two

times a week did some sports back in her days and um and now is going to the gym as I said twice a week and doesn't even know that she's doing something to train

for hrock because she does some running and some little bit of weights or whatever cardio stuff as well and uh now she hears about this through her

friend's Instagram page or whatever and suddenly she feels really challenged to maybe put it to a test if she can actually it and we see this every single day we have 50% participant is women

female that is I mean you know this better than I but this is huge in the fitness industry in the endurance industry uh comparing

to marathons and triathlons what what is comparison to marathons and tri 35 fish if so big difference big difference

probably less and uh and why because there this is the sweet spot for women to put what they do into perspective and into training and they

don't have to compete with their husbands men whatever they can if they want but they can also compete just amongst themselves in the women's category just like the men who are uh

fighting against each other and taking off their shirts uh the women enjoy that a lot as I said 50% of the participants do it and I think the I think that that

is one of the most interesting aspects about about Hierro in the end and you can do it mixed as well can't you so you got singles you got doubles events you got mixed doubles events yeah the variety is Big you can do relays which

is often times a good starting point entry point especially in Asia they use that a lot um uh uh at the Hong Kong event I think we had almost 30% relays um so that is a good starting point for

for people to test the waters where you only have to run two times one kilometer and do two workouts and then you split it amongst four people if you had many more events in a city say you had 12 events in London would you lose the

specialness of High Rock because it's twoo available 100% we do have two already with a total of eight days or nine days in London um it's still it's

still not we still have room to grow we're eventually looking at the first ever week of Fitness racing in London Olympia that will happen uh very soon

with uh seven days of HX racing uh and people complain a lot about um that there are not enough spots because again London was sold out in a minute um

literally and uh that is difficult and that's but if you're growing we're growing with 100% in offerings in participation slots per year for the

last two years the problem if you want is we're growing faster in participants but coming back to the point we discussed earlier for us operational excellence is still number

one so we wouldn't just open another event just to have another event and maximizing profit at this point it's really finding The Sweet Spot of supply and demand and still being able to

execute and with that growth we grew to a lot of uh employees over the last uh 12 months and controlling that growth also on the on the back end of the

business is certainly very important as well can we talks Partnerships and what I mean by this is I want to I want to approach this in three three ways we have gyms we have the brand Partnerships

you've created and then we also move into the merchandise can we start with the GS because the affiliate partnership you have here you mentioned mother who may not realize she's training in but now you started to

create a community of Fitness organizations who were part of the hiero family how has this been working it's funny because we created a revenue stream out of a completely different

approach when we started in 2017 myself and Christian we really I mean I went I drove to a local gym in Hamburg in the north of Hamburg where there was a crew

of 25 um elderly women working out and I showed them some hro workouts and invited them to the race on the 17th of November or 18th of November in 2017 and

told them about yeah this is our new idea and it's great and they by the way they came up and that particular gym has been part of it since then it was it's really funny but we basically paid them

the gyms to whatever put like our our posters in their lockers or uh send an email to their newsletter chain to you know make people come to H rocks one year

later we switched the model and suddenly the gyms paid us to get a license for H rocks to be able to promote hrock because we realized we are solving a

problem for a lot of the gyms out there which is community people are going with their headphones into the gyms and working out but it's very very exchangeable it's a price point game if you want no one drives 45 minutes

through the city to their favorite gym you drive 45 minutes to your favorite sports club if you play 10 is you might drive 30 minutes to the city but not many people maybe London is different everything's 45 minutes here but so what

do they get for license with hro we in the end to a certain extent copied that logic from the CrossFit business model so you can become a hiero Training Club as we call it nowadays we have two

different levels but the hiero training Club basically allows you to offer hiero group class training we provide a lot of material for that uh we coach your coaches you can you can promote hiero

you can you can um advertise with hro in your gym and we just recently announced that now the we have 5,000 Global partner gyms that that bought the affiliation uh uh from us how much do

they pay for affiliation uh 1,500 bucks a year so it's not it's not really expensive it's basically you return that by having two or three new members 1,500

bucks a year mhm that's nothing yeah that's nothing which is which is also the idea because so they're not turning their business into a high Rock Gym the the training Club doesn't necessarily uh

they they do other stuff as well they do everything but they also offer hro courses hro classes and stuff like that and then the second level would be the hiero what we call H performance center

that would be a full invest into uh that business just starting we just recently opened the very first one or not us but our partners but that will we will see that growing over the next couple years especially here in the UK big time I I I

imagine but the there's another logic behind that because it's not about it it's great Revenue I mean look it's crazy I mean something we paid for like a marketing channel because that

was the first thing I said to back in the day our first marketing employee I said like look let back to the paid media example let's look into channels where we don't have to worry about

hitting our target audience and gyms were such a logical solution because they're all there right they're all target audience literally 100% check so we that's what we did we sent everyone to the gyms talk to them talk to the

owners convince them make them come to the event and so on and so forth and now suddenly it turned into a revenue stream how great is that so it's not about maximizing profit at that end

necessarily but it's still 5,000 marketeers that are promoting our product to their 500 to 5,000 members

every single day which is if you want yeah I don't even know if that's called organic anymore because they pay us so brand Partnerships finding the right companies to now associate with you and go on this growth Journey how have you

approached the company that you've wanted to be involved in this journey with you when we we were very lucky that our first two partners were Red Bull and P pummer and uh I think with Puma we had

just that one guy who understood the product very quickly uh who was like a Distributing retail guy at Puma local in Hamburg and he sat on our table and he

just he's he clicked he he understood what it was and he had the right connections within the in in the corporate corporation uh to forward it

so we made a tiny easy merge deal with them just at the start they felt like we were to a certain extent their last exit um when it comes to Fitness because

Reebok was back then very much owning CrossFit if you want and that was like the logic how people saw Fitness so I think we had and and they were struggling overall Puma was struggling a

lot uh in the competition with Adidas and Nike so yeah they partnered up but it took us five years I actually until

summer last year summer last year not yeah until we really got through at Puma internally as well and they've been our partner since the start but since last

year things have changed and they really are very engaged now and what does that mean they're really very engaged yeah I I don't think anyone internally at Puma

really knew about hiero until 2021 okay or after Co basically but since then 22 hit and the success got bigger and the numbers were higher now I raced with an

FR Prem CEO last year in Munich in a double and uh he's very very big fan now and racing a lot and um and so they do all of your kit we do it together we do

it it's a it's a it's a I will send you guys some stuff it's a it's a yeah co co-branded uh actually yesterday we what a timing yesterday we launched the first

ever HX shoe it's the GRE we saw it on have to be very careful it's not a hiero shoe we don't created a new shoe we created an existing shoe of hiero and we co-branded it and yeah so we launched

that yesterday how does a deal like that work a deal like that works uh that basically there is a retail logic behind that and uh we sell all that stuff

everywhere online on at our events and um is it like a footall kit deal I guess on that are we so so Puma paying hrock they get the license for the hro to use it they can sell it then distributed

across their own channels you get a percentage fee of that is it a more personal relationship uh that's about right with one big difference that the

main in in that the main sales part ends up being at our events Where We Own 100% of the sales but we do have a commission in the everything that is sold through

puma.com they pay a sponsorship fee and uh therefore they get the licensing rights to create the product with us and then we sell it through all the channels and then they different Comm so then tell us how that's influenced you know the merch is a huge part of the business

it's a huge part of community it's something that the athletic Community tap into so much right and it's earned media well earned marketing for you in a way how have you approached it yeah

that's that also came very organically um because we every marathon race or whatever gives you a shirt after a race right and so when we started we were like yeah we have to give away a shirt

as well and now we had Puma as the partner so we started um creating some stuff but basically at the beginning buying things from them to a discounted fee and then we were printing stuff on it and then selling it at the event and

that worked people liked that it was like kind of a remembrance um thing from like you Hard Rock Cafe stuff or whatever right uh and uh and we were

like oh this is funny that works and then ever since we've just grown this part and now yeah it's it's it's a big community driver it's it's a very big

marketing tool for us um you get pictures on social media every day from any place in the world where people are rocking the hro merch and do you have a

hero product uh I would say no I don't I don't think so I I hope it's going to be the shoe now we launched it yesterday as I said we um I I really think that could

be the one where did you sell the most us us sell the most I guess so where do you sell the least I I don't know exactly but could be Germany really yeah uh but I'm not sure but you go from so

you got the fitness kit as in you know you got your t-shirts your shorts Etc now you've got shoes you also have backpacks and and like cool stuff like this and sweaters you want to start business of

sport at Rock you want yeah sure yeah and uh sweaters and hoodies and jackets and you know all kind of all varieties of things that you can wear at any time and so and and it plays a big part of

the business model it does play a very important part it's growing um yeah can I ask how much revenue does merch do oh so hard to say but somewhere in the

ballpark of somewhere sub $20 per athlete I would say $20 per athlete yeah 6 Eddie V Eddie vents that's insane when you look at

that though you're like wow [ __ ] from no offense a 650 person event in Hamburg what a what a journey yeah it's been a fast Journey but especially considering

those two and a half years of what was the biggest oh [ __ ] moment oh oh [ __ ] in a in a positive way or in a oh my God it could be either we always struggle to

break through in the US we don't really know why we have our ideas and arguments um a lot has to do with the importance and growth and and

and size of of CrossFit in that market we believe because there was a certain uh or is still uh to a certain extent

like a a block of that community that feels d attacked almost by by our product which I don't think makes a lot of sense but that's that's the the

emotions in that and uh I I can't really explain it otherwise um we didn't do anything differently but the US was the slowest growing markets of all and so

the first oit moment was last year 1 of May the idea was that we need a Tipping Point Pinnacle event in that market because a little bit like you have to go

bigger in the US as people always say and needs to buzz because otherwise they don't believe you um and so we rented out p76 invested big time into that outdoor

event first time it was raining the two days before it could have killed everything and then we had this blue sky 8,000 people one day best ever event and it was like oh [ __ ] yeah that's and

ever since the US events are sold out it was exactly what we what we planned and what we hoped for to me this is more accessible than CrossFit maybe I'm wrong but it seems like it it speaks more to

the to the mass and it and it seems like you've really attacked as you said it as a sport who is your competition do you look at do you have competition no no

because and in the end it's like combining us with Crossfit is like combining Marathon running with 400 meter running it's both running you need choose but that's about the comparison

so there are a few movements that is the same absolutely but uh it's a completely different sport you needed different you you you will be probably a pretty good hiero athlete if you did CrossFit

all your life no doubt about it I'd have to run a little bit more and and maybe even vice versa have to lift a bit a little bit more but it's a completely different sport and it's a completely

different way of training and in order to get to get good and fit and so it's not about at the moment I don't wouldn't call anything competition is the only competition we have in the end is the

global world of entertainment you have just a limited amount of time that you can spend with audio family or whatever right that's what we always call the attention economy I say for podcast we compete with Taylor Swift as much as we

do in other podcasts kind of you do absolutely I totally agree and and that's that's why I would say we if anything we compete with other events that are happening on the same day in that City where people would say i'

rather go to that football game what Revenue line do you not have today that you think will be massive in 5 years time at the gym Department I think we will grow to 20,000 Affiliated gyms over

the next two years wow uh there is the next big kpi I guess um two three years maybe yeah that's the one big one Partnerships is still uh as these

Partnerships are obviously most of the time long-term contracts um the next wave of renewing hopefully the contracts with our Global Partners will also have

a certain impact you mentioned that it has a spectator element yeah do you look at and in the future do you see broadcast deals you look at yeah so media Partnerships you got Netflix

whatever it may be you hit the weak spot be good Netflix series be amazing yeah but especially now Netflix is let's say getting into live content you know you look at owning a sport that has never really had a history of distribution

across linear TV that would be amazing good idea yeah God but also like on the founding Journey like it's a [ __ ] nut story but you tie that in this is where something like Netflix can be so creative because you can have that live

Sport and then you have a library of the family story so you have the documentary piece along you can also see like a drive to survive on the athlete side you wanted to jump on Tik Tok go in on Tik Tok because to me I agree like Fitness

community on Tik Tok is one of the biggest things right oh my yeah so why did you not like the size scale resources of the business you have now you can get someone who's great at Tik

Tok again it's it's really I I have to blame only myself for that because it's literally a a business decision step by-step approach and there I only have

24 hours and uh that was one of the priorities that we set aside due to the existing growth everywhere and us not having the problem to sell our tickets we focus on different things for and

that's the one of the two things together with that medialization part that we're really still in the baby shoes are the two things that we that will be next St the things that we drivve for we talk about it all the time

across of Area sports you know now we live in an environment where athletes are icons people follow athletes to to get you know excited about a sport we haven't really mentioned I don't think that it's you know that topend professional side alongside the mass

participation how are those professional where have they come from who who have you brought into this hiero environment who are now winning these events and becoming your like star star quality

cost yeah that's that's the second most important thing about especially also looking at medialization and what you guys said about drive to survive Logics and things like that um it's um we knew

from the start and that's why I always I mean you might have seen that always talk about these aspirations to become an Olympic sport Fitness racing hiero would never be an Olympic sport but Fitness racing um

and because I really believe in that that you need to be a legitimate sport you need that professional level that those aspirational athletes that people look up to and we do see that we see

that even the the fittest 45 year olds that become world champion in the age group in their age group they still get these selfie pictures with the world champion of the elite races that no one

knew before our current world champion Alexander rovic one of the nicest guys in the world I think he had 800 followers on Instagram when he started coming up to the first race in Vienna

Austria like five years ago now he's still he has 60,000 followers or whatever not a huge following but his story is is crazy because now everyone in Austria knows him he's a world

champion in this sport that no one knew before and this is now his day job wow he quit he was a teacher he quit his job last year I think and now uh he's a he's a HX athlete and you have there and

that's what I meant before by that must make you proud that's what I meant with creating this platform of for people to you know do whatever they do and that does make us very proud and it's he's

not the only one there are quite a few now of the top athletes that that do this you mentioned your struggles to build a career financially sustainable career in hockey at the start now you're creating a financially sustainable environment for athletes to actually be

hro athletes yeah and when I saw some of the contracts they signed with pruma I did think about the time when I had two Olympic gold medals I couldn't sign a tenth of the contract that they're signing now but that's a different story

which athlete does not do high rocks that you would most love to see at an event oh that's I I like I really like that question I don't think ever everyone asked that before um you know

there there is one logical answer that would be someone like Matt Frasier or you know CrossFit Champion uh many times and like out of that world kind of that

was would be like a logical answer and I think that's going to happen pretty soon actually TI Tumi seven time TI CL Tumi seven times CrossFit Champion female from Australia she did a hiero mix

double the other day in at the race in Melbourne and uh she became third overall in 55 minutes which is crazy and uh she was really good and I think she

she can be the next big kirox star but sorry to get back to your question I think tennis players would be really good I really think they would be very

good they have such strong legs they are very used to interval training interval performance so I can

see like a novik jokovic being world champion in the age group 40 to 454 in two years so You' attribute lower body strength is the most important call legs of course a little bit of upper body

strength but the majority of the workouts is structured to burn your legs so physically the ideal kind of physical profile isn't necessarily someone that's

very heavy up no if you look up our if you look up the top athletes you see um usually

like rather thiner strong guys and girls with um the ability to run the kilometer

in 3 minutes 20 and still push a 202 kilos slat out of Interest what's the difference between the elite level men and women times they are not that far off but the the weights are different so

it's it's a little bit scales but it's it's interesting because the women are doing what the man open category is doing so if you were to race you would have the same weights than the women pro

and they're crushing it so the world record for men is 53 minutes and change and the world record for the women is I think in the ballp power of 57 something

so there's a 4minute threshold with um uh the scaled version but I mean the women are my fastest time is still 6 minutes lower than the world record of the women wow the same weights in

doubles for me do you have a prize money for the winner for the elites yes a lot how much is the winner oh uh per race we put in

50k uh the winner is 16 17 something okay $225,000 I think I saw something like that yeah the swimmers would probably be quite good the yeah Alex rockov the world champion is the former

swimmer yeah I'm just like how would Mr Beast change the event he'd probably put like $100,000 in like a Seas through glass treasure chest and then open it on top of the winner when they win squid

games yeah like that would be a great Instagram shot of the alleys like sweaty covered in dollars that's true but I have to say the I'm very cautious and maybe I have to get better and learn

more there but I'm very cautious of these entertaining things to mix that up too much because I like this to be a professional like a sport and I like

people to actually take on the challenge for the sport and not so much for the entertainment you talked about everything today what about what's next how does this continue to build because you've done this in such a short space of time the serious answer is that we

really need to build the company behind what's happening on the front end of the business at the moment with a growth because that is the main task of of us

as the founders at the moment of our leadership team that we get all these processes it sounds very boring but it is the truth the damn truth um we worked

as a like a startup for the first 5 and a half years everyone was doing everything everyone would reply to everything everyone would think about everything and now we realize that's not possible anymore with that size of the

company you need to have people focusing on their verticals not looking left and right too much but really making that vertical grade and um and that's really something the structure that we need to

set up now and that we have to work on in order to deliver the events on a level that we expect from ourselves for the next year what would you love to do at the events but cost and margin

prohibits you I would probably invest into uh like you know these NBA glass flaws that um show all these data of things when you jump like how fast how

high how whatever much power you put into the jumps on the burpees for example or when you push the sled that you would have like a digital sled um um

glass front where you would see with how much Jewel or c kilograms you put into the sled at this point so I would look into much more solutions to show and

make data visible throughout the race that's a good point right surely data is a massive piece here like something like whoop must be all over this yeah our partner is called a mafit uh which is um

a Chinese company uh a great product same device logic um tracking has a HX track on it which is cool because you don't have to like just click the amount of time you raise but it's actually put

into oh ski o click run click next workout and so on uh so that's really cool for obviously data stuff and and yeah I think data and um to to answer

your question again it's making data visible but also the the mediatization part in which yeah investing into all these different

opportunities um is is 2025 we're going to do a quick fire uh what's been the hardest thing about building h rocks

just never giving up and believing in a product that has not existed before and going all the way throughout the all

ups and downs that are there but that's classical entrepreneurship I guess what's been the most useful transferable piece of your professional athlete career in building this business

feedback learning that feedback is 95% of the time a very good thing and that you if you're 11 years old and you play football and you play a [ __ ] pass

or you miss an empty goal your coach will tell you and you have to cope with that and founding a business and working with people and creating an environment where I'm able to say that something was

[ __ ] and that we have to do it again or whatever is one of the biggest most important things for me that uh people understand when I say that that there is no emotions behind that and it's just

about the thing which Market are you not in that you would most like to be in the one market that's missing probably is is Argentina oh that's that one country yeah why are you not in

Argentina step by step we're just launching Brazil now and Argentina will be shortly next but that's I think that's the last bigger yeah that South

America is is a little bit wi space still but yeah you you've said you wanted to be an Olympic sport yeah but it couldn't be branded H rocks how do you play a role in the development of

ensuring that this becomes a a recognizable Standalone entity that Fitness racing will become ANP Pi sport is I already gave you that promise um

hiero could be the sanctioning event you know part behind that where people qualify for the Olympics in the end and

um all sorts of all those things um but that's future talk but I see that 10 years time we're having this

conversation again where is the business we want to grow to having events in the 150 biggest cities in the world world uh

we at as I said at 83 now oh 85 um with then an average of three event days per

event so 450 days of HX racing um and uh that is our objective that's that's what we're aiming to that is that is what we're driving to and and um making the

product better working on the with the product I now talk about the events really focusing on making the event spectacular for everyone participating that you you go there and you you feel

like a professional athlete as you're supposed to this has been so much fun so thank you I enjoyed this thank you guys