Andy Hoang - CEO & Founder of Aviron on Pioneering Fitness Entertainment

Welcome back to the Casey Adams Show. Today we are joined by Andy Hoang, the CEO and founder of Aviron. Andy, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Of course, man. It's one of those things, man. We'll dive into it. But when I first, and we were just chatting before, but when I first came across your product, the Aviron rower machine, I was really intrigued because in a world of health and fitness and so many products out there, and as someone that takes their health seriously, I've gotten into running marathons the last couple of years, I got on the cold plunge wave and there's always a great novelty factor of something new or reinventing something that has existed for a while. And you guys have done that in my opinion. But for those that may not know what Aviron is, I'd love for you to just give a quick high level overview about what I am referring to before we really dive in here.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So Aviron is a, is in the connected fitness space. The connected fitness is synonymous with instructor led classes. But we do things a little bit differently. We're trying to use game psychology, game design to make workouts more enjoyable. So the way I describe us is we're a fitness entertainment platform that uses game design and psychology to motivate instead of the traditional instructor led experience. And our first modality that we've come out with is a connected rowing machine. So it's a, it's like kind of a state of the art, very different looking than traditional rowing machines. Rowing machines have been around for a long time. They really haven't evolved that, that much. And then on it is like a big 22 inch touchscreen.

Wow, it looks incredible. For those that are either listening or watching, everything will be linked down below, obviously, obviously through the episode. So you'll have to check it out if you are just listening. But no, I think you're so right, man. And even too, you know, as someone that I was telling you before, right. Like every, when I'm in the gym, here and there, I'll hit the rowing machine and it just has this like analog, it shows me how many I'm going to butcher it, like how much I'm pulling or like how many yards I've went thus far. Some of those numbers and it's just a boring thing, right? Like I love rowing it, I feel great after. But when I saw the product, I'm like, yeah, the gamified elements is really Cool. And kind of makes me wonder, man, like, what led you to want to go build and tackle a problem like this? Where does your health background stem from? And what led to the inspiration to start Avon?

Yeah, it's an interesting story. So. And there's like different aspects of the story that kind of bring it all together. But the short story was, you know, I've always been being active in my life. I was, I competed in high level martial arts for pretty much like two decades. And I also suffer from ADHD when I was growing up. So it was like hard to. To focus and hard to. Hard to find ways to stay active when I left sports, essentially. And I think when you're starting a business, there's like two reasons why you should start a business. Like, one of them is because you're trying to solve a problem. Like, you have someone that's sick in your family, and the other one is because of passion. So I've always had a passion for fitness, but I never had a passion for cardio. That was, that was really challenging for me. Okay, someone who had adhd.

Okay, go ahead.

Sorry. Yeah, exactly. Like in everything from like reading to do. And cardio is no different. Cardio requires you to have, like, focus. Like you need to be focused for 30, 40 minutes looking at one thing, and it is just kind of mind numbing. So when I read about Peloton in an article, I was like, wow, this is an amazing idea. You can have this great workout experience on your own time in the comfort of your home. But I knew that that experience didn't resonate with me. It was just a little bit too boring just for me. And growing up, I played a lot of video games. I was super active, played a lot of sports, like I mentioned. And so combining my passion for fitness with gaming to make a cardio machine that was efficient and effective and fun to use.

So cool, man. And even too, like, riffing off examples. Right. As someone that is by no means in this space as a business owner, but has loved and have seen, like one of my good friends who I co host another podcast with. He, his name is DJ Swivel and he's obsessed with. Excuse me, he's obsessed with the tonal. And you know, you see. So sorry, you see things like tonal or. I believe there was another product called Mirror, which was acquired by Lululemon. Right. I believe it's all that. And then things like Peloton, like these new age versions of these devices. I haven't seen a rowing. And what led you to Wanting to take a step into this world. And why rowing? Obviously you saw a gap in the market, but you seeing peloton and all these things, what led to saying, hey, we want to do this, and the rower is the right vehicle for this to start. And also do just love to give context to the audience. When did you launch Aviron in the first place?

Yeah, we, we. So Avron's Avron's been actually being around for a while. We're different because we bootstrapped the business for the first five years. So I started working on it kind of in my basement. And I think like, 2016, late 2016. And then we finally launched the market at the end of 2018. And in the first few years, it was like, really, really tough. We were selling primarily to, like, gyms. Vertical markets is what we call it, like hotels and country clubs and whatnot. And then Covid hit, which was super challenging because, you know, all the gyms were closing.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then finally we raised capital from institutional investors. And that's kind of. Kind of what. What helped us, like, rocket ship to where we are today.

Wow, man. So you guys launch it. You're building this in 2016. What does that even look like, man? You know, hey, I want to go build a new age rowing device machine, a screen gamified. What was V1? I think people would appreciate that journey of figuring out, hey, what do we even do here? What's the first step you took as someone, especially when taking that bootstrap mentality. Not like, hey, I want to go raise a bunch of money and then invest a lot in R and D. You really took a different approach to it, it sounds like.

Yeah, I think the key. And there's like so many different types of businesses you can start. I definitely chose a business that wasn't easy, like building a physical product that's seven. It was like, like our first. Our first model was like over 8ft long and weighs 150 pounds. And you have to worry about not just hardware, but software. Like, it was. It was really, really tough. And I think the key to our success was being naive and just not knowing how. How challenging it was going to be. Yeah, and like, the product has come a long way since the very beginning. So we were actually in the beginning, we focused like hardcore into gaming. That's kind of where I thought we would really build the product. And so we made a ton of games. And the truth is, people didn't really resonate with the games. And so the first version of the product wasn't that great, and we weren't really selling that many models. And then Covid hit, which made it worse for us because we were primarily selling to vertical markets. So, yeah, it was like a nightmare in the beginning, and it was like, tons of problems. But, you know, we've kind of evolved from there. And now we're not just a gaming company. We're a fitness entertainment platform. And the products come a long way.

Wow. So just to kind of walk through that story. So you launched in 2016. Covid happens. 2020. So you're about like four years in the journey prior to Covid hitting. That's correct. And still up until then, you're bootstrapping the business. You're selling vertically in these markets. Covid happens. What led to that next decision of, hey, raising capital. And they bring us back to that time of, you know, people aren't going to gyms. Therefore, like, this is a huge bottleneck and we have to, like, really figure out what's next. It seems like to me, a critical component of the business where things have pivoted and have changed significantly since that moment. Is that right?

Yeah, it was. It was really tough in the beginning for first, you don't think it's gonna be that hard, and it's way harder than you think it's gonna be, especially. Cause I described, like, how challenging the product was. And you think it's gonna cost X amount of dollars to build the business, but then it ends up costing three to four times that much. And so we started in 2016, and we thought we'd be ready by 2017, but we didn't launch until the end of 2018, so we're already spending a ton more of my personal money remortgaging my. My. My condo to kind of fund the business, borrowing as much money from friends and family.

Yeah.

And. And then Covid hit. And I remember when Covid hit, like, when Covid before co hit, I think it was like January 2020 was one of our biggest sales months. We hit like 100k in sales, which was like, huge for us. I was like, oh, man. Like, we're finally doing it. We're on track to do like a. Over a million dollars in our. I mean, like, to. To finally reach over a million dollars. And. And then I remember the next month, I think February was okay, but then March hit and our sales went down, I think, like $5,000. And it was brutal. So it was either we pivoted the business and sunk in more money and tried to tackle a new channel which was direct to consumer, which I had no experience in. Like, yeah, I didn't know what CAC was, didn't know what conversion rate optimization, email flows. Like, I had no idea what any of that was. But we gave it one last shot. And after we gave it that one last shot, sales finally started picking up. And I've always tried to raise capital since the beginning, always tried to message investors. I remember in like 2019, I think I flew down to San Francisco with the rower. Like I brought the entire row, put it into the back of a rental and drove to as many, many VCs as I possibly could. And I remember like one VC was on like the third floor. So I carried 150 pound rower up. Oh my God, four flights of stairs in San Francisco. They have no elevators.

Oh my gosh.

And every investor was like, not interested. They're like, you know, you guys are too small or too late. Rowing's too niche. And you know, I think we just kept grinding and hustling and finally in winter 21, we got into Y Combinator. And once we got into Y Combinator, it really opened up the doors for us. And ever since then we've grown like exponentially, which has been great. Wow.

So you guys got in the Y20, 21 Y Combinator.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That's incredible, man. And talk to me about like the product today, right? It's, I know you guys have that the different versions of one has, comes with the 22 inch screen. And then there's one that you can just hook it up to the iPad, I believe what has been the biggest learning lesson for you, from getting it to a point where you're, you know, 8ft long, 150 pounds to where it is today, you know, fully 22 inch screen, it's more so portable in a sense of clean it up, like, very slick design. What's been the biggest lesson as someone that's building a physical product to get it to where it is today?

The biggest lesson, like I mentioned, it's really, really hard. And maybe I can describe why it was so hard and how challenging hardware is. And I would say our business isn't even that hard. Think of a company like Nvidia or where it costs billions of dollars to build a microchip. Like that's. Yeah, that's crazy. So you know, our hill was, wasn't that that high to climb, but I, that I found it super challenging. Like when you build a hardware company versus like a software company, you're going to spend so much more Money. And every mistake that you make costs you not only a ton of money, but a ton of time. Like with software, if you make a mistake, you can launch a new version of that software within a couple hours, couple days, and your customers barely experience pain. Right. And then I remember, for us, I don't remember what year it was, probably 2019 as well, early 2019, we had a problem with our rowers where you would row and then every couple minutes it would just stop tracking your data and they would come back five or six seconds later. So you just like imagine working out and suddenly your stats just go to zero and it comes back up. Yeah. And I remember staying up until I think it was like 2:30, 3:00 clock every day because I was working with my engineering team overseas where they were manufacturing the equipment and reworking a new version of firmware every single day. Or like reworking a little bit of the hardware and adding capacitors onto like our sensor board. And then waking up and driving six hours to. There's a city close to us called Ottawa. I'm in Toronto.

You're in Toronto? Yeah.

And I drove there every single. Yeah, yeah, drove, drove there every single day for over two weeks to just try a new version of software. I pretended like it was nothing to the customer. I was just like, hey, I just want to check it out. And you know, we're doing some testing because we're, you know, you're having some issues. And yeah, we'd be driving five, six hours, doing a 30 minute test, driving back, and then working on it all night until the next day. We were like, try again. And like, I remember at the very end, like of the two weeks, I was about to give up because like, as long as I have a little bit of hope that like, okay, we can try this other thing. Like maybe that'll work. Yeah, maybe we'll try this other thing. Like that keeps you going for sure. But when you get like two weeks in and I was like, man, I have no more ideas. Like, I don't know what to do. The amount of time we spent, money we spent was like crazy. And we like, obviously we finally like solved the issue. Yeah, but it just like that's like the biggest learning curve is it's just, I don't know if it's like a learning, but it was just incredibly challenging and way more challenging than I thought it would be.

Yeah, man, that's insane. Just like, you know they say hardware is hard and the ability to tie in the software component and you're Juggling both and trying to improve both. It's a whole different game. I'd love to talk about the business today. What does the team look like now? And just to kind of speak to. I know you guys were talking about, it was mainly the vertical sales into channels like gyms and those type of channels. In a sense. What does the business look like today in terms of how you guys think about direct to consumer team and just overall, where do you spend your time today?

Yeah, it's been an incredible journey. I tell people all the time that every six months the business looks completely different. Which it, which it does when you're, when you're growing really fast. I think in 2021, at the start of 2021, maybe we had six or eight employees. And even though connected fitness space is a challenging environment right now, you think of like peloton and how they're doing. You know, tonal, everyone's done big Rifts. You know, we've, we've managed to grow to about 80 employees right now.

So.

You know, we, we've seen some, some great growth. Sorry, what was your other part of your question?

More so, yeah, like what does the business look like today in terms of like team, in terms of even like location team? Is it all based in Toronto? Like talk to me. Yeah, like about like how things have changed in terms of sales channels, marketing efforts, like customer feedback, the product enhancement. Like just, you know, if we were to give someone a sense of like the high level of like, hey, this is where the business is today to whatever extent you can speak to, would love to just like catch them up to speed on where it is today because I think there's so much value to dive into from there.

Yeah, we're a different business. Like one of the things that like the way I describe our business is we're a product first business. I think, you know, there's companies that are like marketing led, operations led and like product led. There's a lot of companies being products. So say Amazon's like a operations led kind of business. Back in the day, Xerox was a marketing led type of company. We try to be a product focused company. So over 50% of our staff is on the product team. I think it's like 57 or 58%.

That's incredible.

All the people in our company and it makes sense because what we're building is, you know, a lot of the content that we're building is video games or some type of game aspect. And games is super intensive in terms of resources. Like you need 3D artists, 2D artists, game designers and sound engineers. Like you need this full suite of people. So that's kind of what the team looks like today. Most of the development team is based in Southeast Asia, which is like a huge advantage for us. It's an advantage because obviously it's like less expensive to hire a talent overseas. But I think it's a huge advantage for us as well because, you know, gaming is big and it's big in North America, but it is huge in Asia. Like per capita, I think people spend 10 times as much on like gaming over in that side of the world and over here. So we're fortunate that we have incredible engineers. It's like. So yeah, our engineers are, you know, compared relatively to North America, they're more affordable, but they're also just like better at their jobs because they live and breathe video games. That's the culture over there.

That's so cool. And even just to go down that route because as someone that is so interested in the business and what you guys have created, obviously it's so easy to think about like the hardware side of it and the unique design that you guys have. But from the software, like the software is so much the product as, excuse me, as the hardware is. And I know on the website you guys say and boring workouts, full body workouts that tap into science of gameplay to make rowing fun and even addictive. I would love to talk about that aspect of creating unique software to make it not only effective or quote addictive, but how do you think about that from the like the software interface perspective I know you talked about in the early days, it was one of those things where it was like, okay, we gotta improve here, but what does that look like today, right? Like I'm someone just for context of the audience, like I'm getting my aviron here in the next couple of days and I'm super excited to dive in. But if you were to speak to someone, even myself and say like, hey, this is sort of the experience that you can expect when you're sitting in front of this beautiful 22 inch screen, you're starting rowing, like, what can users expect? Slash, what is that experience like in your perspective and even just a perspective of past customers?

Yeah, great question. The experience is completely unique to anything you've ever experienced before. And that's because it is truly new. Like there's no one that's combining gaming, like true video game elements with exercise equipment. And it's not easy to do because you're not On a computer with controls or a console where you have like a bunch of buttons, like you're using your body mechanics. And so you have to really understand how the human body works and in combining it with all the elements from gaming. So the way I describe the actual experience itself, I would kind of break it up into two elements. So there's actual. The physical video games itself that we have on the platform. We have dozens of different types of video games, some of which are super rudimentary. Like we have ones that resembled old school Brick Breaker where you have like that brick that's bouncing around. It's like super visual and stimulating. There's music and colors. There's like mystery blocks and bosses and you're trying to beat your high score. You're trying to beat everybody else's high score. So we have like hardcore games and then those games have varying degrees of difficulty. So we have this new game called Blaze Breaker where you can do it with up to five other people or four other people. Wow. And there's, there's fires that at different levels on a building. And to target the different fires you have to change, you have to adjust your stroke rate. So like a higher stroke rate will get you to aim higher on the building and a lower stroke rate is lower on the building.

And that's like controlling, that's controlling the flow of water to put out the fire in the game. Based on how intense you're rowing. I'm just.

Yeah, intensity is how strong the water is. Yeah, yeah. And then to aim it is the, the pace in which you're rowing. So if you're rowing at a faster pace, you're going to aim higher, but you need to row stronger if you want to have a stronger water pressure, essentially.

Yeah. That's so cool.

And it's fun because it's a team based game where you're working together to take out fires with these other firefighters. So you're playing in real time with other people within our community. But at the same time it's competitive because you're trying to take out the fire so that you get more points than your friends. And the more you play, the more you unlock new abilities. So you get new fire trucks and you unlock new levels and new backgrounds. So that's like how I describe the one aspect of the platform which is like gaming the other aspect of it. And kind of what I mentioned earlier is when we first started, we were like a pure gaming company. But gaming doesn't resonate with everyone, especially because it's such a New idea of combining gaming with fitness, that you're not going to become a multi billion dollar company if you just focus on like we have video games on a piece of equipment. So we're kind of a fitness entertainment platform. And what that means is you can do streaming services, you can do virtual rows, you can do classes on our platform, you can do video games, you can do races, you can do a wide variety of different types of workouts. But we bring it all together using game psychology and game design. So every minute that you work out, even if it's on Netflix, you earn in game currency. And that currency can be used to unlock new workouts, backgrounds, and whatever it is. Doesn't matter what workout you do. We have leaderboards and high scoreboards, like old school arcades where you're playing Pac Man. There's high scores. Like every single workout, even if it's not a game, has high scores. And every single workout gives you the ability to compete with other people. So even if you're doing a virtual row in the Philippines, you can do it with other people in real time. And then once you finish the workout, you can see how you ranked in that virtual row with other people. So it's like gaming, but also gaming elements across the entire platform.

No, that's incredible. You said Netflix. Is that something where someone could watch a show as they're rowing? Is that right? That's like another question that popped to my mind.

Netflix doesn't allow us to do that, but we have YouTube as an example. So yeah, you can do picture in picture on YouTube, watch YouTube and play a game at the same time. We have Spotify, so you can listen to podcasts while you're rowing.

Oh, that's gonna be amazing. Again, I love speaking through the visual element. Like someone like myself that I try to find time to. I don't find I create time. For example, watching my favorite podcast, in a sense, I either I'm on a walk or on a run. Obviously you can't.

Yeah.

Watch a podcast when you're running or on a walk necessarily, or it's not the most efficient thing to do. But for something like rowing, like if I can row for 30 minutes, I'm able to then watch a YouTube podcast on the screen. Like, that's. That's gonna be huge for me, man. I don't think you understand how epic that is. Yeah, that's so cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's funny because, like, and the reason why we have so much variety is we thought our customers, like, when you look at the data. Our customers love variety. Like there's not one workout category that dominates. It's not like you put on like 20 streaming services and then customers just all do streaming. Or the. Or most of our customers just only watch Netflix. Like, people love variety. Like they want to be able to listen to a podcast, watch a YouTube video, play a game, do a race all within one workout. Like have like little mini 10 minute workouts in different areas. That's what makes I think the product special.

Very cool. No, absolutely, man. And I appreciate you helping share with us like the visual elements of it and I'm sure people appreciate that as well. I want to talk about rowing as a workout itself. I remember hearing you talk about how rowing targets about 86 muscles in the body. Let's talk about that as someone that is. You know, I got into running like hardcore running marathons like two years ago, obviously. My producer, one of my good friends, is a bodybuilder, so I kind of follow his workouts and I'm bodybuilding building and I'm running and I'm trying to balance all that stuff. But I'd love to talk about just the, the actual workout components and benefits of rowing because I know again, I've heard you speak about how it targets again those 86 muscles in the body. So. Yeah. Why rowing and how has it become in your eyes, like an efficient workout for you? And obviously just would love to hear about some of the benefits if people aren't familiar.

Yeah, yeah. Rowing is an amazing exercise. It's. It's one of the most efficient exercises out there. So it's actually 86 of your muscles. So it's like way more than 86. Oh wow, 86. It's a ton of muscles like you're. Thank you for. Yeah, almost every muscle other than some. Like you're pushing muscles so you're not really working your chest because you're like you're pushing your triceps, but your biceps, your shoulders, your cores being engaged and a ton of legs as well. People think it's a lot of upper body, but it's way more lower body. Especially because our rower is a little bit different. Where we wanted to build a rower that would act as not only a cardio machine but also a strength building machine. So it has very high resistance. So it goes up to 100 pounds of resistance, which is a lot higher than your typical rower. And so when you crank it up all the way, like you'll feel it in your legs more than any other part in your body.

This is good.

And what's interesting, which is like kind of a fun fact, is I'm not a rower and none of our employees are rowers as well. So we, we make it like kind of a. We don't make it a mission, but we try not to hire people who are rowers because all of our customers, like 90% of our. I think it's something. It's crazy stats. It's like 90% of our customers have never rode more than twice in their life. And 50, over 50% have never even been on a rower.

Like, you're saying actually rowing in the water, just for the context.

No, no, even. Even on.

Oh, you're saying on a machine. Wow.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's. Rowing is a sport that everyone understands because it's an Olympic sport. It's like gotten huge because of CrossFit or whatever it is. People understand that it's full body. A lot of doctors recommend it because it's low impact on your joints while being full body and super efficient. Like, if, if you want to burn 500 calories, you're going to be able to do so on a rower faster than you can, you know, running or spinning. So it's, it's a great exercise for so many reasons and I think that's why it's one of the fastest growing modalities. But the truth is, it's one of the most challenging workouts. Yeah, absolutely.

Get on the rower for five minutes and you're, you're dead. It's. It's a. I love it. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. It's, it's brutal, but it's an amazing exercise and it's efficient and that's why we chose rowing. And that's also why we don't hire rowers, because we're building a machine for regular people like, that aren't professional rowers. Like, if you're a professional rower, the truth is you should go out and buy the concept too, which is, you know, industry leader. But if you are looking for the most effective workout on a machine that's really enjoyable to use because it's actually fun and you're going to get a great work out of it, then that's kind of what we focus on.

Yeah, totally.

And why we. Yeah, why we chose rowing.

I love that man. And again, I love the distinctive nature of. Yeah, it's like if you're trying to train for the Olympics, like there's other things out there and I, and I appreciate your, as a founder, like, pointing out other references of, of thought and how you guys think about that. I want to talk about the, the actual product one because. And again, this is something where the timing is great. As of this recording, I'm. I'm getting my Avron Rower, I believe in three days here. And I'm excited, right, for like the, the team to come help set it up and everything. But when it comes to. Obviously it's on the website and people can learn more, but just for the sake of the conversation, I know you guys have a. It's really cool where you can, when it comes to like the amount of space it takes up, you can really like put it right side up so that it's not laying down all the time. Would love to hear some, some of the like length, weight and why you guys built it in a sense where you could also sit it up straight so it's not always having to be laid down, if I'm not mistaken.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll take it a step back and explain a little bit more of like.

Yeah, please.

The logic behind the rower. Because when I first started the business, a lot of people question why we didn't just build an app to work with the rower like the best selling rower out there. Unlike other industries like treadmills and ellipticals or spin bikes, the rowing industry is dominated by one player, which is the Concept 2 rower. Which is the rower that you see in every CrossFit gym and probably every gym, like commercial gym you go to. Yeah, it's Concept 2. It's the flagship.

I'm looking it up right now on my phone just for the. Okay. Concept two rower. Yeah, go ahead.

Sorry. I'm listening.

I just want to see this.

You'll recognize it. Yeah, you'll recognize it. That is the rower that every gym has.

That's the one. Sorry to interject. That's the one that my gym up here has.

Yeah, and it's a great rower, but it's been around for like 40 years and it hasn't changed, like not one bit. And so when we thought about it, we were like, why aren't more people rowing? Like it's in every gym, but it's the one machine that you'll see sitting there that no one uses or very few people use. And then we thought it's because it really hasn't evolved to be more accommodating to all people. Various sizes, heights and weights. And so we set out to design a rower that was more accommodating and more accessible to more people. And so what you'll Notice on our rower, and I'll get to like the basic stuff, like the weight and the length, but our rower is way more accessible because it has some really cool features that no other rower has that I'm really proud of that we worked really hard on. Like, one feature is the ability to adjust the distance between your feet so you can actually make it, like, wider and closer together. So most rowers only allow you to adjust, like, for different feet sizes. They don't actually allow you to adjust for different hip sizes.

Wow, you're so right.

Most rowers. Yeah, yeah. So if you. If you think about it on. On the Concept two, I may not want to use their name, but your foot placement is pretty close together. And it's close together because that allows you to generate the most power. And you think about it, it gives you the greatest range of motion and you can drive more power, especially because you're in a skull that's very narrow. Right, that's great. But if you weigh 250 pounds or you're not flexible, you're not going to use the rower because it's not a great experience for you. So we want to address that by making the foot placements as wide as you want it to go and as narrow as you want to go, so you have a little crank on the side of it. Um, I'll mention one more feature. I mean, there's like, tons of features that we worked on rowing machines. They're great because they're low impact, so, like, you know, you're not gonna have any poundage on your knees. I run a lot too. I enjoy running. But, like, rowing is. Was something that I thought about, like, okay, for my grandparents, to my parents, like, this is. This is great for them.

But, yeah, absolutely.

Every rower is like 6 inches off the ground. So when I think about it, I'm like, how is my grandma gonna get on this rower when it's six inches off? Yeah, it's great for her, but, like, it's not easy to get on and off. So we built our rower so that the seat height is literally twice as high as every other rower so that you can just sit on it like you're sitting on a chair. So that's like, some of the innovation that people don't really recognize when they see the rower because they don't understand rowing. No one really knows rowing. But, like, once you start using it, you're like, oh, I get it. Like, this is why this rower is, like, way more comfortable and smoother and different than every other rower. And so we're really proud of that. And so we, yeah, we added all these other features that you kind of mentioned. It's shorter than the flagship rower, it's only seven feet long. And we, we did some, like, special engineering to get, to get that done. It stands up vertically without any, like, I won't mention the competitor, but the biggest competitor that everyone knows out there, like, they have a rower. You have to like, attach it to a wall if you put it up vertically. So we want to, for you to store it vertically without having to attach it to a wall. So, yeah, yeah, a lot of really, really great features.

That's so, so great, man. And even too, as someone that's, and I'm not even just saying this because I'm having you on the show, but as someone that is looking forward to getting the rower myself, like, when I saw it stands upright and you could just put it up vertically, like, we're putting it in this one room and I'm like, this is going to be great. Right? Like, we have, we'll have a rowing section and, you know, we can lay it out, we can put it down. It's, it's, you know, obviously living here in la, we have this. I have a balcony where we have the cold plunge. We've made it like this meditation area, but in one of our bedrooms, we're going to. It's going to be this rowing section which is going to be fun. And we always have friends that come on over, hit the plunge. So the ability to have people hit, you know, five, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, rower, hit the cold plunge as, like a little workout prior to jumping in is going to be a cool little home set up here.

Yeah, yeah. No, I love that. And I have a plunger as well. And I have a sauna in my backyard.

So I'm like, you got all of.

It, man, like biohacking. Yeah, I got all of it too.

Yeah, yeah. I'm curious, you know, you talked about, as someone's building a company in the world of health fitness, what does your health stack entail in terms of workouts? How has it changed over the years? Where do you spend your time? Obviously, I talked about how, you know, I, I have a trainer who's a bodybuilder. I am actually just got accepted into the New York City Marathon yesterday and it will be my first major marathon. And this is just a side note, but my goal the next six years is to do all six major marathons. New York, Boston, Chicago, Berlin, London, Tokyo. This is the first year that I'm doing a major and it's this marathon journey that I'm on. But I want to hear about your, like, what are your health goals and how does health fit into your life and how has it changed over the years?

Yeah, health is. And I'm just gonna, like, spin off a little bit. It's funny because if you look at the CEOs of most fitness companies, like, most of us are not healthy. And it's because, like, we're just working all the time and business is super stressful. But over. Over the past few. Few years, I've been, like, obsessed with every health product out there. And so my regimen is like, it's. I mean, to you, it's gonna sound probably normal or. Or whatnot, but for a lot of people, it, like, it sounds. It's gonna sound crazy. So I have, like, all the wearables. I wear an aura ring all the time. I get my blood work done, and I get, like, custom supplements based on, like, my blood work. I.

What company do you use for red light therapy?

The last one I went to, I went and got a blood test from Next Health, I think, and then I use bionic for the supplements. I don't know if you heard of them.

Love it, Love it. I was just curious because I use. I work with a company called Merrick Health, who've been awesome. So, yeah, I was just curious.

Yeah. So I don't even know where to start. There's, like, so much. Obviously I use, like, I stopped using AG1 for a little bit, but I was on them for quite a while. And then I have, like, red light therapy. I have PEMF mat. I obviously have a plunge pool. I have a. I have a sauna there. Probably a bunch of stuff that I'm. Oh, I use this. This really cool thing you might. Might not not have heard called. It's called Neurosym. Have you heard of it? It's like, it activates your vagus nerve. You clip it to your ear. I know Brian Johnson, like, has a very, very. Yeah, check it out. It's called. I think it's called Neurosim. Neosim. I'll figure it out. If that's not right, I'll send it to you. And it stimulates your vagus nerve. So I believe, like, I was like, whatever. It's like, it keeps you relaxed and it helps you sleep better. But then I had. I pulled. I pulled a muscle in my back a couple months ago, and as soon as I put it on after, like, 30 minutes. I was like, pain free. And I was like, wow, this is incredible. Wow. So, yeah, very cool. I invest a lot of time and money. Yeah. You researching to like all the things.

Yeah. No, it's so cool you say all that because, I mean, a year, probably like two years ago, I would have been like, that's crazy. And for some people, they obviously still think that. But now I'm like, yeah, I do my blood work every six months. Getting onto like the customized supplement plan with Merrick Health. Obviously you got the plunge now. We'll get the rower, get a sauna here in the near future as well. But no, that's super cool, man. And for the sake of time too, I want to dive into childhood for you. Prior to launching Avaron, what were you doing work wise? Did you plan to go out and start a company or what did the, the origin story of you, how you think about work, entrepreneurship stem from.

I'm fortunate because my family has a long line of entrepreneurs. Like, my father's an entrepreneur. He has like a tech business and I worked there for a couple of years as well. And then my grandpa was an entrepreneur. He owned like some businesses and a school. And so I think, I think it just runs in your blood. And I wouldn't say like entrepreneurship runs in your blood. It might be like my ability to tolerate risk, my ability to tolerate pain is probably, you know, a little bit different or higher than the average person. That's what makes me suited for entrepreneurship. But to go back to my childhood, my childhood was, it wasn't great. It was great in that I had parents that really valued strong work ethic and doing well in school. And so they pushed me in the right direction for me to like, become successful. But I suffered from like undiagnosed ADHD until I was about 25 or 24 or 25 when I finally like got diagnosed. And that was challenging because I was kind of a disappointment for most of my childhood. Like, I would, I would obviously do really, really poorly in school and for. And for immigrant parents, like Asian parents, like, you have to do well in school.

Yeah.

So that was like, that was like challenging. And yeah, just growing up, I would avoid my parents. Like my dad when he, like, I remember when he would come home from work because he worked hard because he was an entrepreneur, he'd come home at like 10, 11 o'. Clock. That was like, that was the worst part of the day because I was like, I'm going to get in trouble. Like, I'm going to get yelled at. But I think going through all of that really helped build my character. And, you know, it's, there's not much that like, phases me. Like, I don't get stressed. I might physically show signs of stress, like, I might break out. But mentally, like, I never get stressed. I'm super linear and focused partially because of my adhd. Probably, like, helps me stay super focused now that I've learned to manage it. So, yeah, it was, it was a tough childhood and I kind of fell into entrepreneurship because I think it just runs in the family and the tough upbringing that I had probably has helped me build the business and be resilient today.

Yeah, that's awesome. I'm curious. I personally, I had, I wasn't diagnosed with adhd. My brother was. As someone that said you sort of have learned and maintained it, I'm just curious, what does that look like for you? Because I'm sure obviously people listening either have ADHD or know someone who does. What was that tipping point for you to, as you said, I don't want to say get it under control, but manage it more efficiently.

Yeah, Like, I don't know where, like, how I turned it. I did read that I think 20% of people with ADHD learn to like, manage it without medication and like, thrive without it. And I'm lucky that I'm one of those people. I think it's actually like a superpower of mine. And the reason why I'm so obsessed with, for example, biohacking and getting the best equipment and the best routine and regimen is because of the ADHD where I can just narrow in and, and like, like I'm on a non stop mission to find the, the, the best answer possible. And so when I can apply that to things that I'm passionate about, which is all those things, but also business, it helps me solve problems. It helps me to like, not quit. Even though, like, there seems to be no answer. It's just like I'm obsessed. And this is like how. Yes, it's like kind of become a superpower. How I got there from like doing super poor in school to like now being a successful, I would say relatively successful entrepreneur. I'm not. I wish I had an answer because I, I wish someone could give me that answer. Yeah.

Oh, no, I get it.

That's so drawn a blank on that. Yeah.

No, you're good, man. I want to talk about from the business perspective, however much you can share or not. When you guys, so you guys raised capital, what was that process like for you? Like, how much did you guys raise if you can share that. If not, all good. And how has that changed the viewpoint on the business and R and D and just how you think about it as someone that bootstrapped it for quite some time.

Yeah. Raising capital was one of the most challenging things I had to do in the business, I think. And I. And like most businesses aren't venture backed. Like, I think, I think I, like, I used to read Inc. Magazine and they would have like an issue of like top 1000 companies every year. And I used to like, go through it, be like, oh, I want to like, learn from these companies. And I think like less than like a percent and a half of those companies are actually venture backed. Which was like, which blew my mind. I was like, oh, I thought like every company that like made it to like the top was venture backed. And the truth is most aren't because it's such an intense, difficult process. Like I mentioned, I flew down to San Francisco with a rower in the back of my rental and just knocked on doors and that led to nowhere. And then when I finally got in a Y Combinator, it was interesting because all those same, like, a lot of those same investors that told me no were like suddenly interested in the business.

Yeah, man.

So, yeah, like I would say the secret sauce to raising capital. And like people say it, but until you experience it yourself, you really understand. But like, you have to have a network. Like, you need to know someone because that like, goes so much further. Like, if you're not in that ecosystem and not in that circle, it like, it's just an uphill battle. Especially because we were a hardware company that was late to the connected fitness boom. It was super challenging. But once we finally got in and people realized we were building something unique, we got out of Y Combinator and raised a seed round about four and a half million dollars. And then we raised a series A later that year for an additional 18.5 million. And then we also secured a venture deadline. So like, without the capital, I don't think we would be where we are today. It's true. Like, capital does help you get what.

And I guess question. So you've raised about 18 for like 22 or 22 million in venture capital. When you say venture debt. And I'd love for you to just explain that for people that may not know, like, oh, they've raised capital, but what this venture debt, what is the purpose? Slash. Yeah, purpose and explanation to do so. And why? Because I think there's a lot of. I know I've had founders on the show before, we've talked about it, but we'd love to hear that from your perspective of what that means and then why you guys do that.

Yeah, so typically you're raising capital obviously to fuel the business to grow. So the idea behind any kind of venture, any type of capital you're bringing to the business is you're trying to get ahead of the, ahead of the curve. Right? Like instead of making money and then hiring one engineer and then making a bit more money and then being able to afford a second engineer, you essentially bring in capital so you can hire all those 10 engineers because you expect to be somewhere in the future faster. Right. So that's, that's the reason why we take in this venture is that we can now spend money on hiring and branding and you know, all the things that you need to kind of grow a business. And you, you do that. And the amount of money you raise is typically based on what you think it will cost you to get to the next milestone. And typically your milestones are like you raise your seed round and you're series A, B, C, D. And you know, at some point you either go public or you sell the company or you just like run a very profitable business. So when you raise a seed round, you're raising it with the goal of taking the amount of money they give you to get to your series A. Venture debt is different, but it serves the same purpose. It serves the same purpose of getting you essentially to that next round. And so the reason why you want to take venture debt is because you don't want to dilute yourself. So every time you take money from investors, you're essentially giving a piece of your company away. If you're giving a piece of your company away essentially, then you either lose control or you lose equity in the company. So that in the event of going public or selling the business one day or paying dividends, you essentially pay yourself less. So you try to raise capital. Let's say we raise our A, but instead of raising, we raise 18.5 million. Instead of raising $30 million and giving up 30% of the company, we'll raise say $20 million or $18.5 million in this case, and then we'll raise an additional 7.5 million from debt. So there's a bank, and so these banks work with specifically venture backed businesses like us who at the time of your series A typically or series B, they'll come along as debt with the round. So it's kind of like a split. So instead of just doing $30 million of venture capital. We're going to do 20 million and we're going to do another 10 million in debt. That makes sense. Got it. I hope I explained it well.

Yeah, no, absolutely. No, that's very well explained. And then therefore you're not taking out the seven and a half or whatever million is not, you know, you're not diluting yourself from that. It's just a debt vehicle.

Exactly.

Very cool. Appreciate the explanation there. And I hope you found exactly. Valuable. I mean, that's incredible, man. Like taking, you know, from 2016 bootstrapping to now. I mean, again, I've had a lot of founders on the show and I always love talking about raising capital because of course, it isn't the, the end result of success, but it's more of the proof and the, that's needed to get you to where you want to go. So there's that, that it's worth noting and celebrating, but it's also the beginning of a long journey ahead. Now, being in a position, right. If, you know, I'm sure if you talk to your yourself in 2016, like, this would be the position that you dreamed about being in a. How does it feel to be over that curve of fundraising? And how do you, how have, how has that allowed you to change your thinking about the future of the business with the ability to now be well capitalized, in a position to go do what you want to do?

Yeah. You know, when we were smaller, you know, when I, when I didn't raise capital, I was like, man, I wish I, I could raise a million dollars. And then once you raise a million dollars, you're like, I wish I could raise $5 million. Like, that's part of being an entrepreneur is like, it's never good enough and that there's always a new milestone. So, like, where I'm sitting or standing, you know, because I talk to young entrepreneurs and I know they're looking up at me like, man, I wish I could build a business where I'm raising, you know, $25 million, whatever it is, but from my vantage point, like, I'm looking at a hill that's even higher. Right. So, like, they're looking at me like, well, I want to be there. And so I feel great that I'm in this position, but when I look up, like, there's just so much more to do. And, and so, yeah, I feel great. But, yeah, that's the truth is it's, it's never ending and it's not like I'm working Less hard. I work probably harder than I've ever worked before and I'm probably dealing with more problems and pain and stress than, you know, than ever before. Yeah. And so what was the second part of the question?

You answered it right. I mean, I think it's kind of summed up right. Success is a moving target and it's not a destination that you're looking to end at, but more of just how has it, how has the capital and now like newfound resources allowed you to think differently about the future, to have that more long term view now that you're in a position of being well capitalized and kind of see farther down the road as you have more resources?

Yeah. I wouldn't say it's like the capital obviously gives you security, but now that our company is at, say 80 people, like I'm in a much different role than. And that's what I think I mentioned earlier to you. Like, we're a much different company every six months. Like if you look at our business in 2021, I was on the phone doing tech support, I was doing customer service calls, I was doing sales. Like I was doing everything that the business needed. And then my role today, you know, with, with all these employees is I don't need to do that granular work. Like, my main job now, I feel is kind of bucketed into two areas. One is seeing a leader and hiring the best people and coaching the talent, steering them in the right direction with the right strategy and with the right vision and bringing everybody along for the ride. I think that's one aspect, that's the aspect that everybody sees and understands that you need to be doing as a leader. But the other aspect, which is really exciting for me, which is probably more exciting, is that it's my job to help the business get to the next level. And what, and the way to describe that is it's step changes. So most of the things that the employees do in your business are going to improve the business incrementally. Like they're going to find some unlock for a new channel of growth. They're going to build a new feature in the product and all those things will help the business grow a little bit. It's like you're on this line and they're going to help you find like the next little, little edge. But my job is to take this line and to actually move the line, the entire line up. So we call that like a step change and to give you examples of a step change and the reason why other people can't do it is, for example, which I'll share with you. You know, rowing is our first modality, and you're going to see additional modalities come out pretty soon. So, like, that's my job, is to find what is the next unlock that's going to take the business from where it is today, and it's going to 3x in the next two years. Like, I need to be able to find those things and then, you know, bring it into our. Our mission, vision and our strategy and disseminate it throughout the organization. But no one else is going to make those crazy, risky, expensive big decisions other than, you know, the leadership team, especially as the founder.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that perspective. Like the step change of one decision, but being a massive decision of change. That's incredible. And I was going to ask about that and even. Excuse me, in the context of just a couple questions to wrap up here. When you think about the future of Aviron, to what extent that you can share what excites you the most about, you know, the different potential products and features or just, like, where the company is moving as a whole? When you think about Aviron in the next five, 10 years, like, what excites you the most?

You'd say, yeah, I thought about this a lot. You know, when I. When I first built the business, I just really wanted to build a business. Like, that was my main goal is, you know, my motivations were different. Like, I wanted to be successful and build a business and be proud of something and make my parents proud, you know, do that kind of stuff. And then a couple years ago, our community, like our Facebook community, I know it's Facebook and it's, you know, it's Facebook, but we have over 10,000 members in that Facebook community, and it's the most inspiring community. Like, going into that community and seeing how people have changed their lives because of the product really excites me. You know, we've. We had this one member actually tattoo our logo onto her arm because it's been, like, had such a positive impact on her life. So we call it the Avaron Queen. And so that's like, that's what excites me. And I know that there are other products for people and she could probably get those same results by using other, other products. But I feel that we're doing something truly unique in that we're bringing a different experience to working out. And so building new modalities is exciting. It's an exciting part of the business because we're doing something, you know, we're just. We're building something great, but we're doing something so different that I think it's going to have an impact not on everyone's life, but it's going to have an impact on people's lives because it's something that they're, you know, they didn't know they needed or they wanted, but it's definitely, you know, helped them get to their goals. And that's what's, like, really, really exciting. Is. Yeah, this journey.

I love that, man. Very cool to hear. And really. Last question to wrap up here, Andy. It's crazy just even taking back and hearing the story of from bootstrapping to then raising over $20 million plus. Success is a moving target, as you'd say. And I think I've heard that a lot from you throughout this conversation, and it's so just exciting to think about where you guys are going. And quite frankly, I'm so excited to try the product myself. But in the spirit of this episode, man, if you were to take a step back and give your younger self a piece of advice, 2016, 2017, what would that advice be and why?

I think to be successful, I think there's, like, three ingredients. You need to, like, work hard, you need to write, to make the right decisions, just like, being smart, making the right decisions. And you need a lot of luck. And if you ask me which is the most important of the three, it's going to be surprising to a lot of people. It's luck, in my opinion. But luck isn't something you don't have any control over. Luck is something you definitely have control over. And so you need to put yourself in a position to be lucky. And so if you want to be able to raise capital to build the business, you need to put yourself out there and meet as many people as possible, go to as many pitch competitions as possible. Even on Thursday night, when you've had a really long week and there's an opportunity to go to an event that probably won't be that productive, and it's an hour and a half away. Like, I would tell myself, go do it, because you're going to possibly meet someone there, and that person's going to be the reason why you were able to raise that capital, find that supplier, reduce your costs, learn about something that takes you to the next level. And, yeah, that's an important lesson that I think would have been helpful in my life if I. If I started doing that sooner.

Yeah, that's powerful, man. I love that. Creating your own luck and I love the. The emphasis on, like, you do have control over that. Wow, man. Well, Andy, before we wrap up here, first off, I want to say your story is so inspiring, and I know I've said it a handful of times here, and for people that have made it this far in the episode, I truly am looking forward to trying out the Aviron rower myself. And I'll be sure to be posting my experiences all on social. But for those that are listening, Andy, where's the best place for everyone to learn more about Aviron, to purchase the product, and just to stay connected with you as a whole and follow along the journey? Man.

Yeah, our website's Aviron a V I R O N active dot com. But I would say the best place, and I know it's not for everyone, is if you can join the Facebook community, Avron Active Community. Like, don't listen to myself on how great the product is. Like, actually go to the community and just scroll through the post and you'll just be inspired by the thousands of community members and the journey that they're on and how. And how successful they've been, how happy they are now. Like, that's really the most incredible part.

I love that. Well, and I'll be sure to definitely link that Facebook community down below and I'll be sure to join it myself, so I can see all the great things happening there. And once again, Andy, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show today. Really inspired by your story and really excited to try out the product myself, so thank you so much, man.

Thank you so much for having me.