
From a Farm in Egypt to Building a YC Computer Vision Startup for Fitness - dang
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/23/smartspot/
======
x0x0
[http://www.smartspot.io](http://www.smartspot.io) because googling completely
failed and I had to find it via product hunt

This looks like a fascinating product; if the founder's around, does it track
back angles? Is it useful for dls/squats/cleans? Can it track bar paths? Can
it track body angles over time, or does it (as of now) just track final
angles?

~~~
augustinspring
Cofounder here. We do track back angle. Squat was our #1 priority, since so
many people screw up.

It does track body angles over time! Check out the end of our video for a few
different exercises:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_qaqoGXHDU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_qaqoGXHDU)

~~~
kolencherry
Out of curiosity, does it track and differentiate betwen both high-bar and
low-bar squats? This is a pretty cool service.

~~~
augustinspring
Great question! It does and it doesn't - we can guide you with either type,
but that's something that you (or your personal trainer) might better be able
to dial in offline.

On our site, you'll be able to see your full 3D skeleton recording and do more
investigation into your form - slow mo, frame by frame, and all that detail-
oriented stuff.

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7Figures2Commas
This looks like a cool technology that will most likely be stuck in no man's
land in its current incarnation.

Selling this at scale to gyms will be very difficult. Personal training is one
the largest profit centers for gyms and at many gyms, personal training is
_the_ most profitable profit center. Convincing members to sign up can be
difficult though (at an average gym typically less than 10% of gym members use
personal training services at any given time) so gym owners are going to be
skeptical about anything that might deter members from trying personal
training.

If this technology is as good as the founders say it is, it will be viewed by
most gyms as a problem, not a solution. A gym isn't going to pay $2,500/unit
for the privilege of potentially cannibalizing its personal training revenue.
On the flip side, if the technology isn't as good as the founders say it is, a
gym isn't going to pay $2,500/unit to add a piece of equipment that doesn't
offer any benefit.

Another poster mentioned selling to individuals for home gyms. Notwithstanding
the fact that this is a non-starter at anywhere near the $2,500 price point,
the market for personal fitness equipment is unfathomably competitive.
Customer acquisition costs are insane and you could easily spend millions of
dollars just to launch a new product.

If there's any value here, it's in the computer vision technology. The
question is whether the company and whoever invests will recognize that before
it's too late.

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padobson
_Personal training, like hair cuts, is a non-tradable service._

But, this is part of the value of personal training. You're not going to miss
your work out if you lose a hundred bucks by not going.

Also, there's value in motivation as well. Having someone there to push you to
get those extra one or two reps is another big part of the value add of a
personal trainer.

This is really cool, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the product evolves
going forward. Props to Mr. Eldeeb for his amazing journey and the beginnings
of an interesting startup. Sounds like the pressures of running a company
might be a cakewalk compared to the rest of his life!

~~~
augustinspring
Cofounder Josh Augustin here. Motivation is a huge part of what a personal
trainer does, and that's why we're going to help trainers reach out to their
clients with email and SMS.

For people who have never been able to afford a personal trainer, like Moawia
and I, this is an awesome alternative, and we believe it can be just as
motivating.

~~~
andrewfong
Josh, given that the Smartspot is using a Kinect, are there plans for this to
become an Xbox app? The motivational "hump" for working out in your living
room is much lower than going to the gym (and cheaper too).

~~~
augustinspring
We feel that our tech is most useful when it's helping people do high-weight
exercises better, without injuring -themselves, so we're targeting gyms first,
but home gyms are definitely a possibility for the future.

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xasos
Love the backstory. Fitness startups are pretty interesting, and I like that
Smartspot is using computer vision (because I haven't seen anyone else doing
it). I would love to see a performance comparison to Athos[1], which uses
embedded sensors in workout gear to detect muscle balance and engagement.

[1] [http://liveathos.com](http://liveathos.com)

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paperwork
This is awesome. About a year ago I bought a Kinect with the intent of doing
something very similar. This story makes me want to get coding again.

I was excited by Amazon phone's stereo camera as well as Google's project
tango. Depth sensing technology is very exciting indeed!

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tiffanyricks
Great Story!! I love the founder’s journey! Nothing was handed to you. You
worked hard for everything you have! I can identify with that. This company
would have kicked butt at SXSW because we did not see many fitness companies
there this year.

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skizm
If you search "Smart Spot" in Google I get this article at #3 and not the
actual website at all. "Smartspot" returns the actual website as the last item
on the list. You should up your SEO game!

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616c
As a personal rant, you can ignore the rest if you can tell this is off-topic
from here. I spent a lot of time in Egypt, I have a former Egyptian spouse,
and I know many Egyptians. This country has so much potential, and it is all
going to waste because variations of this story, kids struggling to even find
time to invest in the sub-standard education they are provided, is common.

Now, like a few other expats who studied there with me in 2006-2007, I was
really upset post-revolution. As expected, people wanted to bootstrap a nation
far behind. There were, like in other public sector jobs, numerous protests by
education sector staff and instructors about how it was bad, and not
improving. Keep in mind in the average university students are paying a few
hundred gineh (Egyptian pounds) per year. As a result, even higher education
is swampy messy of inadequate staff and resources like our worst inner city
middle schools. And this is the top of education chain in Egypt. Of course, as
expected even in the most developed nations (I was scarred and disturbed by
local politics, jaded from my time over there as I saw more parallels over
time), this was put on the back burner when it is crucial to improving the
general state of affairs. Not that many will address that, because it is not
politically expedient.

No one really focuses on the education problem in Egypt. I know some people
running companies there, if you can even believe it pre and post-revolution
when internet cuts were common, web development firms. Egypt invested in, for
its time, top-rate broadband availability in the region. It is one of the
first Arab countries to have Internet backbone as part of the higher education
networks in the 90s prior to the Zaki information economy push around the
millenium. When I studied at the time, with everything else faulting, the
Internet infrastructure, even for average consumer use, was surprisingly not
bad. They even had cool joint degrees. If I had money to spare, I would have
considered one.

[http://www.africabuild.eu/consortium/iti-
mcit](http://www.africabuild.eu/consortium/iti-mcit)

So there is great infrastructure and potential for the Eldeebs I know and
knew, pre-revolution at least. The sad reality is that stories like this are
so common in Egypt, it is crazy. No kid, even the most motivated, cannot be
expected to fight for enterpreneurship when he cannot eat and must work side
jobs so his whole family can survive. Education, even when kids can get
access, is terrible, in spite of great telecom infrastructure that was part of
a perceived information economy bump in the future.

I generally think Ahmed Zuweil, a famous Egyptian technocrat and Nobel
Chemistry Prize winner, is somewhat an asshole. But he used to run ads during
Ramadan on Egyptian television the last few years underlining education is THE
priority to make Egypt return even to a fraction of its true greatness.

If anyone thinks Eldeeb's story is moving, please look into orgs like this and
many other Egyptian NGOs invested in education. Lord knows I do.

[http://www.zewailcity.edu.eg](http://www.zewailcity.edu.eg)

~~~
jessaustin
AIUI, Egypt is yet another African country that fell victim to land reform.
The unique wrinkle to the story is that instead of taking the land from
experienced farmers and giving it to the less capable masses, Mubarak took it
from experienced farmers and gave it to corporate cronies. Less socialist,
still disastrous! Egypt could feed itself 8,000 years ago, it could feed
itself 800 years ago, and it could feed itself 80 years ago. Now, not so
much...

