New technology from startup ventures is transforming the sports industry. The mission of this series will be to introduce startup companies in the sports technology space to a broader audience and allow Founders of promising new ventures to tell their story. Feel free to contact us if you know of a startup that should be considered for this series.
Company: Mighty Audio
C-Level Team Member: Anthony Pu – COO
Headquarters: Venice, CA
1. What is your elevator pitch?
Mighty plays your Spotify music on-the-go without a smartphone. Lightweight, durable, and a small enough to clip-on to any piece of clothing, it’s the perfect device for your active life. Mighty comes equipped with Bluetooth and WiFi and has a hard drive that can store 48 hours of music offline. All for $75.
Mighty #MountainBiking: Your Trail. Your Music. Your World. pic.twitter.com/h2qE0Zg8D1
— Mighty Audio (@MightyAudio) February 16, 2016
2. Problem & Solution
Mighty was born from personal frustration with the on-the-go music status quo. Today, every option to stream music while exercising requires a bulky, fragile smartphone. And they’re only getting larger, more fragile, more expensive, and more battery hungry. This motivated us, a team of ex-collegiate athletes, snowboarders, yogis, and avid exercisers, to create a simple product that provides users with a comfortable and seamless music+fitness experience, all without a phone.
Mighty is first device in the world that let’s you play your Spotify music without being connected to a smartphone. It uses WiFi and Bluetooth to sync your Spotify music, so you never have to hassle with cords or computers. Mighty also has a flash hard drive that stores up to 48 hours of Spotify music. If you’re an iPod Shuffle owner, you can throw away all of those annoying cords (along with the Shuffle itself). And gone are the days of booting up your computer, logging into that slow iTunes program, and paying $0.99 per song.
3. Market – your target market and the overall market
Mighty currently only works with Spotify, so the close to 100 million Spotify users globally are our primary target audience. That being said, we think that the introduction of Mighty as an alternative to exercising with a phone will convince non-Spotify users to switch to the streaming service. So our broader target market is anyone who hates exercising with their phone (e.g. runners), wants their music in places that don’t have a connection (e.g. snowboarders), or wants to disconnect from digital distraction and focus on their music (e.g. yogis).
4. Business Model – how do you make money?
Short-term, all profits will come from selling the Mighty device. Longer-term, we believe that there are opportunities to enhance the product (e.g. water proof version) and expand our product line (e.g. headphones).
5. Management Team – with titles
Anthony Pu – COO
Anand Pandurangan – CTO
Mark Gullickson – Head Mechanical Engineer
Erik Ries – Head of Brand Experience
6. What else do you want the audience to know about your venture?
The Mighty team is extremely passionate about how technology can improve lives at the intersection of music and fitness. Music and fitness are joyful aspects of almost everyone’s life and we’re excited that Mighty can be the bridge between those two activities, making both more enjoyable.
We’re launching (or launched, depending on publish date) a Kickstarter campaign on Tuesday, February 23rd to introduce Mighty to the world. Please click here to support the Mighty movement!
Answer 1-2 bonus questions:
If you were to invite any CEO to dinner who would it be and why?
Elon Musk – he’s a visionary who isn’t afraid to tackle the world’s biggest challenges.
If you could go to any sporting event, what would it be and why?
Game 7 of NBA Finals – there’s nothing better than one game of hoops for all the marbles!