00:00Eventually, in life, everything is about risk management and odds.
00:05Like what's the probability of you being successful in what you're doing?
00:09And what's the probability of you making a certain investment and having a positive ROI?
00:14At the end of the day, everything is about probability.
00:19I lost my father when I was 18.
00:21And ever since I lost him, I was very much into fitness and wellness.
00:26And I didn't want my kids to go through what I went through in life.
00:29That's why I was always fit, made sure that I'm eating very healthy, and I researched the industry.
00:36And although my background is gaming, I was always working out and I knew that I wanted
00:40to have an impact and to have people live a longer and healthier life.
00:47Shalom McKenzie made his $1.4 billion fortune after merging his software company with DraftKings
00:53and going public via a SPAC.
00:55He believes his new startup, Amp, could be even bigger.
00:59But building a new company in the challenging, competitive, and highly saturated at-home
01:03fitness device market is not for the faint of heart.
01:06And the odds are stacked against him.
01:08Ever since I was a kid, I was very much into sports, statistics, and I was very good with numbers.
01:14So I used to place a lot of bets when I was a kid with my friends.
01:18I founded Tenbet in 2002 with a friend of mine.
01:21We were only five people in the company.
01:24And when we started, we didn't have money to market.
01:27So we offered the best odds on the market.
01:31We've made our software very sophisticated by detecting who's a sharp customer and who's recreational.
01:37And we knew how to manage the odds.
01:41And we saw that our strength is in technology.
01:44I founded SB Tech in 2007 because I saw that it has more potential for us because we can
01:50work with the biggest operators if they'll use our software.
01:54And we don't have to market to spend a lot of money on marketing.
01:57SB Tech eventually became the biggest software provider in the world for sports betting companies.
02:02In October 2020, McKenzie was playing poker with his employees on a 192-foot yacht off
02:07the coast of Greece, celebrating that SB Tech had merged with DraftKings and went public
02:12via a SPAC in a $975 million deal a few months earlier.
02:17We were playing poker every night, went to restaurants, did a lot of water sports, and
02:21had a very good time together.
02:24And one of the guys that worked with me is very close to me.
02:28And he was very fundamental for SB Tech.
02:31I was always trying to influence him to lose down on his weight.
02:34And I made a bet with him that if he's going to go below 100 kilos, which is 220 pounds,
02:40I'm going to take a very big yacht for him.
02:42And he's going to choose the people and the place that he's going to go with.
02:46So all the guys that heard about the bet, they went crazy and said, you must lose your
02:51weight.
02:52You're going to go into a regime.
02:54So he went back home, and they took out all of his living room away.
02:59And they put it at gym.
03:01And he was working out twice a day.
03:03He had a personal chef, a personal trainer.
03:07And happily, I lost the bet.
03:09He lost more than 25 kilos, which is more than 50 pounds.
03:13And because of that, it completely changed his life.
03:18That friendly wager became the motivation for Amp Fitness.
03:21Similar to other at-home workout equipment manufacturers, such as Tonal, Alter, and Mirror,
03:27the nearly $2,000 Amp is installed on a wall in a user's home.
03:30And remote trainers, both AI-generated and human, guide customers through exercises within
03:35the app, which requires a $23-a-month subscription.
03:41It's actually a digital crossover device with resistance up to 100 pounds.
03:47It has three angles.
03:49First angle, second angle, third angle.
03:54And then I'm pulling the knob.
03:55It can go down and up, also within a finger, because it has an electric magnet motor that
04:03controls the weight.
04:04And so it's also zero gravity.
04:06So it's very easy to pull up or pull down.
04:09The app uses no weights.
04:10Rather, a silent electromagnetic motor creates resistance, from 5 pounds to 100 pounds, which
04:16can be increased with the turn of a dial, similar to a Google Nest thermostat.
04:21Users then get personalized workouts.
04:22The amount of resistance will increase or decrease, and the duration and intensity will
04:26also fluctuate, depending on progress.
04:29One of the things that drove me crazy is that today you've got much more data on your mobile
04:35or on your car than you have on your own body.
04:37You know, what was your workout a month ago?
04:39How much did you bench press a year ago, and how much are you bench pressing now or
04:43a month ago?
04:44You know, you don't have this data.
04:46I wanted to come up with a device that will be your own personal trainer, will count your
04:52reps, calculate your progress, show you how you're improving, and also give you the right
04:59workouts and movements according to your goals.
05:02I wanted people to have fun while working out because, you know, it's a fun experience
05:11that they want to share with their friends.
05:13How do you motivate someone to overachieve, to break his record, to be motivated?
05:18Because sometimes you're not feeling like working out.
05:21We've done it in a social way that they can compete with other people.
05:24They're having fun.
05:25They know how they're making progress.
05:28The whole user journey is something that does not exist today on the market.
05:33McKenzie says he personally invested about $50 million to Seed Amp, and friends and family
05:38invested as well.
05:39I'm taking bets by investing into people that I'm recruiting and that I know that they can
05:45deliver, and investing in a product and technology that I believe in and I know that is going
05:55to revolutionize this space.
05:57I think that my background and being a second-time entrepreneur coming from the gaming industry
06:02with a lot of knowledge in technology and product and having the know-how how to make
06:08a product that is super engaging, fun, and simple plays out to our advantage.
06:15In order for me to leverage the success of Amp and to make sure that it's going to be
06:20the dominant player in this industry, I think that we would want to go public in the next
06:26three to four years.
06:27I don't see strength as the only vertical for Amp.
06:31It's the whole ecosystem of wellness, which is nutrition, supplements, sleep, strength,
06:37and how you are using this data in order for you to fulfill your potential and be stronger
06:42and healthier.
06:44There's no other product like this in the market.
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