MyFitnessPal, a service that allows users to track their calories and share that information with friends, has raised $18 million in its first round of funding.
This seems like one of those stories where a company goes years without raising any funding (MyFitnessPal launched in September 2005) before raising money from top-tier venture firms. The round was led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with participation from Accel Partners, and Kleiner's John Doerr and Accel's Andrew Braccia are joining the board.
MyFitnessPal has previously said that it has more than 40 million registered users. As part of the funding announcement, it also says that its users have lost a total of 100 million pounds to date, and that over the past year, it has been adding 1.5 million users every month.
As for why it's raising money now, co-founder Mike Lee told me that he and his co-founder/brother Albert Lee have always had "a thousand item to-do list, and we could only do three things on it." Over time, he said, "things kept dropping off the list, which kept getting bigger and bigger." So raising money will allow the company to expand the team and to add the features that the Lees have been planning. It also allows MyFitnessPal to put more resources behind its recent efforts to expand internationally, which doesn't just involve creating translated versions of the website and app, but also support for local foods and units of measurement.
As MyFitnessPal has grown, a number of other services have sprung up to help users track their health, some of them creating their own devices and others relying on the smartphone. The company actually offers an API that helps it integrate with outside services.
"Clearly there's this explosion of activity happening around the quantified self," Lee said. "The amount of data that we will have about our personal health is only going to grow. … We really want to advance our ability to help users make meaning from all this data. We really want to analyze the data to help our users be successful."
As for making money, even though the company has been profitable since its inception, Lee acknowledged that MyFitnessPal hasn't taken a particularly sophisticated approach in this area thus far: "We have not been focused on monetization to date, especially for a bootstrapped company. We literally slapped ads on." So he plans to do "a lot of thinking" around the business model — the key, he said, is that MyFitnessPal is addressing a real pain point for users.
MyFitnessPal's vision is to make good health attainable and sustainable for everyone. Powered by more than 30 million people, MyFitnessPal is the leading resource for taking charge of daily health and provides users with a one-stop shop to eat better and get fit. Their free mobile apps and website provide support that allows users to track, learn, communicate and improve their health and wellness. With the largest database of over 2 million foods, including nutritional content from all major brands...
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB) is a well known Silicon Valley venture capital firm, due in large part to their past success. They were early investors in many significant companies, including Amazon, AOL, Compaq, Electronic Arts, Google, Intuit, Macromedia, Netscape, Segway, and Sun Microsystems. The name of the firm comes from the four founding partners: Eugene Kleiner, Tom Perkins, Frank J. Caufield, and Brook Byers. In March 2008, KPCB announced the iFund, a $100M investment initiative focused on ideas...
Accel Partners is a global venture capital firm with offices located in Silicon Valley, New York, London, China, and India. They typically make multi-stage investments in internet technology companies. Founded in 1983, Accel Partners has a long history of excellence and innovation in the venture capital business and is dedicated to partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams to build world-class companies. Accel today invests globally using dedicated teams and market-specific strategies for local geographies, with offices in Palo...
Mike Lee is co-founder of MyFitnessPal, the leading free resource helping people improve their health. Prior to founding MyFitnessPal, Mike co-founded NextC, a venture-funded startup focused on building online communities. During his 20 year tenure in the technology industry, Mike has held leadership positions at several other top start-ups in Silicon Valley, including Palm, Handspring, Beyond.com, and Regis McKenna. Mike graduated summa cum laude from Princeton with a B.A. in economics.
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