Sweatcoin

Sweatcoin was created to motivate people to increase physical activity and address obesity issues, which cost the global economy billions of dollars in direct costs annually.To encourage more action, Sweatcoin identified the need to overcome "present bias." "Behavioral bias" is a term in behavioral economics describing the human tendency to ignore things that don’t have an immediate impact on us. The solution is a fitness app that converts outdoor steps into virtual currency ("sweatcoins"), which can be used to purchase real goods and services on the app’s marketplace (offering instant gratification).Currently, over 400 vendors in the UK, US, EU, Canada, and Australia accept sweatcoins as a payment method through the app’s marketplace. Since its launch, the Sweatcoin app has been downloaded over 25 million times per week, with 5 million active users.To date, Sweatcoin’s parent company, SweatCo Ltd, has successfully raised nearly £5 million in venture capital funding. The latest round, totaling £4.2 million, concluded in December 2017 and was led by Goodwater Capital, a Silicon Valley VC firm focused on consumer technology. Participants in this round included Greylock Partners, Rubylight, Seedcamp, Justin Kan (founder of Twitch and Justin.tv), and Rain Lohmus (founder of LHV Bank).