SA fitness App draws investment from 4Di Capital’s Stanford

·21 Sep 2015

FitKey, an app that connects users to a range of geo-located exercise classes, has received investment from Cape Town based angel investor, Justin Stanford, MD of 4Di Group, a diversified investment management group.

Stanford is also co-founding General Partner of early-stage technology venture capital firm 4Di Capital.

The app, which entered beta in May this year is poised to open to the public. It enables the user to join an extensive range of fitness and exercise classes without being locked into a specific contract.

Stanford and FitKey founders, Evan Walther and Joshua Shimkin, signed a pre-seed investment in August this year.

The two parties have decided to raise capital on the Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE).

SAFE is different from a convertible note as it is not a debt instrument and does not bear maturity dates, regulations or security interests making it less risky for the founders. It ultimately de-risks early stage investments for investors as well, where slow deals and onerous terms often kill early stage companies.

“We are the first South African company domiciled in South Africa to raise on SAFE though with Barclays’ Tech Lab’s Africa accelerator in Cape Town using SAFE, it’s quickly becoming the standard. It is going to change the rate at which early stage companies in SA can raise funding and do so in a manner that prepares them for later rounds,” said Walther.

“Our round is oversubscribed and we’ve raised enough capital to reach breakeven. Though, we’re still accepting investment from value-add investors through the end of the month,” he added.

Stanford’s investment will be used to build out the FitKey team to ensure that it has the resources to scale rapidly across the country. “Although we use tech, it’s actually a very human business. We know that by including some more great people in our team we can grow this business exponentially in the next year,” Walther said.