Cofounders, ClassPass
Payal Kadakia and Mary Biggins were running a failed startup, Classtivity. In its first year, the MindBody-like startup got fewer than 100 signups for local workout classes on its platform.
But Kadakia and Biggins noticed a few of its users trying to hack a promotion it ran that allowed users to visit local workout venues at a discounted rate. So Kadakia and Biggins scrapped their old idea to be a B2B class-management platform and began offering gym-like memberships to its users.
ClassPass costs $99 a month and it lets users sign up for hundreds of local spin, barre, yoga and dance classes in New York, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles. ClassPass grew much faster than Classtivity ever did, and got 350,000 class sign-ups its first year.
In March, ClassPass raised $2 million in seed funding from investors like BoxGroup and SV Angel. In September it raised a $12 million Series A from notable angels including David Tisch, Shana Fisher, Kal Vepuri, Fritz Lanman, and Hank Vigil.
Since ClassPass launched in May 2013, more than 350,000 classes have been booked on ClassPass.