Altitude Accelerator incubator tenant, Aviron, recently raised 4.5M USD from a group of investors including Y Combinator, Samsung Next, Formic Ventures and Global Founders Capital.
Aviron is a company that designed a rowing machine with you in mind – short, high-intensity workouts that save you time, high resistance settings that allow you to include strength training with your cardio workout and hundreds of content options to get you motivated and keep you engaged month after month.
Aviron joined Altitude Accelerator (formerly RIC Centre) 4 years ago in 2017 when founder, Andy Hoang, was working part-time on Aviron alongside a full-time job to survive and sustain the business. Aviron was a 2018 Incubator program tenant and went full-time in 2019. Read Aviron’s origin story here.
“It’s been a very long road. I did what most companies do, which is start from scratch to build a business. Most Silicon Valley-backed companies are very young. But I tried to raise capital just in the past few years,” explained Hoang.
Aviron is at the “intersection of fitness and gaming.” Their competitive advantage is their interactive game interface which includes games such as shooting zombies, racing Olympic athletes, and more. This is the difference between them and other competitors which focus on the class experience.
“Part of what value RIC Centre brings is their network of advisors and expertise. Raising capital was very challenging so we started very slowly. Fortunately for us, we received the assistance and got the experience we needed to achieve some huge milestones that allowed us to accelerate our growth,” shared Hoang. “In December of 2020, we had less than 9 employees. Ever since raising capital, we’ve grown to 25 employees.”
When asked what the biggest lesson Hoang has learned as an entrepreneur, he explained that you don’t truly know how challenging it is until you’re in it. “Entrepreneurship is a real commitment and you must be willing to sacrifice a lot for a bet that’s not guaranteed.”
The long-term vision for Aviron, according to Andy Hoang is to grow the business three-fold every quarter in order to bring the business to a billion-dollar company. Learn more about Aviron on their website. 