Miami-based Startup, RunLive Selected for German leAD Sports Accelerator
ORLANDO – Miami-based RunLive, Inc. is one of ten startups chosen from over 400 applicants to participate in the 2018 cohort of the leAD Sports Accelerator in Berlin, Germany.
RunLive recently launched a public beta of its running app in the iOS store that differentiates itself by being one of the world’s first gamified social running platforms.
Runners across the world can connect and match instantly to compete in real-time, while being rewarded for their triumphs and the miles they cover. The app offers instant motivation and around-the-clock competition powered by patent-pending algorithms, in-run voice chat and audio-guided feedback.
Founded by Mike Thompson, a Jamaican entrepreneur based in Miami, Florida, RunLive has mostly been self-funded with a small friends and family round coordinated by co-founder David Mullings, also a Jamaican entrepreneur.
“We were very specific about the kind of accelerator we wanted to apply to and leAD was the best choice based on our target market combined with their strong suite of mentors, coaches and partners” said Mike Thompson, a former Development Operations Engineer, who came up with the idea for the app 2 years ago.
“Our goal at leAD is to find ambitious startups that want to change the future of sports. RunLive is a perfect fit for our accelerator program with a great team and a promising product. We look forward to working with them to help them achieve their goals as a company and as founders,” Christoph Sonnen – CEO leAD Sports
While plenty of other running apps with a social component do exist, most of them focus on mapping your run and tracking statistics but do not offer a way for runners to connect and compete in real-time.
“I was introduced to Mike by a Florida angel investor group to help him scale and was really impressed with his product. I committed to help raise capital and invest but got sucked in by his drive and the product roadmap” said co-founder David Mullings who is also a mentor with the Branson Center of Entrepreneurship Caribbean and Founder Institute Jamaica.
The duo participated in a round of interviews and then were invited to Berlin to pitch and conduct interviews on Monday, July 16. Now they will accept an investment for 8% of the company with a post-money valuation of €1.25 million and participate in a 12-week program in Berlin that ends with presentations to 16 investors and leAD’s internal fund.
RunLive currently has over 1500 users in the public beta and is focused on the user experience before trying to scale bigger. The team was in the middle of fundraising for their seed round and are excited to showcase diversity in tech.
leAD Sports was founded by Klaus, Horst and Stefan Bente, grandsons of Adi Dassler, the founder of Adidas.
