It was great to be at the launch of ActiveLab 2019 yesterday at Bird and Bird in London.
Having attended the first ActiveLab in 2017, then being involved judging and mentoring the 2018 contingent, it was an honour to be invited to attend the 2019 launch event, to meet the new cohort of start-ups and to network with ukactive and other industry luminaries.
Steve Ward introduced the evening’s line-up, followed by a warm welcome from Emma Green of Bird and Bird. Charles-Emmanuel Nelis from Decathlon spoke about making sport accessible through innovation, digitisation, and coding. Adrian Nash of LifeFitness (formerly Google) concluded the warm-up before a brief panel debate, then we got into the pitches.
Each ActiveLab company gave a 60 second pitch to the audience. All were very professional and polished, and there was a good mix of solutions for a variety of different issues, from motivational avatars to body scanners. For me, the top three were (in order of appearance) GoSweat, CoachAI, and HealthPod. We were aware of all three of these companies already through a variety of different networks, but it was good to meet or reconnect with representatives from all three companies and find out the latest developments with their products.
You can read about all 9 finalists on the ActiveLab homepage, and download the latest ukactive FitTech report here. Well done to Jack Connors and everyone at ukactive for putting together a great programme and a slick event!
Good luck to all the 2019 cohort, we look forward to watching your development and seeing the final vote at Active Uprising on 6 June.
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