Carrot or stick! – The startups using rewards and punishments to encourage exercise

Fitness and technology have become a match made in heaven. Wearables have been rapidly growing in this space, with major players such as Google now getting in on the action. Others have utilized fitness technology in the shape of apps, giving users guidance and support within their routines. However, for one app, the key to helping encourage healthier lifestyle choices comes in the form of punishment.

Lazy Jar is a third party Fitbit app that encourages users to naturally build the discipline required to achieve their fitness goals. Through negative reinforcement, users are pushed to achieve their fitness goals or incur a penalty, resulting in a committed donation to charity. Users join and make a six-month activity commitment (i.e. 80,000 steps a week). Then users must choose their penalty amount — of which 80% will be donated to childhood cancer research if their goals are not met.

Here in Europe, the latest technological marvel, blockchain, is now being fused with fitness to encourage better lifestyle choices for everyone involved. However, unlike Lazy Jar, this startup looks to encourage good behavior with unique rewards. What’s more, this startup has recently announced support from a very credible figure within the country of Estonia.

Lympo, a company rewarding sports enthusiasts for completing fitness challenges on its app, today announced that the former Prime Minister of Estonia, Taavi Rõivas, will be joining as the new chairman of the company’s Supervisory Board.

Lympo aims to encourage healthy living around the world by rewarding people for exercising and leading more active lives. With the help of blockchain technology and fitness gamification, users will be paid through the Lympo app for finishing fitness challenges with LYM tokens, which can be used to purchase sports and wellness products or services, such as sports clothes, sneakers, healthy food or gym memberships.

The first version of the Lympo app will be released next month in the 15,000 runners’ marathon in Vilnius, Lithuania.

After the upcoming soft launch, Lympo will reach the U.S. market by the end of this year with a powerful all-star support team. NBA club Dallas Mavericks owned by the ‘Shark Tank’ star and investor Mark Cuban and world’s number 2 women tennis player Caroline Wozniacki have already signed partnerships with Lympo.

“Lympo’s mission is one that I can easily relate to,” said Taavi Rõivas. “I ran my first marathon because of a challenge and have been a passionate runner ever since. I have seen many startups and know well that the key to success is to have a great team. Lympo’s team is one of the most inspiring, and I am certain that Lympo has huge potential.”

“We are thrilled to welcome Taavi Rõivas on board as the chairman of the Supervisory Board of Lympo,” said Ada Jonuse, CEO and co-founder of Lympo. “His position as a figurehead in the political and tech world will help share Lympo’s vision on how blockchain and data can help transform the fitness and healthy lifestyle industry.”

As the old saying goes, “Anything worth having doesn’t come easy” and washboard abs are a prime example of this. However, thanks to the innovation of these startups making the most of modern technology, we might all be one step closer to our dream fitness goals. Or at least we will become a little healthier in the process.

Disclosure: This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company