The Egym story doesn’t begin with a particular passion for fitness. Quite the opposite. Florian Sauter and his co-founder Philipp Rösch-Schlanderer had known each other since school and had repeatedly talked about building a business together, but they lacked the right idea. While both went to the gym, by Sauter’s own admission, they weren’t particularly successful there.
The decisive spark came during a semester abroad in the US. There, going to the university gym was a natural part of everyday life. At the same time, Sauter and his future co-founder experienced a fitness world that struck them as surprisingly analog: workout plans on paper, weights that had to be adjusted manually, and machines that were complicated for beginners to use. That was at a time when the iPhone was just demonstrating how fundamentally everyday experiences could be digitized. Why shouldn’t that work for fitness training, too?
A personal trainer in machine form
The two founders made a conscious decision to solve the problem through hardware first. Their vision: a machine that guides users through their workout, taking on part of the role of a personal trainer. What may sound obvious today was an unusual approach 16 years ago.
Among other things, taking part in the Munich Business Plan Competition proved helpful. For Sauter, the greatest value did not lie in whether their assumptions back then turned out to be exactly right. Instead, the competition forced the founders to think their business model through completely and logically. When trying to explain an idea clearly, weaknesses become visible and can be addressed early on.
Financially, Egym started out exceptionally small. The founders were still finishing their studies and had barely any capital of their own. Through the EXIST program, they were able to finance themselves for twelve months, supplemented by 12,000 euros in material resources. For a hardware startup looking to develop an initial prototype, that was a modest starting point. Consequently, those first twelve months felt rather slow for the founders.
150-kilogram pitch deck
The search for investors also had little in common with today’s SaaS pitches. At the time, hardware was seen more as an exotic outlier in the venture capital world, while software-as-a-service companies took center stage. For Egym, that meant countless conversations and plenty of convincing.
The first business angel, Achim Lederle, believed in the idea and, in Sauter’s assessment, also saved the founding team from a critical mistake: Egym had originally considered launching directly in the US. Looking back, starting in Germany first was the right call, especially for the hardware business.
To convince additional investors, the team focused on making things as tangible as possible. With their first self-assembled prototype, they drove a Sprinter van across Germany. At meetings with potential backers, the machine—weighing around 150 kilograms—was hauled off the trailer and carried right into the office. Instead of just looking at slides, investors were meant to see: This product actually exists.
The effort paid off. Following the initial investment from High-Tech Gründerfonds, Egym was able to expand its team and drive forward the development of its first real machines. Early on, the founders also brought sports science expertise into the company. Employee number one, initially hired as a working student, still holds a leadership position at Egym today, according to Sauter.
Sold Before the Product Even Existed
Sauter now describes one of the most crucial early milestones with visible astonishment: Egym managed to sign a sales contract for a complete circuit of eight machines, even though only one of them existed as a prototype. The rest consisted solely of CAD images at that point.
For Sauter, this holds a central lesson for founders: Market validation should happen as early as possible. Only after that came the delivery of the first real machines, trade fair appearances, further customers, as well as new products and business units over the years.
The founder emphasizes repeatedly that the path from startup to unicorn was anything but straightforward. The hardware-heavy business model was unprofitable for years. Egym relied on investor capital to build up the necessary scale. Every additional financing round therefore required fresh persuasion.
Arguably the greatest existential challenge, however, came much later.
From Full Throttle to Full Stop
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, it struck right at the core of Egym’s business model. In the B2B sector, the company primarily works with gyms—and those remained closed for roughly eleven months in total during the pandemic.
Particularly problematic: immediately beforehand, Egym had banked on massive growth and built up staff and resources accordingly. Within a very short space of time, the company had to switch from “full throttle to a full stop.” In retrospect, the situation was a close call, Sauter says. At the same time, the crisis made the company stronger. Since then, growth has been going very well.
The support of investors was also crucial during this phase. They were willing to help shoulder the additional risk. For Sauter, this was proof that Egym had evidently found the right partners when selecting its backers.
From EXIST to business angels, Bayern Kapital, and High-Tech Gründerfonds through to international investors, the financing landscape grew along with the company. Ultimately, Egym reached the next symbolic milestone: a unicorn valuation of more than one billion euros.
American Investors and the Courage to Think Bigger
In the interview, Sauter describes himself as a “techie.” Co-founder Philipp therefore primarily handled investor relations. Even so, Sauter observed how the role of investors evolved over the course of the company’s development.
In the early phase, business angels were able to help with very practical advice and protect the founders from mistakes. Later on, international and especially American investors brought a different perspective: significantly larger ambitions and a more global outlook from the outset. For Egym, it was crucial that these investors came on board at a stage in the company’s development when this international perspective actually suited the business. At the same time, they pushed the founding team to think bigger themselves.
This bigger-picture thinking is now also reflected in the company’s vision. Egym started out with hardware, but today offers numerous services around the original product. Increasingly, the focus is on how fitness and prevention can be more closely linked to the healthcare market.
An important step along this path was the acquisition of Qualitrain, now Wellpass. Sauter describes the logic behind it clearly: The equipment was initially intended to help people navigate their way around the gym. The next step was to get more people into the studios and moving in the first place. Corporate fitness provided a gateway to individuals who in some cases had never exercised before.
In the long term, Egym believes fitness should therefore move beyond being merely a leisure activity and play an active role in health prevention. Users, gyms, and ultimately Egym itself stand to benefit from this.
AI at Egym shouldn’t just be a matter for new employees
With more than 1,000 employees today, Sauter’s own role has also changed fundamentally. From the operational work of the early days, his role has shifted increasingly toward leadership. He does not want to derive any universal advice on corporate culture from this. For Egym, however, it was important to build a company and a work environment where the founders themselves genuinely enjoy working.
The company currently sees a particularly big challenge in artificial intelligence: finding good AI talent is difficult. However, simply hiring new specialists is not enough for Sauter. He says it is at least as important to empower the existing workforce to work with AI. Egym is therefore investing a lot of time and energy into this area.
Sauter’s forecast is clear: virtually every job at Egym will look completely different in two years. The transformation must therefore come from within the company itself.
AI is also already transforming the way software development works. Although Egym manufactures physical fitness equipment, the company has always seen itself as a software company rather than a hardware company. A single machine is not enough. Only through a software ecosystem does it become a compelling overall experience. With current developments in the AI space, Egym must now fundamentally rethink once again how software teams will operate in the future.
The US as the Next Growth Engine
Another key focus remains internationalization. Co-founder Philipp is now working in the US. In addition, according to Sauter, Egym recently completed a merger with the American company Playlist, forming a joint group. With this move, the company aims to further expand its footprint in the US market.
The potential there is enormous, he says. At the same time, the next major stage of Egym’s vision remains in place: the move from the fitness market into the healthcare market.
However, Sauter doesn’t attribute Egym reaching this point solely to strategic brilliance. Success also involves coincidence—being in the right place at the right time. Nor does success as a founder automatically mean being a good investor. While the Egym founders do occasionally make smaller angel investments when they are particularly convinced by a topic or team, they do not do so on a large scale.
“Two-thirds of things don’t work out as planned”
What lesson remains after 16 years of building a company? Sauter consciously refrains from giving blanket advice. But for him, one experience runs throughout Egym’s history: founders need a clear goal and must not let the inevitable detours derail them.
Egym, he notes, has always held on to the idea of improving the gym experience and moving more toward healthcare in the long term. The path there was not a straight line. What matters, he says, is not questioning your own convictions at every obstacle. At the same time, you have to realistically expect that a large part of your original plans won’t work out. Sauter puts it bluntly: founders should expect two-thirds of things not to work out as originally intended—and keep going anyway.
Perhaps a dose of naivety is also part of it. Looking back, Sauter says that the founders might never have started Egym at all if they had known back then just how complicated the hardware business in particular would turn out to be. Not every difficulty needs to be fully figured out right from the start. Sometimes it helps to move forward without worrying too much – as long as you don’t lose touch with reality.
And one more thing hasn’t changed after 16 years: Florian Sauter and his co-founder are still at the helm of the company together. A clear division of roles has contributed to this, says Sauter. Above all, though, the fire still needs to be there.
