The best ideas in business rarely arrive with a press conference and a polished product. They start as solutions to problems that no one realised existed. They live in garages and bedrooms and late-night conversations. The best ones start before the hype, before an industry has grown and evolved. Those that get in at the ground floor, taking risks when others can't see the vision, are often the ones that net the fairytale ending.

ROXFIT might just be one of these fairytales. In 2023, two former rugby players turned builder-operator duo found themselves training for their first HYROX races and mulling over the same question everyone asks when they wade into the world of fitness racing: how does my performance in one part of the race impact the others, and how do I make sure I’m improving overall?

The race was clearly about more than just generic programming; there was an art and a science to developing training systems that worked effectively and capitalized on the wealth of modern data available to us. Was it possible to build an engine that could connect the dots and really help drive performance, not just deliver programming, but contextualise and adjust to individual requirements and performance?

Ben Wilson could code. Joey Allott knew how to build community and narrative. Between them, they could see the shape of something new. Not another programming app, nor a coaching cult led by an enigmatic personality. But a tool that captures the reality of hybrid fitness training, stitches together the running and the workouts, and then makes the data useful enough that you come back tomorrow because you know you are better than yesterday.

They called it ROXFIT. They moved fast, launched an MVP inside two weeks and showed it to top athletes like Hunter McIntyre (and anyone else who would look…) in a warm-up zone in London. Hunter grinned, as did others, and reality started to bend itself around them.

Then came a fork in the road. A bigger platform wanted ROXFIT’s engine inside an “official” build. For three months, the founders explored it. The numbers were tempting. The vision was not. They walked away and doubled down on what they believed the sport needed.

Twelve months later, ROXFIT now has 150,000 users, an oversubscribed seed pot, and V2 on the runway. Unlike many institutionally-backed startups, they also run a meme committee. Every Friday, the community waits for it with bated thumbs.

This is the story of how the jokes and the product feed each other, why they turned down a collaboration that would have looked great on a pitch deck, and what the upcoming V2 tells us about where hybrid fitness is going next.

The Problem

We start on Zoom. Ben and Joey are relaxed, direct, and slightly amused by how fast everything has moved. They grew up in families that ran things. They learned quickly that the fastest way to understand an industry is to make something for it and see who turns up.

well.being: Give us the early read on the origin. What was the spark?

Ben Wilson: “I was doing 10 x 500 on the SkiErg and trying to work out whether I was getting faster or slower. I could code. I had built time-based engines before during my time at WithU. But my Apple Watch was just giving me very basic information. No context, no laps that meant anything for hybrid. I wanted to tag the work with proper labels, see compromised running, see where pace fell off, and have that tied to a real training objective.”

Joey Allott: “I’d worked across brands and communities and saw the gap from another angle. There were plenty of smart programs out there, but nothing neutral, useful, and genuinely community-building for the HYROX world. We didn’t want to start a cult. We wanted to be informative, entertaining, and a place people hang out because the product makes them better.”

Building out their MVP in a short space of time with the basic functionality to accurately track and tag different workout segments, the boys realised they had an answer to a problem. As they iterated on this and built the first ‘engine’ (a description of the code which lets the app work in the format it is today) they began to build in tools beyond just tracking, with dynamic responses to performance in a session dictating future loading. As the data set they had available grew, they could predict performance and what needed to happen for someone to get better.

The Decision

Within a week of launch, which saw over 5,000 downloads with no marketing, a larger player building an official HYROX app came calling. For a while, it looked like ROXFIT’s engine would power that app under a licensing arrangement, and the app came off the App Store as they explored developing in tandem. It would have meant quick scale and headlines, but it also meant a product direction that didn’t match Ben and Joey’s vision.

w.b: Why walk away from an official partnership path that many founders would kill for?

Ben: "While we explored a potential official partnership, we ultimately chose to remain independent to stay true to our vision. We continue to collaborate closely with their team and community - and remain open to deeper partnerships in the future.”

ROXFIT went live in the App Store again, and the team went back on offense. There were 12,000 users, then came a European block of races and steady organic growth. In the world of SAAS business, where customer acquisition costs are the make-or-break for many companies, ROXFIT unlocked a magic marketing approach that brought these costs down to virtually zero. By year's end, they had compounding momentum and the beginnings of a cult following for something unexpected.

The Meme Committee

You can believe in performance and still have a laugh. ROXFIT’s weekly Friday meme drop became appointment viewing. The founders call it a committee. It is two people, a WhatsApp thread, and a clear sense of where the line is (or isn’t), realising that the growth of HYROX also meant a body of shared experience, the founders saw meme cultures as a canny route to their consumers.

w.b: How do funny memes help build a serious product?

Ben: “It is who we are. Hybrid is serious. People train hard. But the sport lives and breathes because of the 99 percent who are not going to win Worlds. The memes give everyone a moment, and they grow the culture.”

Joey: “People DM us asking where the memes are if we are late. They send ideas. We even tried the temporary forehead tattoo stunt at a race. The point is to make the space feel welcoming and self-aware.”

When this piece goes live, ROXFIT will drop a “meme committee” meme on social. Consider it a handshake with the audience and an easter egg for the insiders.

The Market Wakes Up

Twelve months ago, raising investment around hybrid would gain you little more than polite confusion. The sport was growing and interesting, but it wasn't institutional grade and the raises were friends and family. Then last season, as momentum really took over, participation numbers in HYROX accelerated. Brands flooded in. Big platforms made acquisitions in adjacent verticals. ROXFIT’s own numbers were starting to look like a real business.

w.b: Walk us through the raise. Who backed you and why now?

Ben: “We pitched SEIS VCs early, and many didn’t get the category. Then we went to an angel's event in Yorkshire, we actually worked really hard prepping for it, and it changed the tempo. DSW led. Angles followed. We filled the 250K pot we were looking for, then inbound interest took it to about 800K. We stopped because we didn’t want to give away more equity. The same investors who passed a year earlier came back. The signal from the broader market helped, but so did user growth and the clarity of the product.”

As the ecosystem of HYROX deepens, more institutional investors are circling startups in the space, and the opportunity to acquire customers at the nascent stage of a global sport is becoming increasingly attractive. The founders report daily enquiries and are mulling when the right time to open the doors again may be.

The Evolution

When speaking with Ben and Joey, it’s impossible not to grasp their ambition. Both are clearly looking ahead. They think they’ve delivered a functional product that is serving their customers well. But when you ask them what the opportunities are to grow, it’s a little hard to keep up. AI is clearly going to play a role, and an integrated expert-level hybrid coach in your pocket seems to be the aim.

w.b: What is the core of V2, without giving away the crown jewels?

Ben: “A proper UI refresh was obvious. We made the first version of the app ourselves and with freelancers. We are working with proper experts now to develop a more refined look and feel for the consumer. The bigger leap is really accessing the tools we have available now, including AI, to create structured, reactive training that you can feel working.

“Plans that progress intelligently, a way of building and logging sessions that reflect hybrid work, and an AI layer that adjusts with you. We want to be the app you open because your 8-week goal is on track and you can see the proof. If you look at other brands that have done this well in different sports, like Runna,  that’s the USP. It’s pretty simple: we WILL get you fitter if you do as we tell you, and what we tell you will be tailored specifically for you”

ROXFIT works on a ‘freemium model’, a free-to-use app with premium benefits for hardcore users. The team believes that with V2 they can get thousands of athletes to see the benefits of premium and pay for memberships. The claim is simple and testable. If the plans make people faster, they will tell friends. If the engine learns across the community, the plans get better again.

The Community Flywheel

ROXFIT’s graph is not only downloads. It is a loop of behaviours. Track a session and see where compromise running falls apart. Laugh at yourself on Friday. Go again Monday. This is how you get a sport to mature. You make it useful and you make it fun.

Joey: “We will keep our voice light where it should be, but the long game is serious. We want to help athletes in the hybrid world improve, compete, and feel part of something. That means tools that map to the sport, and an identity people are proud to wear.”

It’s a powerful tool in the building blocks of the next evolution of HYROX, ROXFIT are going to own millions of athlete data points on HYROX athletes. That’s going to be valuable no matter what.

The Quickfire Q&A

w.b: School, families, early lessons?

Ben: “I was book smart and sport obsessed. Sold sweets at school. Built products for other people for years. Learned that I prefer to own the decisions. My parents run wedding dress shops. I grew up watching them work.”

Joey: “Rugby, team environments, competing. Entrepreneurial family. Knew I didn’t want to be a PE teacher or a standard PT. Wanted to build.”

w.b: The pivotal product realisation?

Ben: “An Apple Watch file is useless if it cannot tell you where the race is won and lost. Hybrid is intervals, transitions, and degradation under fatigue. We needed an engine that understands that logic.”

w.b: The Vienna moment?

Ben: “We launched in Vienna early 2024 after I built over Christmas. The MVP had already been battle-tested at events. From there it was to iterate, show up at races, and listen.”

w.b: The “official app” fork in the road?

Ben: “We explored a licence. We kept control clauses live. When it was clear the direction wasn’t ours, we exercised the break and went back to ROXFIT. The short-term cheque would have been nice. The long-term product would not have been right.”

w.b: The numbers you are happy to share?

Ben: “We saw roughly 5,000 downloads in week one of the original launch, then paused during the licence period. After we restarted last September, we grew around 40 percent month-on-month through the European block. We are now at about 140,000 users.”

w.b: Why the memes?

Joey: “Because the 99 percent deserve to enjoy the ride. Because the sport needs cultural glue. Because it works.”

w.b: What will you raise next and why?

Ben: “We do not need to raise to ship V2. If we choose to go faster and broader across hybrid racing and gym simulations, additional capital accelerates build and distribution. We are speaking to parties who understand the category.”

w.b: What does success look like in 18 months?

Joey: “Tens of thousands training on ROXFIT plans with measurable improvements, a product the top 1% trust on race week, and a community identity that still makes people smile on Fridays.”

HYROX and its community are at the start of a journey. The ecosystem needs talented entrepreneurs making products that raise the game for everyone. With institutional capital coming in, a robust network of product offerings means a rich buffet of choice for consumers and continued innovation in the space. If the V2 delivers structured training that works, if the data layer gets smarter across the community, and if the voice stays human, ROXFIT has a legitimate chance to become the default operating system for hybrid training. That tells you where hybrid fitness is going. Faster, smarter, more fun, and more crowded. Someone will win the platform race. The ones building from first principles tend to stay in the running longer.