Venus Williams is the best known to be one of the best tennis players ever, but she is also a productive angel investor. In her last business train, Williams supported the French startup Ward.
Ward is a free app that offers real rewards for walking. It follows your steps and makes it possible to collect points (referred to as “stations”) that can be exchanged for gift cards, donations or discounts. The aim is to encourage people to be more active and at the same time benefit from their daily movement.
Williams has invested a non -mentioned sum in the company and will also act as an ambassador. In the meantime, Ward has organized $ 25,000 for monthly “Venus Williams Championship” for its charity organization, which users can organize up to $ 40,000 in donations of up to $ 40,000.
“A large part of the good and active stay is simply to move your body in which way you can, and with Ward will go to an entertaining and rewarding experience,” said Williams, whose portfolio also includes French social investing -apps and Pelago, a British startup that concerns drug abuse through “virtual clinics”.
In addition to the physical rewards, users can collect virtual trade cards – called weavers – in certain places on the map, a bit like Pokémon GO. Users can compete with friends or join virtual leagues, pursue their progress on leaderboards and earn gold, silver or bronze medals based on activity levels.
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Bring your team with you and multiply your efficiency to cover more terrain and collect new leads.
The idea is to get people to go further and more frequently – and it seems to work. Around 20 million people who use the app are collected every day, the company said.
Hiking plans
Yves Benchimol, CEO von Ward, founded the 2019 startup alongside Nicolas Hardy and Tanguy de la Villeorges. The company is almost completely equipped, apart from a few hundred thousand euros that were collected in 2020.
While Ward himself did not collect much capital itself, it spent a lot of money. So far, the company has given the users and USD 1 million for charity partner 20 million of cash back.
Ward generates sales through retail partnerships, advertising and functions such as “Playtime”, in which users can earn additional rewards by working directly with mobile playing third -party players.
Ward is just one of a cohort of pro-walking fitness startups. The competitors include Walk15A Lithuanian company that has tested its technology with public health services. The co-founder and CEO of Walk15, Vlada Musvydaitė-Vilciauske, told TNW last year that she wanted to make a pharmacy to go.
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