Luke: [00:00:00] From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist Podcast, we’re demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I’m your host, Luke Moltz, VP of business operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy respecting brave browser and search engine.

Luke: Now powering AI with the Brave search. API. You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Tom Ette, who’s the co-founder and CEO of erda, the leader in game-based connected fitness with a background in tech and a passion for habit forming design, Tom is pioneering a new category of workouts that motivate users through gameplay rather than traditional instruction.

Luke: Tom is passionate about building technology that’s not just smart, but also human combining data, personalization and behavioral science to make fitness more engaging, effective, and sustainable. He’s especially interested in how [00:01:00] gamification and AI can intersect to drive long-term habit formation in digital health and wellness.

Luke: In this episode, we discussed why game mechanics are more motivating than traditional workouts, specific design choices they made to trigger specific behaviors within their games that effectively build user engagement and stickiness of their app, and how they’re using AI to personalize the workout experience for users.

Luke: Now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist,

Luke: Tom, welcome to the Brave Technologist. How are you doing today?

Tom: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me, Luke.

Luke: Yeah, thanks for coming on. I’m excited to get in the weeds on this one. What’s the main problem you all are ultimately trying to solve with your app and technology and, and who kind of benefits the most from it?

Tom: Yeah, totally. So we are trying to solve health problems, so all manner of physical, mental health problems, so obesity, inactivity, poor mental health, all manner of like physical. Health issues that [00:02:00] come from an activity. And one step downstream from that is just the fact that activity, physical fitness, breaking a sweat every day, improves physical health, improves mental health, and people know this, but they generally don’t tap into the benefits of physical activity and regular fitness and daily fitness because.

Tom: They just don’t inherently enjoy it, right? Not everyone loves going for a run or loves getting on the treadmill, loves doing, you know, the rowing machine. But when you do, when you do that regularly, there’s a magic in it, right? You, you have more energy, you sleep better, you feel better, you have more confidence, you lose weight, you get all these health benefits, and so the, the problem you’re trying to solve is making.

Tom: Fitness more enjoyable, making it less of a chore, turning into a game, turning into something fun and engaging and habit forming in terms of who we are solving the problem for. So there are people that access daily fitness that, that work out regularly, right? That go to the gym or run outside or hike a lot or play sports or go to fitness classes or whatever.

Tom: So, so obviously like those people are, they [00:03:00] don’t experience the problem. So we generally solve the problem for people that. Know that they should be working out, but struggle to find the right experience. They don’t connect with the gym, they don’t connect with fitness classes, they don’t connect with sports, whatever.

Tom: It’s, so we call them kind of fitness minded people who don’t like fitness classes because that’s the kind of main fitness solution in person and digital. And so the what? That person generally ends up looking like that ends up using our product to, to kind of solve this problem. They skew a little bit male, they skew a little bit introverted.

Tom: They might be a little bit more competitive. Right. Um, they might be a gamer so that if they’ve struggled to find the right fitness product or solution out there in the world, they discover or, and they use our games.

Tom: Make working out fun and addictive and habit forming so that they can experience all those physical, mental health benefits of kind of regular activity.

Luke: I’m just kind of curious too, it seems like this whole idea of like game [00:04:00] mechanics in fitness, how did you guys kind of meet up with that element?

Luke: What’s kind of the genesis of finding that there and what have you guys discovered so far about that?

Tom: Yeah, where did it come from? Maybe three different angles. One is just like you could see software and digital content helping people build fitness, fitness habits with other companies. You know, Peloton comes to mind, you know, their digital content helps people work out more.

Tom: So great. So that works. Another element was just one of our founders being a gamer and seeing how addictive it’s to game and how habit forming it’s to game and really all of us having a bunch of apps on our phone that like. Feel addictive and have little game mechanics that keep us coming back. And then the third element was in the kind of user-centric or people-centric research phase of starting this company.

Tom: We just talked to a bunch of people about when they were in the best shape, and a lot of it was when they played sports. And sports really is like when you get down to it, it’s like gamification of fitness, right? Like what is basketball? Running around and [00:05:00] working out a lot, but in the framework of a pretty simple, arbitrary game.

Tom: And same with, you know, hockey or whatever. And, and when I thought about my life, like when I was in the best shape of my life, it was when I played sports competitively and had that structure and the, the fun and engagement that came with being an athlete and being on a team and being in a league and kind of so those were kind of the three different areas that kind of led us to like gaming.

Tom: Plus fitness equals like this company and the solution to this big health problem.

Luke: Are you observing anything interesting around the game mechanics that maybe, maybe something that wasn’t even anticipated? Are you guys learning from the feedback loops you’re seeing from the use Oh yeah. In rg? Yeah. Yeah.

Tom: Yeah. I mean, so many things like our whole product philosophy is human centered, right? And, and by that I mean like. There’s like high and low elements of that, right? The high element is like, we are a mission oriented company. We’re here to help people build lasting fitness habits and unlock all the benefits that that brings.

Tom: Mm-hmm. So [00:06:00] that everything starts with that problem that people, real people experience, and all of our products and features are designed backwards from that. And then the kind of low or like tactical version of that is like the actual process that we use to design. Our products is very iterative.

Tom: it’s done in partnership with. Our members and, and kind of the, the, the people that use our product. It’s done very iteratively. It’s done, it, it’s very like discovery focused, meaning like, we talk to them, we get things in front of them, we get feedback, we watch them use it. We do survey work, like we keep rolling out iterative versions of the product and getting feedback and seeing how people use them in order to produce the final product.

Tom: Right? It’s not like we like go in a room, we dream up a game and then we release it to the world. It’s, completely the opposite of that. It’s iterative. Together with humans and the people that are actually gonna use and benefit from our products.

Luke: What does that human-centric term mean to you?

Luke: Compared to like Tech [00:07:00] First or some of the other terms people throw around? I mean like is it really about the health or, or what else does that in involve?

Tom: For me, it’s, it’s the same two things. It’s like the first principle around what are we here to do? Like what is the purpose of what we’re doing? And that is to, that is the mission that is solving a problem for a person.

Tom: And the technology is a tool to help you do that. So it’s like a complete top down orientation about why we’re here and what we’re doing. And then it’s a process. It’s kind of like how we come up with the ideas for products and features. It’s how we test and iterate on them. It’s how we finalize them and we do that.

Tom: In partnership with actual people that will use it. Like that process. I think about a spectrum. It’s like film auteur over here and enterprise software over here. And if you’re like an artist developing a film, you’re not doing that iteratively with audiences. You have a creative vision and you’re going off and you execute that vision, you release it to the world and hope end the vision [00:08:00] orientation and.

Tom: Come up with ideas. We test them, we get feedback, we iterate on ’em, we get feedback, we iterate on ’em further, we get feedback, we watch people use them. So it’s a process that underpins our entire product development and way that we operate and that is human centered.

Luke: There’s gotta be pretty rewarding too.

Luke: Totally. To a degree, right? Because you’re building something that’s helping people get healthier.

Tom: Totally.

Luke: It’s almost like you’re a trainer, but, but a little less direct, but also very in that mix too. It’s kind of an interesting combination of things.

Tom: Not to toot our own horn too much, but like not only are we helping people with something concrete that improves their wellbeing, their day-to-day wellbeing, their health, their mental health, their physical health, but we’re doing it for people that have struggled to do this before, right?

Tom: Mm-hmm. That, that have like, I’ve tried the gym, I’ve tried SoulCycle, I’ve tried Peloton, I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that, and this is something totally new and different and speaks to me and like. Gets my brain into fitness mode and, and [00:09:00] reframes fitness as something fun and enjoyable and that I can do every day and not like, feel like it’s doing my homework or eating my vegetables, but feel like it’s something that I enjoy and, and happy to fit into my day.

Tom: And coming from, you know, my previous job before starting this company was. Like we talked about in ad tech and media and that’s, that just felt different. Helping agencies advertise more effectively on, on behalf of brands like was satisfying in certain ways, but this is much more tangibly human. People on the other side of our product are humans that speak directly to us and that experience the physical and mental benefits of our product and tell us about it every day.

Tom: So I, I personally get. Out that, like we have a Slack channel where people every single day share concrete feedback directly from members. And I just get a kick outta it. I, I, that’s so cool. I find it exciting.

Luke: Yeah. I can say this. Coming from the ad tech space, it’s almost like moving junk food to like, uh, [00:10:00] actually like helping people improve their lives.

Luke: Like it’s such a cool pivot.

Tom: Particularly because like the tools that we use to achieve it are games and gaming and gamification, and those can so easily be used to like make you addicted to your phone or waste five hours a day or whatever. Mm-hmm. Like they can so easily be used to do things that are not good for you as the user.

Tom: That’s also part of the philosophy here is like. Digital tools and gaming tools and gamification are really powerful. And so pointing those at like a problem, that part of why we’re.

Luke: From your vantage point too, like have there been some small design choices that you’ve seen make a big difference in overall engagement?

Tom: Yeah, like so many, you know, one really minor one that comes to mind is like, okay, so we have a suite of games, you know, some single player, some multiplayer, and each game has like hundreds or thousands of different workouts. So there’s like thousands of different things you can do. And you kind of like the way that you choose your workout [00:11:00] is typically like you choose.

Tom: Game that you wanna do and then you choose a workout within that game. So we had initially positioned our game types as competitive workouts and interval workouts, and within competitive workouts there were series of multiplayer games. Within interval workouts, there was a series of single player games.

Tom: We changed competitive workouts, that card to say community games. And we ran an AB test, community games rather than competitive workouts. And the usage of those games and workouts like dramatically increase. So just framing it like that, copy, framing it as community games rather than competitive workouts.

Tom: Competitive sounds a little intimidating. Workout sounds less fun than games, whatever. Dramatically improved. So that was just a really minor tactical like design that was almost not even designed like copy change that we like tested and was really effective. And yeah. Another one that comes to mind like is our goal setting feature was honestly not rocket science, but has had one of the strongest and [00:12:00] longest lasting impact on engagement.

Tom: And it’s just like on top of all the other stuff that we do, you can set a goal and the goal is really simple. It’s just a number of times you wanna work out per week. Mm-hmm. One, two, it’s like one through seven. And those are the, that’s the menu of options, really simple. And you pick one. And then you like track it and you get rewarded and you know when it happens and you get streaks or whatever in a dramatically improved engagement.

Tom: And it lasts to this day. And, you know, it really moves the needle. And the one thing that we’re building right now is people just, they go on vacation like they mm-hmm. Go away for. Two weeks ‘cause of school vacation or whatever, and they lose their streak and they get demotivated. So we finally like took on this like overwhelming feedback and we’re, we’re launching right now, like a vacation.

Tom: I just came outta a meeting seeing the mocks for this and I’m excited about it. So that’s why top of mind where you can turn on a vacation mode where you can pause your goal for, you know, one to four weeks. So you maintain that sense of achievement and kind of continuation and progress over time rather than like resetting that and coming back to zero because you.

Tom: Went away for vacation [00:13:00] for two weeks. Which, which, and that’s what you

Luke: heard from from users? Just saying, guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s awesome. So cool. So it was

Tom: completely member driven, like we didn’t Yeah. Come up with that.

Luke: That’s great. What kind of role does AI have in personalizing the workout experience?

Luke: Are you guys doing much on that front or,

Tom: yeah, so I guess first I’ll say like internally, we use all sorts of AI tools to make ourselves much more efficient and effective. So in the product design ENG processes, like we just write code faster, write better code, automate the, you know, the QA process, automate and produce a different, like a couple different like design directions.

Tom: So we can decide between like digest a bunch of qualitative feedback from members, blah, blah, blah. This, all this is to say that like it makes us much more efficient so that we can. Release more products with the same number of people with the same resources. So, so that’s like kind of beneath the hood and not visible to members in terms of using AI to personalize the workout experience.

Tom: So a couple different ways. So first is just like our calibration system. Maybe the way that [00:14:00] I’ll frame this is like one of the core concepts of gaming is tailoring it to the user, right? Mm-hmm. So if a game is too hard. It feels really discouraging, and then you stop doing it, right? If a game is too easy, it feels boring and you stop doing it, it has to start at the right level of difficulty and then ramp up as your skills develop so that you are continually like somewhat challenged but not overly challenged.

Tom: Right? So like the way that we pull that into. Our experience using AI as our calibration system. So when you first get on a rowing machine, you take a calibration test that starts the personalization process so that every single workout you take, like for some games, the targets are personalized to you.

Tom: So that like the target that you’re trying to collect and hit to gain points is like in a specific. Speed or incline or intensity, that’s different for you, Luke, than me, to someone else. And that updates over time using machine learning based on your historical workout data, the fitness goals that you’ve input, aggregate learnings that we have from the whole [00:15:00] community around what.

Tom: Encourages and discourages people. So that’s one of them. And then maybe the other one I’ll, I’ll say is just like the discovery and recommendation process, like the way that you discover and have workouts recommended to you, people wanna start working out generally, like pretty quickly. They wanna like 1, 2, 3 clicks and and they’re in.

Tom: And we have kind of a recommendation and personalization system to recommend you. Workouts based on what workouts you’ve completed having completed your fitness goals and what we learned from other folks in the community around what workouts people like and don’t like. And complete. And don’t complete.

Tom: So there’s more, but those are just kind of a couple.

Luke: No, that’s awesome. That’s super helpful. Like context, I mean, because there’s a lot of things you gotta weigh in. You’ve got people that are doing experiences that they’re familiar with, with a new experience with the gameplay, and it seems like a lot to balance.

Luke: When you look out at the bigger picture too, what do you kind of see as the biggest risks and the biggest opportunities as more tech platforms merge entertainment and data and wellness and gameplay like this?

Tom: Yeah, I see more opportunities than [00:16:00] risks, generally speaking, because at least in this country, people are unhealthy, but there are risks.

Tom: No, no. I shouldn’t

Luke: laugh. It’s just, uh, yeah. Yeah. But it’s, it’s true.

Tom: I guess the risks I see one is just like. Privacy. So coming from an ad tech background, you don’t want health and wellness to turn into ad tech where like there’s so much data harvesting and people don’t feel comfortable that their data is protected and not shared.

Tom: So I think like data privacy is a risk and companies need to be really careful that. People feel comfortable sharing their data and feel like their data’s gonna be treated with respect and privacy. So I think that’s one thing that could blow up and prevent a lot of opportunity. And then the other thing I’ll say is like, particularly on the entertainment side, is like making sure that there’s a scientific rigor to products.

Tom: When you kind of bring entertainment into health, you might lose sight of some of the scientific rigor [00:17:00] around what actually makes people healthy and what constitutes a good workout and what constitutes healthy habits and what doesn’t. Because there’s some fitness products out there that are very gamey and entertainment or compelling, but like don’t actually produce a workout or don’t actually produce better health outcomes.

Tom: So I think making sure that entertainment doesn’t become more important than health outcomes, like entertainment is a tool. So that has to remain the core goal. So that’s kind of the other. I see

Luke: first principles, right? Yeah,

Tom: totally. Exactly right. Yeah. Like coming back to like the human center, like why are we here?

Tom: What is the thing we’re trying to do? And it’s improve people’s health and data and entertainment and game and all that stuff are tools to achieve that outcome. Mm-hmm. But yeah, mostly I see opportunities and upside people are unhealthy in this country. I don’t, I don’t recall the stats, but a minority of Americans get enough physical activity.

Tom: A majority of Americans are like overweight or obese. Mental health problems are very widespread and growing life expectancy’s coming down, right?

Luke: It seems like two in a time when [00:18:00] the pharmaceutical industry is bringing all these new tools for weight loss and stuff there, fitness has gotta be the other half of that coin, right?

Luke: Totally. If you can help build Fs, you know, if somebody all of a sudden now has these doors open to them where they can be more physically active, getting ways to connect with those people sounds like a huge opportunity.

Tom: Right, and like data and entertainment and tech and gaming can dramatically. Help people to that end to be physically active.

Tom: Mm-hmm. That’s what I see as the biggest opportunity. If you think about how many people, particularly young people like play sports and use sports as a way to be more active and gain confidence and gain physical health and mental health and build relationships and all that stuff. A lot of that can happen for adults through technology, data, entertainment, gaming, and help that fit into their lives and kind of work for ’em.

Tom: And realize and like unlock the magic, you know, the health magic that comes with just like breaking the sweat every day and being active.

Luke: Yeah. In this kind of [00:19:00] race to innovate, is there something, an area where you feel like there’s conversation that we aren’t having enough of as a broader society or even just within tech?

Tom: Yeah, maybe I’m just like, so in tech startup land that I think a lot of the conversations are happening. Like I think people. Talk a lot about kind of high and low, right? Like what’s gonna get traction, what’s gonna make money, like what type of innovation is gonna be financially successful? And also people do, I think there’s a lot of discussion around like, what’s gonna solve the world’s biggest problem?

Tom: I just went to like a demo day of companies coming out of MIT and they all were framed around. Solving the world’s biggest problems as defined by like the UN develop utp, the UN development project around like health and women’s rights and obesity and whatever. Like, like there is a lot of conversation around like using innovation to solve the world’s biggest, most intractable problems.

Tom: Some of the things that like, there’s less conversation around or like kind of in the middle. What types of innovation or what types of companies are gonna attract the type of people that you [00:20:00] wanna spend the day with and you wanna work with? I think that kind of defines how much you’re gonna like your work and your job and how successful you’re gonna be is like the people around you.

Tom: So like kind of that middle layer around. Not just like what’s gonna be successful and what’s gonna solve the world’s biggest problems, but what are the people you wanna spend your day with and what, what types of innovation and ideas are gonna attract those people? And, and that’s what’s gonna kind of power you in the medium term to realize the fruit of that innovation.

Luke: How do you think we should hold, like tech leaders and companies kind of accountable for the impact of what they’re creating?

Tom: Yeah, I feel like the biggest thing for me is reputationally holding people accountable. Not just attaching status to financial outcomes, but attaching status to like impact, so, People that behave unethically or have a negative impact, but still make a lot of money. Hopefully over time those people will like find it harder to recruit, find it harder to get funding. Right. Like reputationally and socially, those [00:21:00] people are less. Desirable and have less status honestly, and people that might not have as big of the financial outcome, but have a better on.

Tom: Are the people that you wanna work for and you wanna hire and you wanna fund. There’s already a lot of financial incentives out there. Obviously, like law and regulation are are tools. You know, for this, I feel like the reputationally, socially is a big unwritten norms and. and kind of reputational dynamics are, are really important too.

Luke: And direct actionable. Right. Like, that’s where you’ll see it play out like immediately. You know? It’s a good, it’s a good point,

Tom: yeah. Right. It’s like when you open a CMO role and you see an application come in from a company that you don’t really respect the impact that they have on the world, then maybe you don’t wanna hire that person.

Tom: That’s a kind of concrete reputational mechanism to like help incentivize the right behavior and hold people accountable. I dunno.

Luke: Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. Uh, [00:22:00] so if you, if you gotta put one bold prediction out there for the future of tech and what would you be willing to bet on today?

Tom: I mean, the prediction I have is in my area of expertise and it’s in 10 years.

Tom: More people will do game-based fitness than sports. Mm-hmm. And that’s not because fewer people will do sports and there’s gonna be some big decline in outdoor physical IRL sports, but people doing physical activity and fitness through digital gaming. Tools will go mainstream. It’ll be totally normal and adopted on a mass level to do that for people for that are in the workforce.

Tom: You know, adults. That’s my biggest thing is like game-based fitness or the people working out using gaming software will go completely mainstream and that’ll be like a default, normal way to work out. Almost as common as running outside.

Luke: It’s awesome. That’d be a great outcome. Like yeah. You know? Totally.

Luke: Those are the good kinds of competition too that we’d like to see out there. And

Tom: again, and it’s not because fewer people are gonna run or because fewer people are gonna play basketball, it’s because the [00:23:00] 75, 80% of people that aren’t doing anything are gonna find things that work for them. Yeah. Is how I see it.

Luke: Anything you wanna let our audience know about as we close up?

Tom: Yes. So we are expanding our partnership with iFit, which makes NordicTrack and, and Pro for machines, which just makes our games and gaming software available much more broadly. So we’ve, they’re a leading company in fitness equipment and digital health.

Tom: They have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of machines out there. And so you can access our games right now on their industry leading treadmill. But as of today, you’ll be.

Tom: Their bikes under connected bikes, including their Tour de France bike, and then on their connected rowing machines. If you have iFit or Ntic Track or Proform machines or thinking about getting them, do that now, you’ll be able to access our games and our software on those devices.

Luke: That’s huge man. Nordic track.

Luke: That’s like stable. Yeah, that’s like all our, all our parents

Tom: [00:24:00] use those, I feel like. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or like that was in my mom’s bedroom growing up. So Yeah, it’s, exactly, exactly. It’s really exciting.

Luke: I really appreciate you making the time today and I want to commend you guys for, for doing what you’re doing.

Luke: ‘cause I think health is super important and, you know, finding new ways to connect people to having healthier lives is a much needed thing in the space, especially in tech with all the good and the bad that’s kind of weighed out there. Is there anything we didn’t cover today that you wanna cover? You know, as we close this up,

Tom: I just wanted to do a quick plug to check out the company.

Tom: I run ada, E-R-G-A-T-T-A. We build gaming software for cardio equipment. We help people build fitness habits through games, and we also sell a series of rowing machines that have our gaming software on them that are beautiful outta wood. Go in your home, check us out, and if, if you haven’t. Found gyms or fitness products or fitness apps or whatever that work for you.

Tom: It, it might be worth checking out.

Luke: Fantastic. And if people wanna follow you or anything you’re putting out on social, where can they find you or your work?

Tom: AR fitness is our [00:25:00] Instagram handle, and then you can follow me on LinkedIn. I, I do some posting there. So that’s Tom, all A-U-L-E-T is my LinkedIn profile.

Luke: Awesome, Tom. Well, yeah, thanks again to you for making the time today. It was great conversation and uh, and best of luck to you with everything and I’d love to have you back sometime to check in on how things are going.

Tom: Wonderful. I really enjoyed it, Luke. Thanks for having

Luke: me on. Take care. Thanks for listening to The Brave Technologist Podcast.

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