Vigour Tech · powered by Soft in Science
A platform thesis
One movement-intelligence engine. Four markets. Schools fund it. Gyms scale it. Health partnerships compound its margin.
Phone capture → on-device pose → movement classifiers → hybrid VLM coaching. Real-time form feedback, natural-language Q&A, auto-narrated reports per audience.
| Stage | Vertical | Window |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Schools Test Platform Anchor revenue · POPIA → GDPR/FERPA | Now → Mo 6 |
| 2 | Youth AI Programs Movement engine ships · form-correction proven | Mo 4 → 10 |
| 3 | Gym Vertical SA → UK → US · primary revenue | Mo 8 → 16 |
| 4 | Health Partnerships across the industry Verified-quality points · life & health insurer integrations · Discovery model | Mo 14 → 22 |
Two-part moat. (1) A unique dataset being built out through Schools (Vertical 1) with coach-in-the-loop labelling · population data no incumbent has the channel to capture. (2) A movement engine that scales efficiently into every new vertical, no rebuild. Both compound with use. Replication time: 18–24 months.
Measure & coach youth. Standardised tests + personalised programs.
Coach adults. Trainer dashboard + client app + home verification.
Verified-movement points across life & health insurers. Member benefit, claim evidence, attribution.
Workplace fitness-for-duty · sports academies · talent ID.
Total reachable in 36 months: $40–80M ARR potential across schools (anchor) + gyms (primary) + insurer & wellness partnerships (margin). SA is the wedge market · cost-base ~⅓ of US-headquartered equivalent.
| Vertical | Buyer | End user | Geo TAM | SA SAM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Schools & Education | Principal · Head of Sport · DoE district | PE teacher · student · parent | $3B (US K–12 + college) | ~5,500 schools metro+suburban |
| Gyms & Personal Training | Gym chain ops · independent PT · franchise GM | Personal trainers · members · home users | $15B US · £5B UK · €8B EU | ~500 gyms · ~6,000 PTs |
| Health Partnerships | Life / health insurer · Vitality-style programme · employer wellness | Member · gym client | $8B US · £1.2B UK | Discovery · Momentum · Bonitas market |
| Adjacent (Workplace · Academies) | HR · safety · academy director | Workers · scholarship athletes | $4B+ (mining, defence, elite sport) | SA mining + national academies = ~R200M |
Schools, gyms, insurers · same wall. Coaching access stops where human attention runs out. One engine puts it within reach at every level.
Stopwatch, clipboard, manual entry · 1 PE teacher per 30 youth.
Objective measurement · personalised programs · form correction.
Trainer eyeballs form · client guesses at home · no rep verification.
Real-time form coaching · home adherence · multi-client scaling.
Insurers reward gym check-ins, not movement quality. No proof layer between member behaviour and underwriting.
Verified movement quality · adherence-as-claim-evidence · points-grade telemetry.
Phone-native. Measurements of 8 key motor capabilities. Same protocol, same scoring · comparable across classes, schools, regions, countries.
PE teacher · sports coach
School · DoE · academy · parents
Comparable cohorts at scale
WHO youth-movement guidelines · ISB testing protocols · FITNESSGRAM · extended for AI-camera scoring at school scale. Designed with Dr G.F. Joubert · Human Movement, CPUT.
5 paying schools · POPIA pack complete · bib OCR ≥ 90% · ~50K labelled reps in corpus.
| Capability | Test | Output |
|---|---|---|
| Locomotor | 10 m Sprint | seconds |
| Standing Long Jump | cm | |
| Coordination | Jumping Jack | reps · rhythm · errors |
| Strength | Push-Ups (modified, younger grades) | reps |
| Endurance | Repeated Sprint | distance · fatigue index |
| Balance | Single-Leg Balance (eyes closed) | seconds held |
| Reaction | Ball Drop Reaction | milliseconds |
| Agility | Zig-Zag Agility | seconds |
| Laterality | Cross-Crawl March | reps · symmetry |
One vision pipeline powers all 9 tests. New tests slot in as scoring modules · they don't fork the system. Every captured rep aggregates into a single corpus that improves every other test.



Each tile below is a real capture from a school pilot. Pose · tracking · classifier · scoring all live.
9 tests, 1 pipeline. Pose + tracking + classifier are shared. Adding a new test is a new scoring module and a config · not a forked product. Every captured rep aggregates into a single corpus that makes every other test more accurate.
PE teacher · youth-development trainer
School orchestrates · parents + school pay subscription
Schools relationship from V1 → parent acquisition funnel
V1 is a measurement tool (commoditises over time). V2 is the coaching companion · sticky, high-LTV · trained on the dataset V1 generates at school-test scale.
V1 generates the three things V2 needs to coach: classifier labels · progression curves · error patterns. New in V2: movement template engine + on-device inference. Carried over: data-gen stack refined on V1 + movements dataset compiled through Phase 1 collaborations.
V1's moat (protocol library + POPIA + child-population data) + V2's (classifier labels + progression curves + error patterns) unlocks Tier 1B (PTs / gyms) and 1C (insurance). V2 is the bridge into Stages 3 and 4.
A number. A rank. Just the score.
"Strong jump. Arm swing softened on rep 3 · try a sharper drive."
Per-rep biomechanics · progression curves · population-aware cues · auto-narrated reports.
3 movements with form-correction live · trainer-rated cue quality > 80% · cohort improvement ≥ 8% on re-test · movement engine in prod.
Phone records the rep
Engine extracts the measurable
Trainer fixes any AI mistake
Correction trains the next session
Personal trainer · gym owner
Gym chains pay subs · insurers buy outcomes
~10M reps/gym/yr · every trainer override = free label
Gyms are the surface. Insurers buy the outcomes. Verified-movement points + member benefit ride on top of every gym deployment.
Primary entry, zero travel. Virgin Active SA ~100 sites @ R1.5K$80£65/site/mo = R1.8M$95K£78K ARR from one chain.
Mature trainer culture · sector consolidating (Pure Gym, David Lloyd). Cofounder network unlocks chains. GDPR over POPIA = ~4 weeks.
Largest TAM, most fragmented. Enter after 3+ chain proof points. NIL-funded colleges + chains in parallel.
50+ paying gyms · >$500KR9M£400K ARR · cross-pop pose validated (<5% drop) · 50+ movement library · health partner engaged.

$0.5–1.5M ARRR9–27M ARR£400K–1.2M ARR
Insurer member · gym client
Life & health insurer · wellness programme
Insurers want verified outcomes · we are the proof layer
Discovery's Vitality is the global model · points for gym check-ins, steps, healthy buys. Today those signals are presence, not quality. We add the missing layer: verified movement quality · every rep, every test, scored. That's a new tier of points, claim evidence, and underwriting input · direct API into the insurer's reward engine.
Nobody bridges school + gym + insurer-grade verification. Every gym session feeds the points engine. Every points payout reinforces the gym. The same engine, two business models, one data flywheel.

Discovery · Momentum Multiply · Bonitas
Vitality UK · Bupa · AXA Health
John Hancock Vitality · Oscar · employer wellness
AIA Vitality · Manulife · global re-insurer pilots
$0.3–0.8M ARRR5–14M ARR£240K–640K ARR + per-member-month rev-share unlocks here.
Next: how the engine actually works · the data we capture, the coaching layer we build on top, and the use cases that compound across all four stages.
The insight · why now
Data gen stack & coaching assistant
The movement engine
Platform-defining use cases
The winner isn't whoever owns the most movement data. It's whoever has the engine that produces it.
Pose · tracking · classification → human-performance measurables on every phone.
Vision-language coaching trained on the Phase-1 corpus + movement templates.
Phase 1 generates the data. Phase 2 builds the VLM coaching layer on top. Both extend through every stage.
Pose + tracking + classification generating human-performance measurables.
Vision-language layer trained / prompted on the Phase-1 corpus + movement-template set.
Uplift adult-only · Sword clinical-only · Sculptor/Form/Gymscore consumer-only · FitnessGram data-entry only.
60fps · landscape-locked · pre-flight scene QA · bib OCR
Quantised pose model · on-device runtime · privacy-preserving
Multi-athlete tracking · phase & rep windows · scene-stable IDs
Per-movement scoring module · fault & quality labels
Reps · ROM · velocity · symmetry · protocol scores · audit log


Self-hosted. Inspectable by design · geometry and rubrics are authored, not learned. Same engine across every vertical.
What's in the video?
Detect athletes, track them, extract skeletons.
What did the body do?
Angles, velocities, reps, phases · authored math.
What movement, how well?
Classify the exercise, judge quality.
Show me a score.
School dashboard, gym, coaching.
Every captured rep · youth, adult, insurer-grade · feeds the same corpus. Classifier and coaching layer both improve with every test we run anywhere. No retraining per vertical.
Cues that match the person in front of you · age, skill, history · not one-size-fits-all. The same fault gets a different cue for a 12-year-old vs. a 45-year-old.
Why this is the moat: powered by the unique coach-labelled dataset we build out through Schools · population data no incumbent has the channel to capture. Generic AI breaks on edge populations; ours adapts because the dataset spans them.
VLM watches an expert demo and drafts a new movement definition. A developer reviews, ships in days. New verticals plug in as engine config, not engineering.
Why this is the moat: library breadth gates every vertical (Stage 3 + 4 both need 50+ movements). 3–5× faster expansion than hand-authored. Compounds with every new exercise.
One capture, four writeups. The parent gets a narrative, the coach gets a brief, the clinician gets a note, the insurer gets a verified-outcomes summary · all generated, none hand-written.
Why this is platform-defining: the reporting surface every audience touches weekly · the layer that drives retention. And the insurer summary is what surfaces "verified outcomes" they can underwrite against · unlocks Stage 4.
The first two build the moat. The third closes deals. Tuned-for-individuals coaching turns our coach-labelled dataset into adaptive cues nobody else can match. Movement-engine expansion lets new verticals plug in as config, not a rebuild. Multi-audience reporting reshapes the same captured data for every audience · the surface that drives weekly retention and unlocks insurer revenue.
Pose · tracking · classifier → measurables
VLM coaching on top of the corpus
Anchor
~50K youth reps/yr · ground-truth scores · demographics · protocol-scored measurables
Auto-report writer (parent · coach · DoE) · talent ID · percentile narratives
POPIA proof · youth corpus · DoE relationships
Engagement
+ classifier labels · progression curves · error patterns · cross-movement signatures
VLM coaching v1 · form-correction cues · movement template engine · audience-aware reports
Form-correction proven on youth · engagement loop · flywheel ignition
Primary revenue
+ adult bodies · 100× volume · trainer-validated labels · adherence streaks
Hybrid VLM at scale · 50-movement library · cross-pop coaching · verified-quality scores
Live capture pipeline across populations · trainer lock-in · insurer partner of record
Margin
+ insurer-grade verified-quality scores · member-segmented outcomes · attribution over 90 / 180 days
Verified-quality points API · member benefit surface · risk-segmented coaching · underwriting input
Per-member-month rev share · bridges school → gym → insurer populations
Frontier & open-source VLMs crossed the price/quality threshold in the last 18 months.
Mirror, Tonal, Peloton have validated the software-first thesis the hard way.
Insurers and employers are buying verified outcomes, not check-ins · the proof-layer category is forming now.
Pure Gym IPO · David Lloyd PE-backed · centralised tech buying.
Athletic depts have new budget · talent ID is a wedge use case.
Pre-2027 compliance bake-in is cheaper than retro-fitting.
SA engineering ~⅓ of US-HQ equivalent · talent pool excellent.
SA pilot data residency unlocks UK/US in weeks, not quarters.
Direct access via the Reddam school group's UK estate · pilot conversations open before Mo 6. Anchors the gym + youth pitch with brand-name reference customers.
Personal access into school-development pipelines and sport-programme leads across multiple states · entry without the usual 9-month US sales cycle.
NZ is a proving market · small, English-speaking, GDPR-adjacent, sport-mad. Reddam + academy contacts give us a third validation geography on top of UK + US.
Personal access at exec level inside one of South Africa's largest life & health insurers · the relationship that opens Stage 4 from day one. Verified-movement points API and member-benefit pilots route through this channel.
UK + US run in parallel, not sequentially. Warm channels compress a 12-month international sales motion into 4 months. And the SA insurer line turns Stage 4 from cold-prospecting into a single warm intro at home.
SA cost-base ~⅓ of US-HQ. We hit Y3 $8–15M ARR on $65–110K one-time + lean monthly burn. The capital ladder is anchor → engagement → scale, not blitzscale.
Sword Health ($3B), Hinge Health ($6.2B IPO-pre), Future ($300M+), Tonal pre-bust ($1.6B). Strategics: Stryker, Hologic, Technogym, Life Time, EXOS, Garmin.
They'd need our schools channel, our POPIA + GDPR / FERPA packs, our movement template framework, our self-labelling workflow, and our trainer + insurer integrations. The model is the easy part · the moat is the capture engine and the relationships that feed it.
Failure to convert school pilots to paid · POPIA → GDPR/FERPA legal slip · cofounder mis-hire. Mitigations: 5-school cap on pilots before pricing test · regulatory packs prepped by Mo 3 · this slide.
Appendix · Legacy detail slides
Tech stack reuse · fine-tuning roadmap · pose-tuning decision. These slides answer specific engineering due-diligence questions and are not part of the main pitch.
Tech stack · one engine, four UIs
Fine-tuning roadmap · P0 → P2 spend
Pose-fine-tune decision
| Component | Built in | Reused in | Strategic role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bib OCR | S1 | S1 only | Vertical-specific · abstracted away by S3 |
| Movement template engine | S2 | All | The configuration-not-engineering moat · 1 wk vs competitors' 2–3 mo |
| On-device inference | S2 | All | Real-time + privacy + offline · required for gym + clinical |
| Identity abstraction | S2 | All | Bib / QR / wristband / face / anonymous · pluggable per vertical |
| Cross-population pose fine-tune | S3 | S3 / S4 | The foundation every vertical depends on |
| Re-ID module | S3 | S3 / S4 | Cross-session continuity · trainer dashboard, longitudinal rehab |
| Hybrid VLM router | S2 → S3 | All | Self-host vs frontier-API tier-out · ~70% cost reduction at scale |
| Auto-doc layer | S4 | S4 + back-port | 30 min/day saved · daily lock-in · payer integration surface |
Designing for the platform from day one is cheap. Retrofitting is fatal. Every component above is built ~10× cheaper as part of an integrated platform than retrofitted onto a single-vertical product.
| Priority | Asset | Stage | Cost (SA) | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P0 | Movement template engine | S2 | R250–400K$14–22K£11–18K | Architectural · required for non-linear movement library scale |
| P0 | Cross-population pose fine-tune | S3 | R350–500K$19–28K£15–22K | The single highest-leverage data investment |
| P1 | VLM coaching prompt library (V1) | S2 | R150–250K$8–14K£6.5–11K | Population-aware feedback · direct moat against generic competitors |
| P1 | Re-ID module | S3 | R120–200K$6.5–11K£5–9K | Cross-session continuity for gyms · longitudinal tracking |
| P2 | Clinical pose module | S4 | R200–350K$11–19K£9–15K | Defer until practitioners are in workflow |
| P2 | Self-hosted VLM | S3 | R150–300K$8–17K£6.5–13K | Triggered by >1k sessions/wk · ~70% cost saving at scale |
R1.2–2.0M one-time$65–110K one-time£52–88K one-time · recoverable inside one Tier-1B deal (Virgin Active SA = R1.8M ARR potential).
Fine-tuning the pose backbone for every vertical is expensive, slow, and almost always premature. The original plan implied this; we pushed back. Defer pose fine-tune until the data tells us we need it.
Per-population accuracy drop > 5% measured against trainer-validated labels at > 200K reps · OR · a top-3 paid customer asks for a measurement we can't deliver.
| Lever | Stock | Fine-tuned |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Zero ongoing | R350–500K$19–28K£15–22K + GPU |
| Time-to-ship | Day one | 3–4 months |
| Population accuracy | ~92% adult, ~85% youth | ~96% adult, ~94% youth |
| Latency | Same | Same |
| Replication risk | Anyone | Hard · needs labelled corpus |
Bottom line: the gap closes the moment we have ≥ 200K labelled reps · which is exactly when fine-tune cost gets amortised. Sequence matters.
| Year | Stages live | ARR target | Driver |
|---|---|---|---|
| Y1 | S1 + S2 | R3.7–7.5M$200–400K£160–320K | School contracts + premium-tier programs |
| Y2 | + S3 (SA + UK) | R27–55M$1.5–3M£1.2–2.4M | Gym chains · ~50 paid sites by Y2 close |
| Y3 | + S3 (US) + S4 | $8–15MR150–280M£6.4–12M | US chains + health partnerships + per-member-month rev share |
Reaching $8–15M ARR at $65–110K platform spend + lean monthly burn is unusual. The cost-arbitrage is real, durable, and structurally hard for US-HQ competitors to match.