Mar 3, 2025 · 34m · the-pitch
#8 FightCamp (formerly Hykso)
Josh Muccio · 7m spoken Khalil Zahar · 5m spoken Jillian Manus · 4m spoken Phil Nadel · 3m spoken Jake Chapman · 3m spoken Tommy Duquette · 2m spoken Howie Diamond · 1m spoken
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Hykso founders Khalil Zahar and Tommy Duquette pitch their smart combat-sports wearable on The Pitch, securing a $300,000 syndicated investment after negotiating a revised valuation cap. The episode highlights the startup's transition into boutique fitness studios, intense investor scrutiny over hardware execution, and subsequent operational success.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Josh holds 26.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Josh as informed peer 5.5 Guest teaching 3.4 Guest disagreement 2.1 Josh pushing back 4.5
speaking balance: gold is Josh, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 7:15 Proprietary algorithm defense
Khalil and Tommy push back against Jillian's premise that any wearable company or big player like Fitbit and Apple could replicate their 3D motion-tracking output filter.
Hardest push from Josh ▶ 19:19 Phil interrogates LOI commitmentsPhil refuses to accept the 2 million LOIs as genuine commercial validation, demanding to know why gyms haven't signed binding contracts.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 3:37 Why heart rate monitors fail in combat sportsTommy educates the investors on why standard heart rate trackers like Myzone are ineffective metrics for combat sports due to caffeine and stress interference.
Josh holds their own ▶ 24:35 Phil dictates valuation cutPhil leverages the founders' pre-shipment vulnerability to aggressively cut their valuation cap from four million to three million in exchange for syndicate capital.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Josh as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Josh pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hykso Founders Introduce Their Boxing Wearable | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | The founders establish their technical background and Canadian Olympic boxing credentials, clarifying that their demographic focus is broader fitness rather than niche elite fighters. | |
| Live Hardware Demonstration and Gym Gamification | 3 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Tommy provides a live punch-tracking demo and explains gamified gym retention mechanics while investors make playful commentary on velocity and intensity scores. | |
| Defending Proprietary Algorithms and Home Expansion | 6 | 5 | 4 | 6 | Jillian challenges why generic wearable giants like Apple or Fitbit cannot copy the device, prompting Khalil to defend their proprietary punch-filtering algorithm and explore Peloton-style home expansion. | |
| Evaluating Commercial Traction and Market Trends | 6 | 4 | 3 | 5 | Investors probe whether boxing fitness is a transient fad versus a sustainable trend, while the founders counter with historical parallels in running and spinning alongside Title Boxing LOIs. | |
| Financial Metrics, Manufacturing, and Funding Terms | 5 | 3 | 1 | 3 | The founders detail their unit economics, 32-dollar landed costs, Arrow manufacturing credit line, and 500k raise on a 4 million cap, receiving praise for scrappiness. | |
| Investor Decisions and Initial Valuation Deliberations | 7 | 4 | 3 | 7 | Jake commits 25k while Phil aggressively pushes back on the unbinding nature of letters of intent, forcing Khalil and Tommy to justify their conversion timeline before Phil initially passes. | |
| Syndicate Deal Negotiation and Valuation Compromise | 7 | 2 | 2 | 8 | Jillian chides Phil for passing, prompting him to orchestrate a 300k syndicate deal conditioned on aggressively cutting the founders' cap from 4 million down to 3 million. | |
| Post-Pitch Debrief and Investor Reflections | 6 | 2 | 1 | 3 | The investors reflect on LOI validity and valuation tactics during debrief, followed by Josh checking in with Khalil and Jake to reveal follow-on investment success. |
Statements from this episode (20)
Duquette: Heart rate is a flawed metric for measuring workout output
“Heart rate is a very, it's a tough way to measure Output, first of all, right, because it's subject to so many external factors, whether it be stress or caffeine.”
Zahar: Hykso developed wearable tech with Canada's national team
“Because we were working with the national team of Canada, they needed very high accuracy.”
Zahar: Hykso targets women aged 25 to 40 as core user base
“Right now, the target market when it comes to the users is actually women between 25 and 40 years old. They're the big market when it comes to fitness.”
Duquette: Building community is the key driver of gym retention
“The holy grail in a gym is community. If you can get that community feel in your gym, strengthen those relationships, you drive retention through the roof.”
Zahar: HBO spent two years failing to build boxing motion tracker
“We know HBO worked for two years on a similar product, wasn't able to pull it off.”
Duquette: Hykso's LOI with CKO Kickboxing is worth around $2 million
“Yeah, that's around two million.”
Zahar: Hykso sold 2,500 units for $360,000 in a pre-order campaign
“Basically, when we learned that the sales cycles were so long, that was actually last January, we decided to do a pre-order campaign, ah, that was in March, and we sold, ah, in four months, we sold 2500 units. It's 360,000 dollars.”
Zahar: Arrow Electronics financed Hykso's first production run
“Arrow is our manufacturing partner, ah, and they finance the first production run.”
Zahar: Hykso is raising $500K on a $4M valuation cap SAFE
“500 K and we raise under a safe cap at four million.”
Diamond: Passing on Hykso due to narrow total addressable market
“To me, I worry about, like, the, like the total addressable market, like the TAM. I think for me, it's a little too narrow, so I'm gonna pass.”
Chapman: Hykso can become the next Strava or Peloton
“I think there's a future here. I think you can become something like a Strava or a Peloton.”
Nadel: Will invest in Hykso if LOIs convert into paid contracts
“I'm gonna pass for now. In four and a half months, if there are contracts, I'm in even, you know, if it means a higher valuation at that point”
Manus: Gym-first adoption beats direct-to-consumer for fitness hardware
“I think they're doing it the right way, where they have the gym marketing dollars behind them, and the adoption will be in the gym, and then they can expand it into at home.”
Manus: I never invest in hardware devices or wearables
“It's because I don't invest into devices. I don't do wearables or anything like that. I don't know anything really about this, and so I never invest in something I don't know anything about.”
Diamond: Customer LOIs are meaningless without signed contracts
“Like, to me, LOIs are, I mean, those are, that's bullshit.”
Zahar: Jillian Manus withdrew from Hykso deal over portfolio conflict
“Jillian actually discovered that she had a conflict of interest with one of her portfolio companies. So unfortunately she had to pull out.”
Chapman: Fund followed on with an additional $100K investment into Hykso
“So they went out to do some more fundraising, and based on all this progress, we decided to increase our investment. So, you know, our initial commitment was 25,000, relatively small, but we just committed an additional 100,000 dollars to their round .”