Assertion Not checkable as stated
Allen: A VC told me I was "too young and too Black"
“I remember my first company, I actually had a venture MD pull me aside and tell me I was too young and too black to get funded. Like they weren't gonna listen.”
Opinion
Allen: VCs issue performative diversity pledges while ignoring Black founders
“What they're doing is they're putting out messaging that, that is asking that a community at large, when they have us, Already here. But I see all these letters from the, you know, the managing directors of this firm or that firm saying, you know, we are commi…”
Insight
Allen: The advice to never build for investors is bullshit
“You know, I've had investors tell me you never want to build a company for investors. That's bullshit. Investors are going to invest in what they like. And if they're the only ones that can provide you access to capital, then you have no choice. Otherwise your…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Allen: Rowvigor CTO ghosted a crucial San Francisco investor pitch flight
“I had bought him a plane ticket and, you know, and we had talked about how important this was and he just missed his plane and didn't say anything or attempt to get on another one.”
Opinion
Allen: Peloton and Fitness Apps Fail to Support the Customer Journey
“One of the things we see in the fitness market is that a lot of people are putting content out, which Peloton is doing in an outstanding way, but they're not supporting their customers in a journey.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Allen: ROWViGOR Targets 85% to 95% Customer Retention
“We want to be north of 85% in terms of keeping people engaged. We think we can do better than that. We're, you know, we're looking at this in the ninety-ninety-five percent range just because of the elements that we talked about.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Allen: Narrow market and lack of revenue blocked Rowvigor's institutional funding
“Then they started saying, well, we see what you've built. Rowing is still kind of narrow for us and nobody's paying for it. And so those two things became impediments to getting institutional capital.”
Assertion Supported
Allen: Competitor Hydrow raised $1M pre-product while Rowvigor struggled
“And meanwhile, companies like Hydro Row get a million dollars without having product one for an idea on rowing-based fitness.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kevin Allen: Rowvigor secured a $100,000 fund commitment toward $500,000 raise
“So after all of this we finally got a fund to commit a 100,000 dollars toward our half million dollar raise.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Allen: Rowvigor User Base Doubled in Roughly 35 Days During COVID
“We saw our Roe Vigor application user base grow by a hundred percent in about 35, 36 days.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Allen: ROWViGOR Spends $15k to $20k Per Staged Workout Production
“Filming existing workouts staged, so not going into a class and filming a live class, getting it staged, running about 15 to 20,000 dollars per production.”
Disclosure
Allen: ROWViGOR Is Launching a Kickstarter Instead of Raising Venture Capital
“Kickstarter was one of the ways that, that we saw a path for ourselves to get traction and kind of prove the model. So we've been head down, getting ourselves ready for a Kickstarter campaign we hope to launch in the near future.”
Disclosure
Kevin Allen: Rowvigor raised $30,000 from friends and family for pop-up
“So we scraped together, I don't know, it was 30 grand from friends, families, and everyone else who would work with us to open this pop-up gym.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Kevin Allen: Rowvigor pop-up gym grew to 1,000 members in 8 months
“Classes were packed. We had about eight trainers, and there was just a lot of buzz and excitement around it. I mean, we had a thousand members in about, I don't know, seven or eight months, and we said, you know what, it's time to scale.”
Assertion Supported
Allen: ROWViGOR Reached 1,000 Members in Seven Months
“Seven months later, we had our thousand people. We had been written up in the Washington Post.”
Disclosure
ROWViGOR Is 30 Days Away from Launching the VigorBox
“Now we're 30 days from launching our in-home product that we call the VigorBox.”
Disclosure
Allen: ROWViGOR charges about $1,400 for its hardware and subscription bundle
“For the VigorBox with the Concept-II and a year's worth of subscription, it's about 1400 dollars.”
Disclosure
Allen: ROWViGOR's $25 monthly tier includes 30 minutes of personal training
“25 dollars a month will include 30 minutes of personal training per month and get you access to all of our content as it stands today.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Allen: ROWViGOR made $40,000 from its brick-and-mortar test
“We made 40,000 dollars during our little experiment in the brick and mortar, but again, that was designed to be an experiment.”
