DietBet Inc

The spark hit Jamie when he saw co-workers competing to lose weight. Instead of pizzas and subs, they were eating salads and taking breaks to jog by the river. Some were sneakily leaving chocolate on each other's chairs. Laughing and losing weight at the same time? It was like someone had spiked the water.

Jamie started thinking about how to bottle up that healthy energy. He posted a survey online and found something surprising: people preferred to play with strangers. Respondents, it turned out, didn't want to do the work of setting up games. They also didn't want to talk about their weight with their officemates. They just wanted to sign up and play. This was the kernel of a new vision: a safe place where people could get weight-loss motivation and support from strangers. A goal-oriented social network.

Jamie reached out to his old friend Matt, who was managing a chain of gyms. Matt was frustrated that health clubs were failing to engage the 85% of the country who never joined gyms. He felt that getting in shape could be fun, instead of a dreary chore. So he invested in the friends and family round and later quit his job to come aboard full time. He now runs BD and Operations.

Around the same time Jamie got introduced to Alison, who had built products at Weight Watchers and Barnes & Noble. She was itching to join a startup but hadn't found one that excited her enough to quit her job. After one fateful lunch discussing the next generation of weight loss (interrupted by an earthquake in Manhattan) she took the leap. She now runs our Product team.

Alison, Matt, and Jamie teamed up with Dima, a programmer who had left Google to move back to Europe. Together, in 2012, they started building out the vision of letting strangers come together to lose weight as a community, motivating each other and holding each other accountable using a mix of financial incentives, competition, and collaboration.

Fast forward to today and it’s actually working. Since we launched last year we've helped over 100,000 people lose a million pounds and we’ve paid out $7 million to our winners. Jillian Michaels from The Biggest Loser just led our biggest game with 9000 players (and a pot of $270K). Players collectively lost 47,000 pounds in a month! Every day we hear inspiring and gratifying stories from our users who are walking around in new wardrobes with a new outlook on life. We’ve also been making money since our first player and are thriving as a business.

The problem with conventional weight loss is that people gain the weight right back. We admit it's ambitious but we believe that our social approach to weight loss, focusing on sustainable behavior change rather than specific foods and exercise plans, is the right solution to tackle this worldwide epidemic. Check out the testimonials on our homepage and see why we’re convinced we’re onto something really big.