15 Reasons Why You Should Invest In MySwimPro

MySwimPro recently announced an Open Public Offering (OPO). For the first time, we are offering future stock to the public. Please visit my post, Invest in MySwimPro – Join Millions of Swimmers, to learn more. Here are some reasons to consider investing.
See Also: An Inside Look At MySwimPro’s Investor Deck

1) Make an Impact

We’d like to invite you to join our community, and help millions of swimmers around the world lead happier and healthier lives through swimming. Our team is dedicated to creating a digital community that empowers aquatic prowess across the globe. We believe that with structured guidance, social interaction, coaching, data and feedback, we can empower people like never before to achieve their dreams. By investing in MySwimPro, you will have a direct impact on not only our company, but also the world.

Winning Apple App of the Year was an amazing accomplishment, but hearing the stories of how we’ve helped people recover from knee replacement surgery, or discover the confidence to lead their lives to their fullest potential is what motivates us to grow our platform even faster. Today, you have the opportunity to join our mission, and make a true impact in people’s lives.
See Also: How MySwimPro Helped Me Get Back On My Feet

2) Shape the Future of Swimming

As an investor in MySwimPro, you will get to communicate, speak with, and even advise the team that you are investing in. You’re investing in more than just our product and market, you’re investing in our team and vision. As an early-stage investor, you are literally shaping the future of our market.

I truly believe that the products we’re working on will redefine the next generation of our sport and we are just getting started. As early adopters and creators of technology, we’re on the cusp of innovations that will shape the future, and you can have a direct impact on that.

3) Back A World Class Team

Paul Graham, the founder of one of Silicon Valley’s most successful early stage funds notes that the most important qualities of successful founders are determination, flexibility, and imagination. We’ve recruited an industry leading team that’s passionate about solving the challenges of our market. As former collegiate athletes, we’re determined, competitive, and creative. As a technical team, we have experience building and scaling products that are natively coded in iOS, Android, and full-stack web.

We’ve also brought on three industry leading advisors and a group of mentors who have started, scaled, and sold mobile fitness companies to the largest sports brands in the world.

“I have been very impressed by MySwimPro’s traction and the milestones they’ve been able to cross in a very short period of time. Fares, and the team’s founders posses high integrity, great motivation and intelligence. They’ve demonstrated the ability to create value in an untapped market with a product that delivers recurring, high margin revenue while collecting massive data. With the right resources, MySwimPro will continue to build upon their early traction, helping millions of people around the world lead healthier lives.”

– Mitch Thrower, Chairman & Founder of Events.com, Financier, Author, 22x Ironman, and MySwimPro Advisory Board Member

4) Join An Accredited Investment Team

Our institutional investors include Invest Detroit Ventures and the Regents of the University of Michigan. Invest Detroit is a leader in Midwest early-stage investing and has helped scale multiple companies to liquidity events and IPO.

Last summer, the Regents of the University of Michigan invested the first round of outside capital in MySwimPro. The University’s accelerator (Desai) is a joint venture between the Zell & Robert H. Lurie Institute (ZLI) of Entrepreneurship Studies at the world-renown Ross School of Business Samuel and the College of Engineering’s Center for Entrepreneurship (CFE).
These programs are consistently top ranked in the world for their entrepreneurship work and helping founders scale massively successful companies. We’ve also been awarded capital from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) by winning the Grand Prize at the Michigan GreenLight Business Model competition.

Additionally we’ve been granted funds Wayne State University’s Innovation Warriors program along with the Macomb Community College’s Innovation Fund of America Grant. Today, you have the opportunity to invest alongside these amazing institutional investors who have a proven track record and diligence process.

5) A Rare Investment Opportunity

Investing in startups was historically reserved for just the uber-wealthy and those with very strong venture capital or angel investment connections. As a result, less than 0.1% of the U.S. currently invests in startup companies.

Legally in the United States, to be considered a professional investor, you need to make $200k/year or more and/or hold over $1m in assets – not including your primary residence. Today with Regulation CF, these qualifications are no longer a barrier for this form of financing. It’s rare to invest alongside institutional investors, and today through wefunder, you have that unique opportunity.

6) Investment Perks

In addition to a future ownership stake in MySwimPro, investors are granted perks at the varying investment levels below:

$100 – Backer

When you invest $100 or more, we know you’re passionate about helping our team grow. We’d love for you to share the campaign page with friends, family and your network.

$250 – Advocate

When you invest $250 or more, you’re forming a closer relationship with our team, product and community. As an advocate, we’ll look for your support sharing our story within your network. You’ll receive an exclusive MySwimPro Investor T-shirt & company swim cap.

$500 – Ambassador

By investing $500 or more, our team will recognize your support as a MySwimPro Ambassador, and in addition to the above perks we’re thrilled to offer you a complementary video analysis (http://myswimpro.com/analysis/) to improve stroke efficiency and maximize your training potential. We’d love for you to share our campaign page within your networks.

$1,000 – Evangelist

By investing $1,000 or more, you’ve become a MySwimPro Evangelist. As an investor of this level, we’ll look to you to build up support for our technology, and help us establish our brand as standard in our industry. In addition to the above perks, we’re very excited to offer you our premium membership for life!

$10,000 – Partner

By investing $10,000 or more, you’ll join an elite group of investors who will help us scale the company. At this investment level, myself and/or 4x Olympic Medalist Peter Vanderkaay will set-up a video call to discuss our strategy, your training, or anything you’d like.

$25,000 – Major Investor

When you invest $25,000 or more, you legally become a Major Investor and are granted Pro Rata Investment rights. This gives you the right to invest in future fund-raising rounds and maintain your ownership % in the company as the we grow and raise more capital.

$100,000 – Financier

When you invest $100,000 or more, you’re providing a significant amount of capital to the round that will substantially move the needle and accelerate the growth of our business. At this investment level we’d be thrilled to set-up quarterly strategy meetings and look at tapping into your network for future financing rounds.

Whichever level you decided to invest in, we’re truly thankful to be working with you and encourage you to share our story within your network. The more investment we can round up, the better we’ll be positioned to scale the business, which will help your investment and MySwimPro succeed.

7) Join A Movement

One of the things that people enjoy most about early-stage investing is getting in at the ground floor of something really exciting. Rather than just analyzing PE ratios and balance sheet strength, early-stage investors are backing the products, technologies, and teams of the future.

Investing at this stage of growth allows the opportunity to invest in innovation and to feel real ownership in your investment. We are creating a cult-like following of passionate community members. We’ve started a movement. The collective energy of our group is much larger than any one-team member. Join us in our movement to help people around the world.

8) An Award Winning Product

MySwimPro is the category leader in swim training on mobile and wearable devices. Apple named MySwimPro as the Best Watch App of 2016.

• Download MySwimPro for iPhone
• Download MySwimPro for Android

App of the Year picks are chosen by the App Store editors to showcase the best and most popular apps available. Other apps honored by Apple in 2016 included Sketchbook Motion (iPad), Prisma (iPhone) and Twitter (Apple TV). Today, you have the opportunity to invest in a company whose product was named the Best App of the Year by Apple.

9) Network Effects

A network effect is a phenomena created when a product becomes more valuable to a customer every time a new customer uses it. Think of social apps like Facebook, and Instagram. The more people on the platform, the more valuable it becomes. Similarly, as we enhance our product experience, form additional third party integrations, and scale our community, our product will continue to grow.

Over time, positive network effects can create a bandwagon effect as the network becomes more valuable and more people join, in a positive feedback loop. We’ve been able to improve this concept of a network effect over time by increasing our community member’s retention. As a result of our recent product enhancements to social engagement these metrics have improved and will continue to improve over time.

10) Traction

As a prospective investor, you can mitigate some of the risk by conducting your own due diligence before making an investment decision. We’ve shared our product metrics, revenue, and growth charts along with other KPIs in our Investor Deck Deep Dive. Below is what our customers think:

“MySwimPro is a God sent, thanks for creating it and I’m so proud to be part of MySwimPro. You have so many features and wonderful tips that can really help any swimmer.”

“As a competitive swimmer, this is my favorite app on my phone. I have found MySwimPro extremely helpful in tracking my progress each day.”

Presenting MySwimPro at Google in Mountain View, California at the Global Sport Innovation Competition!

11) Deep Industry Connections

Our founding team members and advisory board are highly connected and networked within the sport of swimming. I’m a 2016-17 American Swim Coaches Association Fellow and on multiple national committees for U.S. Masters Swimming. One of our Advisors, Peter Vanderkaay has competed in three Olympic Games and was elected Co-Captain of the US Olympic Swim Team in London (2012).

The access we have to our market is an incredible competitive advantage. As an ambassador, thought leader and technologist in the sport of swimming, I’ve had the immense privilege of participating in multiple U.S. Aquatic Sports Conventions, American Swim Coaches Association World Clinics and the most recent FINA World Aquatic Sports Convention in Windsor, Canada where I was able to meet the Greatest Olympian of All Time, Michael Phelps.

12) Proven Business Opportunity

We’re building on a proven business model that has demonstrated significant traction in adjacent markets including running, biking, personal training, yoga, and nutrition. The freemium subscription model has captivated the health and fitness category for the last decade.
See Also: An Inside Look At MySwimPro’s Investor Deck
This category is consistently one of the fastest growing markets for Apple and Google in their respective App Stores by app creation, distribution, and revenue. When you invest in MySwimPro, you’re backing a proven business concept that’s allowed dozens (not an exaggeration) of fitness apps scale to millions of dollars in annualized revenue.

13) Frugality of Founders

As a small team of three founders, we’ve been able to create a lot of value in our industry on very little. We’ve tapped the local entrepreneurship resources which has significantly reduced our capital costs for things like legal expenses, marketing, and internships. We’ve made it this far without ever paying for our own office space, we stay on friends couches/floor when we travel to events, and we apply this level of frugal thinking to all aspects of the business.

When you invest in MySwimPro, you can be confident that your money goes further. Your investment will give us the maximum impact because of the frugality we’ve demonstrated in our first two years and our ability to execute on very little resources. With proper funding, we can scale much more aggressively, and you can help us do that.

14) Financial Return

In 2012, Thomson Reuters launched the Thomson Reuters Venture Capital Research Index which seeks to replicate the performance of the venture capital industry. The index shows that venture capital has returned 19.7% per year since 1996 versus just 7.5% and 5.9% respectively for public equities and bonds.

In 2012, Professor Robert Wiltbank released findings from the largest data set on individual angel investments that has ever been collected and found that U.S. angel investors returned 2.6x their money on average. If we assume that the average time to exit an angel investment is five years, 2.6x equates to 21.1% annualized returns which is slightly higher than overall venture returns. Also, there are few asset classes that offer the homerun potential of venture investments.

Peter Thiel’s initial investment in Facebook increased in value by over 2,300x prior to IPO. Although investors should absolutely not expect to find the next Facebook, Twitter or Uber, it is hard to ignore the asset class’ potential to generate outsized returns. While there is considerable risk in early stage venture financing, you can be confident to know that our team will be working 110% to maximize the return on your investment. When you win, we win!

What is My Potential Return?

The information below is merely a summary of a potential outcome. I encourage you to review the information provided through the Wefunder portal, in particular our Form C and attachments. We’re raising on a SAFE (Simple Agreement For Future Equity). It’s a recent funding vehicle that’s gaining popularity in early-stage tech capital raises, as a replacement to convertible notes.
It’s used most frequently in the pre-seed and seed level companies where it doesn’t make sense to place a valuation on the company at this point in time. It essentially delays valuing the company until the next round of financing where it will have more traction to base that off of. It’s not a loan and does not accrue interest. However, like convertible debt, your investment would convert into equity upon a qualified financing.

• Because we’re raising with a SAFE, in order to trigger conversion of an investor’s shares, we need to raise an equity-financing of $1M or more to be a qualifying round. As an investor, you would then be awarded preferred shares on the terms set by this future round (in the constrains of our $5M Valuation Cap).
• For Example: If you invest $10K in this crowdfunding round, and if in 2 years we raise $2M at a $10M Valuation, your investment would convert into preferred shares at the $5M valuation cap that we have set at this round. The new investors would be investing at a $10M Valuation.
  These new investors will also have the right to buy you out (this does not apply to “Major Investors” – $25k or more).
• Also, only these “Major Investors” have the right to make follow on investments in future rounds of financing.
• Additionally, with the way it’s set-up, I (as the CEO) will have proxy to voting power for all non-Major Investors ($25k or less). This is done to manage potentially having 500 people on the Cap Table and then having to deal with all those investors in the decision making process.
• To continue that example, let’s say we’re acquired for $40M in 5 years from now. You would roughly 6x (would be 8x if there is no other future financing) your money accounting for the dilution you would have received from that $2M round of financing.
• Summarizing, your $10k investment would equate to roughly $60-80k at a $40M liquidity event. Also keep in mind the capital gains taxes that would be owed on this increase in share value.
• This is a somewhat descent calculator (https://republic.co/crowdsafe/calculator) to see this – this calculator doesn’t factor in a future financing round, but it gives you an idea of how it would convert.
• A 5-10x return would be an amazing outcome. A par outcome would entail a liquidity event where you would return your money back or some portion of it. This is higher risk than public investing, so losing all your money is a real possibility as well.

Again, I recommend that you review the Form C, particularly the risk factors. This information is all viewable on our wefunder campaign page at wefunder.com/myswimpro.

15) Change the World

We’d like to invite you to join our community, and help millions of swimmers around the world lead happier and healthier lives through swimming. This is bigger than you or me. The opportunity is in our hands to make a difference. What do you think? Let’s put a ding in the universe together!

See Also: Invest in MySwimPro – Join Millions of Swimmers
Shoot me an email at fares@myswimpro.com if you’re considering investing and would like to learn more!

Happy Swimming!
Sincerely,
Fares