Melbourne mates’ social media gym idea backed by Sydney billionaire

These high school friends have received $500k in funding, including from one of Australia’s most famous billionaires, through an idea sparked in lockdown.

Two young Melbourne mates have launched a business that has just gained the backing of one of Australia’s most famous billionaires.

Jake Carp and Cara Davies, aged 21 and 22 respectively, dropped out of university earlier this year to pursue their rapidly expanding business idea, Steppen Fit.

Mr Carp described Steppen Fit as a “crossover of TikTok, Spotify and Instagram but for fitness” — a free-to-use app that aggregates exercise tips into a social media-like feed to “democratise workouts” particularly for Gen Z users.

It’s taken off against the backdrop of lockdowns and gym closures.

“I was a skinnier guy,” Mr Carp told news.com.au.

“I wanted to put on weight, go to the gym, but didn’t know where to start.”

Jumping on social media, Mr Carp saw his long-time friend from high school, Ms Davies, asking in a poll in November 2020 if people her age would be interested in an app for those who didn’t know much about fitness.

High school mates Jake Carp and Cara Davies have dropped out of uni to pursue their idea.

The idea “really resonated with me” according to Mr Carp, and he soon offered his help.

“Young people, Gen Z, have no idea what they’re doing at the gym,” he explained.

“The issue is we don’t want to pay for a fitness app, we don’t like subscriptions. Personal trainers were gone in lockdown and they’re quite expensive anyway.

“People were going to TikTok and Instagram for workouts but they’re very broad.”

Ms Davies came up with the idea for Steppen Fit in November last year to fill this gap and Mr Carp joined in February.

With Ms Davies studying software engineering and psychology while Mr Carp was a commerce and computer science student, they had a little bit of an idea for how to get started.

They pooled together $25,000 in savings to create the app.

Then in March the budding entrepreneurs realised they needed more money.

The friends wanted to get together $200,000 to take their product to the next level and opened up the app to a crowd-funding campaign — which means its investors will be rewarded later down the track in equity.

“We finally got the first investment, that spring-boarded into the next,” Mr Carp recalled.

“We worked on our pitch. It ended up raising two to three times that amount.”

They raised a whopping total of $536,000.

One investor’s name stood out from the rest — Sydney-born Afterpay co-founder Anthony Eisen, which Forbes estimates has a networth of $2 billion.

Anthony Eisen, co-founder and co-CEO of Afterpay, has thrown his weight behind Steppen Fit. Source: Damian Bennett

The app is a social media aggregator with an algorithm, kind of like TikTok or Instagram, but for exercise junkies.

The pair of uni students managed to convince Mr Eisen to jump on board their funding round because Ms Davies was the first ever person to intern at Afterpay, in the summer.

Taking him out for a coffee as a thank you, she used the chance to “get a quick pitch in”, Mr Carp recounted.

She pulled out her laptop and explained what Steppen Fit was. However, her Wi-Fi cut out halfway through.

Despite that, Mr Eisen seemed keen. A month later, he sent an email confirming he was in as an investor.

It is unclear how much of the half a million dollars is down to Mr Eisen.

There was no way that Mr Carp and Ms Davies could have known back in March that Melbourne and Sydney would be both caught in the throes of an extended lockdown just a few months later.

But it’s done wonders for business.

This month alone, 11,000 more users have joined the platform.

They’ve also got users across 30 countries, with a “decent presence” in New Zealand.

To get Steppen Fit to be bigger, the two decided it was time to bring on some outside help.

They brought on a few other designers and developers as well as content creators, around eight staff members in total that they employ.

They also added a third founder to the executive team, 41-year-old Dave Slutzkin, who had worked in the start-up space before.

Mr Slutzkin acts as Steppen Fit’s CTO, while Ms Davies is the CEO and Mr Carp is the CFO.

Jake Carp, Cara Davies and Dave Slutzkin are all co-founders of Steppen Fit.

The two university students have deferred their degree — although both are unsure if they’ll ever go back — while they work hard at Steppen.

All three co-founders quit their other jobs and Mr Carp estimates they work more than 100 hours each a week across seven days.

All the money is reinvested back into the company.

“We’re not on a salary, doesn’t make sense for us to take money out of the business,” Mr Carp said.

“We (Care and I) both live at home, in lockdown we’re not spending a lot of money, it’s a pretty cheap lifestyle.

“But Dave has forgone a salary even though he has a family.”

Jake Carp talks to news.com.au.

By next year, they want Steppen Fit to be a household name in Australia; “Whether they’re on it or not, they know the brand,” Mr Carp said.

They also want to compensate their creators the same way YouTube would.

At the moment, Instagram and TikTok don’t give any money directly to creators in Australia, which Steppen is hoping to top.

They also want to team up with sports brands such as Nike so people can buy directly through the app.

That said, the company is yet to create a business model to stay economically viable.

“We definitely don’t want to put a paywall up or a premium model,” Mr Carp assured users.