Phlex is a tech company focused on bringing innovation to the sport of swimming. Founded by four elite swimmers, the passion and insight into the sport is the driving force behind the business. Phlex’ ultimate mission is to highlight the benefits of swimming and improve swimmers’ awareness and engagement worldwide.
Like many other startups, Phlex originated from the realization of a problem people were complaining about: Swimming lacked effective tracking and engagement. There was nothing out there built specifically for swimmers and most importantly, no tool that provided meaningful feedback in an unobtrusive way.
The story starts with founders Luke Torres (CEO), Ryan Rosenbaum (CMO), Marcin Cieslak (CPO) and Harrison Gibson (COO). Although from a range of different backgrounds, they were all avid swimmers who went on to become teammates at the University of Florida.
Considering the amount of time spent training in the pool, they were amazed by the lack of tracking available to swimmers. For example, at that time, the only way to check your heart rate was by placing your fingers around the neck and counting each beat over six seconds (as wrist-based devices are inaccurate in water), to then derive the popular beats per minute metric.
Although originally thinking of the problem from a competitive swimmer’s point of view, the team quickly realized this was a much more widespread issue, extending all the way to fitness swimmers. “With the ongoing boom of the fitness and wellness industries, tracking and overall body awareness have become much more critical for measuring improvement and developing smart training plans.
We’ve seen big players such as Orangetheory gyms adjust to the market demand by introducing custom heart rate trackers to not only increase engagement, but to also deliver a more detailed breakdown health-wise to their members. We intend to bring this same level of engagement to swimming”, adds Luke Torres.
With a sizeable and growing market in mind, the founders began building the team necessary to bring their vision to life. The two core additions to the team were Eric Donnelly and Justin Correll, both UF grads who had proven their talents through high caliber jobs and PhD programs within the machine learning and hardware fields.
Phlex attributes a lot of its early progress to the Hatchery program, led by Nola Miyasaki, for helping them build a strong foundation around the vision for the company.
Phlex then set on a mission to bring a “designed by swimmers”, unobtrusive tracker to the market. That’s when the EDGE was born. Driven by machine learning technology, the EDGE is a goggle-worn tracker, which provides not only heart rate feedback, but all of the most meaningful metrics a swimmer could want.
These extend from splits, stroke count, set detection and professionally written workouts, all available on the Phlex Swim app (iOS and Android).As soon as Phlex launched the EDGE, ambassadors from all over the world joined the team to help spread the word of a new generation of swimming.
Phlex has backing from athletes such as Elizabeth Beisel (USA 2016 Team Captain alongside Michael Phelps), Dara Torres (5-Time Olympian, Best-Selling Author, Motivational Speaker), Cody Miller (2016 Olympic Gold Medalist), Alia Atkinson (World Record Holder), Calvyn Justus (Olympian and YouTube Sensation), Jazz Carlin (2016 Olympic Double Silver Medalist), Dan Wallace (World Champion), amongst many more.
Today, Phlex is leveraging their momentum to keep on further revolutionizing the space. For all of you swimmers, triathletes or fitness enthusiasts, buy your EDGE today at www.phlexswim.com!
