Diary of an Entrepreneur

 

Strategic Alliance with Microsoft Just One of Many Important Milestones for Podfitness

 

By Teri Sundh

 

In October, Podfitness was one of the original Microsoft partners when Microsoft launched its HealthVault platform. As cofounder of Podfitness, the day represented one of many important milestones for our company and its path to success.

As savvy entrepreneurs know, partnerships are important to any business venture. At Podfitness we have had the opportunity to form strategic alliances with several global brands including iVillage, Polar, Cooper Aerobics and Walmart.com. When the opportunity presented itself to form a relationship with Microsoft, we were thrilled with the opportunity to leverage Podfitness technology to provide a unique platform for the Microsoft HealthVault product.

The relationship with Microsoft represents our ability to partner with global brands to bring change to the way consumers exercise and view their health-related information. By making Podfitness available to HealthVault, we will together provide a technology platform consumers can use to arm themselves with health-related resources and information. We are united by the goal of helping people live better, longer lives by helping them make good health and fitness decisions.

The combination of Podfitness with HealthVault, provides access to an environment of new online services to search, store and connect people with their health information that can be used in creating customized workouts with Podfitness — putting them in control of their health and wellness delivered in a format that they can listen to on their MP3 player.

Our relationship with Microsoft was born out of our commitment to the health and fitness of consumers. Our path at Podfitness started two years ago, when we sensed a major shift coming in the MP3 (portable music device) market. We believed that the iPod-led revolution had the potential not only to change the economics of the music business but also the fitness industry. This idea began a multi-million dollar process of conceptualizing, building and refining the idea of Podfitness.

Today, we are providing breakthrough technology that combines customized, inspiring workouts from the world's elite trainers with your very own music to deliver a personalized weight loss solution for use on your mp3 player. We also plan to add a video component so users can watch and listen to workouts on mp3 players.

The Microsoft partnership is just one example of many important days in our company history. We see the company growing, and partnerships like this one with Microsoft provide great validation for our business model.

 

Teri Sundh is the CEO and cofounder of Podfitness.com. She has excelled in executive management for over 15 years, negotiating multi-million dollar contracts with Fortune 500 Companies as a vice president at Franklin Covey, as well as developing strategic partnerships for several successful startup companies.

 

Launch - Winter 2007

 

 

For the full "digital magazine" version of Winter 2007, visit: www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/growutah/launch_2007winter