Baltimore Ravens' Elvis Dumervil and Kansas City Royals' Eric Hosmer are wearing Athos workout apparel to track their muscle activity, heart rate, and breathing
Two University of Waterloo alumni, who began developing their smart workout gear while still electrical engineering students, have landed on the 2016 Forbes Top 30 Under 30 list.
Dhananja (DJ) Jayalath, 26, and Christopher Wiebe, 27, are co-founders of the California-based wearable tech company Athos, which produces fitness apparel that measures key performance indicators such as muscle activity, heart rate, and breathing. The two friends met in second-year and began developing their technology as a fourth-year design project, winning two awards at the Ontario Engineering Competition.
The water-resistant, breathable, sweat-wicking apparel is being worn by high-profile athletes including NFL’s Elvis Dumervil of the Baltimore Ravens, MLB’s Eric Hosmer of the Kansas City Royals, and professional boxer Mike Lee. The products retail for between $185 and $230 CAD.
After the duo graduated in 2012, fellow Waterloo alumnus and venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya stepped up, backing Athos with $3.5 million in seed funding. Palihapitiya, who also graduated from the electrical engineering program, heads up Social + Capital Partnership and is a part-owner of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. Last year, Athos received an additional $35.5 million in funding led by Social + Capital, and along with millions of dollars in merchandise sales, has raised over $50 million so far.
“The University of Waterloo was an essential part of building Athos. The freedom, resources, and challenge to create something new for our fourth-year design project was the catalyst that enabled us to be ambitious and try to do something that nobody had done before,” said Jayalath. “Waterloo's emphasis on practical skills, combined with deep academic understanding of engineering was another factor that helped set us up for this journey into entrepreneurship.”
Jayalath and Wiebe got the inspiration for the smart gear while working out. They wanted to know whether they were working the right muscles, and whether their form was right while lifting weights.
Athos has employed numerous co-op students from the University of Waterloo, and have recently hired three Waterloo graduates to work at the company full-time.
“Waterloo continues to be and will remain integral to Athos. The interns that we recruit from Waterloo take on projects that are equal to what the rest of the team is working on and each quarter we are blown away by the talent and skill of our interns. If you want an epic term where you are forced to step your game up, come work with us at Athos,” said Wiebe.
The workout gear, which is just as comfortable as any other compression apparel, uses electromyography (EMG) to measure the electrical activity generated by working muscles. Although EMG technology has been around for decades, in the past it was limited to elite sports institutes and research laboratories. Even for athletes who had access to these facilities, collecting EMG data required expensive machines and electrodes attached to the body with wires. Jayalath and Wiebe wanted to create a simple, affordable, and more accessible solution; something that was as close to a personal trainer as possible, without the hefty per-hour fees.
Woven directly into the fabric of the shirt, shorts, or pants, the biosignal sensors collect information about what muscles are firing and how hard. This physiological data is collected and analyzed by the Athos Core, a palm-sized device which snaps into the apparel and connects to a mobile device via Bluetooth, allowing the user to make real-time adjustments to improve muscle activity, movement patterns, and overall function. The clothing also measures standard workout data such as heart rate and calories burned.
Five other Waterloo alumni have been named to the annual list in the past two years: In 2015, Danny Yaroslavski, founder of LightBot, and William Zhou, founder of Chalk.com, were named by Forbes in the education category. In 2014, Eric Migicovsky, CEO of Pebble Technology, Ted Livingston, founder and CEO of Kik Interactive, and Douglas Lusted, CEO of WestonExpressions, all made the list.
