Health and nutrition tracking app MyFitnessPal has sold to the sports apparel maker Under Armour for $475 million, the company announced today.
The San Francisco-based health tracking app boasts the largest nutrition database in the world with more than 5 million foods. In its nine years of existence the firm has amassed more than 80 million registered users for its website and app, and will see its combined user base with Under Armour grow to 120 million, in what the acquiring company calls the “largest digital health and fitness community in the world.”
The deal had been in the works for several months, according to one source with knowledge of the situation, and following interest from multiple acquirers CEO Mike Lee went for Under Armour because the “brand was well aligned."
Till now MyFitnessPal has derived its revenue from selling ad space on its app with the help of mobile ad networks. The startup, which was bootstrapped for most of its life until an $18 million funding round led by Kleiner Perkins in 2013 was actually profitable for a while, according to Lee. Hiring product engineers and data scientists to boost its analytics offerings, pushed it into the red more recently.
Lee started MyFitnessPal nine years ago as a desktop app when he and his then-fiancee were trying to shed a few pounds ahead of their beach wedding. When his trainer told him to start counting his calories on paper, Lee created a web application that allowed him to do it on a computer instead. The service became an iPhone app in early 2009.
It went on to become one of the world's most popular weight-loss apps, and helped put a dent in sales for Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, dieting stalwarts that watched their share prices drop over the last year or so as a result.
“We have the largest database that’s ever existed of what people eat,” Lee said in an interview with Forbes last year. "There’s never been something like this.”
Last summer MyFitnessPal announced it would include steps tracking as a core feature, overlapping further with the software provided by wearable trackers made by Fitbit or Jawbone.
When asked about how MyFitnessPal's business model might change, Lee hinted at a premium version of the app where users paid for additional features that would increase their likelihood of weight loss success, or premium versions that could be prescribed to patients. Lee and his brother Albert are listed as co-founders of the company.
Baltimore, Maryland-based Under Armour said it had also acquired Endomondo, a fitness-tracking app largely popular in Europe in January for $85 million. Endomondo is based in Copenhagen, Denmark, and claims to have one of the largest digital communities of fitness enthusiasts, with approximately 20 million registered users.
Under Armour said it expected to close the MyFitnessPal acquisition in the first quarter of 2015.
Kleiner Perkins has released a video of partner John Doerr, a lead investor in MyFitnessPal who sits on the board, interviewing the Lee brothers about the origins of their company. You can watch it here:
