June 13, 2023

Exercise 2.0: Building Tech to Electrify Your Workout and Stimulate Better Results, Featuring Bjoern Woltermann, Founder and CEO of Katalyst

27 minutes

“We haven’t invented a new way to work out since the ancient Greeks. With electro muscular stimulation, we're breaking that.” Invention is a big part of everything Bjoern Woltermann did at Katalyst to bring electro muscular stimulation, or EMS, to the US market – and to US homes. EMS workouts have been around for decades, but typically only in a physical therapy context. With Katalyst, you wear a suit that triggers your muscles while you work out, promising the equivalent of a 2-hour workout in only 20 minutes, and with less injury risk than a traditional workout. But to make this suit work at home, Bjoern and his team needed to invent everything from special sensors to custom textiles.

On this episode, we'll hear how a long-time back problem led Bjoern to discover EMS training in Germany, and realize the untouched opportunity for bringing it to the US. And we’ll go deep to understand how Bjoern and his team created a fascinating mix of hardware, software, sensors, textiles, and content and then stitched it all together.

This is Crafted from Artium: a show about great products, and the people who make them. At Artium, we help startups and enterprises build incredible products, recruit high-performing teams, and achieve the culture of craft they need to build great software long after we’re gone. Check us out at thisisartium.com

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