We’re on a mission to improve the health of the world.
ShapeUp was founded in 2006 by Dr. Brad Weinberg and Dr. Rajiv Kumar while they were medical students at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. They learned from their early clinical encounters that their patients who were most successful at losing weight, increasing their exercise, quitting tobacco and achieving lasting healthy behavior change all had one thing in common: they had used their social network-friends, family, and colleagues-to create an environment that supported their efforts and held them accountable to meeting their goals.
Watching the plight of unhealthy and frustrated patients, grasping the threat of a national obesity epidemic, and identifying online social networking and gaming as a strategic way to promote healthy living, they went on leave from medical school to launch a wellness platform designed to unite people and improve their health through teamwork and peer–support. The duo decided to focus their efforts on the corporate market, targeting employers who were struggling with rising costs and seeking innovative ways to help their employees transform their health.
Weinberg, a self-taught computer programmer, built the first version of the software platform, and Kumar led the business-to-business sales and marketing teams. The company quickly gained traction by becoming the first wellness vendor to demonstrate that a social approach to wellness provided the key to solving the engagement problem that exists in the health care industry. Early pilot programs delighted their customers and led to wide-scale global roll-outs, and published research proved significant health outcomes from the program.
After years of product development and successful program implementations at large employers and health plans alike, the company hired Mike Zani, a Harvard Business School graduate, former U.S. Olympic sailing coach, and veteran executive, to manage the company’s rapid growth, provide strategic vision, and attract the best talent. Zani quickly built an impressive management team and designed a corporate infrastructure that would scale along with the company’s expansion. Weinberg and Kumar eventually returned to Brown to complete their education and earn their medical degrees, and they are now back at the company working full time in strategic roles.
Founded initially on the basic premise that people are more likely to succeed at reaching their goals when they work together with the people they care about, ShapeUp continues to stay true to its original philosophy. The company has remained focused on uniting people to improve their health while at the same time expanding its vision for the future. ShapeUp aims to build the largest platform in the world that unites individuals with their entire health care ecosystem – including their friends, family, colleagues, employer, health plan, physicians, pharmacy, health coach, and more. By creating a simple, central place to connect with the activities, information, ideas, and people that can lead us to better health, ShapeUp is working toward improving the health of the entire world.
