In 2010, Lauren Fleshman, a 2x USA 5k and 5x NCAA champion, and her husband Jesse Thomas, a professional triathlete, realized that the power bars they were eating weren’t getting it done. They found that there were two types of post workout nutrition bars, ‘performance bars filled with gnarly ingredients’ and ‘real food bars not balanced for sport.’ They decided that they could make something better. Later that year, they teamed up with pro marathoner Steph Rothstien, and founded Picky Bars. Picky Bars makes dairy and gluten-free bars using real food ingredients instead of the fake stuff other companies use.
It makes sense that professional athletes would come up with this idea. Nutrition is a very important aspect of athletics and especially endurance athletics. Lauren, Jesse, and Steph are very driven people. Many aspire to be pro athletes but not many get there. They are driven mostly by joy. They love endurance sports and when they realized something was missing they took action to fix it. Its a great idea because it solved a problem they were personally dealing with. Steph Rothstien has celiac disease and most every thing marketed as gluten-free is not made out of real food. Recreational athletes see a company like this as a part of endurance sports culture and tend to identify with it better than a company such as Gatorade that sells drinks in vending machines in airports and gas stations. You can get your bars straight from Picky Bars with a monthly order of pick some up in your local specialty running shop.
Picky Bars doesn’t need to be sold in Wall-Mart or Costco to reach its intended market. You can join the Picky Club and get a set amount of bars sent out to you monthly directly from the company. The bars are also sold in specialty running and endurance sports shops around the country.
Picky Bars reminds me that there are an infinite amount of ways that entrepreneurs can make the world better.
Check it out at http://pickybars.com/
Julia Hu is doing something dozens of others are doing. But she is doing it right and she is doing it better. Hu created a wristband called LarkLife that tracks sleep patterns, diet, and exercise. Millions of people attempt to log their food intake and fitness for the day through phone apps and website, but have trouble keeping up. This is not the only issue – Hu and her 21 employees at Lark Technology believe that people are not challenged to change their life simply with raw data. “When you look at everyone in the world, about 3 to 4 percent are motivated by data. These are Olympic athletes, highly goal-oriented people, and tinkerers,” Hu explains. “The rest of the population is not at all motivated by numbers–or is actually negatively motivated by seeing numbers.”