Meet VAY founder Joel Roos and find out how his career as a professional athlete inspired his entrepreneurial path

12.05.2021 07:00, Isabelle Mitchell

Joel Roos founded VAY, a software startup and Venture Leader Mobile that digitizes human movements to make products more competitive, immersive, and intelligent. VAY's technology aims to enable new digital approaches that promote physical activity, increase performance, predict risks for injuries or disorders, and provide feedback for more effective and faster treatments. Learn more about Joel's expectations for the Venture Leaders Mobile experience and his love for challenges and productive Saturday mornings.

The Venture Leaders Mobile 2021 will accelerate their expansion into the global market and strengthen their business network by attending the Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona, Spain, to meet with top-notch investors and industry leaders. To introduce you to the members of the Swiss National Startup Team, we asked each entrepreneur to complete a short profile and choose six questions from a questionnaire about their personal and professional life.

Name: Joel Roos
Location: Zurich, Switzerland
Nationality: Swiss
Graduated from: ETH Zurich, MSc in Robotics, 2018
Job title: Founder and CEO of VAY
Number of employees: 11 (as of 04/2021)
Money raised: CHF 1.25 million (as of 05/2021)
First touchpoint with Venturelab: In 2020, for the Scale up Bootcamp

"VAY analyzes human motion with computer vision, in real-time from RGB camera video streams."
 
How and where did you come up with the idea for your startup? 
I researched similar computer-vision (CV) technology for autonomous robots' navigation around humans. Given my professional sports background [Joel used to be a professional volleyball player], I was often asked for advice on my friends' sports routines. I identified the problem of limited access to professional guidance for amateur fitness enthusiasts. Digital fitness products lacked, and most still lack, the means to close the feedback loop and collect enough information about their users to provide true personalization. It quickly became obvious that digital therapeutics products will also benefit from the higher transparency and adherence provided.
 
What do you expect from the Venture Leaders roadshow, and how will it help you achieve your vision? 
The Mobile World Congress is a great event to attend and showcase innovation, especially with such an interdisciplinary Swiss delegation as the Venture Leaders Mobile. Our technology brings professional training from the fitness studio to mobile devices—the only requirement is a regular camera that can be found in any consumer device, such as a smartphone or laptop. The worldwide pandemic has accelerated innovation in the digital fitness market, and CV-based motion analysis is on the brink of taking off. We will present industry leaders using our technology in newly launched products, clearly showing how we will reach our vision of a human-like, fully virtual personal coach or therapist. Setting a new industry standard with the UX personalization through VAY will make it imperative for other market participants to follow.
 
What would be the title of your biography? 
Challenge Accepted—I've always loved accepting a challenge and challenging myself. When making an important decision, I have never chosen the easy way. What gets me really excited is trying to find an easy solution for a very complex problem.

What is the one talent you wish you had?
Some more artistic talent to illustrate things would make it so much easier to explain the ideas in my head quickly.

What is your favorite book? 
The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson. It draws you in as a crime thriller, but eventually, you get caught in a state-level conspiracy with never-ending twists. It's pure thrill and tension!

Where and when are you most productive?
When cleaning up the week on Saturday morning: Coffee, orange juice, good music, ideally some sun on my balcony, no interruptions, and the vision of having a clean slate to enjoy an afternoon off or start a new initiative.

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder? 
Seeing your innovation in action, making people happy, or helping them. When we showed our first prototype at Zurich Main Station, I remember tons of people coming in with no idea how to do a proper squat. Using our showcase app, they learned it in under a minute.

What is the most important lesson you have learned as a founder? 
Be patient and set your priorities right. There are so many opportunities along the way—carefully choose which opportunities to pursue so that they help you realize your vision. New ones will come along.


For more information and updates on VAY and the Venture Leaders Mobile, follow the Venture Leaders Mobile 2021 team with #VleadersMobile on social media or subscribe to our newsletter. 
 
This year's Venture Leaders Mobile program is supported by Huawei, Swisscom, and VISCHER.