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Gym Class VR
VR basketball game
- 1-20 employees
- B2C
- Gaming
- Fitness
- SaaS
- Virtual Reality
- Santa Monica, CA
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Company mission
To turn millions of gamers into athletes.
Our take
Virtual Reality is an excellent opportunity to turn video games into a workout, but few manage to successfully combine fitness, fun and social aspects into a viable package. Enter Gym Class by IRL Studios, a VR game which allows players from around the world to work up a sweat going toe-to-toe on the basketball court.
With headsets outselling video game consoles, a VR-native basketball game would seem to be an easy slam dunk. However with earlier investments in this space failing and Meta significantly increasing the cost of its Oculus headsets, there's no guarantees of success. Still, with over a million players pre-launch driven by smart social media marketing and glowing reviews from its engaged player base, Gym Class seems set to buck this trend.
These early successes held Gym Class net investments in a seed funding round led by YCombinator and a16z. This capital allowed it to officially launch on the Quest Store, and it is working on further developing the game and expanding the customisation options available to players, hiring new talent to make this possible.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Funding (1 round)
Aug 2022
$8m
SEED
Total funding: $8m
This company has top investors
Leadership
Matthew Harris
(Co-founder & CEO)Before co-founding Gym Class VR was Lead Engineer for Insperience and Cubicle Ninjas, and Lead Developer at Spatialand (acquired by Walmart).
Justin Hubert
(Co-founder)Was Lead Artist at Insperience and a 3D modeler for Spatialand and Prologue Immersive.
Paul Katsen
(Co-Founder)Was Group Project Manager at Twitter and Product Manager at Coinbase. Before that was Co-Founder & CEO of Blockspring and Outpost Kitchens.