Picture this scenario: you’re the captain or coach of a rowing team. You want all your rowers’ erg scores in one place, but your options are manual and inefficient. You could have rowers or coxswains take all the scores down, but you’re asking them to do a ton of transcription each time they erg. Even if the transition happens, where does the data go? Managing this data in Excel requires additional manual work of inputting and managing the scores once received, and rowers don’t have visibility into each other’s scores. What if your team isn’t erging together? Then gathering data gets even harder and more difficult to get consistently recorded. If only there was a way to automate erg logging where all the logs went straight to a central spot for the team to view.
Sound familiar? It’s an age-old problem rowers around the world encounter on a daily basis and it only becomes more prominent as squad sizes grow and the burden of accountability falls on a dwindling ratio of coaches and coxes to athletes. Furthermore, there can be no greater frustration than expending all of your worth into the sum of a piece on the indoor rowing machine, only to have to manually jot down results.
Which, in essence, is how ErgBot was founded. ErgBot was created by Benjamin Barton, Joseph Ebner and Romy Simpson, who met at the University of Pennsylvania whilst balancing study and sport. The concept behind ErgBot is demonstrably simple; it is an automatic erg score logger that records data via images and pictures. With the experience of both rowing at a collegiate level and software development (Ben is a product manager at Amazon and Romy a product manager at BackerKit), ErgBot makes recording erg data significantly faster and easier. The app uses computer vision technology to allow anyone to log erg data straight to Google Sheets with the snap of a picture; as the team state, they’ve found a way to automate a process rowing teams are forced to complete thousands of times a season.
The appetite for such a niche addition to the indoor rowing world is clear; ErgBot now has over 7100 unique users and is active on both the App Store and Google Play. “We first started working on ErgBot in 2018,” explained Ben. “When we were thinking about our rowing experiences, we realised we were literally logging thousands of ergs every year without a good solution to do that. During the winter, we’d erg six times a week 12 weeks a year with 40+ rowers, which adds up to roughly 3000 pieces a winter season without proper technology to track”.
The idea for picture-capture came from the team’s experiences with apps like Uber or Venmo; when prompted to enter credit card details, your phone can extract the required data via your camera, simplifying the previously manual process. “We thought, why don’t we just use that technology but on ergs,” said Ben. “You’re basically feeding into the fact that most folk already take pictures of ergs but skipping the manual part”. The idea of logging ergs at the snap of a picture became the goal, and testing and development started. “We were originally testing the initial version of ErgBot out on a bottle of hot sauce,” said Joe. “We took a picture and it transcribed every word in perfect text – that was probably one of our most memorable lightbulb moments”. The team then built out an initial version of the app, using React Native and NodeJS software frameworks for those curious.
The ErgBot team started making demos of their automated erg logging app, and shared them on rowing message boards, Facebook groups and Reddit. The demos gained traction and included a link to sign-up for early access; by the time user testing came, there were 900+ rowers, coaches, and coxswains who were on the interest list excited to give the app a try. After launching on iOS in October 2018 and Android in February 2019, they now have thousands of unique accounts created across over 60 countries.
One of the team’s biggest developments was the move from a single-user app to a product designed with teams in mind. “A great team experience is our holy grail,” explained Ben. “We’ve tried three times to build that mode successfully but after launching in 2021, it is now used by seven different squads and counting”.
To use the app as an individual is currently free but ErgBot has a premium tier for clubs, schools and universities to upload and store their results via team mode. The expansion plan is global; all of the clubs currently on the ErgBot team mode roster are American but there is no reason why the technology developed by Ben, Joe and Romy cannot be applied in boathouses and gyms across the world. “We want to continue to build out and develop team mode,” said Ben. “We started with individuals to get the product in people’s hands and get the messaging out there that it was genuinely as straightforward as taking a photo. For us though, we believe the best use-case for ErgBot is teams. Whilst we were at Penn, there was still a lot of manual work for erg logging and throughout our years we never had a full erging repository available to the various squads. Essentially, we want to make team mode as simple as possible”.
As incumbents of the software world, the development of ErgBot fits seamlessly with the day-jobs of the founders. They’re able to apply their daily learnings at world-class technology brands in building out a smarter, sleeker product for indoor rowers around the world. Business is not only about being the first to spot a gap in the market; it’s about being the first to do something about it. As the only viable product to solve this problem, ErgBot is excited to push for further international expansion.
ErgBot is available on both iOS and Android and is currently free for individual users.
- iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ergbot/id1435719133
- Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ergbot777&hl=en_US&gl=US
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