Farhad is the Founder and CEO of Naked Labs. Inspired by his life-long dedication to fitness and technology, he set out to create the only fitness tracker that gives you a full picture of how your fitness and lifestyle choices affect your body.
Prior to founding Naked Labs, Farhad held several business/product management and engineering roles in the semiconductor industry. Most recently at Maxim Integrated, he led the Wireless product line as Director of Business Management, serving both Automotive and Consumer markets. Farhad is also an avid cyclist and a certified spin instructor at Bay Clubs.
Sully: My first question, for those that don’t know, what is Naked and what does it do?
Farhad: Naked is the world’s first home body scanner–Naked is a full-length mirror embedded with Intel RealSense 3D sensors. When you step on our scale/turntable, you rotate 360 degrees in 20 seconds, allowing the sensors to capture your accurate volumetric body model. From this body model, we are able to extract accurate measurements, calculate body fat %, and provide you with a progress map showing where you are gaining/losing muscle and fat, all of which is accessible from our companion app for iOS and Android. You can also set and track goals and create time-lapses of your body’s changes!
Sully: Where did this idea come from?
Farhad: Fitness has always been important to me, so even while I worked as a business director at Maxim Integrated (Nasdaq: MXIM) prior to founding Naked, I was adamant about keeping a work-life balance and was a part-time spin instructor at the Bay Clubs. I saw first hand the influx of new members each January, then the 80% dropout rate after only six weeks. I also realized that people who saw visible progress were much more likely to stick with a regimen or a diet. The issue was that even though the newcomers to the gym were making good progress, it was not reflected on a scale (weight without context is meaningless) or in the mirror (subtle changes are difficult to see with your own eyes), and they quickly lost motivation. With this observation, I met up with an old friend, Ed Sclater and founded Naked Labs, with the mission to inspire health through honest insights and motivate behavioral change by helping people visualize progress much faster and more accurately than what you can see on a scale or in a mirror.
Sully: The company selected the .fit tld for the domain name naked.fit. Tell me what went into your name selection and why .fit was chosen over a .com name.
Farhad: We knew that we wanted a short, memorable domain name to make it easy for people to find us. Having a product name like Naked meant that a lot of the domains we were interested in were already taken, and we wanted to brand with the product name (rather than company, which is Naked Labs). When we saw that naked.fit was available, it was a no brainer! We are a first-of-its-kind product with an already playful name, so it just made sense to pick a domain name that broke away from the ordinary.
Sully: How have customers reacted to the .fit tld. While it seems to be a perfect, natural fit, has it caused any confusion being a newer tld?
Farhad: Surprisingly, there has been minimal confusion. People think it’s a pretty cool domain, and we’ve received a lot of compliments. Sometimes people get confused and say, so I should email you at “info@naked.fit.com“? But, overall, it’s been manageable and easily corrected.
Sully: Naked is available for pre order right now. When do you expect it will ship?
Farhad: Naked is expected to ship in March 2017.
Sully: What advice do you have for others that are considering launching their business on a new tld such as .fit?
Farhad: Since so many new businesses are popping up on the internet, clean and professional domains that end in .com are becoming rarer and rarer. We’ve seen a lot of companies launch with unique domain names like ours, such as camera companies using the .camera domain. We’ve also recently noticed an increase in companies rebranding their websites using creative domain names, such as venture capital firms using the .vc domain. We encourage businesses to take the risk and go with the new tld! Soon enough, using new tlds will be the norm, and you’ll be considered ahead of the curve for your decision.
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Mike-interesting as always. It’s interesting also that Bang.fit is going to be an app. produced by I think ( could be wrong) and adult media company-Im pretty sure Mike Mann owns BangFit.com and we own BangFitt.com.