Vytal Ventures, an athlete-backed, founder-led venture studio for health, fitness and wellbeing, has announced its first cohort.
Four founder-led businesses – PHYT, Precision Coaching, vessa and Open Wellness – are joining the studio.
PHYT is an AI-powered body composition platform that turns a 30-second smartphone scan into a fat, muscle and PHYT Age reading, validated against DEXA scanning.
Precision Coaching replaces the fragmented tools that gym operators, trainers and clients use today with a single, unified operating system covering everything from PT recruitment, training and retention, through to science backed client programming and hyper personalised plans.
vessa is built as the clinical layer bridging fitness and pharma: a platform to coach people through GLP-1 weight-loss medication and help them hold onto the results afterwards.
Open Wellness is data-orchestration infrastructure for the fitness and wellness sector. It sits above the systems an operator already runs, membership, door access, finance, and connects them rather than replacing them.
Vytal Ventures launched in April 2026, bringing together Jack Malin and Dave Rushton, former founders of global fitness platform Membr, alongside Inner Circle, the founder-first investment platform backed by a global network of entrepreneurs, athletes and investors, represented by founding members Peter Crouch and James Cox.
A launch event saw founders present to one another, sharpen their preparation for investment rounds and rotate through one to one mentoring sessions with Vishal Amin, chief executive of wellbeing operator Until; Alun Peacock, chief executive of JD Gyms, and Jon Cottam, CEO of Energie Fitness, alongside the Vytal team.
“When we built Membr, we learned first-hand how hard it can be for good founders to get the right support at the right time,” Malin said. “When we set out to build Vytal, we wanted to meet founders and give them access to our expertise, networks and knowledge of the sector so that we could help them scale quicker.
“Cohort One is Vytal doing exactly that: four founders in a room with people who’ve actually built these businesses, not just funded them.”
The studio’s model pairs that operator access with a community of athlete and investor backers it calls the Bench. Former footballer Crouch, whose Inner Circle platform provides access to a network of experienced investors and former athletes, says the same thinking sits behind Cohort One.
“Elite sport teaches you the value of discipline, coaching and performance under pressure,” he said. “Meeting these founders who live those qualities in their businesses is exciting for me.
“They’re all trying to solve problems that genuinely benefit people’s health and fitness, and putting the wraparound of our networks and the Vytal team’s experience behind them means that hopefully they’re more likely to succeed.”
Applications will open for Cohort Two later this autumn.