Francisco Varela - Executive Chairman at dotmoovs

Hello Community,

We’ve got some brilliant projects within our portfolio and want to tell you more about the founders and teams behind them. On a regular basis, you will have the opportunity to learn more about specific projects through our interviews. Feel free to post any questions you may have further down in the comments section.

In today’s interview, we have Francisco Varela - Executive Chairman at Dotmoovs. Let’s go!

Hi Francisco, hope you are well. Please share a bit about yourself.

Hi, I'm Francisco, I'm 35 years old, and since I was young, I've been passionate about innovation and creativity, and used to being an entrepreneur throughout my entire professional career. I've always been a sports lover, and when I was finishing my business management course, I was watching a channel called FuelTv, and I came up with an idea “why not invent a way for people to be able to compete and play sports against each other without having to of being on the ground face to face?” This first idea was what led to dotmoovs.

In 2021, you and the other co-founders, Pedro Rente Lourenço and Salomé Azevedo, launched dotmoovs. What drove you to develop a web3 fitness app, and what is your main goal?

The idea of developing a fitness and sports app on web3 arises due to the difficulty that most amateur athletes have in monetizing their sports-related work, and dotmoovs emerges as a solution and form of income for this entire audience. At the same time, in the fitness aspect, dotmoovs gives a monetary incentive for people to improve their health by being in a good physical shape.

dotmoovs promotes sports and peer-to-peer (P2P) competitions. It is also one of the first apps combining web3 and AI technology. Could you tell us the benefits of this AI integration?

Through AI, which we developed in-house, our users will be able to have their movements read in real-time and, in this way, we’ll help correct their posture in order to prevent injuries and teach them how to improve their technique. We also score their skills through AI, assuring fair competitions, and more recently, we are applying AI to create custom nutrition plans, so we can provide the best solutions for each user, based on their profile, activity and needs.

Who is your typical user, and what should it expect from the app? Does he need any prior web3 and/or crypto knowledge to use the app?

This topic I think is one of the most problematic for all web3 projects… The main difficulty is that most users who want to take advantage of dotmoovs’ technology have a difficulty understanding what a wallet, a blockchain, and other Web3 terms are.

On the other hand, most of the holders of a token tend to care more about the performance of that token, and what they gain from it, other than the project itself. With this in mind, we are working hard to ensure that the app experience can be done by a Web2 user without blockers. Users who are familiar with Web3 notions and market, can already fully understand our app, and have no problems with the usability of the product.

dotmoovs currently offers 2 sports: football and dance. You announced that the team is working on a new sport mode called "fitness". How far along are you in the testing phase, what have you learned so far, and what can users expect from the new feature?

Our 3rd sport, fitness, is now officially launched! We have been taking advantage of these first few weeks after launch to collect all the feedback from users and immediately improve our app.

Fitness introduces a completely new dotmoovs.

In this new sport we have no competition, for now, we have a sport focused on the physical change of our users, which provides them with training and nutrition plans entirely personalized to their routine and goals, improving their health, and we will soon launch the possibility for users to have AI correcting their posture in real time while working out, as if they have a personal trainer next to them at all times.

The dotmoovs ecosystem is fueled by the native token $MOOV: could you explain its role and importance?

$MOOV is what fuels the entire economy for users who want to enter the dotmoovs competitive mode, that is in P2P competitions, where for each victory that a user has, they win a monetary reward that is given through our token.

I’d also like to announce something new here: we are preparing a new form of business within dotmoovs, which is B2B! With this, we will create a new utility for $MOOV, where holders will be able to support new hubs that can be created within our ecosystem.

You have been recently accepted into NVIDIA Inception, a reputable program supporting startups with cutting-edge technology and resources from NVIDIA. What does it mean for dotmoovs, and how are you taking advantage of this opportunity?

The NVIDIA inception program is something that we are extremely proud of as it is a seal of approval for our technology. In addition, we have the possibility of collaborating with NVIDIA partners and, in this way, we have access to exclusive and detailed products for the dotmoovs segment. NVIDIA also gives us a series of credits that we can use to support the cost of our technological development.

You have already onboarded more than 82K users across 190+ countries. What is your growth strategy for the upcoming years, and have you involved (or are you planning to involve) the community in future initiatives?

With the launch of fitness, we will start this year with a focus on the American market in terms of user acquisition. We are closing collaborations with marketing agencies in that market, who are very optimistic about all the improvements we have made to the app in terms of user experience, and the new features that we have been developing. We were also recently financed by a European fund, which once again gives an incredible seal of approval to our organization, and a bigger monetary power. Thanks to all of this, we are extremely excited for the future!

The bear market has put pressure on crypto projects and investors for the last 12 months. Have you done anything differently at Dotmoovs to tackle these challenging conditions?

It forced us to focus essentially on technological development, and put a stop to token performance marketing. Because of this, today we have a very robust and solid technology, and are financially stable. We believe that what matters more and more is users engaging in projects, which is a big problem in the Web3 market, as most have a lack of users, which is why we want this to be a differentiating asset for dotmoovs, compared to the competition within in the web3 market.

Thank you for all your great answers. Is there anything else you would like to share with our community?

Big news is coming: MOOV 2.0 ;)

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Thanks a lot for your time Francisco. Good luck with your projects!

You can check the social media profiles of the project: Website | Twitter | Telegram | Instagram | Discord | YouTube

The Morningstar Ventures Team