As Nix Biosensors prepares to launch its first consumer product at the end of 2022, it's beefing up its team with industry experts.
The Boston startup announced yesterday that David Renton, the former chief operating officer of Zwift, has joined Nix as interim chief operations officer and chief technology officer.
Nix is a consumer diagnostic company that makes single-use, wearable patches that analyzes athletes’ sweat. The patches can tell them when, what and how much to drink by looking at fluid and electrolyte levels.
Renton joins Nix from Zwift, a company that combines indoor gaming, real-world events and exercise hardware. During Renton’s time at the company, Nix said he led a ten-fold increase in users and helped secure over $770 million in funding. He helped build the company’s esports programs, which included launching the Tour de France Virtual when the real Tour de France was canceled due to the pandemic. Renton was also part of the team that created the real-world Tour de France Femmes, one of women's cycling's two grand tours.
“So many industries are evolving right now, especially sports and fitness,” Renton said in a statement. “I believe that one of the biggest and most exciting areas of this evolution is in biometric data. For years, the status quo of wearables has been activity trackers worn on your wrist. The next generation of fitness technology is biosensors — devices that provide a new class of data and level of personalization never seen before in consumer health and fitness technology.”
Nix has made a number of new hires this year, including Pratik Patel, the former director of performance nutrition and assistant strength and conditioning coach for the New York Giants, as director of human performance; Inga Stenta, former head of U.S. marketing at Reebok and Nix’s chief marketing officer; and Tom Fowler, a new Nix advisor and former president of Polar.
The company was founded by Meridith Cass, who is a former entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School.
Earlier this year, BostInno covered Nix’s testing of its patches on runners preparing for the 2022 Boston Marathon. The patches were worn by the likes of Boston Marathon race director Dave McGillivray and Paralympic athlete Tatyana McFadden.
Cass told BostInno that its first consumer product would consist of a disposable patch, an electronic pod that attaches to the patch and an app that analyzes and displays the data.
“What that system is doing is then collecting sweat off the arm, off that bicep region,” Cass said at the time. “It’s measuring that sweat 100 times every second and then doing some data processing and then sending all that data to… your phone, but we have some other hardware integrations like Garmin watches and bike computers.”
After launching the consumer product at the end of this year, Nix said it plans to launch additional biosensors designed for team sports, military and labor applications in 2023.
