Startup Spotlight

Each week, we profile one early-stage startup from our submission pool, companies you won't find covered elsewhere. Some are raising their first rounds. Others are building in stealth, gathering early users before they go to market. This week: Dubl.

Most people who set fitness goals don't follow through. The tools exist (workout apps, calorie trackers, wearable devices) but consistency remains the core challenge. Research suggests roughly 50% of people who start a new exercise program drop off within the first six months. The issue typically isn't knowledge or access. It's accountability. Without a meaningful consequence for skipping workouts or a tangible reward for showing up, fitness goals tend to fade into the background of daily life. Personal trainers and body composition testing can help, but they're expensive. DEXA scans run $75 to $150 per session, and personal training often exceeds $100 per hour.

Dubl is a fitness challenge platform that pairs financial stakes with body composition tracking. Two participants, whether friends, coworkers, or family members, each deposit money and take an AI-powered body scan at the start and end of a 30-day challenge. The scans measure metrics like body fat percentage, lean mass, and circumference changes, which feed into a proprietary scoring system called DublScore. The score evaluates each person's transformation relative to their starting point, so results are based on progress rather than existing fitness level. At the end of the challenge, the person with the higher score takes the other's stake. Alongside the challenge product, Dubl plans to offer a subscription tier that provides body composition insights, personalized workout recommendations, and nutrition guidance based on a user's scan data.

Dubl was founded by Raghav Sehgal, a 17-year-old high school student based in Charlotte, North Carolina. Sehgal has been building the product for eight months, handling full-stack development including API integrations for AI body scanning, a custom scoring algorithm, and payment infrastructure. This is his first startup. While he lacks the typical founder résumé of prior industry roles, Sehgal brings a personal connection to the problem. He built the initial version after struggling with his own fitness consistency and says he has connections in the college fitness and bodybuilding communities that he plans to use for early distribution.

Dubl is pre-launch. The MVP is built but not yet available on the App Store, with a public release expected soon. The company has a waitlist of 100 people. There are no users or revenue at this stage. Sehgal has spent the past eight months developing the core platform, including the body scanning integration, DublScore algorithm, and payment system. The near-term focus is finalizing the app for its app store submission and onboarding initial users to validate the challenge format and scoring system.

The global fitness app market was valued at roughly $12 billion in 2025 and is projected to grow at a compound annual rate of 13% or more through the end of the decade, according to Grand View Research. Within that market, gamification and social accountability features are increasingly common strategies for addressing user retention, a persistent challenge in fitness apps where dropout rates remain high. Dubl sits at the intersection of fitness tracking and financial wagering, a space currently occupied by apps like DietBet, StepBet, and HealthyWage. Those platforms focus primarily on weight loss or step counts. Dubl's differentiator is its use of body composition scanning and a relative progress scoring system rather than a single metric like scale weight.

Dubl is raising $250,000 through a SAFE to take the product from its current MVP stage to scaled user adoption. Planned allocation includes product and engineering (40 to 50%), growth and go-to-market efforts (25 to 35%), payments and compliance infrastructure (10 to 15%), and operations and early hires (10 to 15%). Key priorities include finalizing core features, building out fraud prevention, setting up escrow and transaction infrastructure, and testing creator-driven acquisition campaigns. The company is seeking introductions to investors and strategic advisors.

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Interested in learning more? Visit dublfit.com.

Word on the street is that three late-stage AI infrastructure companies are shopping for $100M+ rounds, all at flat or down valuations from peak 2025 levels. If true, that's a meaningful shift from last quarter's valuation exuberance, particularly for companies burning $10M+ monthly with limited revenue visibility.

OpenAI is reportedly finalizing its $100B funding round with Amazon potentially contributing $50B through a combination of cash and AWS credits. The circular financing structure (invest money that gets spent back on services) is becoming standard practice, though Nvidia's pullback suggests limits to this approach.

On the exits front, two enterprise security companies in the $500M+ valuation range are exploring merger discussions. Both are struggling to cross $50M ARR despite strong investor pedigrees. A combination might create the scale needed for a strategic exit, but board politics and founder egos could derail talks.

Finally, whispers of SpaceX IPO timing accelerating following the xAI acquisition. Sources suggest a mid-2026 public debut at the $1.25T combined valuation, though regulatory reviews of the merger could delay the timeline. If it proceeds, it would be the largest IPO in market history.