Most studios do not fail because their classes are bad. Fitune figured out why they really fail, turned it into a system, and is now building the company that fitness studios across Latin America run on.
Somewhere in Latin America right now, a studio is taking a booking on Fitune. Then another. At the company’s current scale it happens roughly once every seven seconds. For a category most people still file under «the booking app,» Fitune is something else entirely.
Its founders noticed something early that most software companies miss. Studios rarely fail because their classes are bad. They fail because the system around the classes leaks. Bookings live in WhatsApp. Payments get chased by hand. The owner becomes the system, and the system never sleeps.
Fitune set out to close that gap. In the process it has been quietly turning itself from a booking tool into something far more ambitious.
From booking software to an operating system
Ask the team what Fitune is and they will correct you before you finish the question. It is not booking software. Booking software runs the calendar. Fitune runs the studio. That is the deliberate shift the company has made, from booking software to the intelligent operating system that fitness and wellness studios in Latin America run their entire business on.
Instead of stitching together separate tools for bookings, payments, websites, marketing, reporting, and partner integrations, a studio runs everything from one platform. That is the shift from software that manages a studio’s bookings to software that runs its business.
«Studio owners do not wake up wanting software. They wake up wanting their business to succeed,» says co-founder and CEO Koen van den Heuvel. «We set out to build the one system every studio in Latin America wins with, and the round we just closed is the fuel to make this the new standard.»
It is a bold framing. What makes it credible is that Fitune did not arrive at it through a positioning exercise. It arrived through years of working alongside hundreds of studios.
A framework to win, not a feature list
Out of years working with hundreds of studios came the Studio Success Model, the framework that now sits at the core of everything Fitune builds, markets, sells, and measures. Its premise is simple and a little contrarian: studios do not win by getting lucky. They win by building the right systems.
The model has four pillars:
- Attract. Make it easy for the right people to find your studio.
- Convert. Turn interest into bookings and payments.
- Retain. Turn occasional visitors into long-term members.
- Operate. Run the whole business on automations and integrations that save owners hours and grow revenue.
This is not just language. It is built into the product. Fitune’s new website builder, for instance, is the Attract and Convert layer made real: it helps studios rank on search, turn visitors into bookings, and win new clients, rather than only managing the ones they already have. That is the difference between software that records a studio’s business and software that grows it.
Three pillars generate revenue. One holds it together. Miss any of them, and growth leaks. It is also the cleanest expression of why Fitune’s incentives line up with its customers in a way few software companies can claim: if the studio wins, Fitune wins.
The proof is in the numbers
Plenty of startups talk this way. Fewer have the traction to back it. In roughly two years, Fitune became the number one platform for studios in Mexico. Recurring revenue has grown 241% in the last 16 months, with total revenue up 264% over the same period. More than 200 five-star reviews say the studios themselves agree. And Fitune is the only platform in Mexico integrated with all three major fitness marketplaces, Wellhub, TotalPass and Fitpass, which is how it plugs its studios into a steady stream of new clients.
Taking over Latam: entering the world’s second largest fitness market
Brazil is next, and it is enormous. It is the second largest fitness market in the world, and it is still growing fast: from around 22,000 fitness facilities in 2015 to roughly 62,000 today, and forecast to pass 70,000 by 2027. The overwhelming majority are small studios with one to ten staff, which is exactly Fitune’s customer. The software that exists there is built for traditional gyms, and even the large fitness marketplaces that operate in the country acknowledge the same gap: boutique studios cannot find a platform built for how they actually work.
Fitune is not adjusting its model to fit Brazil. Brazil already works the way Fitune is built. Two more countries soon follow, with one goal stated plainly: to become the number one operating system for studios across the region.
The next chapter is intelligence
The part the founders are most animated about is what comes next. Fitune is building AI into the core of the operating system. Rather than asking owners to interpret dashboards, Fitune is building intelligence that identifies opportunities, recommends actions, automates repetitive work, and eventually acts on behalf of studio owners across marketing, operations, and member retention.
«We spent years learning what makes a studio win, and we built it into a product and a repeatable playbook,» says co-founder and CPO Rodrigo Contreras. «The next step is intelligence: an operating system that does not just run a studio, but actively helps it grow. That is what we are building, and we will take it to every market in the region.»
That is the line between a tool and an operating system, and it is the bet Fitune is making for its next phase of growth.
The bigger prize
The founders are also betting on where the whole industry is going, not just where it is. Booking software solved a scheduling problem. The next generation of studio software has a bigger job: to make studios genuinely better businesses, and through them, to get more people moving, training, and staying healthy. A studio that runs well keeps more clients coming back, and every client who keeps coming back is a person who stays active.
«The time when a booking platform was enough is over,» says van den Heuvel. «The systems that win from here are the ones that make studios thrive and, through them, get far more people working out and healthier. That is the future we are building for.»
Fitune is not building a booking system. It is building the intelligent operating system that studios in Latin America win on.
Why we backed them
Founders who pick a hard, unglamorous market, learn it deeply, and turn that knowledge into a system competitors cannot easily copy are exactly the kind we built Caricaco Ventures, and our new CV2 stage, to back. Fitune is building from Central America for all of Latin America, with a rare combination of vision and operating discipline. That is what category leaders are made of.
If you are a founder building something serious in this region, this is the kind of ambition we want to hear from.
Learn more about Fitune on their website: https://www.fitune.io/es