For Evan Ledahl, the path to building Demotu did not begin in a software company. It began in fitness and sports performance, where he spent about a decade training clients, coaching, and eventually running his own gym.

After closing the gym, Evan began studying business and later taught himself to code. That combination of firsthand industry experience and new technical skills eventually led him to build Demotu, a movement analysis platform that uses computer vision to turn a smartphone into a movement assessment tool.

Today, Demotu is being used by gym chains and professional sports teams to assess movement, track performance over time, and provide data that would traditionally require more time, specialized expertise, or expensive equipment.

In this Startup Story, Evan shares how his experience in fitness led him into technology, the challenges of entering a market before it was ready, what he learned from mistakes along the way, and why founders should start with problems they have actually experienced.

Note: Responses have been lightly edited for length and clarity.

From Fitness and Coaching to Building Demotu

Before founding Demotu, what were you doing professionally, and what experiences led you to start your own company?

Evan: I’d spent about 10 years in fitness and sports performance before any of this, training clients, coaching, and eventually running my own gym. Running a gym was a crazy experience and taught me a lot through failure. When I closed it down, I didn’t jump straight into anything. I just started reading every business book I could get my hands on, trying to figure out what I could’ve done differently.

The majority of those books were written by people in tech. Reading through them is what started sparking ideas in my head. I didn’t want to just hire someone and outsource the development, so I decided to learn to code myself. It ended up being natural to me, I got good at it fast, and I started building what became Demotu as my first project. As I was building it, I landed a job working as a software engineer, and did that for about three years before going full-time on Demotu.

What problem did you see in the fitness and sports performance industry that made you realize something needed to change?

Evan: We started out as just a movement analysis company. What brought it to life was seeing so many trainers not doing movement assessments before training. For me, movement assessments helped me gain clients because they showed why someone needed to work with me. They also made me a better trainer. I needed to know how someone moved before I could train them. It’s like putting a race car on a track without checking the alignment first. Trainers were skipping assessments because they either didn’t have the knowledge or didn’t want to spend 20 minutes per athlete doing it by eye. I knew there had to be a faster, better way to do it.

Every startup has an “aha” moment. Was there a specific experience or conversation that convinced you it was time to build Demotu?

Evan: The experience was how important movement assessments already were to me as a trainer. I used them on every client, they were core to how I worked. When I started learning computer vision, marrying the two together just felt like the perfect fit. I had this unique experience from being in the trenches as a trainer that felt like an earned secret. Most people building tech didn’t have that background and didn’t see what I saw. Once I saw the vision of putting the two together, I didn’t need convincing. I just had to run with it.

Building Before the Market Was Ready

Starting a company is rarely a straight path. What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a founder, and what did those experiences teach you?

Evan: The biggest challenge was timing. We were early to market with this, which meant a ton of the early work wasn’t building product, it was educating the market on why they even needed something like this in the first place. People looked at us as just a tool, not a need. That meant we had to keep expanding what we built, turning it from a single tool into an actual platform, which was the right call in hindsight, but at the time it was all work and no reward for a long stretch. Once the market actually started looking for what we’d built, we were miles ahead of anyone else trying to catch up.

Your background includes both the fitness industry and sales at Yelp. How have those different experiences influenced the way you build and grow your company?

Evan: Both played a huge role. Coming from the industry I’m selling to gives me a lot of insight and helps me connect with the market. A lot of our competitors aren’t from the industry and have a hard time connecting the same way. We’ve landed some large contracts because we’ve been able to become real friends with our champions inside these organizations. We talk the talk. It’s a tough industry to work in if you haven’t been in the trenches yourself.

For Yelp, I still use most of what I learned there in how I sell today. That was an intense job, doing the full sales cycle starting from a cold call. I’ve adapted the approach for how we do it now, but a lot of the same fundamentals still apply.

“There’s probably a million things we could’ve done differently to shorten the path to getting here. But most of being a founder is just sticking it out through the mistakes until you find product-market fit.” – Evan Ledahl, founder, Demotu

Making Movement Analysis More Accessible

Demotu is making movement analysis more accessible through a smartphone. Can you explain how the platform works and what makes it different from traditional movement analysis tools?

Evan: Demotu turns your phone into a movement assessment tool. No markers, no sensors, none of the expensive optical motion capture setups labs use. Our computer vision watches how someone moves and assesses foundational patterns like squats, hinges, and lunges, turning them into real feedback on asymmetries, compensations, and range of motion.

What used to take 20 minutes of a trained eye now takes a couple minutes and gives you real numbers you can track over time. We’ve validated our accuracy against optical motion capture too, so the numbers hold up against the gold standard.

But it’s grown well past one-off assessments. Trainers can track clients over time, gym chains can see movement trends across locations, and pro teams can assess entire rosters and track players throughout a season. We’re also tying in wearable data to connect changes in movement quality to things like sleep, recovery, and nutrition.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently during the early stages of building Demotu?

Evan: There’s probably a million things we could’ve done differently to shorten the path to getting here. But most of being a founder is just sticking it out through the mistakes until you find product-market fit. All the mistakes we made are basically the normal badge of honor of being a founder, in my opinion, and we needed every one of them to get where we are today. Every startup is going to have its own blend of mistakes, that’s just part of the deal.

If I had to give one real piece of advice: don’t start having babies in your 30s while you’re building a company. Those forehead wrinkles are a lot harder to get rid of now.

Seeing the Technology Make an Impact

What has been one of your proudest moments as a founder so far, whether it was a customer success story, product milestone, or personal achievement?

Evan: Seeing this rolled out across major gym chains and pro sports teams has been an unbelievable feeling every time. The proudest moments are seeing something you killed yourself building, based purely on faith, actually make a real impact.

Two stick out. One gym chain runs an event every quarter where all their trainers work a Saturday doing consultations to sell personal training. Normally they’d sign around 80 new clients that day across the whole company. The first time they used us, they signed over 800. The other was flying down to Dallas for the UFL’s physicals day. We assessed all 500 of their players in under a day. The old way, one trainer spending even just 20 minutes per player, would’ve taken over four weeks of full time work to get through everyone once. We did it in a day and helped them make real decisions on player availability based on how those guys actually moved.

Advice for Founders Turning Expertise Into a Business

What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about turning their expertise into a business but isn’t sure where to begin?

Evan: Start with a problem you’ve actually lived, not one that sounds good in a pitch deck. I built Demotu because I understood the gap between what a real movement assessment should look like and what trainers could actually do with 20 minutes and their eyes.

Don’t wait until you feel qualified on the technical side either. I taught myself computer vision and machine learning by building the thing I wished existed. Find people who cover what you don’t know, get something in front of real customers fast, and expect mistakes to teach you more than master plans.

Also, learn enough of every piece of the business you’re going to run. I’m glad I learned to code before vibe coding with AI tools. It took longer, but I actually understand what I’m building, which makes for tighter, cleaner software.

About Demotu

Demotu is a movement analysis platform that uses computer vision to turn smartphones into assessment tools. Used by trainers, gym chains, and professional sports teams, it helps track movement, evaluate athletes, and monitor performance over time without expensive equipment.

Wrap Up

Evan’s journey with Demotu shows how firsthand experience can help founders solve real problems. By combining his fitness background with new technical skills, he built a platform now used by major fitness organizations and professional sports teams. His advice to founders: solve a problem you understand, learn as you go, test with real customers, and expect mistakes along the way.

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