Fitness app Steppen has raised $1.65 million in Seed funding to help Gen Z build healthy habits.

The final round was supported by Sydney VC Galileo Ventures, with support from VC Flying Fox, targeting female founders, and LaunchVic’s Alice Anderson fund. Startmate also invested after Steppen was successful on his second attempt and was accepted into last summer’s cohort.

Anthony Eisen of Afterpay and Jagen’s family office also contributed by initially backing the venture in a $500,000 pre-Seed round in August 2021.

Steppen was co-founded at the end of 2020 by high school friends Cara Davies23, and jake carp, 22 – they even went to kindergarten together – with Dave Slutzkin along as co-founder and CTO. Davies, the CEO of the startup, was a technical student at Monash University and worked as an intern at Afterpay.

Since its launch in mid-2021, the Steppen app has been downloaded more than 325,000 times, with the US leading the market, followed by the UK. Users have watched more than 3 million training videos and completed more than 75,000 workouts

“A large majority of our users are in the US, and at our peak growth rate, we have someone downloading Steppen every 45 seconds,” Davies said.

“Our app is built to help young people who have no idea how to train. We use the habit formation research to help our users develop a fitness habit that will really stick. What really inspires us about Steppen is that we help young people live healthier lives.”

Steppen embraces research into habit formation to help users train. The design of the app makes it easy for users to track and plan their fitness activities.

Davies said Steppen is built specifically for beginners and therefore offers gamified features, along with reminders to keep users motivated for fitness, with more than 6,300 workouts on the app.

The new funding will be used to continue expanding market reach and growth in the US, along with habit forming research.

The app can be downloaded on the iOS App Store.