A VentureLabs interview with Scott Keesey, the CEO and Founder of DISCOVELO

Mental health issues and inactivity in youth are continuously increasing, but numbers have skyrocketed due to the pandemic. This has had a large impact on youth in the classroom. Kids have many sources of stress and anxiety which impede their ability to focus and learn.

Based out of Whitehorse, Yukon, Scott Keesey and his team at DISCOVELO combine both technology and emotional awareness with exercise, to help students regulate their energy, allowing them to focus on learning in the classroom. Their impact startup’s mission is to help users optimize their relationship with the body and mind.

We had a chance to chat with Scott about his company and dove into how DISCOVELO’s software can help youth across the country, and ultimately users of all ages around the world.

VentureLabs (VL): How did DISCOVELO begin? 

Scott: DISCOVELO was a collision of circumstance and intention. It kind of came about through my partner John Carson who has been doing incredible work trying to improve the physical health and wellness of youth. He was doing that through a non-profit called Run For Life which started on the east coast where he created some running clubs that were very popular with students. He just needed something for students to do during the winter months. The organization found some junior-sized stationary bikes and placed them in classrooms. They were a huge success with the kids, not because children love to exercise, but because they hold energy that needs some sort of outlet. The students found that outlet in these little yellow bikes, and the teachers noticed their readiness to learn improving after this activity.

On my side, I was coming out of an unhealthy career that had impacted my mental health. I was looking for an opportunity to do something meaningful where I could help others avoid the effects of stress and anxiety in their everyday lives. Right at the same time, John was getting some feedback from teachers saying “you know these bikes are great, but could you develop some software that could encourage more students to use these?” He was a little bit leery but together we connected through our friendship and found an opportunity to truly make an impact by combining our talents. 

I guess that’s what I mean by a collision of circumstance and intention. These are things that we very deliberately set out to do independently, and the circumstances brought us together to move forward and help students in particular, with both their physical and mental health. 

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VL: How does the DISCOVELO interactive media software work? 

Scott: Our software is an app that connects to any stationary bike with simple Bluetooth sensors, a tablet, and a web-based dashboard for teachers to see important data from the smart bike use. A tablet connects onto the handlebars, a heart rate sensor on the arm of the student, and a cadence sensor on the crank arm of the bike that sends a Bluetooth signal to the game. You have to keep pedalling while managing your heart rate to move through the activity. But first, it starts with the student user being guided through an emotional energy check-in. The game asks: How are you feeling? How’s your brain feeling? Your body feeling? What kind of emotions are you feeling right now? Then the student enters the fun part, the gamified pedal-powered world of games that are controlled by the biofeedback of their heart rate.

VL: In what ways does DISCOVELO impact both students and teachers in a classroom setting? 

Scott: I think it’s really important for a startup company to think a lot about its value proposition. What are we offering? We have a different value proposition for student users and teacher users. 

What we offer the student is physical fitness right in the classroom combined with cognitive engagement. A recent study done out of Dalhousie University found that less than 3% of students are getting the required amount of physical activity during the day, and the pandemic has brought that down even more. We offer additional opportunities for physical fitness, while also helping to raise awareness of their emotional energy state. The effects of stress and anxiety — not just on students but on all of us — take us out of that zone of regulation where we do our best work and our brain operates optimally. This combo of exercise and cognitive engagement is proven to ultimately improve their readiness to learn and ability to focus in the classroom. 

What we provide teachers is a tool to help regulate the emotional energy in the classroom. More than 50% of teachers have very seriously thought about leaving the profession; for reasons including a lack of support and student behavioural issues. We provide a supporting tool to address the behavioural issues in the classroom by regulating that emotional energy. The other important thing we provide is data visibility from the student bike session. This allows them to make data-driven decisions in their classrooms, and use it to report on socio-emotional learning outcomes.

VL: Is DISCOVELO stationed in any schools yet? And if so, how has the interactive media been received so far?

Scott: Yes, we have the smart bike packages in several Yukon schools right now and an advanced trial program. We’ve received exceptionally positive feedback from both students and teachers to date. We haven’t even released the full functionality of what we have developed yet, but students are lined up at the bike first thing in the morning. Teachers, as they do, are implementing systems for who gets to go and do the activity when. I think that it’s very important to provide teachers with the flexibility to implement this tool however they see fit and work with their value systems within the classroom. 

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VL: Can you give us some details about the DISCOVELO culture? 

Scott: I can for sure! The biggest thing that we are rallied around is the importance of mental health on the founding team. I spoke earlier about some of the struggles that I had in my previous career with the effects of stress and anxiety. The startup culture is renowned for stress and a high-pressure atmosphere. So, we are entering into this as a founding team with a very deliberate focus on our own mental health and wellness. We have been very upfront with all of our partners, funders, and investors about that cornerstone of our culture being non-negotiable. So, we check in frequently ourselves, making sure that we’re all in the right headspace.

VL: What’s next for DISCOVELO? 

Scott: We are most excited about having our minimum commercial product, our alpha software product, launching into the market in the next couple of weeks! We’ve received a Mitacs grant to work with academic partners, so we’ve partnered with the University of Windsor and their Faculty of Education to start developing a research program to firm up our last piece of evidence in our evidence chain. That program will be kicking off in the fall of the next school season here in the Yukon, and in the meantime, we have the validation that has now made us comfortable to proceed to go to market and fill our pre-sales!

The first focus for us is to meet with the teachers and school boards across Canada who have stationary bikes in their classrooms already. We’ll start there and then expand into other markets; vertically within education and horizontally into home use and workplace wellness initiatives for example. We have two great developers working with us right now, and we’re close to looking to bring on a few more to meet the demand for product development. 

Partnerships have been really critical to our success thus far, so we are always expanding those partnerships and looking for opportunities to amplify and elevate the great work that other organizations and companies are doing too. 

We self-identify as an impact startup, and one of the mantras of impact startup culture is to prioritize collaboration over competition. It opens up worlds of opportunity when you’re not just closely guarding everything you are developing in secret. When you can truly open your heart and your intention to the good work of others, some incredible opportunities to explore those synergies arise.

Learn more about DISCOVELO and their software at discovelo.com