Indoor climbing is a tricky sport to track. That’s why Spanish startup Lizcore caught TechCrunch’s eye at MWC earlier this year. The team of two co-founders — led by CEO Edgar Casanovas Lorente, a climbing instructor and guide turned entrepreneur — were showing off hardware they hope will see climbing gyms ushering in the kind of social gamification that all sorts of other sports already enjoy, thanks to the rise of wearables and activity tracking apps.
The system that Lizcore has devised only asks the climber to wear a lightweight fabric NFC bracelet to track their sport, meaning they don’t need to climb with their mobile or another chunky device. The bracelet works in conjunction with smart base units and top-out holds — allowing route stats to be captured and progress mooned over in Lizcore’s app.
Fast forward a few months and the startup has raised a pre-seed funding round as it works on commercializing its hardware. The team has pulled in a total of €600,000 at this point (around $630,000 at current exchange rates). The funding comes from several investors and business angels, including Startup Wise Guys, as well as individual and business backers from the sector, plus a chunk of state support (in the form of an interest-free loan of €200,000, and some grants).
They also recently signed their first local customer: a climbing gym called Drac de Pedra in the Catalan town of Rubí, where they held a demo event of the route tracking tech earlier this month. “They want the full installation. But they will start with 30 routes, which means 10 devices,” co-founder and CTO Marçal Juan told TechCrunch.
While digitizing indoor climbing is still core (ha!) to Lizcore’s pitch, front of mind for the team is finishing work on a safety device for auto …