Bain veteran Payal Kadakia quit her job to pursue her passion for dance, and built a $600 million company, Classpass ($PRIVATE:CLASSPASS), in the process. The six-year-old startup, today led by serial entrepreneur Fritz Lanman, isn’t showing any signs of slowdown.

Hiring at Classpass has skyrocketed since its initial launch in 2013, with the most dramatic increase seen in the last year. The number of self-identified Classpass employees on LinkedIn increased by 119% to 564 from 257, since the beginning of 2018. 

Classpass can’t seem to hire fast enough. The number of job postings doubled since the beginning of the year, nearing its all-time high in August 2018. Last summer’s hype followed news of the startup’s largest fundraising round in July, an $85 million funding round led by Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, as well as L Catterton, which has invested in luxury fitness brands like Peloton ($PRIVATE:PELOTON), Equinox ($PRIVATE:EQUINOX), and Pure Barre.

On the user front, excitement has dipped since 2018, with Classpass’ current engagement on Facebook falling by 83% since its peak last January. However, the most recent data shows that engagement is recovering - which we can tell from our Facebook ($FB) Talking About Count. 

The dip may be because more people are actually using the platform, rather than fussing about it on social media. The number of Google ($GOOG) Play App Store ratings, by number, swelled to surpass 4,200 in August 2019, a dramatic increase from the 200 reviews in late 2018. 

And most importantly, consumers are satisfied with the platform: ratings have increased to a stellar 4.4 out of 5 stars, up since February this year (Ratings data not shown). One user wrote: “There’s so many different niches of fitness nowadays, and joining one studio is so expensive! Classpass makes fitness fun, affordable, and empowering - what it should be!” 

Despite talk about the boutique fitness “bubble” popping, those fancy trampoline classes aren’t going away anytime soon, and neither is Classpass, Kadakia, 36, said in an interview with The New York Times.

“We’ve built this place where anything works,” Kadakia said. “Our job isn’t to prescribe. It’s to give you all the options so you can choose and have access to what you want to do.”

About the Data: 

Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales. 

Further Reading: 

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