Revolutionizing Fitness with Mauro Frota

Mauro Frota is the founder and CEO of BHOUT, a Lisbon company transforming the fitness world by combining artificial intelligence, gamification and combat sports. With over 30 years of martial arts experience and more than 20 in the fitness industry, he has continuously sought innovative ways to engage and motivate people to stay active.

Holding a degree in Sports Science and specializations in Fitness Marketing and Club Management, BHOUT reflects Mauro's commitment to understanding human behavior and applying it to improve exercise adherence. Before founding BHOUT in 2020, he had a diverse career, including creating the Evolution wellness center, consulting on software for gyms and serving as Master Coach for Precor in Portugal and Spain.

‍

What brought you to start the company?

It all started with a dream: I literally dreamt about a punching bag that would hit me back. As I’ve always been a combat sports enthusiast, a gaming and psychology nerd, and a fitness professional, it only took me a while to realize that I could turn this into reality.

‍

What problem did you see?

We all know how important it is to stay active to age better and stronger, but the fitness industry has always failed to retain people and keep them engaged for longer periods of time. It is built and aimed at fitness and sports enthusiasts, who are a small percentage of the world's population.

‍

What inspired you?

In order to build BHOUT, I’ve gathered inspiration from the worlds of technology, game mechanics, nudging and psychology to create a product that really takes care of people’s health while delivering them an immersive, complete and fun experience.

‍

How does the business reflect your values and personality?

I’ve always been a creative person and also a huge tech enthusiast. I think that BHOUT reflects that by becoming a product and service that delivers something exceptional, completely new, that has no parallel in the market, and that is paving the way in the fitness tech industry.

‍

What was the process of founding and establishing the company?

BHOUT’s first moments were the ones of a startup: my founder and I have left blood, sweat and tears in the walls of our first club, which later would become the lab for our BHOUT experience as it is today.

We had to be resilient, fools up to a certain point, to keep going even when everything seemed to be failing. However, we were always confident that we were creating a product and service that had no parallel in the market, that had to be created and put to the test in order to reshape the fit-tech horizon.

‍

“Europe has the brain power and the will to become a super-potent startup ecosystem and compete head-to-head with the US and China, but it needs to overcome risk aversion.” 

‍

What were some of the biggest technical challenges you faced in developing the product?

Our company highly depends on both software and hardware. Generating our software was challenging, but I think I can speak for the whole team – from tech to product to production – that building hardware such as the BHOUT Bag was a unique challenge.

Our product is composed of over 300 parts, most of which we designed, produced and tested, so you can only imagine the challenge of putting it all together while also managing an ongoing business. Hardware development was also a huge challenge since our product doesn’t have an equivalent in today’s industry. There’s no other smart, wearable-free punching bag in the world aside from the BHOUT Bag.

‍

What was the most rewarding part?

It’s very hard to say: I could mention the day we closed our first seed round, back in 2023, which was the biggest seed round ever in the fit-tech market; or the day we opened our first club with the latest BHOUT experience, in 2024; or even just the fact that we keep on closing deals to open BHOUT Clubs a little bit across the world.

‍

What are some lessons you have learnt along the way?

Throughout these years, there have been countless lessons. I’d say that some of the most valuable were that you can never go far by yourself, as cliché as it may sound, but also that sometimes you have to active your “noise cancelling” feature: sometimes it may seem that what you’re doing won’t work, doesn’t make sense, that it’s time to let go, but good things aren’t built in a day and if you have a strong vision and mission, you should always go back to that.

‍

Do you think your city is a good place to build and scale a startup?

Lisbon is a great place to start, but our ambitions have never been solely focused on it or even in Portugal.  We have great dreams for BHOUT: to deliver the Club experience worldwide, to take the BHOUT Bags to other gyms, fitness corners and hotels, and even to develop an Olympic eSport, a project that’s already ongoing. I’d say that Lisbon is an amazing starting point to take us to new heights.

‍

What advice would you give to young founders, especially to those in Lisbon?

Build a network of not only investors but also advisors, experts and friends to help you build, rebuild and reenergize whenever needed. Portugal is relatively small, and it’s possible to access amazing circles with surprising ease.

‍

What is next for your company? 

We are very focused on expanding our network of BHOUT Clubs in several regions across the globe, and 2026 will be the year that BHOUT can be played internationally – we’re very proud of that.

The team is also working very hard to roll out our B2B product in order to attend to our waiting list of partners who want to have a BHOUT Bag in their health clubs, corporate fitness corners and hotels. This will allow users to play BHOUT in a different setting than just our clubs and stay active on multiple occasions.

‍

“What we were lacking was a solution that made exercise a fun and complete experience, built to keep everyone engaged as time went by.”