Benjamin Lowry
A Naval special warfare team member from Chattanooga has co-founded a tech startup for customizable workout supplements.
Benjamin Lowry said he served five years in the Navy as Direct Support to East Coast Naval Special Warfare (NSW) units, had three deployments to Afghanistan, set the military sit-up record in Florida, graduated Army Airborne School, tried out for a D1 football team as a veteran, and applied to Y-Combinator.
Mr. Lowry said, "I grew up playing SOCOM U.S. Navy SEALs on consoles. Years later I would play a key role in SOCOM. I was the youngest and lowest to ever successfully screen at a NSW command. Prior to that I was the military sit-up record holder in Florida where I attended initial training. I graduated Army airborne school as a prerequisite to attending military freefall school, which I ultimately never attended. I had three deployments in Afghanistan as part of a counter terrorism mission. I left the Navy in 2015 and attended the University of Tennessee Chattanooga for one year. During that time, I bulked up about 60 pounds and tried to walk on to the football team. I received a call and they said they weren’t looking for a linebacker. A little disheartened after nearly a year of grueling physical training, and not getting offered a spot on the team, I decided to start my own supplement company.
"This company wasn’t going to be just another company trying to sell you a 'better' product. This was a company that would allow anyone to choose the ingredients, pick the dosage, and share it, at a significant discount. I saw for too many years, young guys going to the military base vitamin stores and getting powerful pre-workout blends with mystery ingredients and risky stimulants all to mask the fact that the supplement itself was garbage. My experience, particularly in NSW, gave me the ability to manage a start-up. I was already used to working odd hours, and at high operational tempo. I was inspired by the athletes that surrounded me in Special Warfare, and I knew there was a better way to buy supplements.
"Our Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business is planning to start production in August of 2017. We recently launched our Kickstarter. We initially applied to Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley, but were not accepted. I grew up with my CTOs and went to high school with them. They went off and became software engineers and got degrees in Computer Science while I was in the military. We decided to keep our equity and bootstrap our production with money earned from crowdfunding.
We hope to bring many manufacturing jobs to the Chattanooga area and increase the city’s perception as a 'tech' city. We do, after all, have the fastest public Internet in the U.S."
Benjamin Lowry