Ernst de Neef, CEO and co-founder of Funxtion, joins Marco and Jonas to talk about building digital products for large fitness operators.

After more than a decade in the industry, Ernst has seen what happens when customers want flexibility, product teams want simplicity, and the roadmap is expected to somehow make both sides happy.

They get into APIs, SDKs, enterprise sales cycles, customization, and an AI workout feature Funxtion spent a long time building before asking a harder question: even if the technology works, can you trust what it gives the user?

There is also the familiar question underneath all of it: when a big customer asks for something, is it a useful signal or just a very expensive distraction?

Ernst gets into:

→ Why poor prioritization can cost more than poor execution
→ The customer request that moved Funxtion from hardware toward APIs and SDKs
→ Why the fitness industry resisted digital products while the existing club model was still working
→ What makes enterprise fitness sales cycles take so long
→ How Funxtion connects engagement to member lifetime value
→ Why large customers often ask for customization they may later regret
→ How to say no to a feature request without shutting down the customer relationship
→ Why Funxtion stopped building a fully generative AI workout builder
→ Where AI can help personalize fitness programs without creating unpredictable outcomes

Follow Ernst de Neef:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ernst-de-neef-312a251/
Funxtion: https://www.funxtion.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/funxtion-international/

Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker
LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/
LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/

Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us
Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/

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0:00 - Welcome and quick questions with Ernst
4:38 - Why bad prioritization costs more than bad execution
6:06 - Ernst’s background and what Funxtion builds
8:15 - What hyper-personalization means in fitness today
11:02 - What fitness products can learn from social media engagement
13:15 - Using data and connected platforms to make recommendations more relevant
14:31 - Why the fitness industry fell behind on digital experiences
17:04 - The customer request that moved Funxtion toward APIs and SDKs
19:00 - The reality of selling embedded software to large fitness operators
20:53 - Starting with lifetime value and working backward to engagement
24:20 - How much enterprise customization is too much
28:12 - Keeping the company vision steady while customers and investors ask for changes
32:41 - How to say no to a customer and still help them
33:00 - Why Funxtion stopped building its AI workout generator
35:30 - The next attempt at making personalized fitness programs work
37:06 - Why progress in fitness technology depends on companies working together

Some product bets fail because the idea was wrong.

Some get a lot messier because the world around it changed.

Gabriela Cordero joins Marco and Jonas to talk about building health and fitness products where that kind of thing happens. One launch had the product, the inventory, and the plan. Then COVID hit, gyms closed, and the team had to work through what happens when a hardware product is ready, but there’s nowhere for the inventory to go.

That leads into a bigger conversation about hardware and software product work. Software can move fast, at least in theory. Hardware asks for more commitment. Sensors, manufacturing, inventory, timelines, and physical design all make the product calls feel a little less reversible.

Gabriela also talks about what she’s building now at MedWatch Technologies: a needle-free glucose wearable. She gets into the process behind bringing that kind of product to market, from the science behind the signal and the hardware constraints to validation, FDA positioning, and how glucose data becomes useful beyond traditional disease management.

Gabriela breaks down:

→ What happens when a hardware product launches into conditions no one planned for
→ Why hardware product decisions are harder to unwind than software decisions
→ How customer research and market feedback shape product roadmaps
→ Why AI changes parts of software development faster than hardware development
→ Why product teams need to separate a good idea from the right feature to build now
→ How acquisition dynamics can create product conflict inside larger companies
→ What she learned from helping bring Nix Biosensors’ hydration wearable to market
→ Why form factor matters more as wearables move into more personal health use cases

Follow Gabriela:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gabriela-cordero1

Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker
LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/
LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/

Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us
Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/

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ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/

1:50 - Hardware, software, and why Gabriela likes B2B2C
5:40 - The highs and lows of building hardware products
6:20 - Launching fitness equipment during COVID
11:10 - Hardware vs software product cycles
12:50 - Where AI helps, and where hardware is still very hands-on
14:20 - Sensor miniaturization and the future of wearable form factors
15:20 - What MedWatch Technologies is building
17:10 - The needle-free wearable Gabriela’s team is developing
20:40 - Chasing the founder vision when the product has never existed before
21:45 - Clinical trials, scientific validation, and building from data
24:45 - Managing product, commercial, marketing, and brand work in an early-stage startup
26:30 - How Gabriela thinks about roadmap tradeoffs
27:20 - What happens when leadership wants a feature the market may not need
30:45 - The product Gabriela is proud of helping bring to market
36:10 - The feature that will save us: glucose visibility
37:00 - Connecting glucose data to food, movement, sleep, and behavior
38:20 - Where to find Gabriela and MedWatch Technologies

Alex from Leisure Labs joins Marco and Jonas for the first episode of This Feature Will Save Us.

They talk about a feature from the Netpulse days called X-Capture, which let gym members take a photo of a cardio machine console and log the workout from the image. At the time, it solved a messy problem: fitness operators wanted connected equipment, but connecting every machine directly was a headache.

The conversation moves into the stuff product teams usually have to sort through before a feature ever ships: timing, simplicity, internal alignment, and the difference between something that demos well and something that actually holds up.

They also get into the 2021 omnichannel rush in fitness, AI prototyping, vibe coding, and why Alex thinks hyper-personalization at scale is the next real shift for fitness and wellness products.

Alex breaks down:

→ Why X-Capture worked as a simple workaround for a complicated integration problem
→ How product teams decide between building, buying, or connecting multiple tools
→ Why company vision problems usually become roadmap problems
→ What the fitness industry got wrong about omnichannel during COVID
→ Where AI helps product teams move faster, and where it still gets risky
→ Why vibe-coded prototypes are useful, but not the same as production-ready products
→ Alex’s take on hyper-personalization at scale

Follow Alex:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexpeacock/
Website: https://www.leisurelabs.co.uk/

Follow Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker
LinkedIn Marco: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcobzg/
LinkedIn Jonas: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonas-ducker-37460bb3/

Get in touch with This Feature Will Save Us Podcast
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/this-feature-will-save-us
Website: https://thisfeaturewillsaveus.com/

Powered by
ROOK: https://www.tryrook.io/

0:00 - Welcome and quick questions with Alex
3:35 - Alex’s background building 50+ products over 15 years
4:40 - X-Capture and the feature that made gym equipment data easier
7:40 - When product confusion is really company confusion
9:50 - Why Leisure Labs started Connect
13:40 - How AI is changing the buy vs build decision
18:20 - Why teams need agreement on the outcome before they build
21:45 - The “this feature will save us” trap in fitness
22:15 - The 2021 omnichannel rush and why gyms tried to become digital companies
25:20 - Stable vision, flexible roadmap and changing sprint priorities
30:40 - How AI helps teams prototype before they overbuild
35:20 - Why vibe coding is useful until the product has to survive production
37:00 - Hyper-personalization at scale as the next real product shift
38:30 - Where to find Alex and Leisure Labs

Every product team has that moment. Someone pitches a feature and says, "This is the one."

Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they are very wrong.

Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker talk to the people actually building products in health, fitness, and wearable tech. The ones making hard calls with messy data, shifting priorities, and stakeholder pressure that never really lets up.

They get into why decisions made sense at the time, and what changed once they had to hold up in the real world.

Follow This Feature Will Save Us for new episodes every other week.
Hosted by Marco Benitez and Jonas Dücker.

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