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.
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