If you've spent any time around the Prota ecosystem you’ll begin to get familiar with the different stories of founders and how they came to be a part of Prota. One founder whose name will almost inevitably come up is Cheryl Kemp of indiFIT. Cheryl has a mix of charm and enthusiasm that is hard​​ to replicate. She’s driven to succeed but also has a refreshing willingness to learn and grow. While some people take many paths to achieve their goals, it feels like Cheryl’s life’s roadmap has always led to her becoming a Founder.

Born in Michigan, Cheryl’s family moved often. This nomadic lifestyle taught Cheryl the flexibility she would need throughout her life. She spent her younger years in Orlando, Florida and attended high school in Ohio. Ohio is where she felt most at home, eventually attending Cleveland State while working full time as a general manager at a restaurant. It wasn’t the typical college lifestyle but Cheryl thrived in the chaos of working in a restaurant, again accumulating the skills she would need later in life.

She always envisioned herself working at an ad agency after graduation, but the offers she received could not compete with the money she was making working at a restaurant. Luckily fate stepped in and the restaurant chain Cheryl was working for had an opening in the marketing department. Cheryl got the job.

Going back to her nomadic roots, Cheryl’s job took her all over the East coast. She finally settled in Baltimore and while she enjoyed her job, she began to crave a little more chaos. She found what she was craving in the chaotic atmosphere of food service technology start-ups. With her experience in the food space she was attracted to up-and-coming technologies and start-ups involving food and food delivery. She worked on some of the first food delivery apps, not realizing how necessary this technology was about to become. She loved bringing her experience to start-ups and figuring out how to make those start-ups successful, even helping to orchestrate a 100 million dollar exit for one of those start-ups. The experience she got working with those start-ups was invaluable. While Cheryl was working with a start-up focused on ordering food in the workplace, disaster struck.

The Covid-19 pandemic shook most people to their core. Cheryl was no different. While dusting herself off from her COVID-related layoff, Cheryl had a unique opportunity to re-evaluate what she loved. While doing so, she focused deeply on fitness and health, which had always been an important part of her life. In the process, she realized that the fitness industry was also undergoing a huge shift. With gyms closing at an alarming rate, many fitness instructors needed to make ends meet. Most sought out technological solutions. Many taught classes using a problematic combination of Zoom and Venmo. Instructors had no real place to go that was designed specifically for them.

Cheryl realized that there was a problem; instructors needed a place where they could conduct classes and get paid securely, but it wasn’t the problem that drove Cheryl; it was the customer. Cheryl had fallen in love with her customer. She wanted to empower fitness instructors to be Founders themselves to take control of their lives. Her platform Indifit.co was designed to do just that.

In May of 2020, her passion for her idea took her to Chrysalis, a pre-idea online accelerator. There she met a group of people who helped her take her idea from ideation to a functioning prototype in six weeks, a superhuman feat. Cheryl decided that perfection was the enemy of the “good enough” and took her quick and scrappy product to market. This was the perfect way to collect market research and what most Founders take 5 years to do Cheryl managed to do in 5 months.

IndiFIT had a great Founder but in order to grow it needed a CTO. It’s not always easy to find technical help that vibes with a company’s mission. While being presented as a case study at 1871 (an organization that supports early stage, growth stage and corporate innovators building businesses, from idea to Fortune 50), she met Parker Hathaway. Parker, impressed with Cheryl, introduced her to Will Little. From that introduction Prota became another stop on Cheryl’s roadmap to success.

Will helped Cheryl interview and onboard a CTO, Brandon Jahner who helped lead a team of Prota talent to build the next iteration of Cheryl’s site. Cheryl then pitched on the Tuesday call. From there she found investors, resources and talent.  Using the feedback collected from instructors during the beta phase, IndiFIT is growing to new heights.

Cheryl recently attracted the attention of leAD, a sports and health tech academy and ecosystem, and was accepted into their second ever cohort with six other founders. She will be spending three months in Orlando, Florida doing workshops, meeting mentors and gaining new insights into herself, her business and what it means to be a Founder.