Cousins and Co-founders Dylan Barbour and Samantha Pantazopoulos Talk Founding and Growing the Vizer App

Vizer, an app that allows you to track your steps and donate meals, is currently one of the most popular Health and Fitness apps in the app store. If my email inbox is any indication, there are approximately infinity new wellness apps created every day. Vizer is doing something right - its users have donated 1.32 million meals to date. This app's concept is incredibly simple as you'll hear Dylan Barbour, co-founder and CGO, and Samantha Pantazopoulos, co-founder and CEO, explain on this week's episode of the podcast. As soon as a user hits 30 minutes of exercise or 10,000 steps in a day, they're able to donate a meal, which is furnished by one of Vizer's promotional partners. Move your body and do good. There are also a number of other perks for users like discounts and rewards with Vizer's expansive partnership network. In just under four years, the pair - who are not only co-founders, but also cousins - created and built the app to what it is today. The idea for it came to Pantazopoulos, who was fresh out of undergrad and just 21-years old, as she looked to live a healthier lifestyle. Barbour, the elder cousin, was 24 years old and left a job at Morgan Stanley - with benefits, he points out on the episode - to bet on his little cousin's idea. Somewhere between the launch of the Vizer app and today, Barbour (whose fandom knows him as Dylan B.) took a hiatus to join the ranks of bachelor nation. He was on season 15 of the Bachelorette and Season 6 of Bachelor in Paradise where he met and proposed to Hannah G. For anyone who has grown a business and scaled it with a lean team, the idea of your co-founder going to film a reality TV show on an island where they're without a phone and computer for weeks at a time would probably give you a fever and chills. Pantazopoulos expressed that basic sentiment - without the part about the fever - she was reluctant to run the business without her co-founder. Today, she says that Hannah G is the best thing that's ever happened to Barbour. Listen to what they're working on, why they got started and more. And if you watch the video version of the podcast, their cousin-dynamic and general Zac-Efron-ness is delightful.   Resources: Download the Vizer App on iOS or Android Follow Vizer on instagram Read about the $1million start-up prize Vizer split with one other company in 2019