About
There is no good map of how ordinary people move and think as they age.
The research that exists was built in clinics, on older adults, a few hundred people at a time. Meanwhile several billion of us carry a motion sensor everywhere we go. footing exists to close that gap — and to give the person carrying the phone something useful in return, from the first day, at no cost.
Why measurement is free
The measurement isn’t the product we sell.
Most health products put the number behind the payment. We put it in front, permanently, and there’s a plain reason: the measurement is worth more to us as a shared map than as a paywall. Every reading taken adds to a picture of how movement and thinking actually change over decades — a picture nobody currently has.
So the arrangement is stated up front. You get the measurement, the number, the history, and one real thing to do about it, free and permanently. What you can choose to pay for is interpretation — a program that adapts to what your own readings do. And you decide, separately and revocably, whether your readings join the research. The app works identically either way. Nothing is locked, delayed or degraded by that answer.
Who’s building it
A small team, on purpose.
Robert Roth
Founder
Fifteen years and more than two hundred online health summits — several million registrations, and a long education in what actually changes someone’s behaviour versus what merely gets their attention. footing is the answer to a problem that business never solved: people finished the content and stopped.
Product & science
Measurement lead
Owns the measurement itself — the sensor work, the scoring rubric, and the standard a number has to meet before footing is willing to show it to you.
Engineering
Platform lead
Builds the parts you should never have to think about: the data handling, the billing, and the plumbing that keeps your readings yours.
The rules we build by
Published, so you can hold us to them.
These aren’t aspirations. Each one has killed a feature or a piece of copy at least once.
- A number never appears without something to do about it.
An age you can’t act on isn’t information, it’s anxiety. Every number in footing arrives beside a next step — and that next step is free, always, whether or not you ever pay us anything.
- No fear marketing.
The research on falls and dementia is why we’re careful. It is not a lever to frighten people into subscribing, and we don’t use it as one. If you ever see footing do this, we’ve broken our own rule and you should tell us.
- No woo.
No frequencies, no energy, no destiny, no "your body is trying to tell you something." Every claim points at a study you can go and read, including the ones that complicate our story.
- Never a leaderboard.
Comparison with people your age is opt-in and private. Nothing is ever posted anywhere on your behalf. If you choose to share a card, it carries your numbers — never your chronological age.
- Small changes get called small changes.
Every measurement has a range inside which a difference isn’t really a difference. footing knows where its range sits, and a movement inside it is reported as "about the same" — no arrow, no congratulations. Sometimes the honest answer is that nothing happened.
- Not a medical device.
footing does not diagnose, treat, or predict any medical condition. It shows you where you sit among people who move and think like you. What that means for you specifically belongs to you and a clinician.
Find your footing.
We don’t heal in a hurry, and we don’t age in a hurry either. The point is the line.