We Are Building The
Founders
Black Box VR was founded by fitness fanatics Ryan DeLuca & Preston Lewis. The team spent years building Bodybuilding.com into the largest online supplement retailer in the world (with nearly $500m in annual sales). With the collaboration of many talented individuals, they created some of the world’s most recognized supplement brands, chart-topping fitness mobile applications, were honored with award-winning health & fitness campaigns, and created the world’s largest online fitness social network (with over 3m members), while always holding true to the mission of changing people’s lives.
In 2016 Preston and Ryan decided to start their new venture, Black Box VR, with a mission to disrupt the fitness industry once again by creating innovative products and experiences that create lasting change in people’s lives. After trying virtual reality for the first time, Ryan and Preston knew they were experiencing a magically immersive technology that, if paired with resistance training, gaming principles and high intensity cardio, will be the winning combination for people trying to reach their health & fitness goals. Black Box VR is redefining fitness as we know it.
Ryan DeLuca founded Bodybuilding.com in 1999 in his garage in Boise, Idaho at the age of 20. Under Ryan’s leadership, the company skyrocketed to nearly $500,000,000 in annual revenue before he stepped down as CEO in 2015. With almost zero startup capital and no outside investors, Ryan grew his company from nothing to become the world’s most visited fitness site and largest e-tailer of sports nutrition supplements. From the beginning, the company was focused on transforming the lives of its millions of customers and staying true to the core principles that Ryan passionately believed in. Profitable from the start, Bodybuilding.com was eventually purchased by Liberty Media. A born innovator, Ryan was named Entrepreneur of the Year by E&Y in 2009 for the Idaho/Utah region and Inc. Magazine called him one of the “Top 5 Coolest Entrepreneurs Under 30”. With 800 team members spread throughout six states and four countries, Ryan was proudest of the fact that Bodybuilding.com was consistently named one of the best places to work. Ryan was temporarily retired for only six months before the startup bug bit him again and Black Box VR was born, merging his continued passions for technology and fitness and the way they can intersect to help people transform their lives. In his spare time, Ryan is a private, instrument rated pilot with over 1600 flight hours. You can usually find him flying his Pilatus PC-12 turboprop around the western USA on the weekends for fun, charity, and business. He’s an avid non-fiction reader, spends his mornings at the gym, and recently took up ballroom dancing, much to the amusement of his friends and family. Ryan lives in Eagle, Idaho and has three crazy kids named Raiden, Kyla, and Bradley.
Preston is the Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer at Black Box VR. Preston is a fitness fanatic, UXUI junkie, product design ninja and product visionary. Preston has provided creative direction and product management to some of the largest brands in the world including Hewlett Packard, Bodybuilding.com, Fiverr, Hurley International and SAP, to name a few. Along the way, his passion for amazing products and solving difficult design problems has earned him numerous awards for projects ranging from traditional print campaigns and packaging design, to chart-topping mobile applications with complex information architectures. As Creative Director and Director of Product at Bodybuilding.com, Preston led teams responsible for a complete cross-channel brand refresh that modernized the company’s brand and set a tone for future digital properties. He led the redesign of one of the world’s largest websites (32mm unique visitors per month), navigating the complexities and collaborating with a 60+ member development and design team; Preston also led the strategy and development of BodySpace, the world’s largest online fitness community with over 3mm members and the creation of platforms that more than tripled the speed at which the company could create and ship digital properties. Preston still considers himself lucky to have been a part of the massive growth the company experienced from under $90mm to over $500mm in his seven year tenure.
After growing many multi-million dollar brands, Preston decided to leap back into the world of entrepreneurship with a mission to combine his passions for technology, games, fitness, and changing lives to create the future of fitness; with this vision, Black Box was born. When he's not creating new digital products and growing brands, he can be found enjoying paleo treats with his wife that she posts on her blog, AmazingPaleo.com, playing the guitar, singing, working out in VR and dreaming up the next tech innovation.
The Rock Star Team Making it Happen
We are fitness fanatics, user experience junkies, design ninjas, game development aficionados and virtual reality evangelists. We are always looking for talented individuals to join our team. Help us create the future of fitness.
Annie Morley is a proud Idaho transplant with no intention of ever leaving the Gem State. A graduate from the University of Washington, she spent the first part of her career working for the largest containerized shipping company in the world.
After an international stint in Hong Kong, she craved a quality-of-life change and landed a recruiting role in Boise. After a few years in recruiting, Annie was herself recruited by Bodybuilding.com. There she oversaw marketing and programming efforts in the military, gym and personal training space. As the Director of Exclusive Brands, she built and managed its exclusive brands program. During that time she was responsible for several of the fastest growing and largest brands at Bodybuilding.com. Annie has been an honoree of the Idaho Business Review’s Accomplished Under 40 and Woman of the Year awards. She’s also heavily involved in her community, serving on several committees for the YMCA, WCA and she is a founding member of Care2Share. When she isn’t working, Annie can be found standing on her head (yes, she’s a certified 300 HR yoga instructor), downhill skiing, or hiking with her husband and very active toddler.
After an international stint in Hong Kong, she craved a quality-of-life change and landed a recruiting role in Boise. After a few years in recruiting, Annie was herself recruited by Bodybuilding.com. There she oversaw marketing and programming efforts in the military, gym and personal training space. As the Director of Exclusive Brands, she built and managed its exclusive brands program. During that time she was responsible for several of the fastest growing and largest brands at Bodybuilding.com. Annie has been an honoree of the Idaho Business Review’s Accomplished Under 40 and Woman of the Year awards. She’s also heavily involved in her community, serving on several committees for the YMCA, WCA and she is a founding member of Care2Share. When she isn’t working, Annie can be found standing on her head (yes, she’s a certified 300 HR yoga instructor), downhill skiing, or hiking with her husband and very active toddler.
Nick is a scientist and engineer who specializes in designing practical implementable solutions from the interplay between real world data and conceptual models. His broad scientific experience includes studying marsh flow and automobile drag with a custom submersible laser particle image velocimeter, developing and programming computational fluid dynamic models of heat and mass transfer to facilitate smart HVAC system operation, and designing models of geological subsurface electromagnetic fields induced as part of electro-kinetic bioremediation systems. Nick has worked in industry in various engineering consulting firms and supported research at the University of Michigan.
For his role as VP of Modeling and Data Science at Black Box VR, Gutschow is responsible for the back end modeling capability of the software as well as on user data collection design and analysis.
With over 10 years as a creative director in the gaming, mobile app and print industries and 5 years at Intel as a software engineer and UX lead, Duane has a unique talent of translating abstract creative concepts into actionable, real-world results. His core competency is in bridging the gap between strategic, artistic and technical teams. He takes personal and career development very seriously and is always learning. Duane has lived an adventurous life across 27 countries, speaks 3 languages (English, Mandarin and Indonesian), is the recipient of a Gold Award at Chinese International Industrial Fair (CIIF) for Excellence in Robotics, and has an enthusiasm and zest for life that he bring to all the teams that he works with.
Chuck Westerberg is an Idaho native who spent almost two decades working for and managing the family dental business. He attended graduate and undergraduate school at Boise State University and has degrees in history and Latin. Chuck has an affinity for ancient history, archaeology, and osteology and has spent time in Europe studying Roman weaponry and signs of possible violent trauma on gladiator remains. When he’s not busy with the IVRC’s educational programs you can find him volunteering for various local non-profits, coaching his two wonderful kid’s baseball teams, and backpacking in Idaho’s great outdoors.
Jim specializes in the creation, publishing and support of interactive products and services for digital platforms. His 16 years of experience includes production management, product design, publishing operations, strategic business development and studio operations management.
Previously, Jim worked at Konami Digital Entertainment serving as Executive Director, Mobile Operations, where he managed operations for all mobile products distributed in North and South America. Jim’s relationship with Konami grew with their acquisition of the mobile technology firm Blue Label Interactive, a company he co-founded in 2004. Jim has provided interactive development services on projects with clients including Microsoft, Disney, Electronic Arts, EA Mobile, Activision, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Bodybuilding.com, Honda, Paramount Studios, Sierra Entertainment, TDK Mediactive, THQ, Inc., and many others.
Previously, Jim worked at Konami Digital Entertainment serving as Executive Director, Mobile Operations, where he managed operations for all mobile products distributed in North and South America. Jim’s relationship with Konami grew with their acquisition of the mobile technology firm Blue Label Interactive, a company he co-founded in 2004. Jim has provided interactive development services on projects with clients including Microsoft, Disney, Electronic Arts, EA Mobile, Activision, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Bodybuilding.com, Honda, Paramount Studios, Sierra Entertainment, TDK Mediactive, THQ, Inc., and many others.
Inventor of things. From a young age, Dan has been experimenting with how to make products better from testing performance of the potato gun to improved optics on a telescope. Currently, Dan serves as Founder and President of IonVR, a mobile VR headset that nearly eliminates VR sickness and works with most every smartphone. In 2005, Dan began his career in IT infrastructure, which led to the formation of Digavise in 2011, with clients across a variety of verticals. Highlights include removing malware from an electron microscope for a large mining company, intranet security for an international investment firm, and identifying SQL vulnerabilities for large companies. After trying an early Oculus DK1, Dan began experimenting with VR, first making a wireless, battery operated Oculus using cloud infrastructure to send data. Using mobile devices soon followed. The first prototypes were built with cardboard and then Legos (dubbed the Blockulus). A year of optics research followed, leading to the current IonVR headset, with built-in hardware that nearly eliminates blur. Research and development continues in virtual reality to improve and enhance the growing industry.
True Transformation Has a Formula
Immerse & Emerge
At Black Box VR, we are creating the world’s first virtual reality gym experience. You’ll step into a Black Box VR boutique gym and immerse yourself in a whole new way to get fit that will make you never want to visit an outdated gym again.
Virtual and augmented reality are the next major computing platforms. These technologies will revolutionize the way we work, play, and learn. Black Box VR will take advantage of these advances to finally fix fitness and end the daily struggle that millions of people go through to get the exercise that they need to achieve the body and health that they desire. Today, fitness is boring, confusing, and almost impossible to maintain for the vast majority of people that set out to get into shape.
Black Box VR will change the way the world works out. You’ll step into the Black Box room with your custom fitness headset and an entire new world will be created around you. As you go through the experience, you’ll get a full body workout that is so immersive you’ll forget you are working out at all.
Some VR workouts in the future will include basic features like having your virtual trainer with you who is guiding you through a body weight workout similar to Wii Fit. We don’t believe that is enough. Black Box VR will integrate resistance training through an electronically controlled cable system which will be seamlessly integrated into the game experience. Reach out to grab that rope or lift the handles on that object and you’ll feel real cables, set to the exact resistance that you need. Functional fitness in a fictional word.
Only three Black Box experiences a week at 40 minutes each will be enough to increase your strength, endurance, and health while shaping your body in all new ways to help you achieve the body you’ve always wanted. Each workout will automatically move you toward your goal by refining the resistance, intensity, and speed based on your goals and your current progress. Plateaus are not allowed.
Black Box VR will open flagship gyms in Manhattan and Beverly Hills and then expand from there. Licensing opportunities will exist for gym chains to add Black Box VR workouts to help them leapfrog their competition and create additional revenue opportunities. Franchisees will also be able to open their own Black Box VR gyms.
Black Box VR is rapidly developing the next and final fitness revolution.
