The “Contrarian Bet of the Century”: Inside the Launch of XENOM with Founder Keith Barlow
When Keith Barlow began telling his friends about the concept of XENOM, he was met with skepticism.
- “There was quite a lot of, ‘Oh, why do you want to build that for CrossFit?’” he told the Morning Chalk Up in an interview.
The same people kept talking about how things were better in 2017 and 2018, and how we should work to reclaim those days.
Barlow didn’t understand why they all chose to look backward instead of forward.
- Because when he looked ahead, he saw a huge demand for something that didn’t exist.
And that marked the beginning of his mission to build XENOM, which Barlow released to the community in February.
- “It might be the contrarian bet of the century,” Barlow said, “but I think there’s this incredibly fertile field that we can go plant seeds in.”
Remind Me
Pitched as the “Decathlon of Fitness” for CrossFit athletes, XENOM is a two-day competition featuring 10 events that aims “to measure every facet of performance,” and to create a “CrossFit Games level experience for the everyday person,” Barlow explained.
Sounds like a regular CrossFit competition, right?
Nope.
What makes XENOM different is that, like a HYROX race, it’s always the same, thus creating “the first repeatable global benchmark for CrossFit athletes.”
- For more details: Nine of the 10 events for each division have already been released.
Worth noting: One reason Barlow is confident he’s onto something with XENOM is that the company he co-owns with his wife, Kate Burton-Barlow, FittestPR — a public relations agency serving brands and athletes in the CrossFit community — represents HYROX.
- So, Barlow has been involved from the inside since the early days, helping build HYROX into the powerhouse it is today.
Barlow’s Vision for XENOM
The concept of XENOM was born out of a hunch.
- “I believed that there is a latent demand for a high-level event that anyone can come and take part in, and get a CrossFit Games-level experience in a known format that is global and that provides a comparable benchmark so people can see how they progress,” he said.
Barlow continued: “There is a large population of people who do compete, and who train every day in the gym, and they aren’t being supplied with a competition that matches the fitness that they build in the gym.”
In other words, no event like HYROX is available for the everyday CrossFit athlete. That’s the gap XENOM aims to fill.
And just like HYROX, what will make the XENOM experience especially unique compared to other CrossFit competitions is that the events will always be the same, making it easy to measure progress and move up to a higher division over time.
Another thing Barlow has learned through HYROX is that spectators enjoy getting up close and personal with the people they’re there to support.
- “They want to follow their brother and get close to him. They want to be five meters away from him to support him on the floor and follow his race,” Barlow said, adding that this is the type of spectating experience he intends to create for XENOM, as well.
All in Nine Months
In just nine months, CrossFit Level 2 coach Barlow has raised $15 million in seed funding, led by investment firm WndrCo and its managing partners, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Sujay Jaswa.
- Katzenberg is the co-founder of DreamWorks and former Chairman of Walt Disney Studios, while Jaswa is the founder and former CFO of Dropbox.
Furthermore, XENOM secured Rogue Fitness as a foundational partner and signed a license agreement with CrossFit, enabling XENOM to be called the CrossFit® Partner Event Series.
Finally, Barlow nailed down the venue for the first event on June 27-28. It will be held at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco, home of the Dallas Cowboys World Headquarters.
- The second XENOM event will be in London, UK, on August 29-30. After that, XENOM will move to Miami, FL, and then to Paris, France.
The plan is to hold 11 competitions in the United States and Europe during its first season, with the ultimate goal of reaching 60 global competitions by year five.
About how he has managed to do all that in just nine months, Barlow said: “If you’re passionate and motivated about the mission and what you’re doing, you can move mountains. And you can move mountains relatively quickly.”
From 100 to 12,000 Followers
Barlow knew he might be onto something with XENOM, but the positive response from the CrossFit community when he revealed the concept in February left him “completely blown away,” he admitted.
- “The CrossFit space is interesting. People have very loud opinions, and they let you know about them very quickly,” he said.
Because of this, Barlow expected both support and backlash, but overall, the support has been much louder than the criticism.
And in a matter of a month, XENOM has already managed to pick up 12,000 followers on Instagram.
Furthermore, thousands of people immediately applied for one of the 250 free tickets to the first XENOM event in Dallas.
- “We’ll see when we actually start selling tickets,” he said, but he couldn’t be more pleased with the initial response.
The Big Picture
Barlow has three big hopes for XENOM: That it’s a win for the individual participant, a win for affiliate owners, and a win for the ecosystem at large.
And while it might be “the contrarian bet of the century,” Barlow is making the bet with confidence.
He brings extensive experience—and valuable lessons—from helping grow HYROX from its first race to 1.6 million participants this year. But more importantly, he recognizes something in CrossFit that others seem to overlook.
- “I think there is so much inherent value in the ecosystem that, for whatever reason, we have almost shied away from,” he said.
He added: “CrossFit is the most incredible, impactful, transformative experience in most people’s lives who do it. It changed my life. The transformational power of training and competing completely redefined my life.”
And he thinks XENOM will have the power to do the same for anyone who gives it a chance.
