076: Impact Biosystems CEO Bridget Hunter-Jones

Boston Speaks Up

Guest Bridget Hunter-Jones is the co-founder and CEO of Impact Biosystems, a venture-backed startup in the Boston area developing adaptive hardware and software solutions in the health and fitness space. Hunter-Jones leads a small, passionate, cross-functional team that wants to create a new personalized recovery market to support the at-home fitness phenomenon that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. Impact Biosystems’ goal is to make athletes of all varieties prevent injuries, perform at their peak, and uniquely live and feel better. The company’s soon-to-launch Pact, which aims to compete with the likes of Theragun and other at-home massage products, promises to be the world's first full-feedback interactive percussive massager that provides a personalized recovery solution with muscle scanning technology. The Pact measures people’s muscle tightness and provides personalized recovery guidance, creating an experience that adapts to them. An engineer at heart, Hunter-Jones got her first patent at age 16, and went on to MIT to get a degree in Mechanical Engineering. Her career began at SONOS, where she started in product development and then moved into project management. It wasn’t until starting Impact Biosystems for Hunter-Jones to finally get the chance to combine her skills in engineering, product vision, and management with her passions for running, yoga, and overall health and wellness. Family is at the root of what drives Hunter-Jones. She gave birth to her son nine days before closing the company’s latest round of funding (they’ve closed $6.5 million to date). On the podcast, we discuss Hunter-Jones’ devotion to her family and her business, as well as her relationship with her father Ian Hunter, a PhD and the Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He also serves as Chief Inventor of Impact Biosystems. Hunter-Jones describes her father’s lab at the barn of her childhood home as “Tony Stark’s lab” where she and her father would work on inventions together throughout her childhood. The barn now serves as the headquarters for Impact Biosystems.