Leveling Up

Marcos Morales '25, a junior from Guatemala City, Guatemala, remembers feeling like he couldn't find his footing as a first-year on Trinity University's campus. "It was a struggle to go from being so close with my family to only talking to them through the phone," he says.

It was one of his cherished phone calls with his dad that shifted his perspective. "I rang him one day, and he said, 'I heard that Trinity is one of the best universities for entrepreneurship. You should go check the program out,'" Morales says. "That changed things for me."

Morales looked to combine his newfound curiosity for entrepreneurship with his skills in computer science. As a teenager, he had a talent for coding that led him to attend numerous summer camps and complete a degree at the Bloom Institute of Technology to hone his skills.

"I always wanted to do some level of professional coding because I enjoyed the idea of picking apart a problem and understanding how to fix it," he says. A computer science major, Morales never anticipated his passion for entrepreneurship. "I came into it completely unprepared," he says with a laugh, "but I knew I wanted to bring value to others' lives."

Morales came up with an idea that could help people in their fitness journeys, something he had struggled to navigate since starting college. "Freshman year, I was not my healthiest," he says. "I started doing some research, and I realized there are a lot of fitness apps out there, but the problem is they will give you a one-size-fits-all solution."

Morales was inspired to begin BFit, a start-up that customizes workout plans for the user, modeled after how personal trainers work.

"What do trainers bring to the table?" Morales asks. "They know you. They know your specifics, they know what works for you, and they fine-tune your workouts based on that. I wanted to use AI to offer that service at a much cheaper cost," he says.

Artificial intelligence (AI) played a crucial role in developing BFit, Morales explains. "Coding is limited. When you're coding something, it's like carving out a path and you have to take into account every possible path. That's hard to do with human fitness journeys," Morales says. Instead, AI generates these paths based on user input.

Morales also views AI as a tool that can be used to level the playing field. "It gives the capability for people who don't have as many resources to bridge gaps. I don't have the funding Google has or a giant team of developers, but with AI, I'm capable of giving value to the user at a much cheaper cost."

Morales entered BFit into the 2023 Louis H. Stumberg New Venture Competition Seed Round, where student-led teams pitch their start-ups to a panel of judges in hopes of receiving funding. After BFit was selected to advance to the finals, Morales, along with WooJin Han '26 and Mollee Priddy '24, spent the following summer in the Trinity Accelerator, a program where students refine their start-ups and build connections with local businesses.

While BFit did not win the Stumberg Competition, Morales learned a lot from the experience and has applied this knowledge to a new project, FitQuest. Staying motivated to work out is a huge hurdle, so FitQuest brings the fun, enjoyable component of video games to fitness.

"We're using the same feedback system as BFit, but we are game-ifying everything," Morales says. "We're letting your progress be correlated to a video game character, and the only way that character will get stronger is if you are consistent [in exercising]."

Currently, FitQuest is in its prototypical stage. "We onboarded 20 users, and all of them are still active. They do a daily quest based on the things they want to accomplish, such as completing 10,000 steps or eating a meal that has 45 grams of protein. Based on those quests, their character gains abilities," he explains.

Morales dedicates most of his spare time to getting FitQuest off the ground. His team just advanced from the 2024 Stumberg Competition and will compete in the finals in the fall. Morales remains inspired by one of his entrepreneurship professor's advice on starting his own business: "You can spend your whole life working to make someone else's dream come true, or you can work to make your own dream come true."