Jacobs ’98 Discusses His Popular Fitness App

Lauren RubensteinJuly 17, 20142min
Government major Jacobs shows you don't have to be a techie to start a successful tech firm
Jason Jacobs
Jason Jacobs ’98 is cofounder and chief executive of Boston’s FitnessKeeper Inc. Photo: Suzanne Kreiter/Boston Globe

Jason Jacobs ’98, creator of the RunKeeper smartphone fitness app, sat down recently with The Boston Globe to chat about his business. The article notes that Jacobs, a government major at Wesleyan, proves that “you don’t have to be a techie to start a successful tech firm.”

“I didn’t study a whole lot,” Jacobs tells the Globe, “but when I did, American government was my major. I got out in the late ’90s, and I came to Boston and started working in small, high-growth technology. I’m not trained as an engineer. The plumbing of the Internet is very important but it’s not something that I could relate to a ton.”

Read more of Jacobs’ secrets to his success here.