About
Imperfect builds an AI coaching app for athletes with real lives and ambitious goals, using wearable and health data to personalize training, recovery, and nutrition. It serves runners, cyclists, swimmers, trail runners, and other athletes, differentiating itself by adjusting recommendations in real time to an athlete’s body, schedule, energy, and circumstances rather than enforcing a rigid plan.
Market
Imperfect competes in digital fitness and wellness coaching, specifically adaptive AI training for endurance athletes. Its positioning centers on combining wearable and health-app data with a user’s body, schedule, and real-life context to provide more personalized training than a static plan.
Individual consumers in the digital fitness and wellness market, especially runners, cyclists, swimmers, and other endurance athletes who want training adapted to their body, schedule, wearable data, and real life. This is a consumer-focused product rather than an enterprise offering.
At a Glance
Problem
Imperfect Foods addressed two linked problems in grocery shopping: food waste and the high cost of buying quality groceries. It created a practical way for consumers to purchase food that might otherwise be overlooked or discarded, while making savings a central part of the proposition. The main use case was affordable, recurring grocery shopping for households that wanted convenient delivery without paying standard grocery-store prices.
The underlying pain is both economic and environmental: consumers want lower grocery bills, while the food system wastes edible or marketable products. Imperfect’s “save money by saving food” positioning made those incentives complementary rather than competing.
Product / Service
Imperfect was an online grocery-delivery service offering an assortment that included organic produce, meat and seafood, plant-based products, baked goods, and rescued or upcycled items. Customers could receive groceries through a weekly curated cart and customize the order, with savings of up to 40%—and sometimes more—versus grocery-store prices.
As of the current research, Imperfect is no longer operating as a fully separate grocery platform: Misfits Market and Imperfect Foods joined forces, with the Imperfect assortment and benefits made available through Misfits Market. The combined model therefore delivers a broader, sustainability-oriented online grocery service built around affordability, convenience, and reducing food waste.
Market
Imperfect competed in online grocery delivery, with a differentiated position in sustainable, rescued, and surplus-food retail. Its closest strategic counterpart was Misfits Market, which acquired Imperfect Foods in 2022; the two companies shared a mission around affordability, sustainability, and minimizing food waste. The available evidence does not identify a complete list of additional named competitors, but the category naturally overlaps with conventional online grocers and grocery-delivery platforms.
The business was not pre-revenue: the acquisition announcement described the combined company as being on track to exceed $1 billion in sales and reach profitability by early 2024. That is a stated forward target rather than evidence that either milestone was ultimately achieved. The clearest current traction signal is the completed combination of the brands and the migration of Imperfect’s shopping benefits into Misfits Market.
Founders & Leadership
Funding History
Maveron
Norwest Venture Partners
Insight Partners
Insight Partners, Norwest Venture Partners
Recent News
Y Combinator’s 2026 AI Assistant directory lists Imperfect as an active P2026 company in San Francisco with four employees. It describes the company as an adaptive training coach for runners, cyclists, and triathletes.
The YC Tier List profiled Imperfect’s app as a personalized AI coach that uses user data to prepare athletes for their next race and adapts training, recovery, and nutrition to the athlete’s condition.
Imperfect launched on Y Combinator’s Launch YC platform as a personalized AI coach for an athlete’s next race. The product adapts training, recovery, and nutrition based on how the user’s body is responding, with use cases spanning triathlon, mountain biking, and ultramarathon training.
Active Roles
1Business Model
Imperfect uses a free-first-month trial for its AI coaching app and then converts users to a monthly subscription. The available evidence does not disclose the monthly price or any additional revenue streams.