Starting Strength vs 9Round

9Round gives you a bigger addressable base right now—142 units, nearly all franchised, with a current FDD that signals operational stability. The lower investment floor ($160K) and modest 6% royalty mean owners aren’t drowning in fixed costs, so there’s budget headroom for a POS-plus-back-office stack. The problem is contraction. A 29% unit decline isn’t a dip; it’s a signal that franchisees are churning or the system is shrinking on purpose. Selling into a contracting base means you’re fighting churn just to keep your installed count flat, and your pipeline depends on new openings that aren’t materializing.

Starting Strength flips the growth vector. 13.6% unit growth on a small base of 25 means every new gym is a greenfield software decision—no rip-and-replace, no legacy inertia. The higher investment range ($237K–$712K) and 8% royalty filter for better-capitalized operators who can afford a multi-module tech stack and will value scheduling and marketing automation to fill a premium-priced service. The tradeoff is TAM: 25 units is tiny, and the stale FDD introduces uncertainty about the franchisor’s current compliance and support posture, which can slow your sales cycle if corporate isn’t actively steering tech decisions.

Timing and terrain favor Starting Strength. You’re catching a system early in its growth curve, where your software can become the default stack before a competitor locks it down. The richer unit economics mean higher willingness to pay and lower price sensitivity, so deal sizes will be larger per location. The risk is that the brand stalls before scaling; the upside is you ride a growth curve instead of clawing for renewals in a shrinking pool.

Verdict: Starting Strength is the stronger opportunity—growth trajectory and unit economics outweigh raw unit count, but only if you can close quickly before the stale FDD becomes a real objection.