Poppin' Bottles with Russell Greene

Russell Greene has hustled his way from bouncer to managing partner of Atlanta's hottest nightspot. He has also created FIT Radio, one of the top grossing apps in health and fitness on the app store. What's next for this Georgia State grad? He's solving one of man's first pain points - spoiled wine.

Greene wants FIT Radio to become more than a music streaming service.

He's adding new features to his app and make it a one stop shop for fitness. In the its next launch, Greene plans to add a proprietary sweat score. How does it work? “People love to share their workouts,” he explains. “It doesn’t matter if someone's 300 pounds or 180 pounds and in great shape. If a 300 pound person goes through a workout class with a 180 pound person and they’re all doing the same exercises, that 300 pound person is working harder. I want people to share all the effort they're putting into fitness and challenge their friends in order to gameify the app.” To test this new sweat score, he would love to team up with his alma mater, GSU.

Like many entrepreneurs, Greene is always working on something new.

Just like FIT Radio, his experience in the club business served as the inspiration for his latest invention. While doing inventory at Opera, he noticed how much wine was being thrown away. “Both red and white wine are only good for a certain amount of time. A restaurant wastes an average of 8-15% of its inventory,” says Greene. “I’ve invented a wine cork that determines if the wine is fresh or not and lets you know how many days of freshness you have left. We’ve created a patented proprietary algorithm that reads a variety gases in the head space of the bottle; it’s functional and we’ve just finished the prototype. It should hit the market by the end of this summer.”

How does Russell Greene do it?

He attributes a lot of his success to the city of Atlanta and Atlanta Tech Village. “The tech community in Atlanta is emerging,” he says. While FIT Radio has had many opportunities to move to the Bay Area, Russell says, “Atlanta is a great city that’s making strides. You don’t have to be in San Francisco. If you’re a startup and you’re bootstrapping, do you want to be in San Francisco and pay $20 a square foot for office space, or do you want to go to Atlanta where people like David Cummings have created a really unique value proposition for startups? There’s a lot of synergy created at ATV.”

As one of Atlanta’s entrepreneurial success stories, Greene would like to see other ambitious young people accomplish their goals and he has heaps of advice for them. For him, “the difference between successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs is perseverance,” he says. He also stresses the importance of knowing you can’t do everything and surrounding yourself with the right people.

Check out Hype's past coverage of Russell's fitness app and the scoop on his quick rise through night club management.