About Gymdesk
It Runs in the Background So You Don't Have To
4,500 gyms, studios, and academies in 34 countries run their billing, scheduling, and members on Gymdesk. The people who build it have taught classes and chased late payments themselves, so it does the job without asking for your weekend.
And Smoothcomp, the competition platform behind ADCC, NAGA, and thousands of tournaments a year, is now part of Gymdesk.
Our Mission
Why We Build What We Build
We take everything off a gym owner's plate that isn't teaching. Then we get out of the way.
Who We Serve
One Kind of Business, Many Disciplines
Gymdesk started in martial arts, because that's where our founder first saw the problem. Then yoga studios, CrossFit boxes, and gymnastics clubs started signing up with the same complaint: too much admin, not enough time on the floor. So that's who we build for, no matter what gets taught in the room.
By the numbers
Where We Are Today
2016
4,500
34
2015
~2M
~7,000
65,000
5,850
Our story
Same Problem, Opposite Ends
Smoothcomp's founders were running tournaments. Gymdesk's founder was training at gyms that ran on spreadsheets. Each built the software they needed.
Smoothcomp
2000 · Sweden
A friendly rivalry
Before there was any software, Ricard Carneborn and Martin Janson were running competitions in Sweden. Ricard had spent a decade on the national team and ran the Nordic Open. Martin was growing the Swedish Open into one of Northern Europe's largest tournaments. The two events were friendly rivals, and the founders competed at each other's tournaments and compared notes on who had the better tech.
Smoothcomp
2015 · Sweden
Smoothcomp is founded
Martin Janson's Swedish Open already ran on a registration tool built by Martin Varghult, and Ricard wanted it for the Nordic Open too. In March 2015 the three of them sat down to plan a full system and started building right away. Ricard brought the name. The first event ran on Smoothcomp that October.
Gymdesk
2016 · United States
Martial Arts on Rails is founded
A Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt with an engineering background watched the instructors he trained with lose their evenings to billing. So he built them software, with a name that said who it was for. For the first three years he kept a full-time job and built it on nights and weekends, with no outside funding and no sales team.
Smoothcomp
2018 onward
Beyond grappling
Jiu-jitsu came first. Then judo, wrestling, karate, taekwondo, and MMA. Non-grappling events went from a small slice of the platform to roughly a fifth of it, and federations across Europe, the Americas, and Asia moved their rankings onto Smoothcomp.
Gymdesk
1 January 2022
Martial Arts on Rails becomes Gymdesk
The name had stopped describing the customers. Fitness gyms, gymnastics clubs, and yoga studios were already signing up, because running one is much the same job as running a martial arts school. The new name made room for everyone.
Gymdesk
2025
Gymdesk Originals
Our documentary series, hosted by CEO Alex Cuevas and filmed in our customers' gyms. Alex sits down with owners on their own floors and asks how they run their gyms.
Gymdesk
Early 2026
Gymdesk Payments
We brought payment processing in-house. Billing used to mean stitching together three separate vendors. Now memberships, charges, and payouts run in one system, right next to the member records.
October 2026
Smoothcomp joins Gymdesk
For academies that compete, rosters, results, and competition history now sit right next to the daily work of running the school. Everyone else keeps using Gymdesk the way they always have
How the company fits together
Two Products, One Company
Gymdesk and Smoothcomp keep their own names and their own teams. Most customers use one or the other. Academies that compete use both, and Smoothcomp Connect ties them together.
Running the business
The software a gym opens every day, whatever it teaches.
- Members, billing, and payments
- Scheduling, booking, and check-in
- Marketing, leads, and retention
- Reporting across one or many locations
Running the competition
The platform tournament organizers and federations use for registration, brackets, and results.
- Event registration and brackets
- Weigh-ins, scoring, and live results
- Rankings, federations, and affiliations
- Athlete profiles and competition history
Leadership
Alex Cuevas, CEO
Alex brings a white belt's mindset to running Gymdesk: show up, keep learning, on the mat and off it. He taught taekwondo before he ran software companies, and he holds a black belt in it. He still trains and competes in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Before Gymdesk, he held executive roles at GoSite, Planet DDS, Legwork, Kaseya, and Yodle.
Alex also hosts Gymdesk Originals. The series has taken him to gyms across the United States and as far as Peru, Europe, and Singapore.
Gymdesk Originals
Long conversations with gym owners about what's working, filmed in their own gyms.
The leadership team
The People Behind the Product
Alex's leadership team. Each of them owns part of what you experience as Gymdesk. When the product, the billing, or the support is working well, one of these people is the reason.
The Smoothcomp founders
Three Black Belts, One Tournament Problem
Smoothcomp was built by competitors and event organizers who couldn't find software that worked for their own tournaments. Between them, they have roughly seventy years on the mat. All three still run academies and organize events.
Where we are
No Headquarters. A Team Spread Across the Globe
Gymdesk started in Austin and has been remote ever since. Today our team works from four continents, and Smoothcomp is built in Sweden. That spread means someone's awake to answer when a gym owner has a problem, whatever time it is where they are.
North America
Latin America
Europe and Israel
Asia-Pacific
In their words
From the Owners Who Use It
Everything above is us describing ourselves. Below are owners who moved off paper, spreadsheets, or another platform, and what changed once they did.
Come see for yourself
Your Job Is Teaching. Ours Is Everything Else
Thirty-day free trial. No credit card, no sales call, no demo required. See whether it solves your problem, the same way thousands of gyms already have.