How Hevy grows

After being laid off from 8fit in Germany, Guillem lived on German unemployment benefits while Hevy made no money. When they ran out before revenue covered costs, he moved back home. The low personal burn let the founders think long-term instead of chasing short-term revenue.

With 'very, very basic' ASO skills, Hevy just targeted the keywords everyone else in the workout-tracker space targeted. Guest calls this a good 80% approach for getting off the ground; co-host notes it at least beats apps doing nothing. No Apple Search Ads early.

Hevy launched below competitors (who were ~50% pricier) because it felt it hadn't yet earned more, then kept the price: $3/month, $24/year, $75 lifetime, with a generous free tier. It avoids running price experiments ($25, 50, 70, 100, 150/year) because in a social network people talk and constant price changes erode trust. Goal: make Pro 'an absolute steal' so recommending it is easy. Guest says jacking up to $75/year plus Facebook ads would not get them to 100M users.

Hevy was designed from day one as 'Strava for weightlifting': users follow friends and see and compete on each other's workouts. A 'suggested users' cell used a rudimentary algorithm that put good, active users at the top, so newcomers without friends in the app still found people to follow. Social is treated as the main growth engine and a retention driver, since users invest both their training data and their community in the app.

Guillem designed a broad first version; co-founder Desmond cut it down. They defined three pillars (workout tracking, analytics, social) and built a minimal but valuable version of each, aggressively excluding anything else, since it was two bootstrapped founders. Features designed 4.5 years earlier still haven't been built.

About 2.5 years before the episode, the co-founders chose to hire rather than stay an ultra-lean, near-zero-cost indie duo. Order of hires: support, a developer, another developer, a designer, a marketer; 10 people now. Guest's rule: hire when your ambition outpaces your pace of development.

When gyms closed in 2020, Hevy did not adapt to at-home workouts. The founders bet COVID would pass and that they'd come out better prepared than competitors who pivoted, and kept investing in the gym product.

Hevy asks for feedback constantly inside the app and keeps in touch with users by email. Early on they also talked to users by phone, but stopped; guest wishes he had kept it as a routine.

Hevy has spent under $15K on ads in total, much of it credit from collaborations. Having grown on product and word of mouth, it hired a head of marketing to start experimenting with paid advertising, pricing and funnel tests. Co-host argues organic-first means each paid dollar later goes further.

In the months after the July 2019 launch, the founders worked hard to get in touch with Apple for a feature. They got their first big one, 'Apps We Love' in the US, in March 2020.