How Ladder grows

Leads who didn't convert after trial (often zero workouts) get a $5 first-month offer that renews at $29.99/month. It is a small share of conversions but gives a user spike in month one and ARR growth in month two from those who stay.

After Facebook users arrived with no context on any coach and got lost, rebuilt activation: all non-coach traffic goes through a ~15-question web quiz (days per week working out, days lifting, training styles, equipment, location, goals) that ends with three recommended teams tied to the answers, then into the app to start the right workout quickly. Built internal tools so the founder can reorder questions and change media without engineers.

Founder held ~100 conversations with Facebook trialers who didn't pay and learned they wanted programming, not 1:1 coach chat, and compared $60/month to Netflix and Spotify. Following Reforge material, ran a Van Westendorp survey (500 responses: too expensive to buy, expensive but considered, good deal, too cheap to trust) and sliced results by cohort (coach vs Facebook source, goals, modality). Relaunched in January 2022 at $29.99/month: join one team, switch up to twice a month, no 1:1 access. Did not A/B test or segment prices, to keep things simple.

For a newly launching coach with no TikTok experience, Ladder's creative director (Etsel) and the founder ran her account as her for the first couple of months, editing her existing raw phone footage with no new shoots. Rules learned: every video reaches a new audience via the For You page, so each must stand alone and either teach or entertain; raw iPhone-shot content edited inside TikTok beats polished Instagram content; coaches must unlearn Instagram habits (outfits, behind-the-scenes cadence); find each coach's niche and content type. Learnings were shared across the portfolio of coaches.

After nailing the content, iterated per coach on getting viewers to the profile, the only link in bio, and the coach's team landing page. Current CTAs are time-based ('we start Monday', 'we start November 6th', 'start before New Year's', 'see results in 4 weeks'), written in the video in TikTok-native font using TikTok as the editor rather than in the caption, and say exactly where to go.

Every TikTok ad click goes to the 15-question web quiz rather than the App Store. Pixels fire on every question and answer combination, and answers that indicate a 'white-hot' user (already working out, not casual beginners, the most expensive and worst-converting lead) are used as TikTok conversion events, so the algorithm learns from early on-web signals instead of in-app events it can't see. Answers flow into Amplitude and a Google Sheet, which the founder read daily while iterating. Knows the cost per answer that is 'in the money' and what it means downstream.

Used surveys of non-converters and campaign-offer data to find cognitive clearing prices (familiar anchors like $9.99, $14.99, $19.99). Moved the annual from $19.99/month equivalent to $14.99/month ($179/year), 50% off the $29.99 monthly, aiming for more cash without giving up too much ARPU.

General Catalyst's growth fund finances up to 80% of a month's user acquisition spend (e.g. $8M of $10M in January), tracks that cohort, and is repaid from that cohort's earnings at ~10% annualized interest, however long it takes (e.g. 3 years). Non-dilutive and not a recourse loan. Available only to much larger, proven apps. Ladder used it.

Journal layer inside each workout: user logs reps and weights (distance for cardio). Next time that movement comes up, recommended weights are prefilled from the logged data. After each workout a recap shows progress since starting (e.g. '62% increase in dumbbell bench press'), PRs across movements, and journal history lives on the profile, building stored state that makes the app sticky.

A 'welcome workout' where the coach voiceover explains the exercise and why, and also tells users to pop up the journal, swipe up and input weights, and why it matters. Coaches keep dropping reminders in regular workouts ('check your journal for last week's weight'). Same approach used to drive widget adoption. Push/email come after as outer layers.

Three feedback buckets: (1) acute pain via in-app feedback forms that flow into Slack; (2) ad hoc plus recurring surveys, including an end-of-year survey of 80-90 multiple-choice and open-ended questions taking 45+ minutes, parsed with AI; (3) dogfooding by staff (encouraged, not required). Gives little weight to 5-10 person interviews in a diverse consumer base; takes care to write unbiased, non-leading questions.

7-day free trial with no payment details collected at start, so the product (getting users through one or two workouts) does the selling. Chosen at launch on a hunch that it is a better consumer experience and to stand out in a crowded COVID-era fitness market.

Home screen shows avatars of people currently working out with a progress ring; double-tap to send an emoji 'cheers'. After finding that cheers received correlated with workout completions and long-term retention, Ladder works on incentivizing outbound cheers so recipients, especially early in their trial, get a 'basket of cheers'.

Users who completed zero workouts in trial are not shown annual (they lack context for a premium price) and are pointed to monthly. Users who passed the first/second workout see annual right before and right after trial expiry. If they don't convert, they move to monthly intro offers: a first-month discount that steps up to full price in month two. The happy path (converting within two weeks of trial end) is not segmented.

Send much (not all) of the Instagram and TikTok ad traffic to a web survey. By about question six the answers reveal the persona and how likely they are to pay, so the funnel reports high-value users back to the TikTok and Instagram algorithms within a short window, helping them find more people like that. Payment still happens in the iOS app, not on the web; tracking from web to install to payment stays fuzzy.

Recruited reputable strength coaches with 10K-100K hyper-relevant Instagram followers. Pitched each with a custom deck featuring their face, brand and name, which stood out from brands spamming them. Terms: every dollar split after Apple's commission, with Ladder doing all upfront investment (shot all content, flew coaches to its Austin studio). Helped coaches with positioning, content and story for their audience. Later brought most coaches on as full-time teammates and learned that coaching quality and being a good partner matter more than audience size.

Each coach has a unique UTM link in their Instagram (later TikTok) bio leading to a coach-specific landing page: quick overview of the product, the coach, training style and equipment, then straight into the app and that coach's team, skipping the quiz because the user has already chosen the coach.

Compared quiz answers with the coach roster. About a third of daily leads (mostly women) wanted traditional bodybuilding, which Ladder lacked, and those leads converted at half the rate of others. Used that to size demand for a new team before choosing a coach, then did hyper-targeted recruiting for the right coach. Repeated for male bodybuilding.

During the COVID equipment shortage, found a supplier and bought ~$50K of kettlebells and dumbbells, then set up a Shopify store whose link was only available inside the app after starting a trial. Coaches promoted it: everyone is looking for kettlebells; start a trial in the app to get access to a store that has them in stock.

Organic performance is the best signal of winning creative. Brand ads borrow hooks, messaging, copy and outlier coaches from organic. Also run Spark ads (whitelisting) on coaches' organic posts. Instead of exchanging post codes (too slow), worked with TikTok to connect Ads Manager to all coach accounts so the founder can check outlier organic Ladder content every day and turn it into an ad in seconds, sustaining the high creative volume TikTok needs.

Found by DMing new users that most TikTok viewers screenshot the ad and go straight to the App Store (3 for every quiz completer), invisible to tracking. Checked rigorously that direct App Store trials stepped up in parallel with quiz conversions every time a new winning creative, extra spend or Ads Manager change landed. Since the ratio is stable, all decisions are made on quiz metrics in Ads Manager.

Ignored Facebook-era rules such as not raising an ad set budget by more than 30% a day or not touching budgets within the week; tested 2-3x budget jumps in a day and makes budget changes three to five times a day, guided by quiz metrics.

Sold mostly monthly for the first ~3 years so month-1/2/3 retention stayed a clear signal for the team. Once retention was understood, simplified the end-of-trial checkout to a simple side-by-side monthly vs annual choice with a clear offer, annual priced at $19.99/month equivalent, using Duolingo's published pricing iterations as a starting thesis.

Programming runs in 'strength series': six-week cycles, six per year (the 'Ladder season'), each themed to the fitness calendar (e.g. shredding in June-July) across all coaches. Completing 20 workouts in a series earns a badge members care about. Each series start is a high-urgency moment for acquisition ('this is a great time to start'), feeding CTAs like 'we start Monday'.

Runna skipped the casual tracking market Strava owned and targeted runners training for a specific race (marathon, 10K) with a customized plan that adapts to logged runs. Ladder similarly mapped segments (home vs gym, men vs women), sized each pocket, recruited coaches/personalities to attract each one, and adjusts sets and weights from logged workouts (progressive overload). Onboarding quiz answers seed the personalization.

Went through all five-star reviews; the common theme was 'getting results'. In fitness, results = consistency, so they set a north star of 4 workouts a week, later ratcheted down to 3 (backed by science). Product ethos 'don't make me think': user opens app, presses play, does the workout. Check marks, streaks and widget are all built around hitting 3 per week.

Calendar widget lights up each day a workout is completed and launches workouts. Not shown as the first thing (trust not yet earned); positioned later, made to look good, with step-by-step install instructions since most people don't know how to add widgets. Acts as a home-screen billboard reminding users of their third workout, and strangers who see it ask about it.

Keep the in-product 'game' very simple: a check mark for each completed workout; three check marks in a week earns that week's streak. The widget carries the streak outside the app.

Nutrition was the clearest signal in the end-of-2024 survey. Researched from first principles what methods work and what users use today; built over ~a year (started early last year) and launched. Because 100 days is too short for retention, they judge it with compressed indicators: week 2/3/4 retention and whether users log consistently on day 1 and day 2. They segment 'hybrid users' who use both workouts and nutrition.

Onboarding asks many questions about who you are and what you want from a workout app, then pairs you with a specific coach whose style fits; different coaches serve different jobs (e.g. host vs his wife). Coach pre-selects the week's workouts, which can be customized in seconds.

Defined granular personas, each served by a coach-led 'team' with its own workout style (e.g. Pilates-influenced at-home dumbbell training for women new to strength vs advanced gym-goers with full equipment). Each persona gets its own creative on social platforms. A pre-download quiz asks workouts per week, modalities, equipment and where they train, giving a real-time view of who is entering the funnel.

Workout completions are the input metric instead of LTV; target is three workouts per member per week, with most iteration on the first week: what users see first, getting them through the first workout on the right program fast, then the second, and pacing the introduction of chats/social features so newcomers are not overwhelmed. Roughly 90% of iteration time goes to activation vs 10% to deals.

First round: price testing and iteration to find the annual 'clearing price' for people willing to commit upfront. Then paywall experiments anchoring to annual and adding incentives/extra features to the annual membership. Near trial end, users who completed a workout are pitched annual as the cheaper monthly equivalent with added features and a year of accountability.

Workouts are programmed in six-week 'strength series'. Before each new series, marketing, coaches and in-app messaging tell the story of the next series and its themes; the lead database gets an urgency message ('tomorrow is day one') with discounts/coupons to lower the barrier to entry. Many leads convert months after trial as fitness needs change seasonally.

After a seed round in mid-2021, put money into Facebook paid with an outside agency, right after iOS 14 disrupted attribution and while bigger fitness brands competed for the same users. Cold users arrived with no context on coaches, got confused, and faced a $60/month price.

Timed the relaunch for January, when fitness consumers are most open to trying something new, and went back to the database of leads bought through Facebook who had declined at $60/month, offering the new $29.99 price, packaging and positioning. Paid spend was still paused.

After growth stalled in February 2022, the whole 13-14 person team focused on growth. Built a basket of growth loops, each needing a grounded reason to believe (experience, advantages, team) and a fast in-house validation test; one channel at a time. Brought all growth in-house after a bad agency experience.

In 2020, as Instagram reach declined, the founder and one early coach (Lauren Kanski) created a TikTok handle for her, posted content and dissected what did and didn't work to find repeatable organic view outcomes, at no cost. Once the account passed 1,000 followers it got a link in bio.

As one growth loop in 2022, used Copy.ai to write movement how-to pages featuring exercise content already shot for the app, following a course on scrappy SEO.

Only after 45 days of organic success did the founder (taking TikTok performance marketing courses) and the creative director start putting small amounts of money behind the learnings, with no marketer on staff.

Treats LTV:CAC as 'fairyland' for a young company. The whole team is anchored on payback period: what was spent, what comes in after Apple, Facebook, RevenueCat and variable commissions (gross basis), how fast it is recouped given retention, and how much burn hitting the gas requires.

Product and engineering optimize one metric, workout completions. Modeled on the personal-trainer experience (programming, coaching, accountability). Users join a coach-led team whose members do the same workout on the same day (asynchronously) and talk in Slack-like team chats; coaches seed early activity and appear in personal-feeling moments in the app. Product growth work pushes new users into chat earlier, with known effects on workout completion and consistency. Also borrows gamification from Duolingo and mobile games.

Manually went through almost 16,000 App Store reviews plus team feedback to write value propositions and problem-solution statements using the words users use, then filtered all creative (especially TikTok) through them.

Ladder is completely free for the first 7 days and shows no paywall at all, so it relies on getting users to return many times; George calls it an unusual strategy.

Ladder added a live cheer feature so other users can cheer someone on while they work out.

No credit card collected to start the trial, from launch to today, so the product can win on experience in a noisy market.

Ladder signed actress/singer Hilary Duff for brand ads.