$10M ARR Without Ever Testing A Paywall — Luke Martin-Fuller, Visible

Over one weekend, put up a website with a 3D wearable mock-up bought on Fiverr and a one-line promise ('Pacing, made simple'), honest that the product didn't exist yet. The CTA went to a Typeform asking 'If we built this product, would you be interested in coming along for the journey with us?'

Instead of building the wearable first, built a free app. Took 100 people from the waitlist ('Founding 100'), ran a Facebook group with them and got on calls constantly. Learned users juggled 3-4 apps (symptom tracking, community, research) and combined them into one experience.

After the free app, repeated the 100-user approach for hardware: shipped 100 wearables free and iterated until it delivered value. Didn't monetize until October 2023, over a year after starting. Deliberately built product first, growth machine later.

One of the first free-app features: opt-in anonymized data sharing with researchers. Required informed-consent flows (who, how long, what purpose), ethics committee sign-off via a partner academic institution, and anonymization pipes delivering data in batches or real time. Started by asking researchers for product advice while building the MVP; the first study came from a researcher asking to use the data. Partners include Mount Sinai and Imperial College London.

API aggregators (e.g. Terra) couldn't give real-time, accurate heart rate. Bought a batch of Polar heart-rate sensors, shipped them to users and integrated via Polar's open SDK to prove the concept. Then got a call with Polar, bought the armband wholesale and passed savings to members. After about a year, asked Polar for better battery, easier charging and accelerometer data; Polar built it with a few other customers.

No margin on hardware: armband ~$80 (wholesale cost). Membership $20/month or $14.99/month on an annual plan. Told openly to users that the value is in the app. Chosen over Oura's model (expensive device, cheap subscription) and WHOOP's (hardware folded into a pricier membership), closer to Tractive's.

Only paid channel is Meta, with UGC creative, sending traffic to a web funnel. One metric governs spend: 'marketing cash ROI' (basically same-day ROAS) kept positive, helped by the annual/monthly mix and by not scaling spend too fast. No lifecycle email, paywall tests, geo expansion, Google Ads, TikTok or SEO.

'Community Voices': the monthly member digest occasionally invites members to make videos about their experience. Interested members join a Slack group after submitting an audition tape. A brief goes out weekly; members submit videos, and any video used as an ad earns a flat fee in cash (not credits or discounts), regardless of how much it's scaled. Videos share real experiences and practical insights.

Every usable member video goes into Meta on a very small budget to find signal; the one or two a week that perform get scaled. Considering having members post freely on organic TikTok too, since ~1 in 100 might go viral.

'Creator Collaborative' works with existing chronic-illness creators; pay negotiated by size, on reach or impressions. Visible first paid creator Gemma for a video, liked working with her and hired her as social media manager; she knew the space and which creators to approach. Most of the marketing team has lived experience of the conditions.

All paid traffic goes to the landing page, then a single web quiz (unchanged since October 2023) that asks about the visitor's experience and whether pacing and Visible fit them, explaining what they're signing up for. Deliberately doesn't push poor fits to buy. Guest notes landing everyone on the landing page instead of straight in the quiz isn't best practice; plans condition-specific quizzes.

Hardware can't be sold through in-app purchase, so built a web payment flow. It allows HSA/FSA payments, sends better attribution signals back to ad platforms, and avoids the 30% IAP fee.

Hardware rules out a free trial, so the free app (no wearable; HRV scan via finger on the phone camera) lets people feel the product's quality first. It's barely promoted: a tiny section on the website. Everyone takes a PMF survey; wearable members score far higher than free users.

The web funnel ran on a no-code tool so fragile the team never touched it. Rebuilt it in-house with an internal dashboard so a new growth hire can run experiments and variants.

Built a feature to explain users' data in natural language to ride the AI trend. Shipped first to the early access hub.

New features ship first to an 'early access hub'. When rolling out broadly, tell the community why with data from early access (e.g. 'X% improvement', 'easier for people with colorblindness'), because users who rely on the tool daily resist change.

Raised only a small pre-seed before product, grew to ~$7M revenue cash-flow positive, then took a small Series A from an aligned investor at the start of the year. Didn't publicize it since consumer members don't care and press coverage could confuse people searching for the product. Money went to data science and core product.