Sweatcoin · B2C · app that pays you to walk
Show two ways to earn on the home screen: walk, or invite a friend for 5 coins
New users went from under 300 a day to 300, 1,000, then 5,000 a day
Workedreferral-programproduct-virality
What they did
After YC rejected them for slow growth (Nov 2016), set a target of 300 new users a day. Since the company issues its own currency, a referral program cost no cash. Built a simple journey: after install, the home screen shows only two ways to earn sweatcoins, walking or inviting a friend for 5 sweatcoins. Earning coins is the core experience, with spending options coming later, so inviting is baked into the main loop.
What happened
Hit 300 users a day, then 1,000, then 5,000; raised a round from Goodwater Capital about nine months later.
- Stage
- Growth (early-growth)
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · How to Turn Gamification Into a Retention Powerhouse — Anton Derlyatka, Sweatcoin“We just realized that unlike other apps or products that actually if you want to build a referral program, all of a sudden, you need to have quite a lot of cash to be able to fund it. Now, we didn't have to do it, because we had our own currency.”
“There are two things you can do to earn sweatcoins. You can either start walking or you invite a friend for 5 sweatcoins.”
“And that kind of helped us to get over the line, and we got to 300 users a day, and then 1,000, and then 5,000.”
Related topics
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