Stronger · B2C · gamified workout tracker
Turn workout numbers into a strength rank users can show off
12 months with no copycat; became the main marketing asset
What they did
What happened
In their words
Peter Gillan - My App Makes $600k/Year Using This Easy Growth Strategy (copy me)
HostThat's awesome. I love the whole category of like Strava for X. I've seen you guys' TikToks. I think I saw them more than a year ago was the first time I they just popped on my feed. And this thing that you're showing right here, like this uh you know, like the anatomy diagram with all the different colors, it's super eye-catching. How did you come up with that?
Peter… years ago now. I remember seeing a Twitter thread with a web app where you could put in, you know, your bench press, your squat, whatever, and it would spit out your performance metrics. And I remember thinking, "No way, that's so cool." And it was a super viral thread, but there was nobody doing it on a mobile app. And whenever we were doing the workout tracker at the time, we were talking to We we didn't go down the investment route. We got a lot of grant funding from government agencies back in Northern Ireland. And whenever we did like our startup pitches, everyone always says, "Don't go into the workout tracking app sector. You're just going to be a commodity. It's hard to stand out." But we had this real insight that, what if we actually were to quantify how strong people were and enable them to assign some sort of status to their strength?
PeterSo no longer would you be telling people, "Oh, I can bench, you know, 100 kg for, you know, five reps," and be met with blank stare. You could say, "I'm actually an elite lifter, because this is what this translated to on the heatmap." It's really trying to think of something that makes it easier to visualize that progress and people can be proud of. And so that's why we decided to implement it. It was kind of our way to stand out in the crowded market, and it was also going to be like our main marketing asset, too.
HostThat's cool. Yeah, I was about to say like it makes for a cool product, then the heatmap is also just visually, it's so eye-catching and it looks really good on TikTok slideshows and like Instagram Reels slideshows. Show some of the results that you've gone with this format, cuz I know you've posted this specific format a bunch of times and it does like really well.
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More from this episode
- Post the same 6-second fade-in app screenshot Reel over and overEst. 150-300M views, a 100M-view month; low conversion and now fading
- Copy a winning video across many accounts, changing a few words or colors each timeAdopted after a rival did it with ~10 accounts; no separate numbers
- Copy a rival's viral video format and post it from 10 accountsDownloads visibly ramped up; out-scaled the team that invented it
- Design every feature to look great as a screenshot for social postsScreenshots are the main money-maker; founder claim, no numbers
- Post 2-3 slide TikTok carousels of real, unpolished app screensHistorically their best-converting channel; weaker in the past year as 20 rivals copied
- Post a rough founder video of a fun app feature before launch~15K followers in week one; then hit #3 in Health & Fitness at launch
- Reply to comments with videos showing their lift as random objects in the appA series of viral videos; likely most of the account's 4.9M likes
- Make everyone start a free trial first; free version only after they cancel~25% boost, their biggest ever; few complaints, but less sharing
- Test when and how often the paywall shows before testing its wordingFounder says they now monetize per user among the best workout trackers; no numbers
- Adapt viral video formats from other app niches, then test hooks by watch timeHow they find each new format; no numbers given
- Keep content in-house; hire agencies only to scale a proven formatTwo founders make almost all content; few affiliates
- Fund the app with government grants instead of investorsStayed bootstrapped; no amounts given
- Copy a rival's strength score and add game-style ranks for each musclePerformed 'brilliantly' per the guest; Stronger later added ranks too
- Give each running influencer their own workout plan in the appGuest says it built a strong brand and rocketed up the charts; no numbers
- Build the new app as a tile-based game that AI tools can't copy yet
Tags: differentiation, status, borrowed-idea