Start with a free app and 100 waitlist users in a Facebook group

Luke Martin-FullerI think we went off and created, I think we maybe paid someone on Fiverr to create a 3D mock-up of a wearable. And I think the site just said pretty much what the hero on our website says now, which is "Pacing, made simple." It was a product promise, but there was not much behind it. And we were honest about that. We went through to a Typeform and said, "If we built this product, would you be interested in coming along for the journey with us?"

Luke Martin-FullerAnd people were incredibly excited about that. But two of us, we had experience building mobile apps. We certainly didn't have the funds or the time to go out and build a wearable. So we did what we knew best, which was starting by building a free app. And that was incredibly powerful. I think we learned a lot from starting small. We worked with a group of 100 people initially from that wait list. We called them the Founding 100.

Luke Martin-FullerAnd we were in a Facebook group with them. We were jumping on calls with them all the time. We learned a few things about our particular use case, which is that people were using three or four different apps. They were tracking their symptoms in one place. They were finding community in another, they were finding research somewhere else. All of those apps were not fit for purpose.

Luke Martin-FullerAnd we thought, "If we can build something into one experience, we can deliver a heap of value to people that have been massively underserved and overlooked." And we were able to build something that people liked and grew. I think we grew to about 50,000 users all through word of mouth in those early days on an app that didn't even have a wearable, which is what we promised. So that was amazing and it really kind of helped us build the muscle of the iterating towards something that people wanted to use.

David BarnardWere you bootstrapping that whole time? And were you working full-time and doing this on the side? How did that work?