KBMH · B2C · kettlebell home workout app
Hire a senior developer who pushes back on your feature ideas
Saved 'enormous' time and money; no numbers
Workedteam-processfeature-development
What they did
Around mid-2025 at ~20K/month, Vadim (PM, designer, marketer and developer) was shipping unvalidated features whenever something went wrong. Hired Sasha as mobile developer / de facto CTO; everything goes through him, Vadim learned Figma, designs and documentation come first, and Sasha converts Figma designs to Flutter. Sasha challenges ideas before they are built.
What happened
Development smoother, professional design, 'the amount of time and money he saved is enormous'.
- Stage
- ~20K/month
“I was super lucky to get to be able to recruit a guy named Sasha as a mobile developer. Well, developer is kind of an understatement because he's basically a CTO”
“if you have someone that you can like like a filter to your ideas and the things that you want to do, not only the code”
Related topics
Get tactics like this every Monday
New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- KBMH: Post a workout reel every day until you hit 100, then judge~2,000 followers and a few hundred dollars after 3 months; later the base for 450K
- KBMH: Watch Brendan Kane's podcast talk and do every task in his free workbook20-40K new followers a month; single reels brought 60K and 52K followers
- KBMH: Put a few hundred dollars a month behind your best reelsPart of the 20-40K followers/month growth; not measured on its own
- KBMH: DM every new follower and sell interested ones on a Zoom callA couple hundred dollars in the first 3 months
- KBMH: Launch in 3 weeks with one program and no login screenApp approved despite bugs; grew into a 40K EUR MRR business
- KBMH: Spend 3 months testing 30+ paywalls, prices and onboarding lengthsInitial conversion near 30% by end of Q1, settling ~16%; revenue reached 20-25K/month
- KBMH: Test different screenshots and app names on your App Store pageNew users 2,000 -> 6,000 per quarter with the same social traffic
- KBMH: Right after sign-in, show swipeable slides of what the app doesFounder says it worked very well; no numbers
- KBMH: Ask for an App Store rating in onboarding if users already know youTons of reviews; being moved to make room for the tracking prompt
- KBMH: Offer a free trial only on the yearly plan; monthly has noneHalf choose yearly; 50-60% of trials convert to paid
- KBMH: Give paying users a WhatsApp group where they can talk to the founderFounder says it raised conversion and retention; instant bug and UX feedback
- KBMH: When someone says they love the app, reply with the review link'Works like magic'; no numbers
- KBMH: When new users skip the paywall, show a one-time 50% off yearly offerA large share of new revenue; regular subscription revenue unaffected
- KBMH: Show the one-time 50% off yearly offer to every existing free user500+ extra yearly subs and ~25K EUR in 3 weeks, after many refunds
- KBMH: Let creators make their own link and 25%-off code for a 50% commissionMost creators ignored it; active ones earned only $200-300/month
- KBMH: Engage with creators for 3 months, then pay them monthly for a weekly post4 creators signed; likely drive more revenue than tracking shows
- KBMH: Run a plain white image with one line of text as your adCPA about 5x lower than abs-and-promises ads
- KBMH: Turn your best organic reels into Meta adsSomewhat profitable, but well behind the plain text ads
- KBMH: Drop lookalike and interest targeting and let Meta pick the audienceBroad worked much better; lookalikes and men 35+ didn't work
- KBMH: Test 5 new ads a week for installs, then move winners to a sales campaignKeeps testing affordable; not every install winner converts on purchase
- KBMH: Tell Meta every trial start or purchase is a 25 EUR saleAds profitable within 7 days; trial-to-paid stayed stable
- KBMH: Track ads in a daily sheet, subtracting your usual organic sales firstShows ads profitable within 7 days; month on track for 100K EUR
- KBMH: Add web checkout so ad money comes back faster than App Store payouts
- Price at $9.99, $14.99 or $19.99, not odd amounts like $12.49Rounded prices tend to perform better in App Masters' data; no numbers