MySwimPro · B2C · swim coaching app
Join a university startup accelerator for first funding and pitch practice
Raised $50K; learned customer discovery, built a network and a tight pitch
Workedfinancingteam-process
What they did
In 2016 went through a University of Michigan accelerator (open to non-alumni), raising $50,000. Gains: customer discovery skills, mentor network, and forced repetition of a short pitch ending in a 3-5 minute demo-day pitch. Recommended for first-time founders or when the program's focus (e.g. health and wellness) matches the app; less useful for mature companies.
What happened
$50,000 raised and useful skills; founder would not do another one now.
- Stage
- early
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building a Content Marketing Flywheel — Fares Ksebati, MySwimPro“we did a program, it was through the University of Michigan, and so you don't have to have gone to the university”
“it can be extremely beneficial to learn the skills of customer discovery and to build a network”
“The whole point of the accelerator is at the end of the program, you do a 3 or 5-minute pitch to the community”
Related topics
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New tactics from the week's founder interviews, each linked to where it was said.
More from this episode
- MySwimPro: Send swimmers found on Twitter to a mockup page that collects emails200 email sign-ups in a couple of weeks for an app that didn't exist
- MySwimPro: Write one article a week answering common swimming questions people search forHundreds of articles over 3 years; traction compounded slowly, no sudden spike
- MySwimPro: Answer the questions users email you in a weekly whiteboard videoEarly videos got 75-4,000 views; years later some have millions
- MySwimPro: Cut each long video into short clips and post them everywhere~500K Instagram and 300K+ TikTok followers; TikTok hits didn't drive many downloads
- MySwimPro: Earn from your YouTube videos with ads and sponsor shout-outsContent pays for itself even ignoring app installs; funds two full-time editors
- MySwimPro: Hand off blog, email, then editing so the founder only films5-person in-house team now; paid for by ad and sponsor income
- MySwimPro: Film yourself training with the app on screen instead of pitching it~30% of videos feature the app for 60+ seconds; no conversion numbers
- MySwimPro: Post videos of customers' big swimming wins on the company channel
- MySwimPro: Give each social channel its own App Store link to track revenueCan now tie revenue to each channel; only set up in the last few months
- MySwimPro: Try paid ads before you can track what the spend producedFirst two rounds failed; third round in progress with better analytics
- MySwimPro: Host in-person swim camps to reach new swimmersWorks but doesn't scale; limited by how many people can attend
- MySwimPro: Keep raising the yearly price, from $100 to $180, while conversion holdsConversion barely changed at each step (the app kept improving too)
- MySwimPro: Ask free and paying users four price questions to find what they'd payAverage matched current price (~$100-120/year); a segment would pay $200-300/year
- MySwimPro: Move free features behind the paywall as the app shifts to paidBuilt user entitlement and complaint reviews; guest would package it differently
- MySwimPro: Raise money from your community through equity crowdfunding roundsAbout $1.2M raised in total, mostly from crowdfunding
- MySwimPro: Test in-app invites with rewards for your most active usersStill being tested; no results yet