MySwimPro · B2C · swim coaching app
Raise money from your community through equity crowdfunding rounds
About $1.2M raised in total, mostly from crowdfunding
Workedfinancing
What they did
After the accelerator, ran several equity crowdfunding rounds instead of traditional VC.
What happened
About $1.2 million raised in total.
- Stage
- growth
In their words
Sub Club by RevenueCat · Building a Content Marketing Flywheel — Fares Ksebati, MySwimPro“since then, we've done a few different rounds of equity crowdfunding. So, we've raised about $1.2 million mostly through equity crowdfunding”
Related topics
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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: Join a university startup accelerator for first funding and pitch practiceRaised $50K; learned customer discovery, built a network and a tight pitch
- MySwimPro: Test in-app invites with rewards for your most active usersStill being tested; no results yet