Welcome to the Sub Club Podcast, a show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing app businesses. We sit down with the entrepreneurs, investors, and builders behind the most successful apps in the world to learn from their successes and failures. Sub Club is brought to you by Revenucat. Thousands of the world's best apps trust Revenucat to power in app purchases, manage customers, and grow revenue across iOS, Android, and the web. You can learn more at Revenucat.com. Let's get into the show.
Hello, I'm your host, David Barnard, and with me today, revenue can't CEO Jacobiting. Our guest today is Jesse Ventesinque, co-founder and chief product officer at Fitbot. On the podcast, we talk with Jesse about the trap of building for existing subscribers, incentivizing word of mouth, and why paid marketing should be an accelerant, not the foundation of your growth strategy. Hey, Jesse, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today. David, thanks for having me. And Jacob, always nice to chat with you. As always, here, excited. Apps, let's go.
So Jesse, I am stoked to have you on the podcast. I often gush about our guests because I try and get people on whose apps I use, or, you know, businesses I admire and things like that. And I am a huge Fitbot fanboy. So you'll hear me gushing throughout the whole podcast because I was looking for a weight lifting app earlier this year and just fell love and have been using it weekly since. So it's going to be fun chatting today.
I did want to kick things off. So as I was looking at Fitbot as a subscription nerd, I saw that y'all have passed $20 million in ARR and are profitable and are venture backed. So three interesting, not necessarily expected things to combine into one. So it must be quite a journey so far. So tell us a little bit about founding Fitbot and raising capital and kind of getting to this point.
Sure thing. And yeah, David, thanks for the support and the praise. Yeah, I think there's several factors that have allowed us to grow the business largely on our revenues alone. I think two of the most important ones. The first is a maniacal focus on product retention and building something that people want. So Alan, my co-founder and I, we spent the first several years, just the two of us building product, listening to customers before hiring, before fundraising, before marketing and really trying to leverage an engaged user base to spread the word. And once we did turn on paid advertising, the unit economics were pretty immediately scalable, I think particularly because of our strong conversion and retention or LTV, which kind of enabled fundraising, enabled hiring. And the paid marketing really acts as like an accelerant to our word of mouth viral loop. And so like as we ramped our paid subscribers, our organic subs kind of grew in line. And maybe lastly about product is around recurring revenue. So our subscription, like retention curve flattens out and we have users at 36 months, 48 months, and like 60 months that are still paying us. So each new cohort of users we acquire adds to this stack of recurring revenue, which is fundamentally about product.
I think the second reason, our goal with FitBOD to challenge the fitness status quo kind of mirrors our approach to company building. So the fitness industry and brands, there's a lot of snake oil, a lot of like shortcuts to success, like the six week plan or this new gadget to promise you the best shape of your life look perfect. The truth is that physical fitness should be a lifelong practice. And especially afterward in the best shape of our lives, right? Like as we age, it's even more critical to do this. And this is kind of a quip, but my fitness goal is to be like a kick ass 100 year old. Like I want to kick a soccer bottle like my great grand kid, right? And so we build a workout app with only one workout. It's your next one. In a sense, it's kind of your lifelong workout. It kind of meets you where you are. So similar to startups, especially in the past several years, the past 10 years, there's been this culture of using shortcuts to hit some idealized milestone. Like raising and spending money prior to product market fit. So I think it's kind of was less sexy at the time. Now it's a little more popular, the path we took, but it's almost like this kind of fitness ideology results take time and work. And we got a compound success.
Yeah, that's such an incredible start to an app like this. I didn't realize that y'all had spent so much time dialing in some level of product market fit before you raised. What did that very early journey look like? Did you launch the app and actually start getting users? And did you have a little angel funding or was this like a side project before you found the product market fit and then eventually raised some funding?
My co-founder Alan and I, my backgrounds in product design, I'd worked as a freelancer for his previous startup.
我的联合创始人Alan和我都有产品设计背景,我曾为他之前的创业公司做过自由职业者。
And Fitbot did start out, you know, after that one wound down, we did started as a side project and really solving like a personal problem. And I think we had a very unique approach to solving the problem, which we can get into a little bit later.
But yeah, we put it into the app store and immediately saw a little bit of traction that I think kind of just built on itself.
没错,我们把它放到了应用商店,立刻看到了一些反响,我认为这种反响是逐渐累计起来的。
We did have like an early beta testing phase where we did make an important pivot from more of like an advanced tracker to a recommended workout plan. And you know, I think ASO, app store optimization actually was pretty important in the beginning, being able to kind of rank in Apple search results. Alan Moreso is the engineer, the analytical approach and he really spent time trying to like test keywords and ranking in those early days. So I think a lot of early users found us that way.
It was really interesting. It was kind of when users were like unilaterally emailing us and that email was growing over time of feedback and requests and praise. That was kind of the first inkling of product market fit.
What was the actual tipping point then of like, now we're really onto something, we're going to raise some funding, start hiring and like, this is a real business.
It was probably when we first monetized, which was still maybe a year and a half before we closed our first seed round. And monetizing and you know, this was 2016 as consumer, SaaS or subscription was kind of early, right? And it was surprising to us at least that someone would pay a subscription for kind of a utilitarian product that wasn't necessarily like a content based.
So it's like, okay, people are paying us for this thing. And then looking up and realizing like, hey, our unique approach leveraging AI and ML to produce like these customized string training prescription, it seems very scalable. It's a large problem out there and we have this unique tech. So that was kind of how we gain confidence.
Was there and this is, I guess I'm asking for the founders like in this situation, it's a common dilemma is like, well, can I get this thing off the ground? Do I need to bring on outside capital? Because you know, the truth is you bring on outside capital, you got to unload outside capital, right? It like puts you on this trajectory, which there are variations to that path, but it starts to narrow your pedantra future options.
What was the big impetus for you guys? Like it was like, hey, like we want to be able to go faster or was it, hey, we want this to be venture scale or what was the decision making and wasn't even a decision. Was this like, we're going to do this and now we're able to or what was your thought process?
There was a question of whether to run this as kind of a small business or raise funding, right? And as you mentioned, like when you raise from investors, the game changes quite a bit.
The early product market fit and just the prospect of being able to scale like a very underrated form of exercise. Like I think string training is the secret hiding in plain sight.
And it really could make a really dramatic impact. I think it's kind of what the world needs in a sense. If you think about it more broadly, maybe with healthcare, right? And freedom from pain, being able to move about the world, right? I think there's come some fundamental ideas there that we got really excited about.
And I think we found a great initial partner and Jason Calicanis to lead that seed round and get it going. That's the guy with the podcast. That's right. Yep.
The podcast. So with Money in the Bank and a profitable company, you mentioned that paid marketing has been a factor in growth. And because you have really good fundamental numbers, that was an accelerant.
Was there pressure to just go raise $50 million and like blow it up with as much paid marketing as possible? And how did you navigate that landscape? I imagine venture capitalists were just wanting to throw money at you in that phase of a funding.
And it's not required to say yes, whether or not it's true or not. You know, when we launched in 2015, fitness tech wasn't as popular as it was today. I think my fitness pal was probably the most successful outcome at like $500 million.
But now look at the landscape in the last couple of years, it's gotten very popular. So we were kind of in an underdog industry at the beginning. And Alan and I internally, we recognize the downside potentially.
And we basically found investors who aligned with that. So Jason has always kind of run against the grain of the grow at all costs. And our subsequent rounds, they've largely been made up of startup operators who have aligned with our model.
So for example, like the co-founders of Calm, the meditation app who famously beat headspace by standing lean and another investor is an operator at Notion, who I think one time like described revenue per head count as a great metric. I mean, that's I think often overlooked, especially in the frenzy of fundraising is that like alignment between your investors.
And it's sometimes personality and background when you're talking about seed and angel stage. And also just like structure of what their funds are designed to do. Like who did they raise money from and the expectations they set? And do they have a thesis? And is there something about what you're doing that goes beyond just the like short term returns, right?
And I think this is where folks, and that's all too much on the venture capital side of things. But I think this is where some folks can end up in the horror stories you hear is when you take money and there's misalignment in how that money is deployed. And there's a lack of trust and a lack of shared vision.
It's worse than a bad marriage because like it's really hard to unwind of an capital deal like it takes a little bit of luck, but also just picking wisely, right? Think about who you raise money from more even than who you hire. There's some advice out there that's like money is money. And there's some truth to that. But like I do think you can go a lot further and your life will be a lot better if you choose wisely.
If you're blessed with a good product and like leverage, right? And the process, which I mean, the way you guys did it was right. Don't show up to your first pitch with a slide deck of what an app could look like, right? And three test flight users, right? Like show up with like a basics of a flywheel.
I feel like with consumer and consumer subscription specifically, you almost need to be a stage ahead of where like a B2B company would have to be, right? Like you guys have to be proving scalability. You need to have product market fit at the seed versus like a B2B. It's at the A usually and you need to have scalability at the A, which a B2B company typically won't have until like the B or C. It's definitely harder.
I'm sure we'll come back to it, but I think the concepts of community, we talk about this every time we get somebody out here with a successful app. There's some aspect of we had some magic substrate, some ether that allowed us to amplify our spend and as a venture capitalist, when you hear that, you're like, ooh, you start to be like, oh, I hear alpha, right?
Like I hear return. I hear margin. And so I think that makes the decision a lot easier. Like I think in consumer especially and just to continue your preach, but like I definitely caution founders don't fundraise until like you're, I think kind of at that stage, like you're at that post-part market fit. You got some scale and like, you know, you really want to go for it.
That's really cool. Yeah. And so that's where I actually wanted to go next is that because you chose and of course in hindsight in 2023, you look like, you know, rock stars with a $20 million ARR profitable, you know, it couldn't be better positioned. And as a customer, I'm thrilled to have heard that. You know, I know this will give me a product I can rely on for years to come.
You're going to build toward not just an exit, but toward a great customer experience. So all those things I'm excited about, but choosing not to just dump a pile of cash on the app, meant you had to go other directions. So other than the paid marketing, you have done what have those sources of traffic been for growth.
So I mentioned the word of mouth and kind of the viral growth loop. So that's kind of critical and still actually, I think a major growth driver today. And so we have a whole strategy set out to try to identify and focus on which step of that viral growth loop is the highest leverage to move a top level metric.
And if we do take word of mouth virality, that top level metric is like the number of new subscribers that an existing subscriber will generate. Our loop kind of looks like a new user comes in, they become engaged with the product. They tell another user via word of mouth or say they can share their fitness progress or results. That'll invite another user who becomes engaged and product being kind of foundational also comes into play here where word of mouth is enabled when a product beats the expectations for a new user, right?
They come up with some expectations and it totally blows them out of the water. And that's what enables word of mouth.
他们想到了一些期望但结果完全超出他们的预期。这就是推动口口相传的原因。
And were there specific ways that you worked as a product leader to kind of identify those loops? And that's what it's called. It's a little burned on the growth loop term. I mean, sometimes for some apps, it really is kind of magical thinking because it's just not the sort of app that is going to get virality. But I think a lot of founders do themselves of disservice by not at least exploring ways that that could happen. So I'd love to hear how Fitbod identified and nurtured those growth loops.
To your point, we're not a naturally social product. So I think the viral growth loop is important and in other words, one just can't use paid you a, right? Paid you a kind of a law of the universe that the more you spend, it's going to get less efficient. And paid you a is kind of like a funnel, right? The more you put it in the top, the more you might get out the bottom, but it's not necessarily like a compounding loop. So I think for us, virality is an important part of the growth story, but we probably need to add other growth loops as well and content being another one, for example, could be user-generated or, for example, our blog. Our blog is something we've been investing in quite a bit. And there's kind of an obviously scalable idea there. We produce content that will drive new users who will produce more revenue to invest in more content. So I see it as like several growth loops playing together.
We're not a naturally viral product, right? So it's maybe unlikely for us to hit a viral coefficient where a new subscriber will invite more than one new subscriber unless you know. But you don't need to, right? You're not NGL or one of these social apps that lives or dies by like social virality or gas or one of the others. But the way that you were saying is like that long-term retention, especially with your long view on it, right? Which I think the retention curve of your subscribers will map the value curve derived, right? So like as long as users are continuously perceiving value, that cohort will not go to zero. And that means usage and engagement.
The thing you said was really profound was about incentivizing virality or word of mouth through beating expectations. That's really fascinating. I haven't thought about it that way, but you're right. You come in and it ties into the investor argument about seeking alpha, right? Like when a user comes in and gets more than they expect, that's information that's inherently valuable to other humans looking to exploit value, right? It's like, where can I find something where the perceived value is higher than the cost? I imagine you put that into the design of the app and like the user experience like from a sign up in macro level, like where there are specific things where you're like trying to like, how do I drive this user to a viral moment within like their first month? Or like, how do you balance, I guess, maybe a different way of phrasing is like, how do you balance that?
And I guess maybe they're not in conflict, but those features or those things that are like purely focused on this like long-term fitness journey versus like, well, also like, I want it to be so good. You tell your friends, right? This kind of like segues into the idea of activation and the product hook. So like a product hook is this kind of discrete, repeatable action that a user will take on a product. And I think a lot of great consumer companies have this, you know, there's like Google Search and I don't know, like handling the noober and we like purposely designed our product hook or at least we took inspiration from near I.L. habit creation model in this and he had a 2012 book called Hooked and basically there's a trigger, an action, a reward and an investment part of this habit creation loop. And let's say for Fitbot, there's the trigger is some type of, you know, psychological uncertainty about what to do in the gym or how to strength train and the action is launching the app and we solve that problem for your next workout.
我猜也许它们并没有冲突,但那些专注于长期健身旅程或者希望自己表现得很好并向朋友展示的特征或事物似乎是不同的。这也引出了激活和产品勾的概念。产品勾是指用户在使用产品时会反复执行的离散化行动。我认为很多优秀的消费类公司都具备这一点,比如 Google 搜索,或者 Uber 的处理方式。我们有意地设计了我们的产品勾,或者至少从 Nir Eyal 的“习惯创造模型”中获取了灵感。他在2012年出版的书中提到,习惯的形成包括触发器、行动、奖励和投资。以 Fitbot 为例,触发器是在健身房或如何进行强度训练方面存在的某种心理不确定性,而行动是打开应用程序,然后我们为你解决下一个训练的问题。
We make the reward visible, meaning after you log a workout, we kind of celebrate it with various achievements and signals of progress and then the investment phase, you know, a user will invest their time or money or data into the product. And so making that reward visible and shareable, which we've invested in quite a bit, I think has been important for a virality and allowing our customers to like show the value they're getting from the product. And so our customers will share their fitness progress out and a potential user will view that and understand the value or might think, hey, I could drive that value as well. There are some really fun things in the app that I've been really impressed with.
It's fun because when I use subscription apps now, I'm using it both as a user and delighted as user with the user experience, but then also thinking about the subscription strategy. And I love the way the sharing screens are designed and like one of the cool things y'all do in the sharing screen is show the total pounds lifted in a workout. And it's so freaking impressive. I've never seen that before. But like my last workout Monday with Fitbod, I lifted 20,000 pounds or something. And I mean, I'm not especially strong. I'm not like benching 300 or anything like that. But it was a really impressive number. And it like, I kind of wanted to share that. That's pretty cool.
But then something else y'all do too is that there's just almost constant banner of share six free workouts. Has that been a big driver of that referral thing where you normally get three free workouts? But if you share the link, your friend gets six free workouts. Has that driven a lot of users? It has, however, we haven't invested a ton into it. And that's kind of an immediate strategy to put more in there. Referral six free workouts link there. We actually added it to be able to understand and measure this growth loop.
So like the first step is to measure, right? And identify which part of that to focus on. And so we built that feature with all the steps instrumented. And we can know like what percent of subscribers view the referral feature, and then what percent will send a referral? What percent of recipients will tap on it and redeem and convert? And so the next step here is to identify which part of the conversion funnel would produce the highest outcome. So it may be the case that we just need to increase the number of times a subscriber sees the referral page.
Part of the best highest leverage part of the funnel is having a referred user convert, right? And we some type of incentive there. So, you know, now a lot of word of mouth happens outside of the product. And we can work on trying to incentivize more of it happening in the product. But just knowing where to invest our limited time and resources on which part of the funnel. And this is true for the entire acquisition activation retention user lifecycle.
I mean, it's interesting to know how many people do that referral motion. But yeah, more interestingly, it's probably linearly related to the amount of word of mouth period. It's very easy and obvious way to do a referral. Because word of mouth is extremely hard to track. You don't know, like you can ask people it's imperfect, you can whatever. But let's say you're trying to like increase word of mouth, I would say like you could look at the result like how many people are referring as a good proxy to your other K factor like inputs.
And I think that's something that I think I suffered from this in the past when I was working on consumer apps was thinking like, I have to measure everything properly. Like if it's not instrumented, I can't trust anything. The truth is, is like getting perfect instrumentation is almost impossible. And you should be good enough with some things that you can plausibly say are going to be related, then work on obvious, not necessarily obvious stuff, but like you can work on things and look at the results of that proxy number. And that can be good enough.
So I understand this from that referral programs are tricky, right? They're like hard to balance and hard to track and they're tricky to set up. But even if that isn't a silver bullet, like in terms of that giving you a two X K factor, it's like if nothing else, it gives you data on what the people call it the K factor, like the 1.1 users per user or whatever. It's interesting.
One of the things you've mentioned several times now is how important retention is to fit by. So I'd love to explore how you think about retention and how you measure retention. You know, then we can talk more about how you drive that retention. Going back to Jacob, your comment, instrumenting is hard and retention is one of the most challenging things for a few reasons.
And so we break it down into different levels of fidelity. So like at the highest level, we have subscription retention, did a subscriber auto renew into the next period or not. And with an annual plan, it takes a year to know that I think with consumer SaaS, we see this, there's likely a cohort of inactive renewers, subscribers who are disengaged with a product, but will renew anyway. So say we want to increase subscription retention, if we reactivate those inactive renewers, it won't move the metric at all, right? Because they're already paying for it. So under these subscription retention, we look at cancellation retention.
Did the subscriber hit the cancel button in the period or not? And that can be measured on a monthly basis, because a subscriber can cancel before their subscription period runs out. So when do they hit in the cancel button? And the last level before that kind of the most important, we have a workout retention metric, which is synonymous with engagement.
But like a subscriber must log three plus workouts per month to survive to the following month. That's like the true retention we try to move and operate on to kind of move the top level.
You just said like most people do this as a level. So you just say like you pick a number say like, Hey, folks doing three or more, we think that's like a good healthy minimum level of engagement. And you focus on that, you just pick that using your gut and informed decision or what was the reason for that cut off?
Practically in the dashboard, you can change that number. I can look at one plus two plus three plus four plus. But you know, if we look at like our ideal customer profile, the people who show the best conversion and retention in the app, it's something like two point something workouts a week actually. Wow.
Yeah. But again, it goes back to this like concept of sort of low resolution metrics, right? Like you just pick some things that you think are somewhat sensitive to what matters. And then building a model of understanding exactly how those three workouts translate into paid subscription and then paid subscription retention is incredibly complicated. But you can imagine it probably helps. Right.
So it's like drive that. And you can plausibly drive the next metric or drive down the cancellation metric or drive up the retention metric, which is interesting.
I mean, the discussion around inactive subscribers is very interesting. I think as an industry for us, you know, I think we've, I mean, it's sort of not our problem, but it is like something we benefit from. And it's an interesting thing.
I think Apple's gotten more and they've lifted a lot of this for us. But like, you know, it would be interesting for Apple to create even more incentive for us to like notify user, like create a level like if they went started tracking activity in the apps and recommended people unsubscribe, that might be really interesting.
I think the emails, the monthly emails are pretty good. They say, Hey, you were subscribed to this. It's like a good start. But it does create, I think sometimes interesting incentive structures for us or people running apps in terms of like, if I send an email to this whole list, I might actually damage my subscription, which is, I think probably morally what you want to do, but also like we're trying to run a business here, right? And like, I don't know, it's a tricky thing.
But again, I think it's like focus on those usage, right? Like drive up usage. Like if you can drive up usage and retention, the score will take care of itself. A lot of this stuff.
But optionality is a job to be done. I have the option to work out. I have a great workout up for that next workout I'm going to do. It's tough because you're not directly providing value in those situations, but in some ways you are.
But what are some of the ways that Fitbot works to increase those numbers? Do you have specific in app or push or email campaigns around driving those workouts?
The retention strategy is to focus on users who are becoming at risk or becoming dormant before they cancel. Typically, I think there's like lower leverage in trying to revive churned users. The longer a user goes from using the product, it's probably harder to get them back. So we're trying to like pinpoint higher up in that funnel when a user is at risk of going dormant and trying to use engagement tactics and interventions there.
We have a model that predicts user engagement and going back to the other Jacob T. Your comment, I think logging workouts, we discovered is the best predictor of engagement. So yeah, we want to focus there on that area. And what else could we potentially focus on?
Well, we could look at our super active engage users and build the features they're looking for. However, I think the bigger point of leverage that move that metric is to try to understand why people are going dormant and try to solve that problem. And it goes back to the areas of focus.
It's probably a wider cohort too, right? Like, you probably have like a lot of folks that maybe don't attach or maybe only retain for a little while, right? There's just probably more surface area in terms of like users in that cohort to attack than like your super hyper engaged users. You keep using the word leverage, which I think sometimes gets overused. But I think actually in this case, alpha is also the word, right?
It's like, where in your app's individual model is like going to be the most ROI. And like talking about those different user bases is really fascinating. Because like sometimes I think the advice on product can be talked to your most like deeply engaged users, right? And like build what they want.
And that's true to an extent, but maybe in consumer land where everybody's revenue is like cap, right? Like you're going to retain it for a long time in B2B. You know, if I can take a 10K account, make it a 100K account, make it a 500K account, like there's real leverage to use the word again and talk and like really building, building building for that user base. But in consumer's assets, different, like, you know, you're going to get $100 a year or whatever your number is from that user. If they're way engaged, so unfortunately, this tragedy, the commons where you do kind of have to make sure you build features that are going to drive mass adoption, not just deeply engaged user adoption.
What's an example of something, one of these tactics? Like you just say like, Hey, come back or do you offer anything free or like, what maybe have you tried that's worked or not?
When I say leverage, what I really mean is about focus. Because I think it's just the critical driver for startup success is where we focus our limited time and resources. To answer that question, I'll actually point to what we're focused on right now and where the leverage is, so to speak.
So, you know, I mentioned our retention is pretty solid. We're actually more focused on conversion and activation as a way to move short term immediate business metrics. And there's more leverage there in a sense that there's more users actually in the activation funnel that we could potentially convert. So out of like say 10,000 subscribers, there's about 15 or 20,000 that make it pretty far in the trial funnel and don't convert. And if we were able to convert that group, we could potentially like double subscribers, so to speak. So we're not as focused on retention right now, right? We're more focused there. And I can tell you a bit about how we go about trying to convert that group.
Yeah, I wanted to actually throw a hypothetical your way because I think this kind of product thinking gets lost too often. I'm a Fitbod life at this point. Like I'm going to keep paying you. I mean, maybe I'd find a different workout app at some point or whatever, but you were just paid for an app because you like it so much. I do that a lot. Yeah. If I'm not using it, I'll just be like, uh, I want this to still be around the optionality thing, right?
So, but as a user, there's specific features I want. And I think this is a trap a lot of especially consumer founders get into. But even, I mean, we face this at revenue cat, you know, when a customer says, Oh, I really need this chart and then it's like, Oh, will we drop everything and build that chart or what's the broader strategy? So let me throw a couple of features I personally want in Fitbod. You tell me how you contextualize that into, you know, what's going to activate new users, what's going to keep existing users subscribed. And I know you have this kind of offense versus defense framework that you think through.
So feature pitch in my little home garage. I've got a TV that I'll like ride my airbike and watch TV while I work out. I would love an Apple TV app. Jesse, build that for me. It's the next great Fitbod feature. It's amazing. Now, where do you go from there as a product leader to contextualize that feature request and decide whether or not it's something worth focusing on? There's a few different levels of context. I'll try to be concise.
I mean, at the highest level, we're going to prioritize based on our vision and the steps we need to get there. So we're aiming to enable 90% of adults to like realize the value of physical fitness and in particular strength training. And so like step one there is to establish product market fit in this core segment. And I'm going to call it the ideal customer profile or ICP. These are people who exhibit strong conversion and retention today.
Now, step two, which I think we're in now is to try to scale and own the market for the ICP. And step three is to, you know, basically build for the non ICP. So at this point, we're taking the lens of we want to increase ICP acquisition, activation and retention. And so moving into offense versus differences, like the next piece of context. This is a great framework developed by Eli Lerner at Reefarge.
You can Google offense versus defense to find a great blog post. I won't describe as much today. So defense is about maintaining product market fit and preventing downside risk competition. I don't know, tech debt and kind of the steps to achieve the vision and offense is about the immediate short term business metrics in our offense right now.
Our focus is not preventing churn. It's not filling the top of the funnel. It's about driving conversion. And so what we're researching or we have been the last year is to understand why the ICP is not converting via user research, deploying some tests, right?
What is the most constraining problem for why the ICP is not converting? Is that because of the lack of an Apple TV app or whatever the problem that solution solves? Well, when you say it that way, or even, um, yeah, this is so key. Yeah, key, right? I think there's a trap of thinking that let's listen to like our super successful engaged customers as kind of a clue for what the unsuccessful customers are missing.
That's not the case. It's the airplanes with the bullet holes picture that you see all the time, right? It's like if you talk to all the ones where they examine the airplanes coming back from France and they were like, Oh, well, look at where they get shot. But actually it's the inverse. You're talking to people who made it. Don't talk to them. They made it. And David's already engaged. You're going to be happy with your app, David.
I don't care anymore. That's not true, obviously. But yeah, I think the tragedies, those are so much harder conversations to have because that user is inherently gone. So like capturing them on the way out, I think is a real challenge. So how do you have those conversations? So you take the Apple TV and that one maybe is too easy to just say, well, that's obviously a pretty niche thing for somebody to be in a home gym. And you know, you probably have some data to just write that off off the top of your head. But what does it look like to actually dig into that focus area of activation and not let your super users like me distract you from the things that are going to matter for activation?
User research is critical. So there's a quantitative approach where we'll try to compare this nonconvert cohort against our successful subscribers and note any differences in their profile characteristics or like the actions in the trial experience. But then there's the qualitative side where we can employ like surveys in app email, A, B testing user interviews.
Now with users who don't convert or those that churn, it's actually much harder to get ahold of them than the engaged users. The outreach safe to invite to a user interview needs to be very vanilla and like authentic as possible. And typically higher volume. Our process will identify a cohort and mix panel and say these are people that logged work out two or three of their trial period. We export that CSV, go over to userinterviews.com who handles all the logistical steps of scheduling and payment.
It's actually free if you provide your own users. Then we'll do these 30 minute interviews that are targeted on what we want to know. And so with these nonconverters, I want to know what is the problem a user is trying to solve by downloading to bot or trying that. And then what is like the actual or perceived gap between the problem a user is trying to solve and our product solution? And I mentioned perceived gap because many times our product solution is a match for the user's problem, but they didn't discover it or don't realize it.
And that's a great problem to have. That's like a framing product feature. Right. It's like telling the people what they need, right? Yeah. But getting to like the real problem that a user is downloading our app for takes some investigation. So a participant may describe several problems. And I'm trying to like get to the most constraining one, you know, typically like asking the five whys will help there.
And here's just one last tactic. So if a user describes a problem, I may pitch a feature solution or even have like a mockup ready to go for their problem. And basically ask the fundamental question is, hey, nonconverter, if this feature existed today, would you buy the app for $79.99? If they say no, it's a great clue that I haven't like found the problem yet.
And there's just one last trap in some of these concept tests where you're showing mockups to participants. But a participant may describe the feature very well or understand what the problem solves and why it would work for other people. But it doesn't necessarily mean that that's a solution to their problem. So I think it's a good tactic. I always try to fundamentally ask if this feature existed today, would you buy Fitbod for $79.99? It's like the fundamental thing I'm trying to get to, right?
I've seen useranabuses.com, but I hadn't thought about it in the consumer context. I think that's like a terrific investment for folks. Like that's one of my favorite things about B2B since I made the jump is it's much easier to get a hold of customers, right? Because I have thousands, not tens or hundreds of thousands. And one thing would be to see if it was always hard to get folks either to come, obviously come in the office was hard. But just to get on a phone call or whatever, like with a random app, I think that's a weird experience for the like random consumer, right? So I think definitely something worth investing in and you don't need, I mean, it sounds like having a product co-founders.
That's a superpower that your company has. I would say even if you're like a technical co-founding team or whatever, like user interviews are something everybody can do. Like you should be doing, especially for the negative set like that. Like that's really fascinating. I'm going to do that. Is there a threshold of hearing this specific problem a certain number of times before you go attack it? David's going to hire a botnet to ask for Apple TV apps. Yeah. So what's what you're thinking about the depth of the need and the kind of number of people who have that need before you actually go build a feature?
Right. So I'm trying to identify a pattern in participants. And I'll usually try to get to medium confidence. I have a medium confidence signal that there's a pattern here and then, you know, develop a hypothesis and then try to validate or invalidate that hypothesis like the cheapest way possible.
Now, you know, this is in the context of offense, right? And trying to move metrics immediately. The defense and building core values, a different approach. Let's say I discover a pattern non converters who say like, well, there is a specific workout format or exercise that I couldn't find. Right. I think, okay, I'm medium confidence pattern there. Maybe I would create an automated survey where the very first question is like, how do your three workouts go? Was there a exercise or format you couldn't find? I don't know. Try to optimize for answering that question.
But even better is to try to build a cheap intervention and solution. So how about for this example, where would a user go in the app to try to address that problem, try to find a workout format and exercise they couldn't find? Let's say I have some ideas about maybe two surfaces a user might go to try to solve that problem. Maybe there's some signal of maybe they couldn't find it, right? Then I try to intervene and ask, hey, like, is there a problem? Could you not find this? Yes or no? And that'll help me size the problem, right? Sizing is the important part here. So give me some signal there to take kind of the next step.
That's a really great approach. And like I said, I mean, I think in consumer subscriptions, it's just too easy to get overly focused on your super users and try and pattern match against them. And so that kind of product thinking, and you actually have a really great presentation. We'll link in the show notes for anybody who's interested to kind of go deeper in this about kind of your product thinking and how you approach these things at Fitbod.
We do need to wrap up. So Jesse, it was fantastic having you on the podcast. I know you're hiring. Are there any specific roles you wanted to call out before we wrap up? Yeah, hiring two product managers. And I think this is a really kind of exciting time to join, especially on the product team, in that we have our core strategies and focus, you know, ready to roll.
So I'm looking for a lead PM for core experience. And now I talked a lot about offense and activation today. And just to reiterate, defense core experience retention is fundamental and that needs to be a big focus of ours. Right. So looking for a core experience PM. And then I'm also looking for a growth PM to actually work on the virality problem we talked about today. This is like really fun role. I actually have somebody in mind. I will make you an intro, Jesse.
Nice. Thanks. Yeah. And make sure you plant the Apple TV with my friend. Yeah, there's ways to make this happen, David. He's going to bounce. Jesse, if you don't get on that, I know the frustration. I know the frustration.
That's fantastic. It sounds like a really great product to work for. So I think anybody should check it out if they're interested in. And it sounds like a really cool. You've obviously created a product that's made at least one person extremely happy. And that's evident here. And it's clear to me now through the way you're describing your process, why that is right. So that's really fantastic. It sounds like a great opportunity.