The Exchanges

Q And you have enjoyed phenomenal growth. Uh, I, I read somewhere it's in the millions of users now. How did this ball get rolling, if you know what I mean? Often it's the hardest thing to get the first hundred users. What was your tactics to get the initial user base?

A To get actually our first thousand users, it was, uh, something that would not scale at all. I actually went around the, uh, the university campuses in our city. There was two of them, uh, uh, University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, and for a couple days I walked around with my laptop before we had launched our product, and I got, and I sat down beside people and asked them, Hey, what do you have a second? What do you think about this idea we're working on? If they were into it, I asked them if they would give me their email and put it in like a signup form as I was standing there. And I did a thousand signups that way. So when we launched our product, um, we actually had a thousand people to send it out to immediately. We had a couple of articles and on day one, we, we did a few, uh, I think about 1500, uh, downloads on the product, which was pretty cool. Um, and as we kind of move forward, we really focused on Uh, social media and content marketing as a core growth channel. And that has helped a lot. And it still is a huge piece of our, our marketing mix today that has driven growth. But most importantly, as, as we iterated and listened to users, we built something they wanted and they started to talk about it and share it with their friends, um, and, and bring them on. And, you know, if you build something people love, it starts to oscillate. And as the social…

AI assessment note: “I actually went around the, uh, the university campuses in our city.”

Q And you have enjoyed phenomenal growth. Uh, I, I read somewhere it's in the millions of users now. How did this ball get rolling, if you know what I mean? Often it's the hardest thing to get the first hundred users. What was your tactics to get the initial user base?

A To get actually our first thousand users, it was, uh, something that would not scale at all. I actually went around the, uh, the university campuses in our city. There was two of them, uh, uh, University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University, and for a couple days I walked around with my laptop before we had launched our product, and I got, and I sat down beside people and asked them, Hey, what do you have a second? What do you think about this idea we're working on? If they were into it, I asked them if they would give me their email and put it in like a signup form as I was standing there. And I did a thousand signups that way. So when we launched our product, um, we actually had a thousand people to send it out to immediately. We had a couple of articles and on day one, we, we did a few, uh, I think about 1500, uh, downloads on the product, which was pretty cool. Um, and as we kind of move forward, we really focused on Uh, social media and content marketing as a core growth channel. And that has helped a lot. And it still is a huge piece of our, our marketing mix today that has driven growth. But most importantly, as, as we iterated and listened to users, we built something they wanted and they started to talk about it and share it with their friends, um, and, and bring them on. And, you know, if you build something people love, it starts to oscillate. And as the social…

AI assessment note: “I actually went around the, uh, the university campuses in our city.”

Q And who would you say are your biggest competitors in the space, and how do you plan to stay ahead of them?

A Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, when it comes to our category, most players, especially the successful ones, are utility products. You look at Fitbit or Fitness Pal or MapMyFitness or RunKeeper, um, tracking apps or pieces of hardware. When it comes to social and community and the health and fitness space, There really isn't something on mobile doing what we're doing specifically. So we view our competition as where else would you look for positive support around your health? And really a lot of people are actually doing that on Reddit subreddits on the lose it or the fitness subreddits, or maybe in the bodybuilding forums, or if it comes to, uh, fitness photo sharing or health photo sharing, a lot of that's happening on Instagram. So instead of saying who's the direct competition, it's where are people spending time With taking action, they should be in our product, and those are some of the places that's happening. We're really focused on, you know, building awareness within those channels, because it's a great way to actually find the highest quality users as well.

AI assessment note: “So we view our competition as where else would you look for positive support”

Q And because of this, you have a phenomenally engaged and active user base. How have you managed to create this unity, and you said obviously you have no negative comments. How have you created such a united, collaborative environment for pump-up users?

A Yeah, I mean, that's a, it's a great question. So we focus heavily on providing a safe, positive, and supportive space for our users. Anybody across the world, regardless of shape, size, et cetera, can feel comfortable to share their challenges and celebrate their triumphs when it comes to their health within the pump of community, and that's what makes it so special. You know, when it comes to health, physical or mental, it's actually quite a sensitive issue. Especially for females, which make up a large percentage of our audience. And what we found is that positive support is a transformative experience. It, it can change people's lives. And it, the opposite of that non-positive support can actually be quite damaging. So we've invested a lot behind community management to ensure pump up remains this way, a positive, safe, and supportive space to share and achieve your health goals. And that has enabled us to have strong engagement. When someone comes in and shares a post, the very first post or photo of their body that they've never posted online before, and they get immensely positive reinforcement support from the community, it becomes a very sticky experience. And they start to use it very often because you just can't find this type of positive support when it comes to health, physical or mental, anywhere else really on the internet. And that's really been the core driver …

AI assessment note: “we've invested a lot behind community management to ensure pump up remains this way”

Q Would you have any tips for, for using Instagram effectively? I mean, 225,000 followers is a massive following. How did you accumulate such a huge following organically?

A So, I mean, I think that the main piece is who is your audience? You have to understand who your audience is to be able to speak to them effectively and create content that appeals to them. Um, so that's what we really focused on. We learned who was our best users of pump up, who was the majority of our user base was using it the most often. And we started building out a content strategy that really appealed to them while at the same time bringing our brand to life. Um, and really we're just providing them something that They wanted to have in their feed and, you know, through captions that we post on our photos, we encourage people to tag their friends and more people discover it. And if it starts to get a lot of likes, it pops up in the discover feed and more people start to discover it. So it's all about really understanding who's the audience and then providing them content that they really can't get anywhere else that really, really appeals to them. Um, and they start to fall in love with the brand and eventually converting to a user.

AI assessment note: “we encourage people to tag their friends and more people discover it”

Q And how do you control the content? Do you moderate it yourself or do the users moderate it as a group themselves? How does that work?

A Yeah, we have a few different tactics in place. Um, some of the ones we're happy to speak about are, I mean, we, we don't moderate every single post that's shared. There's way too many of them every day for that to be feasible. Sure. Um, the community is strong. If someone posts something inappropriate or someone posts a negative comment on someone's post, the community is so strong at this point that We'll know probably within, like, 30 to 90 seconds, and it will go straight to our community management team, and we'll, um, we'll, we'll take the appropriate actions on that piece of content. Um, so we've never had too large of a problem that's ever lasted more than a couple minutes.

AI assessment note: “it will go straight to our community management team”

Q Would you have any tips for, for using Instagram effectively? I mean, 225,000 followers is a massive following. How did you accumulate such a huge following organically?

A So, I mean, I think that the main piece is who is your audience? You have to understand who your audience is to be able to speak to them effectively and create content that appeals to them. Um, so that's what we really focused on. We learned who was our best users of pump up, who was the majority of our user base was using it the most often. And we started building out a content strategy that really appealed to them while at the same time bringing our brand to life. Um, and really we're just providing them something that They wanted to have in their feed and, you know, through captions that we post on our photos, we encourage people to tag their friends and more people discover it. And if it starts to get a lot of likes, it pops up in the discover feed and more people start to discover it. So it's all about really understanding who's the audience and then providing them content that they really can't get anywhere else that really, really appeals to them. Um, and they start to fall in love with the brand and eventually converting to a user.

AI assessment note: “through captions that we post on our photos, we encourage people to tag their friends”

Q And finally, how can you ensure that your company doesn't become another maybe dead fitness wear, like many have said of the majority of Fitbits and gym memberships with very little user retention? What are you going to do to ensure that this doesn't happen to you?

A Yeah, it's a great question. We're, we're really focused on this. I think this is the most important thing to focus on in, for anybody playing in the health and fitness space. You know, I kind of touched on it before, but most fitness products are utility driven, and Utility is useful, but doesn't often focus on the motivational aspect enough, which we believe is the primary problem in the category. And I, I think this drives massive drop off. And, you know, we take a community driven approach. Community is the core of our business and our product. And that, that focus is focused on motivation. And, you know, from the data we have, what we've seen is community is super powerful when it comes to keeping users. When we get a user involved in that, in our community, we keep them. So all we're focused on is Converting users into becoming those who get involved within the community, every user who signs up and focusing on building products, um, for our community that keeps them engaged, that adds extra things they can do or extra things they can share based on what they're looking for and asking for. And that's kind of what we've done so far, what we plan on doing as we, uh, as we, as we move forward. And I, it should help us maintain the retentions we, um, the retention we see with our strong community.

AI assessment note: “Converting users into becoming those who get involved within the community”

Q And how do you control the content? Do you moderate it yourself or do the users moderate it as a group themselves? How does that work?

A Yeah, we have a few different tactics in place. Um, some of the ones we're happy to speak about are, I mean, we, we don't moderate every single post that's shared. There's way too many of them every day for that to be feasible. Sure. Um, the community is strong. If someone posts something inappropriate or someone posts a negative comment on someone's post, the community is so strong at this point that We'll know probably within, like, 30 to 90 seconds, and it will go straight to our community management team, and we'll, um, we'll, we'll take the appropriate actions on that piece of content. Um, so we've never had too large of a problem that's ever lasted more than a couple minutes.

AI assessment note: “it will go straight to our community management team, and we'll take the appropriate actions”

Q And who would you say are your biggest competitors in the space, and how do you plan to stay ahead of them?

A Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, when it comes to our category, most players, especially the successful ones, are utility products. You look at Fitbit or Fitness Pal or MapMyFitness or RunKeeper, um, tracking apps or pieces of hardware. When it comes to social and community and the health and fitness space, There really isn't something on mobile doing what we're doing specifically. So we view our competition as where else would you look for positive support around your health? And really a lot of people are actually doing that on Reddit subreddits on the lose it or the fitness subreddits, or maybe in the bodybuilding forums, or if it comes to, uh, fitness photo sharing or health photo sharing, a lot of that's happening on Instagram. So instead of saying who's the direct competition, it's where are people spending time With taking action, they should be in our product, and those are some of the places that's happening. We're really focused on, you know, building awareness within those channels, because it's a great way to actually find the highest quality users as well.

AI assessment note: “instead of saying who's the direct competition, it's where are people spending time”

Q And finally, how can you ensure that your company doesn't become another maybe dead fitness wear, like many have said of the majority of Fitbits and gym memberships with very little user retention? What are you going to do to ensure that this doesn't happen to you?

A Yeah, it's a great question. We're, we're really focused on this. I think this is the most important thing to focus on in, for anybody playing in the health and fitness space. You know, I kind of touched on it before, but most fitness products are utility driven, and Utility is useful, but doesn't often focus on the motivational aspect enough, which we believe is the primary problem in the category. And I, I think this drives massive drop off. And, you know, we take a community driven approach. Community is the core of our business and our product. And that, that focus is focused on motivation. And, you know, from the data we have, what we've seen is community is super powerful when it comes to keeping users. When we get a user involved in that, in our community, we keep them. So all we're focused on is Converting users into becoming those who get involved within the community, every user who signs up and focusing on building products, um, for our community that keeps them engaged, that adds extra things they can do or extra things they can share based on what they're looking for and asking for. And that's kind of what we've done so far, what we plan on doing as we, uh, as we, as we move forward. And I, it should help us maintain the retentions we, um, the retention we see with our strong community.

AI assessment note: “When we get a user involved in that, in our community, we keep them.”

Q Huge, huge growth. How are you going to continue this fantastic growth?

A So, you know, I already touched on the piece of, you know, social media being a really core piece of our growth strategy. We don't, we don't buy ads. Um, we haven't yet. We don't, we don't really believe in that. I can't remember the last time I bought an ad. I mean, sorry, I saw an ad and downloaded an app from an ad that I became an engaged user on. Um, but we're really focusing on building products that our users love and that encourage them to share more about those externally, um, on their other social channels, inviting their friends and giving them a reason as to why they should bring their friends into the pump up community. Um, and at the same time, um, really just keeping up with what we've been doing so far, building awesome products that appeal to our users and get them to use it more and they talk about it more and it grows faster. I mean, The growth rates we're seeing are pretty strong, and they have been now for, for quite some time.

AI assessment note: “building products that our users love and that encourage them to share more”

Q And because of this, you have a phenomenally engaged and active user base. How have you managed to create this unity, and you said obviously you have no negative comments. How have you created such a united, collaborative environment for pump-up users?

A Yeah, I mean, that's a, it's a great question. So we focus heavily on providing a safe, positive, and supportive space for our users. Anybody across the world, regardless of shape, size, et cetera, can feel comfortable to share their challenges and celebrate their triumphs when it comes to their health within the pump of community, and that's what makes it so special. You know, when it comes to health, physical or mental, it's actually quite a sensitive issue. Especially for females, which make up a large percentage of our audience. And what we found is that positive support is a transformative experience. It, it can change people's lives. And it, the opposite of that non-positive support can actually be quite damaging. So we've invested a lot behind community management to ensure pump up remains this way, a positive, safe, and supportive space to share and achieve your health goals. And that has enabled us to have strong engagement. When someone comes in and shares a post, the very first post or photo of their body that they've never posted online before, and they get immensely positive reinforcement support from the community, it becomes a very sticky experience. And they start to use it very often because you just can't find this type of positive support when it comes to health, physical or mental, anywhere else really on the internet. And that's really been the core driver …

AI assessment note: “we've invested a lot behind community management to ensure pump up remains this way”

Q Huge, huge growth. How are you going to continue this fantastic growth?

A So, you know, I already touched on the piece of, you know, social media being a really core piece of our growth strategy. We don't, we don't buy ads. Um, we haven't yet. We don't, we don't really believe in that. I can't remember the last time I bought an ad. I mean, sorry, I saw an ad and downloaded an app from an ad that I became an engaged user on. Um, but we're really focusing on building products that our users love and that encourage them to share more about those externally, um, on their other social channels, inviting their friends and giving them a reason as to why they should bring their friends into the pump up community. Um, and at the same time, um, really just keeping up with what we've been doing so far, building awesome products that appeal to our users and get them to use it more and they talk about it more and it grows faster. I mean, The growth rates we're seeing are pretty strong, and they have been now for, for quite some time.

AI assessment note: “social media being a really core piece of our growth strategy”