Guillem Ros & Desmond McNamee

Hevy

Hevy: 10+ Millionen Downloads mit nur $15K Werbeausgaben

$160K MRR

Current revenue · as of November 2024

GetLatka

4 years

$100K ARR

Mundpropaganda

Growth Channel

Co-Gründer

Founder

Guillem Ros & Desmond McNamee

Co-Gründer•Technical•Remote

Commitment

Full-time

Experience

Experienced

Product

Hevy

Trainings-Tracker und Planer-App für Gewichtheben mit Social-Features und Fortschrittsverfolging.

Type

Mobile App

Industry

Gesundheit & Wellness

Model

Freemium

Marketing Strategy

How Guillem acquired customers

Growth Channel

Mundpropaganda

Also Used

SEO / ContentCommunities

Tech Stack

Tools used to build Hevy

React NativeNode.jsPostgreSQLApp StoreGoogle Play

The Full Story

TL;DR

Guillem und Desmond bauten ein Strava für Gewichtheber, das fast ausschließlich durch Mundpropaganda wuchs.

Ich bin Guillem, Mitgründer von Hevy. Ich arbeite seit einem Jahrzehnt in der Fitness-Welt und habe bei den größten Fitness-Apps gearbeitet. Jetzt baue ich Hevy mit meinem Mitgründer Desmond auf.

Das Isolationsproblem

Desmond sagt, dass es die isolierende Seite des Fitnessstudio-Erlebnisses war, die uns inspirierte, Hevy zu erfinden. Wir wollten das Community-fokussierte Erlebnis schaffen, das Strava für Läufer bietet, aber für Gewichtheber.

MVP aufbauen

Wir bauten die erste Version in etwa 75 Tagen. Die App verfolgt Trainings, überwacht Fortschritt und hat Social Features, um mit Freunden zu teilen. Der Hauptunterschied war der Fokus auf den sozialen Aspekt – Freunde folgen, Trainings teilen und PRs gemeinsam feiern.

Fast gar keine bezahlte Werbung

Wie kommt man zu zwei Millionen Downloads mit nur $15K Werbeausgaben? Man braucht nicht unbedingt bezahlte Werbung, damit das Wachstum schneeballartig abläuft. Wir konzentrierten uns auf den Aufbau von Features, die natürliche virale Schleifen schaffen – Trainings teilen, Freunde einladen, Erfolge feiern.

Organisches Wachstums-Engine

App-Store-Optimierung
Reddit-Communities (besonders r/fitness)
YouTube-Fitness-Creator, die die App entdeckten und bewerteten
Mundpropaganda von zufriedenen Nutzern

Skalierung auf 10M+

Hevy hat jetzt über 10 Millionen Nutzer und generiert $160K+ MRR. Wir wuchsen das Team auf etwa 13 Personen, während wir die ganze Zeit bootstrapped und profitabel blieben.

Downloads: 10M+
MRR: $160K+
Werbeausgaben: $15K insgesamt
Team: 13 Personen
Zeit zum Aufbau des MVP: 75 Tage

Key Takeaways

Social-Features schaffen natürliche virale Schleifen und Mundpropaganda-Wachstum

Du kannst mit fast gar keinem bezahltem Marketing zu Millionen von Nutzern wachsen

Konzentriere dich darauf, Features zu bauen, die Nutzer natürlich teilen wollen

Community-Engagement auf Reddit kann signifikantes organisches Wachstum fördern

Originally published onHevy Blog

Founder proof brief

A one-page proof brief turns Guillem's Hevy playbook into your next test.

See what it covers before you sign up: the pattern worth copying, the channel to test, and the risk to avoid when you adapt this story.

Pattern

$100K ARR

Channel

Mundpropaganda

Output

Action checklist

What a proof brief covers

A one-page brief that turns Guillem's pattern into a testable plan
Channel bet: start from Mundpropaganda
A risk check before copying the Hevy playbook

See what a proof brief covers

See what it covers first. Create an account only if you choose to unlock.

Inspired by Guillem's journey? Generate a business idea in the Gesundheit & Wellness space using AI and real founder data.

Milestone Journey

Guillem achieved 2 milestones on the path to $100K ARR

$10K MRR

$10,000

2 years

April 2021

Avg: 1 year

+2 years to next milestone

$100K ARR

$1,900,000

4 years

April 2023

Avg: 2 years

4 years

Total journey time

Milestones achieved

Against every documented journey

Guillem Ros & Desmond McNamee reached $10K MRR in 2.0 years, faster than 20% of the 295 documented $10K journeys (median 12 months). The amber bar is this journey.

See the full distribution

Guillem's Path to $100K ARRPremium

The journey, decisions, and context behind this milestone

How Guillem actually did it

7/7 funnel stages sourced

Reconstructed from Guillem's own published sources. Quoted claims are the founder's words, verified verbatim; anything marked as our analysis is exactly that.

Where the idea came from

Personal pain5y domain experience

Guillem started going to the gym in early 2019 and wanted to track his workouts. Existing workout trackers did that fine, but he missed being able to interact with friends about their training, and, having previously been a triathlete, missed the social accountability that cycling/running trackers gave him.

“I missed the ability to interact with other friends working out.”

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog)

Validation

Built first, validated after

SurveysInconclusive16 survey responses

Guillem wrote a Google Forms survey and stood outside his gym asking people to fill it out. Only 16 people responded, opinions were polarizing, and by his own later assessment the sample was too small and demographically mismatched to draw real conclusions from.

The gym-door survey got a small, polarized response; Guillem later concluded survey data is a weak proxy for real usage, especially for a novel product.

“Only 16 people answered the survey”

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog)

MvpValidated

After the inconclusive survey, Guillem and Desmond built and shipped the MVP to friends and family first. Real validation came once strangers outside that circle started using the app on their own.

Following the friends-and-family soft launch, the app began picking up organic App Store and Google Play traffic from people with no connection to the founders, which is the signal Guillem cites as real validation.

“we had total strangers using our app!”

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog)

First test users

Personal networkFree testers

The MVP's first release went out to friends and family before any public or App Store launch.

“ready for a small launch amongst friends and family”

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog)

First paying customer

Platform marketplaceFree to paid upgrade$3

Hevy ran free for its first six months, then released a paid Pro tier in December 2019. The paying subscribers came out of the same organic funnel as the free users, word of mouth plus people browsing the App Store and Google Play, about 50 to 80 new users a day with no marketing spend. Everyone already using the app was given a free Pro account, so the first 100 subscribers were all people who arrived and converted after the paid tier went live.

“We rely completely on organic downloads, from word of mouth or from people just browsing the App/Play Store”

Desmond McNamee, "Our First 100 Paying Subscribers" (Indie Hackers product update, with founder comment thread)

Acquisition channels, and whether they worked

Word of mouth · friends and familyPre-launchWorked

The MVP first went out to friends and family rather than the public, and that circle was the app's earliest source of usage and reviews.

“ready for a small launch amongst friends and family”

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog)

Guillem credits friends leaving five-star reviews with getting Hevy off the ground in its earliest days, ahead of any paid or PR push.

“we mostly got off the ground with the help of friends giving us 5 star reviews”

Guillem Ros on LinkedIn, "6 years ago when we launched Hevy..."

Product HuntLaunchWorked

Hevy launched on Product Hunt on 16 November 2019, the same day as its formal press-release launch, and saw a spike in signups from the listing.

“Got a bunch of great feedback, and had an amazing reaction from the community”

Guillem Ros, "Launched on Product Hunt!" (Indie Hackers post)

The official Product Hunt account tweeted the launch, giving it extra reach beyond the listing itself.

“We got tweeted by the official Product Hunt account which was really exciting”

Guillem Ros, "Launched on Product Hunt!" (Indie Hackers post)

SEO / Content · App Store / Google Play organic search (ASO)LaunchWorked

After the friends-and-family soft launch, Hevy began surfacing organically in App Store and Google Play search and category browsing, bringing in users with no personal tie to the founders.

“we started gaining organic traffic from the App Store and Google Play”

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog)

What didn't work

Product scopePre-launchCost: time

During prototyping, Guillem let the design scope creep until the app tried to do everything a workout tracker could do, at the expense of doing any one thing well.

“It was the antithesis of what I wanted the app to be.”

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog)

What they did instead: Cut the design back to three pillars only: workout logging, analytics, and social, and built the MVP around those alone.

How it changed as they grew

At launch: 2 people (2 co-founders, Guillem Ros and Desmond McNamee, no other team members)

Today: 8 people (2 founders plus 6 additional team members (per a third-party report referencing 2022-2023 figures))

Bootstrapped

Pricing new tier: free only → free plus a Hevy Pro subscription at $3 per month or $24 per year

The founders kept Hevy free for its first six months and only added a paid Pro tier once they judged the free product solid enough to charge alongside. They deliberately kept the paywall soft so free users, who they saw as the community the app depends on, were not pushed away.

“After 6 months of iterating on the free product, we felt Hevy was robust enough to start offering a Pro version”

Desmond McNamee, "Released Hevy Pro" (Indie Hackers product update)

Sources (8 in the founder's own words)

Guillem Ros, "How we built Hevy" (Hevy blog) · founder-authored
Guillem Ros, "Launch Press Release" (Hevy blog) · founder-authored · 2019-11
"About Us" (Hevy site, founder bios in first person) · founder-authored
Guillem Ros, "Launched on Product Hunt!" (Indie Hackers post) · founder-authored · 2019-11
Guillem Ros on LinkedIn, "6 years ago when we launched Hevy..." · founder-authored
Guillem Ros author bio page (Hevy blog) · founder-authored
BoringCashCow, "Workout Tracking App Makes $40k a Month" · third party
Desmond McNamee, "Released Hevy Pro" (Indie Hackers product update) · founder-authored · 2019-12
Desmond McNamee, "Our First 100 Paying Subscribers" (Indie Hackers product update, with founder comment thread) · founder-authored · 2020-02

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Frequently asked questions

How much does Hevy make?

Hevy reports $160K MRR as of November 2024. $160K MRR November 2024 (~$1.92M ARR). 10M users by 2025. Bootstrapped. Source: GetLatka.

What is Hevy?

Trainings-Tracker und Planer-App für Gewichtheben mit Social-Features und Fortschrittsverfolging. It operates in Gesundheit & Wellness.

How long did it take Hevy to reach $100k arr?

Guillem Ros & Desmond McNamee took 4 years to reach $100k arr with Hevy.

Was Guillem Ros & Desmond McNamee a solo founder?

No. Guillem Ros & Desmond McNamee built Hevy with co-founders.

What marketing channel did Hevy use to grow?

Hevy grew primarily through Mundpropaganda.

What industry is Hevy in?

Hevy operates in Gesundheit & Wellness.

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The Full Story

TL;DR

Guillem und Desmond bauten ein Strava für Gewichtheber, das fast ausschließlich durch Mundpropaganda wuchs.

Ich bin Guillem, Mitgründer von Hevy. Ich arbeite seit einem Jahrzehnt in der Fitness-Welt und habe bei den größten Fitness-Apps gearbeitet. Jetzt baue ich Hevy mit meinem Mitgründer Desmond auf.