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 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”

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”

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”

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”