How I got to the first 1000 users as a solo, non-technical founder

So you have a great idea for an app which could significantly improve the world. But you don’t know how to code…

I get you. I was in the exact same position one year ago, and although ‘significant world improvement’ still eludes me, I’ve managed to create the first version of the app and get the first 1000 users.

This is how I did it. Hopefully it will be helpful for those who are right there where I was one year ago.

It all started with a problem and two very good friends. I wanted to get a healthier lifestyle but despite having done medical school, and with so much contradicting advice out there, I didn’t have a clue as to what I should be doing to help me prevent all those nasty diseases like diabetes, cancer and dementia down the line. So I started reading scientific articles and asked two friends if they wanted to improve their lifestyles with my help.

They said yes and we created a Whatsapp group. I failed them miserably and didn’t help much. But this experiment got me wondering: maybe if we turn this into a sort of game, it would be more fun and engaging? And hopefully more helpful too.

Time to create a larger Whatsapp group with friends. We started playing the healthy habits game. Each one of us would get points for doing the right things for our health. This created a healthy competition which drove us to improve our lifestyle. I was doing all the work behind the scenes using a simple excel spreadsheet.Healthy Habits had reached its first 10 users.

This idea seemed promising. It was time to test the concept with more people. But doing all the work required using an excel spreadsheet only, simply wouldn’t be possible. It would be much easier if I could use an app to save and track my daily habits. Only one small problem, I didn’t know how to code…

This left me with all but one solution: learn how to code. So I started taking Udacity’s online courses on Android development. It took me 2–3 months to create an app that I wasn’t totally ashamed of showing other human beings. A group of about 20 friends and family agreed to give it a try. Healthy Habits had just crossed the 25 user mark.

I kept taking online courses and improving the app. It was a great motivation realizing that (at least) some of my friends and family were getting value from using the app and improving their lifestyle. But what if they were just being supportive?… I had to test it with complete strangers.

I tried to find beta-testers in multiple ways. The strategies that worked best were posts on health related Facebook groups and on the Quantified Self forum, and cold emails to the scientists that had done the studies I was using in the app. “A real-life game to help you live longer” was going to be tested in the real world. Healthy Habits had more than 75 users by now.

The feedback I got was reassuringly similar to that of my friends: a significant portion liked it and used it for several weeks to improve their habits, another group liked it and used it a bit but didn’t really manage to improve their lifestyle, and the remainder felt that something was still missing.

I made a few improvements based on their feedback and moved on to the next step: the Google Play store launch. I wasn’t expecting a huge success, but what happened still felt totally demotivating! What happened was that nothing happened. “Build it and they will come” really didn’t work for me. No one came…

After a couple weeks agonising over why things weren’t working out, I realised that a distribution strategy was needed. “Build it, tell them about it, and then, some will come” worked a bit better. I started telling people about what I was doing through Reddit (the Longevity subreddit was a big hit), Facebook and Instagram. Slowly, new users started to show up. Healthy Habits reached 100 users.

Then something amazing happened: the first few users that loved the app. And they started rating the app with five stars! Some of the first ones were friends who were being kind but after a while complete strangers started telling me they loved it and asking for new features. This led to a ramp-up in organic growth — people downloading the app either after a search in the app store or through word-of-mouth. Healthy Habits crossed 500 downloads.

Immediately after the 500 downloads milestone, I noticed something: the conversion rate in the app store suddenly increased. If before, only 15% of people in the app store that clicked on the app downloaded it in the end. After, this number jumped to close to 20%.

In the meantime, I was working on a new version and a slightly different concept. In the medical prevention space you have two big problems to solve: a) what is the most important thing someone can do to be healthier and prevent disease, and b) how to help them with behaviour change. What I realised from user feedback and by analysing the usage metrics was that users were being attracted by and really appreciating the app’s approach to problem a) but no so much to problem b). And they were asking for more help with problem a).

So I did what they were asking for. A new concept was born and is now being tested: “Find the most important lifestyle change for your health”. Users can choose their main health goal (e.g. Live Longer, Prevent Breast Cancer, Prevent Dementia, Prevent Diabetes, etc.) and fill in a lifestyle survey. Using data from the best and most up-to-date scientific research on lifestyle and medical prevention, and the information provided by the users, the app shows them which are the most important lifestyle changes to achieve their health goal and what benefit they could expect.

The new version is doing wonders and the app just crossed the 1000 users mark. Weeeeee!

There is still a lot to do to help people increase their chances against the most common, yet preventable, diseases. But we can only take one step at a time. The next step is to make the app more engaging and motivate users to change their behaviour. Hopefully this will help the app reach 5000 downloads.

My takeaway so far is: when you find an insurmountable problem, or things aren’t working as you hoped and your efforts seem pointless, keep going, keep trying, keep learning. It’s a long journey and it ends if you stop. So don’t stop. Keep pushing forward. Good luck!

You can also find the most important lifestyle changes for your health with the Healthy Habits app

A special thank you to inesvanmuysen for her help and feedback on this story!

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 272,171+ people.

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