How I Built This $160K/Month Gym App
Mauro Botanes joins Starter Story to explain how he grew Symmetry, a gym-tracking app, to $160K per month in one year using data-driven experimentation instead of gut instinct.
The gist
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Set quarterly OKRs, then run A/B tests for at least 2 weeks with control and variant groups before shipping any feature.
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Focus experiments on high-friction moments in your funnel, like a search screen that moved activation and retention by 3% or more.
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Use analytics to find funnel drop-off points, then talk to users to understand why they are dropping off.
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A/B test your paywall variants and track ARPU by country and 30-day retention, since ARPU sets your acquisition budget.
"I use quarterly OKRs and put really ambitious OKRs. OKRs are very important to give you direction and to know towards where to build. We see them if not weekly, daily, to make sure we are always on track towards these OKRs."
▶ Play at 7:362 creators recommend it, including Eric Ryan.
See all on the OKRs page"These experiments are being tracked in PostHog. So, here we track everything, and we can see how everything is running. For AB testing, we use PostHog."
▶ Play at 11:576 creators recommend it, including Furqan Rydhan, Greg Isenberg, and Maddox Schmidtoffer.
See all on the PostHog page"For AB testing the paywalls, we use Superwall. They have really good experimentation tools."
▶ Play at 13:214 creators recommend it, including Benjamin Chen, Kyle Fowler, and Nicole LePera.
See all on the SuperWall page"We connect to this analytics tool like PostHog or Superwall or RevenueCat with MCP, and see all of our data from there."
▶ Play at 13:119 creators recommend it, including Ben Leavitt, Cedric Roberge, and Christian.
See all on the RevenueCat pageWhat they recommend · 9 picks
Productivity
4 picks · Mauro Botanes ·Mauro's productivity →
"We found UGC. We were really good at it and we just did more and better. In the last year, we have posted nearly 80,000 videos, we have more than 500 accounts, and we have done ..."
"You must AB test everything. You have your control version, the version of your app currently, and the new version being AB tested. After at least 2 weeks of running the experim..."
Software & apps
3 picks · Mauro Botanes ·Mauro's software & apps →
"These experiments are being tracked in PostHog. So, here we track everything, and we can see how everything is running. For AB testing, we use PostHog."
"For AB testing the paywalls, we use Superwall. They have really good experimentation tools."
"We connect to this analytics tool like PostHog or Superwall or RevenueCat with MCP, and see all of our data from there."
AI tools
2 picks · Mauro Botanes ·Mauro's AI tools →
"Me and my team, we use Claude everywhere. We love to use Claude with MCPs, and we connect to analytics tools like PostHog or Superwall or RevenueCat with MCP, and see all of our..."
"I also use WhisperFlow a lot. I like to speak with my computer, and that way I'm faster than typing."
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