A Build-in-Public Investor Update

We just sent out a big update, clearing us for a mini-launch this week! 🚀

(This is republished from my Substack. To get the story first, subscribe there)

Over the last month, some incredible things have happened.

• We’ve watched an invite-only beta spread to over 18 countries
• We’ve watched user retention hold incredibly steady at 40mins / day / user
• We’ve watched our WAU and MAU chart continue to track up and to the right

The best part? We’ve been heads down, building the product, talking to investors, mapping out a new professional-app roadmap, and connecting with fellow builders who could be great additions to our team.

We can’t wait until we add a dedicated focus on community, marketing & growth. Our unique position as the first holistic, tech-agnostic, universal social health interface — enabling anyone to sync activity, cross-platform / cross device — is something missing at both the individual and organizational level. We plan on capturing both markets with a versatile, consumer-facing product.

Things we’ve been tracking

We’ve spent a lot of time finding qualitative-oriented adjustments through iterative feedback. Our team has been talking with our global user-base every day to carve out unique insights and narrow our focus to the key features driving the user experience.

In particular, our team has been tirelessly improving our cabanas — the central feature on our app . We’ve been making structural edits aimed at a more intuitive experience (especially for users with English as a second language). Additionally, we’ve focused on making it easier to join new cabanas. We want Teammates to effortlessly find cabanas that both match their current interests and also enable them to explore new segments of holistic health.

Finally, we’re empowering users (who we call Teammates) to escape the healthtech niches they’ve been previously stuck in. This is incredibly rewarding to watch, and we can’t wait to improve the experience and break through even more verticals soon.

We’ve recently implemented fixes like:

• Standardizing metrics attributed to all synced activities
• Fixing bugs associated with linking data points to cabanas
• Optimizing load time and navigation
• Improving the onboarding experience
• Making support resources more accessible

In doing this, we’ve also been:

• Answering questions around the clock from all over the world
• Exploring existing tech verticals to better understand where the needs we’re addressing are the most severe

Two standout existing user niches during this beta period have been Apple Watch users (1), and now we’re witnessing the rise of Peloton users (2).

This clearly demonstrates that — even for individuals who use the exact same technology, with tech that should be optimized for sharing — there’s still so much missing. The vertical ecosystems they rely on have forgotten to prioritize accountability, teamwork, and a social setting. Without these essential keystones, it’s difficult for anyone to focus on a healthy lifestyle, month-by-month, across holistic health.

Apart from our qualitative focus, the numbers still matter, and we’ve enjoyed watching the results of our work 😄. We’re currently sitting around 100 WAU and 250 MAU from about 300 invites sent through our user base from February. Average user engagement per day continues to hover at 40 mins. It seems our audience is beginning to grasp what’s possible on Cabana Health.

Things we have planned

First things first, we’re planning an upcoming Product Hunt launch to open our app to new outsiders. This will be our first time using Product Hunt, and we anticipate our usage to climb even with a non-targeted audience if done successfully.

One of our principles is to move fast, so once everything’s working from this next major update (which we’re already testing), we’ll try to be prepared for a launch within a few days. Our goal is to be in the best position to make sure nothing breaks, stress-test our beta real-time, and make a zero-to-one product immediately easy to understand for all new Teammates.

After launching, tidying up any major bugs, and hearing new feedback, we plan to begin raising our pre-seed/seed round.

Over the last 3 weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of talking with 50+ investors about our product, team & mission. Tom and I will be raising for the first time and don’t have the luxury of an existing venture network already in place. Because of that, we’ve been very happy with how our pure cold-email outreach has worked in an industry where introductions are so important. We will soon double back and map out any potential warm intros for firms & people that require it before starting on our round.

Our objective in raising is to add the necessary help we need to scale our app quickly and transition our focus to growth. We can’t wait to provide cabanas to built-in communities like influencers, organizations, companies, events and more. This is what our cabana architecture is engineered for! This is the next step, this is where we can provide compounded value-add, this is where long-term networking effects set in.

To serve these collectives, we need extra help with development and community — these are the areas we look to deploy capital and spur progress. We also project strong unit economics with an initial user-monetizable value of $3.50 per month while maintaining a free, add-free service. For that reason, we look to use some added marketing spend to reach a wider audience and accelerate growth.

In exciting news, we’ve started mapping out our V3 product — our professional app.

The speed and strides we’ve taken from our alpha (November, V1) to our beta (February, V2) and now to our professional app (Pending, V3) is something I’m very proud of.

Our team has gained an incredible amount of clarity on the user segments we’re serving (and the segments we’re positioned to reach). Team confidence is high as we map out our professional app.

With our V3, we’ll be bringing together a transformative design experience with a breakthrough engineering feat to put forward a new standard for social health. We want Cabana Health to be the first thing people download after getting their Apple Watch, or Peloton, or Headspace subscription, Oura Ring, Strava, or Lose It membership. We’re ready to do what it takes to achieve this.

Lastly, our team is happy to set up private demos of our V3 product with willing stakeholders who align with our mission. I promise you your mind will be blown :)

Last note, Tom and I are in LA / SD during May (vaccinated), and would love to meet up if you’re in the area! Send either of us a ping and we’ll do our best to get together!

(As a reminder: this is republished from my Substack. To get the story first, subscribe there)