Speaker 1I launched Symmetry a year ago, and now it's one of the biggest names in one of the most saturated app markets. This is Mauro. He's 22, and in just one year, he built an app that makes over $160,000 a month. But this isn't really a story about the app he built. It's more of a story about how he
Speaker 2decides what to build. First, we built what we wanted. Terrible idea. Second, we built what users wanted. Mediocre. And now we approach a methodical and scientific way of actually
Speaker 1building useful things. Most builders just ship features and hope they work, but Mauro does it differently. He treats every feature like a science experiment, and I think it's the number one reason his app is so successful.
Speaker 2Adding one screen, it's increased 3% retention. That is why you have to A-B test everything.
Speaker 1So I asked Mauro to come onto the channel to break down this entire approach, and in this episode, we'll dive into the app that he built, that makes over $160,000 a month, why most builders are wasting so much time on features that won't move the needle, and his approach on how to build apps the right way in 2026. All right, let's dive in. I'm Pat Walls, and this is Starter Story. All right, Mauro, Gus, and I would love to welcome you to the Starter Story channel. So tell us about who you are, what app you built, and what's your story?
Speaker 2So my name is Mauro. I'm 22 years old, and I like the gym so much that I've been doing it for a long time. And I've been doing it for a long time. The fastest-growing health and fitness app in the Spanish market. I launched Symmetry like a year ago, and now it's one of the biggest names in one of the most saturated app markets. And today, I want to share all the tactics of how I did it.
Speaker 3All right, Mauro, thanks for being here. Could you just pull up your app, tell us what it is, who your users are, and then pull up your revenue dashboards to show off that this is legit?
Speaker 2Okay, so basically, it's a gym tracking app. So you can track your workouts and track your weight and reps for different exercises. And currently, we are in the Spanish market, mainly in Spain and Mexico. Okay, so this is our revenue cut dashboard. You can see we're currently at around 160K monthly revenue, and we currently have around $3 million both across iOS and Android. What I think is super cool about what
Speaker 1you built is that you built this gym app, but it's sort of localized to the LATAM market, the Spanish market. There's plenty of gym apps in the US, and then finding this sort of niche. This is clearly working. It's doing over $160,000 in revenue in the last 30 days, which is cool. And we're going to talk all about it in a little bit. So let's get started. Okay, so we're going to talk all about it in a little bit. And we're going to talk all about it in a little bit. And we're going to talk all about it in a little bit. And we're going to talk all about it in a little bit. We're going to talk all about the growth. But before we do, I want to understand a little bit about your background. Had you always been building apps? What's your background? How do
Speaker 2you get to this point? Growing up, I was actually obese, and the gym is what helped me a lot. The reason I built Symmetry was to share this improvement I had in my life with others. Before building Symmetry, I was actually a fitness YouTuber, and so were my co-founders. And we were like, okay, YouTube is good, but we want to help more people. How can we do this? And that is when we joined together to build Symmetry.
Speaker 3All right, before we get into some of the stuff we want to talk about, we have to like building the product. Let's talk about growth. So maybe just give us a little bit of a sense of your growth timeline. You said you launched like a year ago. Talk to us about
Speaker 2your growth timeline in the last year. So we launched on 6th of June of last year, so just barely over a year. When we first launched, we had a very small spike in downloads due to our previous YouTuber era. But then we had to transform into another acquisition channel that was reliable and scalable. And over summer, we were trying to do GC. We barely were at around 30K downloads. At the end of quarter four, we did see a lot of growth. We had a lot of growth. Slight increase, but it was in January in Q1 when we saw a spike. Maybe people go to the gym more in January. And since then, we've stabilized. Awesome. And then let's talk about some of the
Speaker 3tactics that you use to grow. I think you just mentioned UGC. What were some of the main growth strategies you use to grow this app to over $150,000 a month?
Speaker 2So first, when we launched, we had this YouTube community that we thought was going to be really good for growing the app. It wasn't. So we started to try new things. We went into influencer marketing. It didn't work. So we tried other methods. And that is when we found GC. We were really good at it. And we just did more and better. Okay, so this is our internal dashboard. In the last year, we have posted nearly 80,000 videos. We have more than 500 accounts. And we have done nearly a billion views in the last year. Something that really works for us is we segment the videos into formats. This was a format that works really good for us, where you see the lock screen of your iPhone with a notification. In this case, your girlfriend leaving you. And below, a symmetry notification saying, go to the gym and work out. And then you see the lock screen of your iPhone with a notification saying, go to the gym and work out. And then you see the lock screen of your iPhone. Well, it works so well that we track all of the videos and we even have sub formats to segment them even more. And this video went extremely viral. You can see 17 million views. So the way we pay our creators and how much are we spending and marketing, basically, we give nearly half of the revenue to the creators. So we pay them a lot. This way, they're incentivized to do more content and to stay in symmetry for the long run.
Speaker 1Okay, thanks for sharing all that about how you grew. I think that's super cool. We've done a ton of videos on UGC. I don't think that's anything new. And you can go and check out a bunch of the content that they create. And see some of the examples. But I actually thought was super cool. And we had chatted before Mauro, as you told me, you have like, sort of like a different approach to building. And when we started digging into it, I thought it was super cool, because you got this app to $160,000 a month within one year. And that's like, really, really fast. Like, usually, you'll see, you know, maybe get to 30 or 50k within a year, you did it super fast. And I think one of those reasons was sort of you have this sort of different approach to building that you shared with me where things just kind of started working right away. So could you share with me that approach to like, how you knew what to build? What features to build?
Speaker 2Yeah, so we went through three different phases when building symmetry. First, we built what we wanted. Terrible idea. Second, we built what users wanted, like directly from feedback requests. Mediocre. And now we approach a methodical and scientific way of actually building useful things.
Speaker 1Okay, yeah, so I agree. I mean, I see a lot of people that go and just start building stuff. Maybe they ask their AI tool. About what to build, or maybe they build based on instincts. But yeah, yours is a little different. Could you dive a little bit more into what you mean by that?
Speaker 2Yeah, so people normally are incorrect about what is important to build and what is not important. Let's say you build a dark theme or a light theme, this may affect like 2% of your daily active users. Whereas if you A-B test the paywall, it's going to affect a lot of users in a radical way. That's why there are like even software just to A-B test at one screen. And apart from the paywall, there are very other important places of your app. And your job is to find those places. And A-B test them and really exploit all of the metrics from them. For example, in Symmetry, our exercise search screen, so the screen you search exercises has a huge impact on activation and retention. Whereas the screen you log into the app first to see your workouts, we've done a lot of things there and doesn't seem to change anything.
Speaker 3Hey, it's Gus, producer here at Starter Story. I love everything that Mauro is breaking down about his process of building apps. I hope you're watching this and getting excited about building your own app as well. But if you're still looking for an idea, we have just the thing for you. It's our free iOS database. And inside you will find hundreds of proven app ideas, and many of them are making over $10,000 a month. And each of the ideas in the database has the numbers to back it up. Real revenue, pricing models, growth tactics, basically everything you need to validate whether this is a good idea or not. Just head to the link in the description and grab this database. It's 100% for free. All right, let's get back to the episode.
Speaker 2So first you want to decide what metrics to actually move. For me, I use quarterly OKRs and put really ambitious OKRs. If your app is really new, put ambitious OKRs. Like it's very easy to increase 10% conversion rate in 90 days if your app was launched last week. Whereas if you're Netflix, it's not going to be as easy. So the earlier the product is, the more ambitious your OKRs have to be. For example, in our case, we call this thing a warmup, which we do every 90 days because we're going to work. Here you have your marketing objectives, your product, and then here we have all of the metrics to keep track. And we see them, if not weekly, daily to make sure we are always on track towards this OKRs. OKRs are very important to give you direction and to know towards where to build for a gym tracking app. A very important metric is activation. If you move activation, retention follows. For example, activation in symmetry is really hard because you have to make someone go to the gym and actually track it. Which is crazy friction, even both for a beginner that has never gone to a gym or someone at the end that you have to change his behavior, his pattern of working out. Crazy work. Whereas, for example, in a calorie tracking app, you just snap a photo and that's activation. So you must know which metrics you want to move and which ones are going to bring long-term revenue.
Speaker 1For people watching this that are also building apps, what are the key data points that you are tracking?
Speaker 2Well, first of all, especially if you're new, downloads. The more downloads, the more revenues. It's proportional. So that's very important. Regarding what's the product, it depends on your product. Activation, in our case, is very important. But for most apps, first week retention or 30-day retentions are very important. And also a very important number is ARPU, average revenue per user, how much you make for every download. This is going to basically decide the amount of money you can pay for creators if they...
Speaker 1I think a lot of people watching this are also building something. They're building an app. Maybe they even have a live app in the app store or they have a SaaS on the internet. I think this framework is really cool where you're actually using data and then making decisions based on that data. Could you give some advice to people who are watching this right now who want to implement a system like this? What data should they be tracking? How should they be running experiments? And what would you do if you're just getting started right now?
Speaker 2First, the most common error I see everybody is not tracking anything. They don't have any events at all in their app. And I'm like, okay, what's your... drop off here and they're like um i don't know well you must have analytics put in your app everywhere the earlier they are in the funnel the more in detail there should be so onboarding must be tracked every screen these analytics are very good for quantitative data meaning you know where you're losing people so that tells you where the problem is happening but not the why for the why you need qualitative data here you speak with the users or they maybe put up posts in like a discord or reddit about your app something like that and then you understand why something is happening so you know the what is happening due to the funnels and the data analytics and then you know the why
Speaker 1because you speak with the users yeah this is something super common that i'll see people who are like developers they're like uh want to just get only qualitative data and then they end up like sending a bunch of surveys and not actually like talking to customers and there's so much value you can get out of talking to customers the last question that i sort of have around this is around okay so when you need to make a product decision how do you go about a b testing two different things how
Speaker 2do you track that how do you think about it okay first you're not coming from a solution place you must come from a problem space so coming up with problems and then after you go for the solution here you come up with different hypotheses different solutions and you design experiments to test these hypotheses so first what problem am i solving how do i know it's real you must know if it's this is happening and then what's the solution and the hypothesis how much will each hypothesis move the metric are there any guardrail metrics i should watch out and then also very important you must a b test everything you have your control version the version of your app currently and the new version being a b tested and after at least two weeks of running the experiment you then analyze the data and really know what is happening to the users for example this is what we call evelyn experiment velocity engine list in your numbers here we have all of our ebitest tracks this is a database that comes from user interviews so it's user interviews that show us the user problem then we do the hypothesis and then we do the experiments these experiments are being tracking puzzle so here we track everything and we can see how everything is running for example this was an experiment i mentioned earlier about the page you see after the onboarding where you see your workouts you see here we tested two different variants apart from the control and they moved nothing the metrics absolutely nothing and they were completely different designs this does say let's not focus on here again this is an inconclusive test let's focus on other areas of the app for example this experiment is just one screen at the end of the onboarding where you commit to like workout so you're like signing hey i'm going to work up that's it one screen just look at how the metrics move it's increased three percent retention adding one screen that is
Speaker 3why you have to a b test everything yeah i was going to chime in with a quick thought which was like i didn't start building anything until all these ai coding tools came out and i definitely fall into the trap of like oh that would be cool that'd be cool if it existed without any information and so you're listening to you talk here i'm like okay there's a lot of good things to keep in mind cool let's switch topics a little bit uh so you you talked to us about all the things you analyze and all the tools you use maybe just walk us through the tech stack you've used to to build this app or the tech stack and tools you use on a daily basis to to run this app well
Speaker 2obviously i use me and my team we use cloud everywhere we love to use cloud with mcps and we connect to this analytics tool like post hoc or super wall revenue cat with mcp and see all our data from there i also use whisperflow a lot i like to speak with my computer and that way i'm faster than typing also for every test in the paywalls we use super they have really good experimentation tools for every testing we use post hoc then we use notion to track all of our documentation and slack to
Speaker 1speak with the team and that's pretty much it okay thanks for sharing tech stack i'm also curious uh we've been talking all about your app here could you just give me a quick demo of your app that
Speaker 2makes over 160 000 a month yeah so our app we try to make it really simple so the first thing you see when you come just like your plan to work out you click on the plan and you see a workout preview and then you start your workout here you can track your weights your reps and we even have like videos to explain different exercises and then the thing that people most like is here the ranks you're seeing at the ranks page where you have a rank for every muscle group and for every exercise and also here you have the social network so it's like a strava you can see here all of the people in in the feed uploading their workouts i even have my own workouts here so it's really fun because people share their workouts you have your streak you cannot lose your streak to your friends you level up in different exercises and people just are having a really great time in symmetry
Speaker 1okay thanks for sharing looks like an awesome app last question that we ask all founders to come on to start a story if you go back in time before uh the year that you started symmetry before you had a successful app what would be your advice to your younger self or for anyone watching this that wants
Speaker 2to build apps that are crushing it like yours i would say to play long-term games with long-term people symmetry was launched one year ago but we actually started the company two years ago we were really bad when we started but we never surrendered and we just kept pushing kept improving the product kept improving our own skills and if you're with people that are here for the long term 10 plus
Speaker 1years it's just a matter of time that you make it too that's great advice thank you mauro for coming on the channel love what you built congrats massive success even after just a year of launching i think people are going to love this one so thanks for coming on thanks for having me pat it's my pleasure to be here all right gus the new co-host of starter story first of all welcome how was your interview being on camera for the first time first off for anyone watching you're still watching this
Speaker 3be kind to me you won't see this in the take but i definitely had a double take when i asked that first question and so for anyone watching who thinks this is easy not easy pat is a pro yeah what did i think of the video it really stood out to me the whole like run experiments thing because like i mentioned maybe in the interview if it makes it into the cut most of my like product decisions have been like oh that sounds cool i wish i could build that or i should just do that with like zero data zero information that's kind of my first thought is like oh a lot goes into all these apps more than just like what cool feature should i build yeah no i mean this is
Speaker 1um sometimes i think people online talk about building apps and like oh you just prompt cloud code or whatever how real companies actually build product is very data based and very analytical and i think that it's sort of like nice to know that if you want to make a change in your app you know that test off once you have enough users i think that's the right way to approach building
Speaker 3anything yeah i'm curious you're really data driven like analytical whether it's with starter story with something else like i think someone watching might think like how much do these really move the needle you know clearly he told he gave us a good example of one that like didn't matter or did matter but like in your experience what's that been like for you i guess that's i'm curious
Speaker 1most of the tests that you run and the things that you try don't move the needle at all and i think just doing those and seeing that and knowing that those things don't matter is like really powerful so that the next time you go and someone says let's change the planning page or let's update the settings page or whatever things that don't matter you already know like obviously you don't want to ever make too many assumptions but you already know like hey that's probably not going to have a huge impact i actually know the things that are probably going to have an impact and then you start building your sense around what to even test so most things don't make a difference and i think just knowing that is good to know that hey maybe focus more on marketing than product often but having the tools and the tool set to know how to make changes and how to track those changes i think is really powerful all right guys we'll see you in the next one peace
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