Sam Penny (00:00)
Welcome back to Built to Sell, Built to Buy. I'm Sam Penny and this show is for founders who are done waiting. If you're sick of tiptoeing around your potential and ready to grab 2026 by the balls.
You're in the right place. Today, I've got a guest who's not just building businesses. He's launching rocket ships. Jonathan Maxim has launched apps that hit a million downloads, raise millions in funding and help hundreds of founders get to that golden first 10,000 users from Via Fitness to HeyPal to viral app launch. He's built a playbook for launching fast, scaling lean and turning momentum into money. This episode is about what it actually takes to make this your breakout year.
If you've got a spark, this conversation will give you the fire. So let's get into it. Jonathan, welcome to the show.
Jonathan Maxim (00:47)
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I'll try to live up to that introduction.
Sam Penny (00:50)
⁓
mate, I love doing my intros that it really sets the scene. ⁓ And this is going to be a great conversation. I've done a heap of research on you and gone back into into your past. I want to start with grit because I think that that's really a core feature of who you are. Now you started something called Via Fitness. What did that teach you about ideas to traction?
Jonathan Maxim (01:18)
Yeah, that was a very formative experience. My first startup, Via Fitness, gave you rewards for working out. So you run two miles, you get a bottle of water or a tank top or 20 % off a pair of shoes, something like that. And that was a story of grit. Unfortunately, it was a little bit misplaced grit in my opinion, which is part of what I learned from the experience. I launched this app. got it to 46,000 users, went viral twice, had two days where we got 10,000 15,000 downloads. And I figured out how to make things
rocket ship, right? But what I didn't do was monetize that app. And so I wasn't making money on those 46,000 users because of investors directions. I was actually talking to Kevin Hart and Mark Cuban at the time.
And Mark Cuban's team was telling me, this was his health VC, was saying, hey, go this direction, go B2B, sell to health care providers as an accountability system to reduce insurance liability. Kevin Hart was telling me, hey, let's make this a viral social media platform, put my name on it, and go big. So I got two investors pulling me in completely different directions, insisting that I follow their direction, contingent for that investment. So that kind of like split me wide open. And ultimately, I was following Kevin Hart's advice because he was going to be the lead investor.
And that, of course, gutted out the company because I was not monetizing. And so the main lesson that I took from that was I need to not just monetize the product so that you can sustain being a founder, but it's more about understanding which users you can really offer value to and something that would be worthwhile for them to pay for. If they're not willing to pay for it, how valuable is it?
Sam Penny (02:52)
So then coming back, we were talking just before the show, I've got this huge strong belief of building the core values into a company early on and really understanding what the brand pillars are of what you're creating. Did you skip that step? Were they misplaced? What was it that you recognized that you didn't connect then with the end user?
Jonathan Maxim (03:16)
Yeah, that's a great question because in my experience being a founder, I've founded several companies by now, but it's always a little hard for me to put those on paper before I start the business. It's a lot easier for me after I've run the business for a little while and see what my opposition is and see what I'm against and then taking a stance against that. So I've always developed my core values after I started the business because maybe I just lacked that clarity early on. Maybe I was too young and naive or simply too lazy to do that due diligence early on.
Now when it came around to this company, I did it from the very beginning and I really think that that helped set that rock solid foundation. But it was also through multiple startups that I learned what I really care about, which is candor, innovation, and ⁓ mindfulness. So those are the three core tenets of our current business today. But like you said, if there's no foundation to the business, really the floor can fall out on you. You really don't have a point of reference for all your decision making. For example,
Am I going to be B to B or am I going to be B to C? If somebody's pulling me one direction, as long as I know where I stand, that shouldn't be a hard question. But it was a hard question for me because presumably I really didn't have that values foundation or those first principles ironed out in advance.
Sam Penny (04:29)
So the few companies that you've built, Jonathan, and the core values that you've placed into those, how closely do they mirror your personal core values?
Jonathan Maxim (04:42)
They're very close. It's essentially an emulation or an augmentation of my own personal values, what I really care about, which is integrity, hard work. It goes all the way back to the things my dad taught me about, finished the job completely, looked the same on the inside as the outside, stuff like that. And that's kind of what I realized was I just need to communicate how my heart feels on the paper for my team to get on board with it and also for them to assimilate, because it's like...
Are they with these values or are they not? Again, it provides a pretty black and white measure of who's gonna make a good fit. And when you put a stake in the ground and you say, is what we stand for, the people who are not a good fit see their way out the door. So that also makes your life a lot easier if you don't like firing people.
Sam Penny (05:23)
Now you've built hundreds of app campaigns over your time. Is there one single biggest myth that founders still believe ⁓ about growth?
Jonathan Maxim (05:35)
Yeah, it's the build it and they will come concept. That's the biggest pitfall that I see startups make. also, in this era of AI, when people can make an app in 15 minutes, there is now a proliferation of apps. But now what there's lack of is people who know how to launch them. And so I just happened to be in this business at the time that this came about. But now I'm seeing it in large volume. I've got people making
products for hospitality, people making Fitness products, all these different products. And they've never worked in that space before. They've never maybe done marketing before. And so when they get their product built, there's this kind of lottery mindset that's been instilled in founders. You start a company, a software company, and millions of people can use the app, and everyone's going to get rich, and it's going to be great. But it doesn't happen that way. They launch on the app store, their website, and then it's pretty much just crickets. They'll get 100, 150 users from their friends and family.
And then that's when they end up on my doorstep and I say, look, they're not gonna come. We have to tell them.
Sam Penny (06:36)
So you've made virality an art form really, and that's consistent all through what you're doing. Obviously, the name of your business has the word viral in it. What does the average founder miss in all of this?
Jonathan Maxim (06:51)
When they design viral structures, so there's two components to virality. There's the product component, which is the product selling itself to other users. And then there's the marketing component, which is how we tell people about the platform. In most people's minds, they will design a referral program, for example. Invite a friend and get this bonus or whatever it is or get some in-app points, something like that. But what they don't do is they don't make it a mechanical function of the app. For example, the optimal way to make a viral app
is to make it such that the user has to complete actions that invite other users to the platform to get the maximum value from it. So you want it to be what we'll incorporate is called a forcing function. Every user has to encounter an opportunity to share it with a friend. And before you ask them for value, need to them the user value first. So the way I like to structure things, let's just use the onboarding experience as an example. So the first time somebody opens an app, screen one is the hook.
Get them excited, get their attention, get them hooked in, you know, sink it in and pull them forward, right? Next we ask, what brings you here today? We're diagnosing their problem, right? I wanna, you know, lose 10 pounds, for example. And then in the next screen, we present the solution. Hey, we got just the thing for you to lose 10 pounds in 90 days. Here's how it works. And then at that time, we offer a little social proof. If you like, trusted by 10,000 Fitness enthusiasts just like you, and then make a call to action and say, try it free for seven days after we've presented the solution, right? So it goes hook, problem.
solution called Action with Social Proof. And then at this point, the user has felt understood. They've gotten their problem diagnosed. They've gotten their problem solved. And so it's actually an appropriate time to ask for the purchase from the user. So a good app can actually get people to purchase within 30 seconds picking up the app just by shining a light on the challenge and the solution and presenting that solution to the user. But what I do that not many people do is I always include a referral opportunity after.
They purchase, so if you take the offer, then it says, hey, Sam, if you wanna get a month free and your friend get a month free, invite them right now. For every friend you invite who pays, we'll give you and them a month free. And so a user like yourself could maybe get three months free just by inviting three friends. And now me as an app founder has four people. When I paid to acquire one customer, I now have four customers. And so that's the mechanics of how virality has to work in order to really, really spread. You think about Dropbox, you think about Uber, all their programs.
reward you, reward them, and make it a part of the experience.
Sam Penny (09:20)
Going back to marketing 101, know, the framework that you just mentioned, similar to a framework that I still use to this day, AIDA, Attention, Interest, Desire, Action, which is exactly same as what you were mentioning just before. Do you feel that many founders are skipping, you know, just the basics of marketing and going straight to product and just out there?
Jonathan Maxim (09:31)
Yeah, I had the idea.
Yes, featureitis is a common name for it. It's like they just, not only do they only talk about the product features and benefits, but they spend time building more more features on their product, especially when AI makes it as easy as a single prompt to build a whole new feature for the app. So what's now scarce is value, and what's now proliferate is fluff. A lot of features, what often happens is a user doesn't have one core massive
Massive value feature like one Grand Slam component of the app and so they start bolting on all these other features But what happens for you as a user Sam as you open it up you like you got ten features I don't know how to use this damn thing and then they use their bounces, right? So whether they are building additional features and overwhelming customers who you know Don't know how to use the product yet or whether they're putting like a list of product features on the website When you're when you're talking about how great you are how great your product is it just comes off as pitching
And when you come off as pitching, sales, then the consumer gets on their back foot and they back off and they're like, whoa, okay, buddy, like, I don't wanna be pressured into this. However, if you take the doctor's approach, which I'm sure you know this because what I've already picked up from you, the doctor says, hey, tell me what's going on today. Where does it hurt? On a scale of one to 10, how bad does it hurt? When does your knee hurt? Okay, can you show me where it hurts? Boom, he's providing a consultative, caring, empathetic approach to understanding your challenge.
before he provides a prescription. If the doctor walked in and just gave you a prescription, he's like, you know what, Sam, I think you've got cancer. I'm gonna go ahead and prescribe chemotherapy. You're gonna be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. However, if you went through three MRIs, saw two doctors, and went through a whole discovery process, that diagnosis and that prescription are gonna be a lot more welcome from the user. So people get the psychology wrong. They default to pitching as opposed to understanding and empathy.
Sam Penny (11:42)
Jonathan, 2026 is really going to be a year of being able to launch fast. So I see this as the year of the fast founder. What opportunities are you seeing in 2026, this year coming, that probably didn't even exist 12 months ago?
Jonathan Maxim (12:00)
Well first of all, AI makes it really, really easy to make an app. I love working with Replet, Lovable, all these platforms. I've built six apps for myself. So really anybody, regardless of experience, can become an app founder now. That's awesome, right? And like you said, it's the year of the fast founder. You can get an app live in a single day these days. So everyone, just democratized the opportunity in a massive, massive way. People can make single function apps. For example, like,
I saw one app that helped guys improve their jawline, or another app that helps them, like, ⁓ max for improving their style, improving their looks. These simple single function apps are becoming really popular. They're going viral on Reddit and stuff. So really, anybody can do it. Anybody can get rich in this space. But what they have to understand is if you want to have 2026 be your breakout year, your fast founder year, you have to be having a
a real quick feedback cycle, right? Put the product in the market, see what users are saying about it, make optimizations, optimize around that, you know, the audience who's providing the best quality, like the best, the most engaged users, I should say, right? Like the ones who are most trigger happy to buy it, the ones who are using it the most, because ultimately what you're gonna wanna find is, you know, let's just say you make a Fitness app, you're gonna wanna pick a niche within Fitness that is not as competitive. You wanna be a big fish in a small pond and eat all the other fish around you and become a shark.
before you go into the open ocean, right? So a lot of founders are gonna be in this position where they'll make a product, they'll be like, oh my God, this thing has so much potential, it's the next Uber, I hear that every day. But what actually makes it the next Uber is like building in the virality, of course, but also following a roadmap that is proven, right? So getting the product right, understanding and finding your ideal customer profile, understanding the customer acquisition costs of that profile, and then.
Optimizing your revenue per user and then doing the virality. So I always take founders through these four stages product marketing sales Virality and then we go to cap raising and we don't go to capital raising if the business is missing monetization for example Because no investors want to invest in products that have zero revenue these days So it's important to follow all those steps and if founders do that, look, it's gonna require more patience You're gonna have to put blinders on you're not going to be trying influencer marketing here and doing all these random things
You're gonna be dialed in and focused on understanding your customer acquisition costs, understanding your lifetime value, how profitable your users are, and stepping up from there. And once you've got that ratio figured out, I mean, the sky's the limit. You can just invest in ads forever and scale, scale, scale. I mean, that's what we're doing with our business. We got profitable on our ideal customer profiles. We have two of them. They return $10 for every $1 that we spend, so I'm spending as quickly as I can.
Sam Penny (14:47)
Yeah, absolutely. Now, AI, obviously, it's going to be an amazing tool to leverage in 2026. So then how should the founder be thinking about speed this year?
Jonathan Maxim (14:58)
Well, speed I think is relative and we all decide what speed looks like for us. The mistake I made when I was a first time founder is I was running really fast in all these different directions. B2B, B2C, I was building features, I was building social components, so messaging, social feed. I was going in all these directions. I was hosting events. You name it, I was doing it. And what was happening was if this is my nucleus of energy, it was getting spread in all these directions, right? So what we really want to be doing is channeling all that energy into one focus.
And obviously there's like a thousand X compounding effect when all that energy goes toward one thing. So I really encourage founders to avoid the squirrel, avoid the lady in the red dress and just focus on that core problem. Like what's the biggest issue that I'm gonna solve here and just relentlessly work on it. My first business, had a, not my first business, but one of my other businesses was a full service growth hacking.
excuse me, growth hacking agency. So we worked for all kinds of clients. That's where we ended up working with TikTok, right? Great opportunity. I wouldn't have had the opportunity to work with TikTok if we weren't accepting clients from all spaces. But that business had me spread really thin, right? Now today in a niche focused business, after like a year, I was like, man, this is harder than I thought. I thought picking a niche was gonna be easy. thought the business was gonna get momentum faster. I was fighting an uphill battle for two years. And I was like, you
I was investing more than I was making, right? I was taking money out of my investments and putting it into the company. I was like, when is this damn thing gonna work? So it took two years of patience and dedication. And then after about two years, it all clicked. Services, client experience, client results, ⁓ cost to acquire a customer, revenue per customer. All those things kind of clicked at once, and then boom, the business was working. I was out of the day today, and I was focused on scaling.
you know, our marketing and growing bigger, know, putting out content, making new ads and stuff. And so now, because I waded through that two years of difficult headwinds, now that I'm on the other side of it, the business is way easier to run and I'm not involved in the day-to-day, so.
Sam Penny (17:09)
what point do you let go of an idea?
Jonathan Maxim (17:14)
man, that's a tough question, Sam. Trying to put me into a corner here. ⁓ The point where I let go of an idea, I like to have a benchmark and understand the logic for that benchmark. In my case, it's 10,000 users. If I can't get profitable with 10,000 users on the platform, for example, costs $50 to acquire a customer, gives us $150 over the course of three months. If I can't get to that ratio, I don't think this business model is going to work because we're talking about
Sam Penny (17:16)
Haha.
You
Jonathan Maxim (17:42)
10,000 users, you got plenty of data, statistically significant data. It's taken probably three or six months to get there and you've worked hard. And if you haven't identified a customer profile who's really passionate about it, then it's probably not gonna work. But I always say any startup can be successful, any startup can win, you just have to be willing to be agile and say, okay, I'm gonna niche down on this little sub-ditch here, or I'm gonna change the product structure. It's all about listening to the customer. So the customers all have problems.
It's just like, we in touch with those problems? If we're not in touch with them, then we'll never actually solve them and therefore the product or the idea, as you put it, will no longer be successful.
Sam Penny (18:20)
So then a founder who's sitting on an idea right now, what's your message to them for this year?
Jonathan Maxim (18:26)
First, ask ChatGPT, be like, hey, is there a demand for this? One of the things I really like about the e-commerce space, people who are making Shopify stores is you can go onto Amazon or you can go onto ChatGPT and ask, hey, what are the most blue ocean niches in e-commerce right now? And it'll say scented candles for older men, for example. And then you can say, okay, cool, we're moving hundreds of thousands of units a month and there's a demand gap of 20,000 units a month, I can fill that.
Same thing on Amazon, you can see, hey, 100,000 people are ordering paper towels every month, but only 80,000 are getting fulfilled. You know that you can go capitalize on that 20,000, right? So I always try to gauge the demand for what I want to build before I go build it. Chat GPT is great for that research, using the deep thinking functionality, making sure that it's not just spinning out AI slop, it's actually reading through documentation. Trust me, there's plenty of slop, as you've probably observed.
Sam Penny (19:21)
Yeah, sure is.
Jonathan Maxim (19:25)
So yeah, just ask, what are customers most unhappy with today? I like to go on the app store and read negative reviews of other apps and see what people are complaining about. I was doing research for this payments platform, remittances, and everyone complained that they couldn't get ahold of anyone in customer support. It was like chat bots, right? OK, so why don't we make a payment app that has a human support 24-7? You can talk to a human. You'd probably crush these other guys because that's such a
When somebody is working hard to make 150 bucks to send back their family in Peru, that's $1,500 in their mind. And so this is a really important sensitive issue for people when their money is being wired overseas and they don't know where it's at and they're trying to get a of customer support. So I love to just look at the reviews on the app store to get inspiration and figure out, are people on the ground saying? What are they really upset about here? Not just the research that big companies are putting out, but what are people putting into words on paper?
Sam Penny (20:21)
It's amazing how much customer feedback ⁓ can guide so many opportunities. Now you've said before that the cost of waiting is higher than the cost of failure. I want you to unpack that for me.
Jonathan Maxim (20:36)
Well, it's very hard to start for a lot of people and I empathize with that. For me, it's easy to start, hard to finish. But the thing is, is when you see an opportunity, look, I'm a believer in God, I believe that God speaks to us when he wants us to do something. And it's gonna come in the form of intuition, right? So if you're feeling inspired to, I don't know, make a solution for hotels to have an AI concierge that answers all the common questions, I think that's God calling you and I think you need to follow that calling.
even if that business doesn't necessarily transpire into something that's mega successful, because it'll create such an experience that's so formative in a person's life. I mean, you know this from being a founder. It is the most high efficiency, I would say 99 % effectiveness in terms of human optimization. It's gonna reveal all your weaknesses, all your insecurities. It's gonna shine light on your lack of work ethic. It's gonna shine light on your lack of consistency, your lack of focus. All that stuff comes out, so it's just so formative. It makes you into such a complete human, and that's my...
personal pursuit, that's why I do it, I love how it optimizes. But if you're somebody who's sitting on an idea, there's another guy sitting across the table who you don't know, who's building that same idea, and he's probably gonna get a head start from you. So, I say get to work, get publishing, the barriers to entry are lower than they've ever been before, and that just means the opportunity to make money is easier. So, saddle it.
Sam Penny (21:55)
barriers of
entry that you mentioned, like that is clearly going to be one of the key things for many founders in 2026. It's so easy these days to find some great products coming out of China or coming up with the idea of building the app in a day. ⁓ And then building your Shopify store out whether it's your Amazon store, ⁓ and monetizing everything. Now, you've helped founders go from zero to 10,000 users and you do it bloody fast.
So what's the first thing you will always tell a founder before they start building the app?
Jonathan Maxim (22:32)
Before you start building the app, it's all about ⁓ making sure it's a topic that you care about, making sure that this is something you're gonna have a marriage with, not a one night stand, right? Like is this somebody you can live with forever? Think about your business like that because really, from my observation, I'm never starting another business again. It's hard enough to start one. I'm not gonna go through and do that all again. Why? Because the business gets more leverage, you get more time, and the business gets more profitable the longer you work on
You'll get better at it, the work gets easier, you get more delegated, right? So there's really no reason to work on multiple businesses in a lot of cases. So, you know, I say get to work on it and have fun with it and do something that you care about, but when it comes to actual execution, the first thing we always do is we put the product in the market and we see how the market's responding to it. We do what's called split testing. We make 10 different hook messages. All the ad graphics look the same, just different message on each of them.
and we see which message is resonating with people. And then we figure out, okay, of those thousand people who signed up, how many of them were male versus female? What age group were they in? What location were they in? Okay, maybe it's females 18 to 34 living in tier two cities who want a new meditation app. When you get to that level of understanding, then you can really start building a product around that person's pain points, right? So maybe they got their heart broken too many times. Maybe religion didn't do it for them.
or something else. When you can understand that level of intimacy with their personal challenges, you can really build a special and magical product for them.
Sam Penny (24:05)
So then on that advertising is becoming pretty expensive and the attention of people is very fractured. They're across multiple platforms these days. walk us through, how do you validate the idea then in those early stages without spending a bucket load on advertising?
Jonathan Maxim (24:24)
Well, the process I walked you through that is exactly how we do the validation. We only spend about $1,000 on ads to figure out exactly which age, gender, location, and psychographics of the most high quality users there are. And that's the whole point is you have to be structured and rigorous about it. It's not just about posting some ads and letting it rip. Usually it's an 80-20. 20 % of the ads are going to be profitable. 80 % are going to be losing money. And so you can't identify that 80-20 unless you have it literally broken out as 10 different.
split tests, right? So that's the first thing that we always do is just go put it in the market, validate it, and make sure that there's demand for it. And you can, what I like to do is I like to go on ChatGPT and look at the economics of this app. So let's just say the average meditation app commands $15 per month from users. It has a three month average retention. You can do the math and say, okay, if it's costing me 20 bucks to acquire a customer and they're staying for three months at 15 bucks on average, you know, I got a two and a half X return on that. So that's something I could pursue.
Sam Penny (25:23)
You're also big on from what I see on giveaways, referral loops, UGC, user generated content. give me, I guess, a case study, something, one of your clients, how those forms have really worked for them.
Jonathan Maxim (25:41)
Well, my favorite case study around the referral component is actually when we worked with TikTok. So TikTok inquired in 2019, they wanted to launch in the U.S. and they essentially hired our team to do it. So we hired 200 influencers in the course of a month and we had them all posting to their Instagram stories thinking, OK, cool. We got all of these multiple audiences, massive point of leverage. It was like 10 million followers across all of those 100
or it was like 100 million followers across all those 100 influencer accounts, something like 20, 30 million. And I'm thinking, wow, we're gonna get tons of downloads for super cheap. So these influencers are posting to their stories and we're getting like a 0.3 % click through rate. And I'm like, that is never gonna make this happen. I mean, if you know anything about marketing, it has to be in like the at least 1 % to 5 % range. And yeah, it's...
It wasn't working. So we asked TikTok, we're like, hey, what's going on here? And they're like, by the way, we've already worked with most of those influencers. So their audiences are already saturated. And I'm like, well, you don't think you could have told us that when we're going through approvals for this influencer list? Anyway, we're the small guys. So we said, OK, we'll find another way.
Influencers posting their stories reaches about 5 % of their audience on average. And the direct message is about 85 % of DMs get opened, or at least at the time. This is before Instagram started filtering the inboxes a lot. So we said, what if we have the influencers direct message their followers with an automation? So we do it in bulk and have them personally refer it. So that's where the referral component comes in. Just imagine one of your biggest fans follows you on Instagram and it's like, hey, it's Sam. I made a video just for you. I posted on TikTok. You want to check it out?
you know, that user's like, my God, I feel special. know, Sam hit me up. Click through rate went up to 33%. ⁓ And so overnight we got like thousand downloads from the first test. And then after that, we're like, okay, cool. We can do this. Got their approval to run it. And we got, you know, 18,000 downloads on the next run, which we sent about a hundred thousand direct messages out. Think about that, million followers and it's like just a little handful compared to the size of the audience.
Sam Penny (27:48)
That's bloody brilliant.
Jonathan Maxim (27:54)
And so that shows the power of authority and referrals. When the influencer, when Tony Robbins messages one of his followers and says, hey, check out this video and you see that blue check mark next to his name, you're like, damn. So part of getting that referral system to work is having people who have authority to share it, right? So your affiliates or your influencers. And part of it is the personalization component. But at the end of the day, as long as people are talking about it and telling each other,
hey, you should try this out. If I tell you, Sam, hey, I've got this app that's awesome for podcasting, you're be like, okay, I'll check it out, you know? So I think that goes a really long way.
Sam Penny (28:28)
So then what's one tactic you reckon that people are really overlooking but you're swearing by?
Jonathan Maxim (28:35)
The first time user experience is the thing that I'm most passionate about right now because when I open apps, 99 % of the apps that I look at, the first screen is a login or sign up screen. It doesn't say what the app does, it's not a video, it's not an immersive experience asking what brings them here today. So lot of people, you'll see registration rates on apps anywhere from 20 to 30 % when they start, which means 80 % of your customers are stopping at the door and leaving, which means 80 % of your advertising dollars are going to waste.
That's a huge opportunity to optimize. That can go as high as 50%, 60%, 70 % registration rate on apps. So building an onboarding experience that's inviting, that ushers the user in, it really takes them through the experience of the app. I'm not talking about telling them what to do. I'm talking about doing it with them, right? So if Sam's got a coaching app that says, hey, you can reach your goals in 90 days guaranteed. That's your hook message on the first screen. And then,
I'm gonna show you how, you click how and then it says, okay, what are you struggling with? Fitness, finances, mindset, whatever. And then present the next screen. So we just diagnosed the problem, then we present the solution. Hey, I've got this 90 day roadmap that I think can solve your problems. Over 900 other students just like you have completed it successfully and 80 % reached their goals. Make it compelling like that, present the solution. And then when you go for the kill, then when you say, give it a try free for seven days.
probability goes up to about 30 % that user takes the free trial. After that, of course, bringing that referral component, invite a friend, get a month free, they get a month free. So I think a lot of people just, UX training is not a prominent body of knowledge. It's not common knowledge these days. And so I really reiterate that to people because again, they're leaving 80 % of their customers at the door and they don't even know it.
Sam Penny (30:24)
The data that you must be collecting from that initial user experience must be huge. Being able to see then where they came from through the marketing, what their answers were to your questions, who stayed around for three months or more, and then being able to put that back into the feedback loop.
Jonathan Maxim (30:43)
Yeah, I'm definitely a dork for that data. mean, you know, we measure every step. OB1, onboarding step one, OB2, three, four, five. And we measure. Then we look at it in the shape of a funnel and we say, OK, we got 1,000 people to download. 80 % made it to step one. 60 % made it to step two. Only 10 % made it to step three. Oh, man, what's going on there? Right? Then we look at that pinch point in the funnel and identify the bottleneck. And then we say, OK, screen three needs to be optimized. Right?
And so capturing that data, most founders that I've talked to, even ones that, the ones where we launched their apps for them, all of them have over a million dollars investment and none of them have any of this data on hand. And they're like, my God, we need that. How come our development team didn't set that up? I'm like, people don't know it. People don't think about it. that's why I try to like, if we got listeners who are founders now, I'm like, figure it out now because you don't want to make strategic decisions about the direction of your business on.
Purely intuition. If you can have data backing up that decision, it's just gonna be that much more accurate, you know?
Sam Penny (31:43)
So then through all of this, what is really making a product shareable?
Jonathan Maxim (31:49)
The way I see it is, I think it's a Alex Hormozi quote, or maybe a Grant Cardone one, which is like, offer 10 times the value of what they're paying for. So if you're offering a coaching program that can lose them 10 pounds in 90 days, for example, and that's worth, I don't know, 500 bucks to the average person, offer it for 50 bucks. So it's not so much about reducing your pricing, it's about stacking on massive value, like making it
So such a good offer that they just can't refuse it. That's the way I see it. think it's like people have this takers approach to business and they come into business trying to get rich. And when you take the other vantage point, you say, I'm actually going to be a listener. going to be a giver. I'm going to give first the onboarding experience. I'm going let you actually try the app before you pay for it. Then creates that law of reciprocity. And I'm sure you, you know, you're a psychological mastermind. can tell you understand that you're better off offering something.
At a lower cost upfront because it creates goodwill in people so I just really believe in 10x in the value for them And if there's any questions about whether you're charging too much just slash the price or add the value because you'll see
Sam Penny (32:55)
Absolutely.
Influences. Influences still relevant in 2026.
Jonathan Maxim (33:10)
Yes, with an exception. Go to socialblade.com, put your favorite influencer in there, and look at their growth trend. If they've grew 100,000 or a million users overnight, you're pretty sure that they're buying fake followers. And the majority of them are or were for a long time. So a lot of people who got big early on were just using bot farms or automations to get those followers. So I'm very distrusting of influencers. Even YouTube influencers, people can buy subscribers on YouTube. They can buy views on YouTube.
The metrics really don't matter in my opinion. That's why when we work with influencers, we always do it in a specific format, which is the affiliate format. For every customer you send us, we'll give you 50 bucks. I don't care how many followers you have. I don't care what your engagement rate looks like. All I care about is the results that I get. So that's the foundation we set with every influencer, every creator, unless we're just going purely for reach and brand, but that stuff doesn't really pay in ROI in the immediate, so.
For most of the founders, recommend just have that expectation set from the beginning with the creators that, hey, I'm doing this on an affiliate basis. Our average creator's making 10K a month doing this. If you can send XYZ clicks, you can expect to make something similar. Does that sound interesting to you?
Sam Penny (34:18)
So then how do you choose those influences? it from the early stage? Is it going out and just finding, you know, ones with a thousand to 10,000 followers, the larger ones, or do you have more of a wider approach, particularly when you've got this affiliate program set in place where, you know, we can easily have 200 influences. And if it works with that particular influencer, they're earning money, we're earning money. Is that the approach that you take just?
being broad
Jonathan Maxim (34:50)
Absolutely not. We were very sniper, not shotgun with it. I like to get three influencers in the first run. So basically what I'm going for, let's just say I shortlist 30 of them. I use TikTok Creator Marketplace, which shows you how much reach they get on average with the average click through rate is and how much they charge for a post. You can get a lot of metrics and understanding. By the way, I was looking yesterday, there's influencers with 500,000 followers that are charging 50 bucks for a post. So this stuff has become a lot more accessible and a lot more affordable with the
proliferation of influencers. So what I'm looking for is relevance. like, does this person match exactly what I'm trying to do? If they're in Fitness, maybe get somebody who makes Fitness humor, something like that. So I try to make the match really close, especially if they have like a little flair, like humor that they add in there. But I'm really just trying to build a small army of zealots who are really passionate about my product. Because if they really love my product,
then they're gonna post about it because they love it, not because they're getting paid for it. And so that's really where the best dynamics form. So try to keep the batch small, shortlist 30, talk to 10 of them, make offers to five of them, close three of them, something like that.
Sam Penny (35:58)
Yeah, brilliant. Now I want to talk about the startup pitch because you're obviously seeing so many founders coming to you that are really in that pure startup phase. And damn, I love a fucking startup. It's so much fun. So you've raised and you've helped a lot of founders raise capital. How do you build a product so good that you've got investors coming to you?
Jonathan Maxim (36:22)
Well, it's partly product. Yes, making an awesome product that people feel the magic when they try it is a key piece of the puzzle. But I think more importantly, it's showing the traction. I don't pitch any founders that have less than 10,000 users. The reason being is I need to be able to show their CAC to LTV ratio. How profitable is this business? That's what the investors want to know at the end of the day. That's what it all boils down to. So we need to bring them statistically significant data, AKA 10,000 users, and a CAC LTV.
Following back to August, we hosted our Founders and Funders event and we showcased three startups for a panel of six investors. All three startups raised, one raised 30K, one raised 200, and one raised 5 million.
I was really unhappy with their presentations. I thought their pitches sucked. I really regretted. Like everyone ran over. There was one founder who was talking about how it was an abandoned high school. And I'm like, dude, you're in your sixties. Why are you talking about this on stage? I built you this audience. Are you serious? I went up there and grabbed the mic and intervened because I was so frustrated. But my point is this, none of them know how to fucking pitch. Pardon my language. I'm like... ⁓
What were you guys even thinking? Did you practice? you pitch to your wife? Anything? How did you guys even raise capital? It shows that if you have a good product and a good investor match, the deal can still happen. But what most founders don't understand is how to pitch. A lot of them are product guys. A lot of them are engineers. They're not pitch men who are used to selling and really annunciating in a clear way all the value, things like that. So I encourage every founder to go get pitch coaching.
If you're gonna spend hundreds of hours pitching to investors and gonna keep getting door slammed in your face, why not pay somebody a thousand bucks and go get some pitch coaching? Because there is a sales psychology to it that can be easily mastered. For example, if I'm pitching, I'm always just, first thing I do is I bait them with a hook, massive value. Hey, our app has transformed 10,000 people's lives and makes $100,000 a month. And then stop. And then let the investors start asking questions.
When you go there and like spill the beans and tell them everything, then they're just like looking at you like, okay, cool. You know, what do you got? And then they're just evaluating and looking for a reason to back out. So I always just bait them a little bit in the beginning, let them ask questions. I want them to be feeling like they're in control of the conversation when ultimately I am in control of the conversation. And then I use those questions that they're asking as my pitching moments. Why? Cause they prompted it, right? So it's going to be invited. That information is going to be valuable to them.
Sam Penny (38:57)
It still comes back to attention, interest, desire, action, doesn't it? Now, building a killer pitch deck, there's some great pitch decks that have been developed over the years. One that always springs to mind is the Airbnb pitch deck, which I think is just such a great thing. It's only about 10 pages long, but they raised hundreds of millions of dollars from it. 2026, what do you see the killer pitch deck to be looking like?
Jonathan Maxim (39:01)
always does.
Well, I don't think a pitch deck is going to be necessary at all in 2026. think startups can get profitable. There's even AI media buying platforms that can get your ads profitable for you. So you really don't have to do anything but like flip them on. So I think the startups that are going to be successful are the ones that, excuse me, go and get profitable quick because it's just so feasible these days. Everything's trackable, whatever. Now, if you do want to raise capital,
Look, the way I see it is get to those 10,000 users so that you can validate for yourself that this is something worth investing in. If somebody else wants to invest in it, that should justify me investing in it too. So I look at myself as an investor, as a founder, I'm like, I need to justify to myself that this makes sense to put more money into. So I like to go with that rationale. But when it comes to the pitch deck, I like to do, I do seven page pitch decks. Same framework, hook, problem, solution, proof and traction.
called action, right? Really, really simple. But what the intention of doing that instead of like a 30 page pitch deck is we bait their interest. We just put the most high impact, most exciting information into that deck. And we don't share the deck. I never share the deck with the investors until I've had a conversation with them, gotten them excited and made sure that they're serious. And then I'll be like, okay, I'll send you the deck. And I just give them a teaser. Why? Because I want them to ask more questions. I want them to engage more. In fact, I would rather perplex and confuse them or
peak their interest than answer all of their questions. So to me, the power dynamic is super important with investors. And if you just go in there and start blabbering, you know, for 15 minutes, all you're going to do is just like, they're going to phase out. You know, that door is going to get slammed in your face just like the other.
Sam Penny (41:11)
Via Fitness, how did you know it time to exit that one then?
Jonathan Maxim (41:14)
Well, you asked earlier about grit. I worked on that company for four years, invested everything I had in it, which at the time was about $150,000. And I had nothing to show for it. But remember, I had some good prospects. I was talking to Kevin Hart. I was talking to Mark Cuban. How did I know it was time to quit? I had to quit, unfortunately. I had run out of money, and I had run up a credit card for 30K at the time. I was like, I simply can't continue. But let's just look at path B for a second.
Imagine I started monetizing as soon as I built the app. 46,000 users, let's just say I got a 5 % conversion rate, so 5 times 40 is what, like, don't know, 2,000, is that right? 200 paying customers, yeah, 200 paying customers, let's just say they're paying 20 bucks a month, I'm making 4K a month. Right now I'm paying for my product development, my marketing. So if I had just monetized earlier, I would have been able to sustain that business, and I really think that was a unicorn business, even to this day.
Sam Penny (41:56)
200.
Jonathan Maxim (42:12)
Because there was other companies that succeeded. There was one called Sweatcoin, which ultimately rewarded you with crypto coins for every mile that you walked. So there was companies that got successful in the space and became maybe not unicorns, but at least multi-hundred million dollar companies. So I simply did not have the runway and the ability to carry on. And that's why I'm so passionate now about telling founders just monetize, right? Like just start getting money in because it's so draining to work on a startup 80 hours a week and make zero money on it.
there is no feedback loop in terms of how successful you are. It's just like, I doing a good job or am I not? Because as far as I can tell, my bank account is going down right
Sam Penny (42:49)
You're clearly very big on building the revenue early on. We've got ARR, your churn rates, you got your CAC, you got your LTV. How do you see each of these building value in the enterprise?
Jonathan Maxim (43:01)
mean, look, all those metrics, those are like the holy grail metrics, right? The things that I'm measuring are cost per install, cost per acquisition, so cost per customer acquisition, average revenue per user, the average order value of the first purchase. I'm looking at how many people take annual versus monthly, like what the ratio is, maybe 70-30, maybe 80-20. I'm looking at lifetime value. How long do people on average stay and use the app and pay for it?
Ultimately again, I'm just trying to figure out how profitable is this damn thing like I'm investing $1 and I'm getting 12 bucks over the next 12 months and this works, right? It I measure that all on a weekly basis. I have a tracker every week. I put my data in 40,000 impressions 2,000 clicks
1000 installs, 800 registrations, 500 free trials, 300 paid customers. I'm measuring that every week and I measure it week over week so I can see the trend forming. Is my customer acquisition cost going down? Is my LTV going up? Where is the opposite happening? Am I paying more per click and getting less traffic? So I'm just looking at that every week and I think it's a good rigor because when you're in those early stages of the business, it's like having your finger on the pulse. like you got this.
this patient laying on the operating table who's about to go under and you gotta like keep your finger on the pulse, look at the meters on the, you know, on the screens and just make sure it's healthy because if the vitals, CAC, LTV being the business vitals, if those are not trending well, I mean, it's only a matter of time before this thing dies. And then that's also an indicator for you to know when to stop. It's like, hey, are we like constantly becoming less profitable over time or is it becoming more profitable over time?
If it's become more profitable over time, of course you can foresee out and you can measure and you can triangulate. Okay, in six months this thing will be breaking even, you know?
Sam Penny (44:52)
In a world of noise and being so easy to build apps these days and I don't know, there's hundreds of thousands, if not millions of apps now on Apple store and elsewhere. That's unbelievable. What is it that's really setting these apps apart that break out as opposed to one that still has a great product, a similar product?
Jonathan Maxim (45:05)
Millions, yeah, there's probably five million.
Sam Penny (45:21)
What is it that, how do you get out of the noise and into that fresh air, the fresh breeze to really have the breakout?
Jonathan Maxim (45:29)
I could give you the traditional answer which would be
niche down, go into a smaller space, right, and dominate that space. But I want to give you a more practical answer. Be okay with pissing people off. In fact, maybe you want to piss people off. I have a post that went viral on Instagram recently, like two weeks ago, and everyone was arguing in the comments. I essentially rage baited them by saying something that was clearly low IQ, and I knew it was going to piss people off. And then they argued in the comments until it hit 10 million views. I got something like 20,
thousand followers out of doing that. And so what is very common is boring average everyday, know, bystander or passive, what's it called? Yeah, I don't know, bystander type of content. It's just like the same chewed up AI slot being spit out over and over. And really the only way to differentiate yourself is through authenticity. So, you know, I think about this other product that helped guys stop vaping, for example.
And it's like, that's not a glamorous space to be in. It's not cool. It's kind of like this weird corner of the Gen Z world. And these guys are crushing it with their app, right? You don't have to make an app that's like the next Uber. You can get mega rich making something for guys who, you know, want to strengthen their jawline, right? Like, I just think of these things that I would laugh at, you know, if I was looking at that business model and be like, I'm going to build an app to strengthen jawlines or to make them like look better. It's just like, it's almost laughable.
But you want to be that ridiculous. so think about how ridiculous can I be? And just use that as a starting point.
Sam Penny (47:08)
I love that whole concept of ⁓ basically rage baiting or being out there with your thoughts, your comments, your posts to make something shareable, commentable, remarkable. And this is one of the problems that I often see many founders and marketing teams jumping straight into chatGPT to give me my next viral campaign. And it's always very vanilla and very bland.
How do you see the use of AI as opposed to having that real human element that chatGPT just can't can't get across?
Jonathan Maxim (47:50)
Well, think about what chatGPT is doing. So when AI first came out, people started publishing a bunch of blog posts. Hey, I'm going to write a blog post on how to launch an app with AI. And so the content gets chewed up and spit out once. And now the AI, feeding off of all the information out there, is chewing up and spitting out already chewed up information. And so what ends up happening is the information becomes more more ⁓ lukewarm, more bland over time.
And so these days, if you're not using really sharp prompts and you're not putting it in deep thinking mode, chatGPT, OpenAI, they're trying to reduce their amount of GPU usage. So they're giving people the basically minimum viable answer. So the AI is just thinking like very surface level in terms of depth. So it's not actually giving a lot of thought and intention to your answer. you can catch it making mistakes and stuff like that, because essentially they made it lazy so that it's more affordable because business loses money right now.
My basic answer is don't use AI. You can use AI to research which niches are going viral right now or which concepts are going viral, but you gotta make sure it's in deep thinking mode and you just gotta make sure that you're not using it to draft content. Anybody can distinguish AI content these days because why? It's all starting to look the same. You see that dash in there and you know, hey, this is just drafted by GPT and they didn't even take the time to put a personal touch on it. Yeah, exactly, and I look at that stuff and I stop reading and I'm like, ugh, here we go again.
Sam Penny (49:11)
removing MDash.
Ha ha.
Jonathan Maxim (49:18)
So what I do is I go onto my Reels feed on Instagram and I find the posts that make me crack up, the ones that I find hilarious, the ones that I send to my friends and I literally recreate them, right? Like there was this one where it said like how my wife sees me and it showed a guy and his wife in the hook photo. And then afterward it had like all these AI variations of him being a plumber and him being a construction worker. Like when my wife wants the couch moved and when my wife wants me to, you know, when my wife wants a ride, it's like a, you know, a driver and a chauffeur.
I thought it was really funny. sent it to my team. was like, hey guys, can we recreate this? My recreation of it, I have the most viral video in that niche or in that space for that particular topic. It's at like 12 million views right now. And I just copied somebody else's concept and it happened to strike, right? So I just think a lot of people overthink it. It's like, don't overthink it. It doesn't need high production. That video was like one three second clip of me on a boat with my wife and then like 10 different AI generated images.
and some music. Anybody can recreate it. I can recreate it in five minutes if I wanted to. I I encourage people not to overthink it. Just look at what videos are already viral. Look at which ones are super exciting or interesting or funny or whatever, know, engaging for you. Recreate them. It's really that easy. don't have to, there's not that much science to it. Now I can break down, there is a science, but you don't need to know the science to make it
Sam Penny (50:43)
Absolutely. How often should then someone be posting? Because I 100 % agree with you, don't overthink it, just get the content out there, but ensure that it is based around your core values and ⁓ the message that you're ultimately trying to put out there.
Jonathan Maxim (51:01)
Yeah, that's a good point. Obviously, you want to stay on brand and you want to say stuff that resonates with your true values. I post as much as I can. We post 150 videos a week, me and my team. ⁓ And the reason we do is because every video is a new shot at going viral. And if you're concerned about perceptions, I'm posting too much or whatever, first of all, the algorithms do not punish you. In fact, they reward you for posting more these days.
But there's also a feature called trial reels in Instagram where you can show it to all non-followers so that your followers and friends don't see it. So you don't have to be self-conscious about what you're putting out there. If it performs well in trials, you can just pull it over to the core profile and let everybody see it. So we post 10 variations of every video in trials, 10 different hooks, different messages, different songs. yeah, we let the algorithm pick which ones are getting the most traction and then bring it over to the main profile once it's a winner.
Sam Penny (51:59)
What are your main tools to manage all that?
Jonathan Maxim (52:00)
It's pretty rugged to be honest. mean, we do the research manually. We look at Instagram feeds. For example, I go into the tech niche and I look at what videos are viral. We break down the video. We say like, what's the hook? What's the music? What's the editing style? What's the caption? Write it all down, recreate our own variation of it. We use ClickUp to manage the workflow or the production workflow. I send them a raw video. record ⁓ once or twice a month. I'll record shorts.
like short videos. also, you know, when I go out to dinner or something, I have my wife like, you know, film me eating and, you know, get B roll footage. It's very low production. It doesn't take a lot of time or effort. So I record once or twice a month and then pass it to the team. They put it in the click up, editors edit it, send it back for my review. I make revisions and improve it.
Sam Penny (52:49)
Yeah, brilliant. Now, before we finish up, Jonathan, I want to just quickly move into the power moves. It's four quick questions. You ready? All right. What is one sector you'd bet on hard right now?
Jonathan Maxim (52:57)
Let's do it.
That's a tough one. ⁓ I would actually bet big on crypto right now. think crypto is saddled for an incredible takeoff as regulation is loosening and as the acceptance is going up and more user-facing applications are becoming valuable. Also, the dollar is at an all-time low right now. So those hedge investments, I think, becoming more attractive as instability with trade deficits and things like that happen.
Sam Penny (53:32)
What's one founder habit that's costing most people momentum?
Jonathan Maxim (53:37)
distraction.
Sam Penny (53:39)
All right, what's one 2026 tool or a platform that you think is really underrated?
Jonathan Maxim (53:45)
Arc ads is basically an AI video platform for generating UGC videos for ads. have currently tested, we actually have an avatar AI person who looks just like you. And here's our top winning video right now. Before that, we had one winning ad lasting us two years. In the last week, that video has gotten seven leads for us. The new one with AI avatar.
49 leads in the same time period. So seven times more effective. So really love Arc ads. It's a little bit expensive. You can always use HeyGen if you want to get a cheaper option, but practice creating different avatars. By the way, the reason that the avatar who's, you know, the...
know, mature bald guy, essentially. The reason that one's performing well is because that's what our ideal customer profile is. We work with old white guys in business, essentially. Not to say that you're old, but like, our avatar is, you know. So we just put somebody who looks just like our average customer in our ad and it worked.
Sam Penny (54:46)
All right, if you had to build a brand or a product next week, what would that be? What would you launch?
giving away some secrets.
Jonathan Maxim (54:50)
That's a tough one.
Well, I've built a handful of apps. Let me just tell you which apps I've built, which I think have a lot of potential. I have a one-click go-to-market app. So you put your App Store link in, and it generates App Store listening content, ad content, your 10 split testing ad graphics.
a roadmap, a budget, and content messaging. So that's one that I have. I think it's going to be convenient for people who are building with AI to be able to launch their apps fast. I think that would accelerate things for them. Because in the early stages, I think it's OK to use AI content. But once you identify the winning audience, then you want to write it by hand. ⁓ Second, I built a platform where
Marketing agencies can interface with their clients more effectively. So they have a data dashboard, messaging platform, escalation tools, snapshot reports, stuff like that, which I think is, know, I've built an agency for seven years. I just think it's a very under optimized space. It's still very clunky and best practices really are not established.
And then the last app that I built is called Vent and basically is a voice journaling app because I hate typing on my phone. It's too small, got fat thumbs. So I just like to voice journal and have AI clean it up and put it into a written format, allow you to share it with close friends, personal or the broader internet and turn it into content.
That one is more for helping people with their mental health. I think mental health is probably the space that is probably going to be encountering the most headwinds terms of people's mental health with the lack of purpose that's going to come from essentially proliferate comfort.
Sam Penny (56:27)
Yeah, brilliant. Now, before we close, Jonathan, for every founder that's out there listening to this, and they want to finally launch something, they want to grow, or even if they want to exit their business, what's your one call to arms for 2026?
Jonathan Maxim (56:43)
You already know what it is, Sam. Get profitable. Get your app profitable. I'm telling you, even VCs, they're looking at revenue numbers these days, so don't underestimate that.
Sam Penny (56:55)
Yeah, I think we always need that reminder to get profitable because we always look at the vanity metrics and just go, Oh, yeah, look how good it's going. Yeah, but how much money are we actually making? How can I fund this into the future? No, I love
This isn't just another podcast and 2026 isn't just another year. It's the line in the sand. The year you either show up or you stay stuck. The tools are here. The pathways are clearer than ever. you do next is the difference between still thinking about it and I built that. So ask yourself, are you building a business or just buying time? Now, Jonathan, that was a legendary conversation. I absolutely loved it.
You drop so many great insights. Now for anyone who's fired up, ready to build, how can they connect with you, follow your work or work with your team at Viral app launch.
Jonathan Maxim (57:46)
Well, Sam, thank you so much for the opportunity to come on and speak with you. You're a mastermind, like I said, and I love to be around people like you. If people want to get help with their app launch, feel free to follow me on Instagram at itsjmaxim, I-T-S-J-Maxim. That's my Instagram handle, or the company page is at viralapplaunch. And just shoot me a DM. I have a one hour free course on how to scale an app to 10,000, 100,000, and a million users. So it's just a really in-depth roadmap.
all value, no sales, and that roadmap is just, I've gotten great feedback on it. It's low production, just walking through the exact steps that we followed to get apps to a million users. So that's free, no obligation, shoot me a DM, just put the word Penny, and I'll hook you up with it.
Sam Penny (58:34)
fantastic. I actually checked out the roadmap yesterday and it's absolutely brilliant. And all of those links, Jonathan, I'll make sure I'll pop those into the show notes. Now that's it for this episode of Built to Sell, Built to Buy. I'm Sam Penny, and I want you to make 2026 the year you stop watching and start winning. If this conversation is lit a fire under you, me a favor, follow the show, leave a five star review and send this episode to the founder in your life who's ready to launch.
Jonathan Maxim (58:38)
How you doing? Awesome.
Sam Penny (59:03)
We're building real businesses with real value, built to sell, built to buy. Catch you on the next one.
