In this episode of 'The Next Next,' host Jason Jacobs interviews Matthew Ruiters and Ben Katz, two of the four co-founders of HYBRD, an app designed to help hybrid athletes manage and optimize their training. The discussion delves into the creation and evolution of HYBRD, which was part of the YC Fall 24 class. The app was built using AI tools extensively, enabling even non-technical founders to contribute to coding. The co-founders share insights on the challenges faced, the role of AI in their development process, their fundraising journey, and their upcoming plans for launching the app. The episode underscores the potential for AI to lower barriers in app development, the importance of user-focused product iteration, and strategic thinking around funding and scaling.
Building HYBRD: Leveraging AI in Fitness App Development In this episode of The Next Next, host Jason Jacobs chats with Matthew Ruiters and Ben Katz, co-founders of HYBRD, an innovative fitness tracking app for hybrid athletes. They discuss the unique approach of using AI for coding and development, their journey through Y Combinator, and the challenges and successes faced along the way. Topics include utilizing AI tools to empower non-technical founders, transitioning from a side project to a full-fledged company, and the future of fitness app development and marketing with AI. The conversation also touches on the implications of evolving AI tools for startup efficiency, competition, and employment.
00:00 Introduction to The Next Next
02:11 Meet the Guests: Ruiters and Ben
03:03 What is HYBRD?
04:10 The Origin Story of HYBRD
09:37 Building the Prototype and Joining YC
15:36 Leveraging AI for Development
19:33 The Role of AI in Team Efficiency
23:11 AI-Driven Workflow Enhancements
24:04 The Role of Technical Founders
25:13 Balancing Hustler and Hacker Dynamics
25:46 Drawbacks and Challenges of AI Tools
27:02 AI's Impact on Hiring and Competition
29:29 Diving into AI Tools: Tips and Experiences
35:47 Application-Only Launch Strategy
37:24 Future Plans and Funding
40:13 Marketing and Distribution Strategies
43:28 Final Thoughts and Parting Words
Jason Jacobs: Today on The Next Next, our guests are Matthew Ruiters, who have been instructed to call only Ruiters, which I'm still getting comfortable with, and Ben Katz. Now Ruiters and Ben are two of the four co founders at Ruiters. Ruiters was part of the YC Fall 24 class, and it's an app that's designed to help hybrid athletes track, manage, and optimize their training.
Now that's interesting for me because I spent almost a decade building a Digital fitness app as well called Runkeeper, and I'm not up to date on what's happening in fitness currently, so that's fun. But also, here's an app that has four co founders, only one of them, Ruiters, is technical by training, but all four of them are writing a ton of code.
How are they doing this? Well, they're leaning hard into AI and these emerging tools to do so. Now, it was really interesting in this episode to hear how they got themselves to use AI because they weren't planning on doing it initially, they were planning to hire. And we also talk about how they've been making out so far, how far in they are.
What's going well, what's not going well, what challenges they're facing, and also just what the implications are for how they'll build the company in terms of financing, in terms of hiring, in terms of roles and skill sets, and what they've learned on their journey so far. I enjoyed this one and I hope you do as well.
But before we get started.
I'm Jason Jacobs, and this is The Next Next, it's not really a show. It's more of a learning journey to explore how founders can build ambitious companies while being present for family and not compromising flexibility and control, and also how emerging AI tools can assist with that. Each week, we bring on guests who are at the tip of the spear on redefining how ambitious companies get built.
And selfishly, the goal is for this to help me better understand how to do that myself. While bringing all of you along for the ride. Not sure where this is going to go, but it's going to be fun.
Okay, Ben and Ruiters, welcome to the show.
Ben Katz: Hello. Hello. Happy to be here.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Jason Jacobs: You guys are the, it's the first time on The Next Next that there's more than one guest at once. So it's only, we're like ten episodes in and already trying to get fancy over here.
Ben Katz: I can't wait for us to all talk over each other.
Jason Jacobs: That's how it's gonna go, I mean it's, but it is, it is interesting in this case though, because, I mean you guys are doing so much with AI and I think having one non technical representative from the founding team and one technical representative from the founding team only makes sense in this case.
And I'm, I'm excited to bring you guys on because you're building. Heavily with AI, but I'm also excited to have you guys on just given my prior experience Building a fitness app for so many years I've been out of touch with that world and I'm excited to hear the latest too
Matthew Ruiters: Awesome.
Ben Katz: Awesome.
Jason Jacobs: Take things from the top guys I don't know which one that one of you wants to take it, but what's HYBRD? Ben!
Ben Katz: All right, I'll take it. HYBRD is essentially a tool that helps athletes that do multiple sports put all of that training data together into one place so they can better track, manage and optimize their training. And so for me personally, like I'm an ultra nerd on this stuff. Like I wear a Garmin and a whoop at all times when I'm training, I'm wearing a polar heart strap.
I use Zwift. I use a Wahoo bike computer. I've used heavy for weightlifting, any fitness app you've heard of, I've tried including Runkeeper. And what I've been left with for the last number of years has been this massive siloed data set where I have all of this data, a bunch of different places, and none of it talks to each other.
And so I actually maintained a workout spreadsheet for two years, and HYBRD is essentially the workout spreadsheet put in application form to solve that pain point 100%.
Jason Jacobs: So many products start that way. It's like you're duct taping and paper clipping things together because you can't find a better way to scratch your own itch. And then at a certain point, it's if I can't find a better way, maybe I should build a better way.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. Now Ruiters, maybe I'll ask this one for, to you. So I know you guys recently went through YC, but talk a bit about the where the idea came from and when and how you guys came together to work on it.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah, so I originally went to college with Shoe. So there's four co founders. Ben, myself, Shoe, and Mats. Mats since Mats name is also similar to Matthew, a lot of people end up confusing us by first name. So good reason to go with my last name. And then Shoe, Ben, and Mats all worked together at Whoop for a few years.
And and through that time, during COVID we started going on bike rides together. The 50 mile bike ride turned into the 75, turned into the 100, and we all started to
Jason Jacobs: This was on the Boston area.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Where's a hundred mile Boston area ride.
Matthew Ruiters: You go out to Concord, back up through Mystic, back and then we had to like tag in a little up and down on the Esplanade to just crack a hundred.
Jason Jacobs: Okay. So you're going on bike rides together during the pandemic. Didn't mean to cut you off.
Matthew Ruiters: No, you're good. And then, and yeah, and then, so we all have just been really good friends for four or five years now, and I think Ben started to, we've all been interested in kind of entrepreneurship and Ben started cooking up with the idea. We all said we would like to build something together.
But then, yeah, I'd hand it over to Ben to, to color in there.
Ben Katz: It the original thought for HYBRD came from, I basically got frustrated because when I ran my first marathon, I lost a ton of strength and I didn't know how I should be training or like how to put all of my weight training and running together into one place to like better optimize and understand what I should or shouldn't be doing.
I like that's what kind of kicked off my spreadsheet tracking process. And after about a year of doing that, I started talking to other folks and that we're doing multiple types of athletics in a given period training strength, cardio, et cetera, and asking them whether they had the same problems that I was having and whether they experienced the same pain points, how many different tools they were using, et cetera, and found that it really was a pervasive problem that a lot of athletes faced.
And from there we took it and decided that we were going to run with it.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. And so what was the initial germ of an idea
Ben Katz: The very original like first version of the idea was just let's get all this data into one place and we were going to make it a little side project and we were like, all right, let's, we can do this on our own time. Let's make it this thing that just puts all the workout data into one place that we can use ourselves.
And then through all of the user research we did, we realized that there's actually a much bigger opportunity here. I think that one thing that a lot of fitness apps really miss out on is every workout is just one puzzle piece in this broader puzzle that is your training. And if I think about, if I was going to tell you, oh, I'm going for a 10 mile run this afternoon, you might think, oh, that's a great workout.
But if I hit legs this morning or ran a marathon yesterday or I'm training for a powerlifting competition, it's actually not a good workout in any of those scenarios. And so without the broader context of everything I'm doing, my Garmin yelling at me, telling me I'm under training because I was weightlifting a lot this week and not running, et cetera, just isn't actually helpful.
And we wanted to give that holistic picture to athletes.
Jason Jacobs: and at what point did it switch for you from something you just do together for fun as a side project to a company?
Ben Katz: I think that the point really became when we realized how much bigger the opportunity was than we originally thought when we first started exploring it. It was just, oh, let's just be a little like fitness tracker and we can just see how many times you're working out and things along those lines. And then we realized that there's actually this huge opportunity where anybody that trains the way that we do.
has a really hard time actually understanding what that does to their body and whether they're doing the optimal things and whether they're training effectively and whether they're overworking themselves or underworking themselves. What is the right mix of strength and cardio that they should be doing?
How do they compete with other athletes? How do they stack up? All of those things are like very personal to each person. And we realized that market is actually a lot bigger than just like a little rinky dink tracking application that we had originally set out to build.
Jason Jacobs: And so once you came to that realization, what was the next step?
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah,
Ben Katz: step was convinced Ruiters to join.
Matthew Ruiters: yeah, because honestly I was not really bought in Shoe, Ben and Mott's. They were like, yeah, we're going to build this HYBRD. We're going to build this company.
Jason Jacobs: was still moonlighting at the time, like nights and weekends on the side.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah. Yeah. And I was like, guys, like it's a fitness app. That space is so saturated. I don't know. And then Ben and Mats in very textbook fashion, took me out to an Italian dinner one night.
And honestly we just like really dug into it and I left that night thinking No, this actually is a real problem that a lot of people have. And we actually can have a lot of fun doing this because, it's something we all feel ourselves. And then I was bought in and Started cooking on a prototype that we ended up using to apply to YC and ended up getting us in and the rest is history.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. So did you guys have day jobs when you applied to YC?
Ben Katz: Yes.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: you got in?
Ben Katz: We quit before we got in. We actually quit in July and then had an extended leave or extended like notice period because three of us worked for the same company and we wanted to leave them in a good spot. And so when we that extended notice period ended the same week that we found out we were getting it to Y, YC and then we moved across the country to San Francisco the next week.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. And so when you thought about that initial prototype, what were the core components that you wanted in it and that you ultimately put into that V1?
Matthew Ruiters: It was, like Ben was saying, You need to be able to track anything you do, whether it's a lift, a run and I think that was one of the initial difficulties is how do you actually make that UI? Because if you think about it, there really isn't a true cardio or strength tracking app in Strava.
It's you have your runs and your cardio's and you can see your lifts in it, but you don't really get fidelity out of that. And then on the other side, there's the lifting apps. But there's nothing that actually really makes it like seamless to log all of that in one place. And so that was the core of it.
And I think one of our core things was how do we use AI to actually make that process like as frictionless as possible.
Jason Jacobs: And did you do that in V1 or was that just part of the longer vision?
Matthew Ruiters: That was in the median term. The first part of the V1 is what's the actual structure that we want these workouts to look like? And and what's our data model actually going to look like? And then once we had that, once we had that data model and iterated on it a bit we were able to move it into and start to use AI to to parse things out.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. And so when it comes to actually tracking the data for these different activities which are the ones that you're using outside sources for and which are the ones that you're doing in house or I guess in some cases it might be HYBRD as well, which would be helpful to understand.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah. You go ahead. Yeah, go ahead. I'll jump in if
Ben Katz: We the way that we've approached it is essentially if you're already tracking it elsewhere, we want to just pull it in seamlessly and not be an additional step for you. And so we integrate with basically every wearable you've heard of slash that the public uses on an average basis and some applications that are standalone as well.
And we'll continue to add to that list. So basically we believe that athletes are pretty stubborn and like the things that they like and we don't want to force them to change that behavior. We want to give them value on top of it. And so for the things that it Likely that they're not using integrations for.
So think logging a CrossFit workout or a weightlifting workout, et cetera. We wanted to build our own experience that made tracking those workouts super seamlessly. And so we did that using what we call our AI workout logger, where you can either free text, right? As if I was going to text you what the workout is, or take a photo as if the workout was on the CrossFit whiteboard or you can voice to text.
And it'll essentially pull out all of the exercises. the sets, the reps, the structure of the workout, whether it's an EMOM, an AMRAP, supersets, circuits, etc. And it'll log all of that for you dynamically, without you having to go and do the classic search an exercise, add sets, reps, weight, search the next exercise, add sets, reps, weight, so on and so on, until you're actually done.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, that's why I've never tracked my strength before.
Ben Katz: It's a huge pain.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: It's just not worth it to me. Especially because I I don't have a set workout. I just muscle through, like I'll do chin ups. And I actually don't even know what order I'm going to do it. I just burn through it.
And try to get in and out as quickly as I can and then at the end of the day, it's if I went to input it, I don't even know if I would remember what what I did.
Matthew Ruiters: No, honestly it's a super common experience and it's something we've heard from so many users. I actually had a user text me the other day saying I'm actually getting stronger because I'm finally tracking my workouts because HYBRDs making it so easy. And so just hearing that it's like very fulfilling and very satisfying.
Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: So at what point did you enter YC and where were you in terms of progress heading in and then maybe fast forward to. Where you are today.
Ben Katz: We entered YC at the very end of September. We had Basically nothing at that point. We really started writing code the week that we got in in earnest. And we fast forward we started writing with all four of us writing code with AI Wrote the first like real line of code for this is something we're actually going to productionalize that last week of September, and we got our first paying user on October 18th, and so super fast to actually delivering a product that users could pay for and actually start to use, et cetera, granted that those first users, they knew that we were still super, super early, and it was a prototype and that they were like, buying into something that is a vision and that they would help us shape that but went through the YC program made more progress in that three month window that I think any of us thought possible.
It was, it was actually, it's amazing to look back at and it's one of those things where every single day you feel like you're not being productive enough, but then you look backwards and you're like, holy cow, like how far we've come in the five months that we've been working on. This is amazing.
In the first part of this year wrapped up a little bit of a, of post YC fundraising and now have been essentially just doubling down on our product making sure that everything is actually working the way that is going to solve user problems. The way we think about like rough, high level building blocks for what we need to do.
First step is we need to make it so that it's super easy to track any of your workouts, no matter where you are or what you're doing. Step two is we need to then give you the, so what layer on top of that. It's okay, you tracked all these workouts. Why do I care that they're all in this one place?
What context can we give users that nobody else can because of that unique data set? Step three is leverage that unique data set to create like social and competitive and fun experiences where you can engage with other people. And then step four is let's take this massive data set that we've built and use that with AI to give people highly personalized recommendations on ways to improve and train more effectively.
And so we really focused on the first two pieces of that. to this point where we believe in making a product that is incredibly good and single player mode before trying to do anything on a social or like multiplayer type of basis. And we're right now gearing up for an actual app store launch to be publicly available in the next two months.
Jason Jacobs: Nice. And you mentioned that you were each coding with AI. Was it always the plan to use AI for coding? And I guess I already know the answer, but Listener Stone,
Matthew Ruiters: no. Yeah. Yeah. So we get into YC. It's a week till it starts. And I, so I worked for seven years at AWS, like all like strictly backend. Java really no front end experience. And so building the prototype was very much me like learning, how do I code react react native. And so we were like, Hey, we need to move fast.
We need to hire a contractor who knows front end. And so we started allocating money in our budget for it. And yeah, and then we go to our advisor at Y Combinator first meeting. We say, Hey. We want to hire this contractor, and he basically tells us that is a terrible idea. Like, why aren't you using AI coding tools and just doing this yourselves?
There's four of you that's such a waste of money. And that feedback, I really do think, changed the trajectory of our work. Company and and our acceleration and we took it to heart because we weren't really using AI coding tools that much and we hadn't explored how much you could actually do with them.
And yeah, I re chunked out 3 or 4 days of just ramp up this is the terminal. This is how you change directories. This is how you start the simulator. And. Yeah, and. basically with those building blocks, said, Hey, just let it run and start prompting. And I think a huge benefit we had was because react native has hot reload.
So as you type, you immediately see the changes happen. It made it, I think a lot easier for the rest of the team to start to get the hang of, because they could just prompt and implement these features. And so I think that was, Super helpful in how we started to really get AI into our workflows.
Jason Jacobs: And so when you first started diving in, how intuitive was it? How many issues did you run into? Maybe talk a bit about just those initial reps as you started to sink your teeth in.
Ben Katz: I can, I could start on this
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah. You should talk about the whiteboard as well.
Ben Katz: So we initially it's actually, once you're set up. It's not that bad. Once you are in cursor and you have access to the code base and you can start to prompt it and be like, okay, like what's going on here? Explain this line of code to me. I want to implement this logic. How do you do that?
Et cetera. It's really not that bad. The act of getting it set up is incredibly hard as somebody that is non technical figuring out how to get the environments going, how to figure out how to get the simulator open, the number of times that I would be like, Rooters, my terminal isn't working. And it's just because I was trying to start the simulator in a folder that wasn't the front end folder is ridiculous.
We had a big whiteboard in our like quote office, which is really just a dining room with four monitors jammed on the dining room table. And one of the, we had a, we had a tally mark for each of the non dev. And it was at the end of the day, you would have to do 10 puShoeps for each tally and you got a tally every time you asked a stupid question that's already been answered.
And so I did a lot of puShoeps trying to figure out how to get my simulator to work. But I think to your question on like how intuitive was it, the way that I would describe it is as a PM. Who, I've never written code, but I've been around it for, five years. I liken it to my high school Spanish, where I certainly cannot speak to you in Spanish.
And if you speak to me, I definitely will not understand you. But if I read it, I can figure out what's going on. That's how I feel about code. I can figure out the gist of what is actually happening here. But I Definitely cannot write it. And I definitely don't know any of the syntax or anything like that.
And tools like cursor, windsurf, et cetera, have taken out a lot of the friction to be able to start writing. And the ability to elaborate and explain when you don't understand how to read something.
Jason Jacobs: And I think it was you, Ruiters, that mentioned that that meeting and that advice changed the trajectory of the company. In what ways did it change the trajectory of the company? And what makes you feel like it changed it that much?
Matthew Ruiters: I'd say it really. Just empowered us to, to, it removed this glass ceiling that I feel like, even I saw for myself that, no, you can actually just build things, and I think a lot of times it's easy to think that, ah, that's actually really technical I probably can't do it, let's just wait for rooters to do it and I think it, It unblocked us from the, let's at least try, because there's certainly cases where it's look, Ben will say, look, Rooters, I tried this, but this is not working. It's cool no worries. But on the vast majority of the time, it'll be like, hey, cool here's the pull request. Let's ship this code to our users from people like Ben and other non technical folks on the team.
It's just really empowering.
Ben Katz: Yeah, I think one other thing to add there is I think about when we think about, okay, we're a YC startup we're trying to grow should we hire people, yes or no? I think that one assumption that we all firmly believe is that AI is the worst that it will ever be today. And if that's true Rooters has become X percent more efficient as a dev just with the help of AI, and he's already a really good dev.
And I, as not a good dev, might be 15 20 at best percent as effective as routers on dev work, but it's then 20 percent more than we had before. And we don't have to pay somebody else to be able to do that. And so as the models get better and the tools get better and better, I'll be more and more effective and routers will be more and more effective in his already really high capacity position.
And I think that we'll just be able to be much more efficient and have a broader breadth of abilities for each individual team member. I think that holds true outside of development too. I think, marketing, design, et cetera, over time, all of that will also become easier and easier.
Jason Jacobs: So given that Ruiters is the only technical person on the team by training, do you feel like you could have had the same success with AI to build the product without Ruiters? Rooters on the team?
Ben Katz: no, I do not think so. We needed somebody, we needed routers or somebody like routers for a number of different reasons, but. To help you understand some of the workflow of how we actually work with AI, we, routers will actually help us understand, is this even a good task for one of the junior devs to try and take on?
There's some stuff that is just, no, you need to, this is going to be too complicated or you need to be very thoughtful in the architecture, et cetera, that he just won't even, he'd be like, no, don't waste your time on that. But then there's other stuff where he'll be like, here's the ticket, or here's like what you were going to go and try to do.
You should break it up into three files. This file should do this. This file should do that. This file should do this. And give you like, just like bullet points, almost like a PM would give like user requirements. He gives the dev requirements of that to us, and then we can go and execute that with the help of AI.
But without that, aI code can very quickly become a hornet's nest. And without the architecture help, and without the PR reviewing, actually making sure that the code we're doing isn't reducing, or isn't introducing regressions, or giving us, setting us up for problems in the long run, etc., is incredibly helpful, because I'm going to be totally honest with you.
Sometimes I'm writing code with AI that I have no idea how it works and it might work functionally on the simulator, but when Ruiters actually takes a look at it and says, yeah, that's actually, that's the best way to do it. Or no, actually, why the hell did you do it that way? And I'm just like, I don't know, man.
That's just what, that's what cursor told me to do.
Matthew Ruiters: But then like to continue that whole workflow, what I think is so interesting is I'll leave a comment and say, Hey, we should, you'd be using this kind of data structure or something. Ben doesn't actually have to know exactly what that means. He just has to take that comment, put it back into AI and then AI will go and fix it.
And then. Republish it looks good. It's like baked in that whole workflow. And then I, and I would call out on design as well. There's there's this tool called Magic Patterns. It's basically cursor for Figma. That has been super helpful and well in helping us move fast.
Where, we just need a quick and dirty design that looks good. We can go in there and it gets us most of the way.
Ben Katz: Yeah. The one other thing I'll add is that I think that the AI tools have helped me learn a lot more effectively than if I was trying to smash my head against a keyboard trying to figure out a small syntax issue, etc.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah. And I think to come back to the original question of like how would it look different if there wasn't a technical founder, I think the product itself would look different because there is the ceiling that, Ben has mentioned as well, there's only so much the AI can do.
And you could probably get an app with some of the no code tools that. That collects all your data, aggregates it all in one place. But then you will eventually reach this point where what you want to build in the app is above where the AI can actually build. And so I think some of that flexibility that you get from being able to actually write code and kind of design things would be lost.
Jason Jacobs: So traditionally, it's almost a cliche that the Y. C. Model was a hacker and a hustler from getting this up close experience to, hatching a Y. C. Company from 0 to 1 using these tools. Do you think that model is changing should change will change in terms of the ideal profiles for a founding team?
Ben Katz: Not necessarily. I think that it just enables the hacker to be better at hacking and the hustler to be able to help on the hacking when there's nothing to hustle with yet. I also think that one of the things that they drill into your head and Y. C. is, it's actually more important to have customers than it is to have a product.
And so the hustler does have an important role early on, where somebody's got to pay for the thing or proof that they're going to pay for the thing via L. O. I. S, etcetera, to be able to validate that this idea is And so I think that the model still holds true, but I think that each team member can start to be more effective in a role that isn't necessarily their natural suit.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Any drawbacks to building with these tools relative to if you had done it the way that you were planning to by hiring?
Matthew Ruiters: It's hard to say. One. One kind of piece of feedback that our advisor at YC gave us was you're going to throw away all the code that the contractor writes anyways. And quite candidly, we're probably going to throw away a bunch of the code we've all written as well, as time goes on.
Ben Katz: We've already thrown away some of my code.
Matthew Ruiters: Hey you've written some good code. There's some great features you got in there. And so I, I think that's a hard one, any particular drawbacks. I don't know how much of this is a drawback, but I think it's something that both, I think we should try to do, but also be careful with is thinking the AI can do more than it can. Where if you're like, Hey let me try to go do this like more complicated task or feature. And you bang your head against the keyboard for an entire day.
When, Because AI then gives you that possibility that, Oh, maybe I can do this. And so I, I think that's just like a sharp edge that you need to be aware of.
Jason Jacobs: As you think about scaling how will AI affect your hiring plans directionally, if at all?
Ben Katz: I think that it makes us a lot more likely to not hire unless we absolutely have to, or there is a very strong, distinct advantage to doing so. Similar to my point earlier about, I think it's safe to assume that the worst AI will ever be is today, I think that the tools are only going to get better and better, and with that, there are definitely advantages to being able to empower more people like rooters with those tools.
But as a very early stage startup that needs to find product market fit and, has to worry about burn rate, et cetera, it gives us the optionality to stay super lean for as long as we want until we decide it's the right time or we found the right person to add to the team where that ROI becomes worth it, as opposed to being like, we have to hire this person now because we don't have any other way to get this product out there.
Jason Jacobs: Given that it's not just making you guys more efficient and giving you guys more leverage, but it's giving anyone who's building with these tools more efficiency and more leverage. What do you think the implications are on competition as you get further along?
Ben Katz: You
Matthew Ruiters: Do you want to go? I can take a first pass and definitely add in whatever you think. You're absolutely right. The barrier to launch is getting lower and lower every single day. And so it is important to think about What's your remote? What makes HYBRD defensible?
Speed is one thing that we feel like we can do. Though again, other people can have speed. And I think one really important thing for me is, as the ability to create products gets so much easier, you really have to be in touch with your users. And I think that's one of our superpowers right now is, we literally onboard, on a call, like every single user.
And we really understand what their use case is, what their problems are, and I think that is something that, just by sheer hours, is hard to to replicate. I don't know if you want to add
Ben Katz: to double down on, on the moat comment. I think the technology as a moat is limited at this point, and so you need to nail brand pricing distribution or user experience. And without winning there, you're gonna have a hard time winning at all.
Jason Jacobs: Having gone down the path of leaning so heavily on these tools to build do you feel like the best way for a team who has not used these tools before to dive in is just to dive in? Or are there things that you wish existed that would have given you a more efficient on ramp? And if so, what might they be?
Ben Katz: I think that the best thing to do is just dive in and get your hands dirty. I will say I think that the biggest friction point now is still getting set up for the first time. I think that tools like Repl. it and lovable. dev are incredible because they go, they make the zero to one process really easy.
It's they can like they'll automatically host it all for you. You just write the prompt and go and they handle all of the details that normally you would need help with. But I find that the ceiling you run into is a lot lower than what you would find on a cursor or a windsurf or something similar.
And the, it's actually there's this like gap in my mind right now where I've built a couple small side projects on Rept just for fun. Like I built roast my workout.com as a joke. And it just, you upload a photo of like your Strava workout or your HYBRD workout or anything you want, and it'll just talk crap to you for no reason.
It'll be like, oh, like you're really slow today. Like, why? Like why are you proud of this? Something, whatever. It's funny but. It's great for replit, but if I wanted to go and add a bunch of functionality to that, I would want to bring it to cursor, but I don't even know how to do that. And that's where somebody like that like Ruiters comes in to help me actually bridge that setup gap.
And so I think that everybody should be messing around with the tools that are super low friction because the buried entry is literally zero. You can get a replica plan for 25 a month and get a lot of runway with that 25. And then for cursor and tools like that. Having somebody be able to help you get set up for the first time as somebody that is not technical, you'll be really, you'll be surprised at how much you can do with just a tiny bit of guidance.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah, I was gonna say one thing that, I know that on one of your previous episodes you had mentioned the terminal can definitely be intimidating and absolutely agree. But I think having just a base level there I, I've almost been equating it to Excel.
If you can make some pivot tables in Excel, you can actually do a lot of damage. And so if you can just get a little familiar, have ChatGPT give you a little crash course in Terminal, I think that can actually go a long way, too.
Jason Jacobs: Ben, if you came across another Ben who had the idea but didn't yet have a Rooters, would you would your counsel to them be go find a Rooters or would it be go sit down with ChatGPT and get as smart as you can and take it as far as you can?
Ben Katz: It would be sit down with chat GPT and go from there.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, I'm still really wrestling with that one. For myself and I'm more like you Ben, although I'm not even a pm. So I'm even a step further away from
Ben Katz: I don't know. You feel some pretty good technology products in your day.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: did. The team did.
Ben Katz: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: I banged my chest and had the voice of the customer and stuff like that, but but yeah, when it, yeah, it's funny, the board always thought I was like a product guy, don't.
I still don't feel like I've got great product and things, but I don't know. It's something something I'm still sorting through externally and probably even sorting through in myself as well. And it's confusing because I'm 48, I know. What my superpowers are and what historically my gaps have been and so I would know just what to do except these tools are confusing because it's is that still the playbook or is the playbook changing right and I. I still don't know. I'm still figuring out and even you, I feel like, Ben, don't know because you started by saying that it wouldn't have been nearly as effective if you didn't have a Ruiters, but then you also said that you wouldn't go get a Ruiters, you would sit down with ChatGPC and it's which one is it, dude?
But I get the tug of war there.
Ben Katz: No,
Jason Jacobs: I feel it as well.
Ben Katz: Let me make a clarifying, let me make a clarifying comment. I say that you should just sit down and figure it out because I always want to bias to action. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be looking for routers in the process. I don't think that it's like Mutually exclusive option, like I think that having a rooters will always make it better and will always make you more effective and will make it you could go here.
Now you can go here, but that I also think that so many people will just default to Oh, I need this thing before I'm going to start. And I think that's a huge mistake. I think you need to just dive in and try and figure it out to the best of your ability while you're waiting for that golden ticket that may or may not ever come.
Matthew Ruiters: yeah. And,
Jason Jacobs: Go ahead,
Matthew Ruiters: was gonna say, I completely agree because it comes back to is this actually a real problem that, People actually have and are willing to pay for and so then it's the question of is this your idea And you're gonna hire someone technical because if it's not even a problem You're just basically burning money by hiring someone technical and so I think that's definitely like at play like yeah You should go see if this is a real problem
Jason Jacobs: spoke to a guy a few weeks ago, and he had an idea he was really passionate about for him, and he had mapped it all out and knew exactly what he wanted to build. And he was considering paying a development firm. I think it was like 140 K or something to build it. And I remember pleading, even though I haven't taken this advice personally yet, although I'm trying to take this advice, I was pleading with him please use it.
Hey, I like just try. And he came back a few weeks later and said that. For 200 bucks for a subscription or whatever, he got like more than half of it built and sees a clear path to build the rest. And it's actually functional. And do I want to try it? Which I thought was pretty crazy. And he made it out like he was so grateful for me, but I said You may feel like the student, but like you're the teacher, dude, because I'm not taking my own advice.
Yeah, I'm trying. I'm getting closer, but to your
Ben Katz: I know you
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, like it's in between the times that I'm like, building the file and getting to know more people and, Getting closer to getting help. I'm also not only fleshing out more what I want to create, but I'm also getting my hands dirtier and dirtier.
And so one way or another, the dots will connect. It's just, I don't exactly know what order, which I think was your point too.
Ben Katz: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. Cool. So directionally, what, how do you guys think about staging? Phasing funding. And end state for HYBRD in no particular order.
Ben Katz: And state is we build a product that our users absolutely love and use every single day. What that actually means that we have ideas, but our users will tell us over time we'll iterate, we'll build, we'll adapt. In terms of in the meantime we're gearing up for a an actual open launch right now.
We're an application only which has been really, I'm actually really happy. We started out in the application only stage. It's been really helpful for us
Jason Jacobs: What does that mean? Application only?
Ben Katz: You, we, like essentially we, you can't just get a subscription to HYBRD. You have to apply
Jason Jacobs: Oh, got it. Oh,
Ben Katz: then we will send invitations to people that meet a certain
Jason Jacobs: Application meaning you apply.
I got it. I was thinking like, wait, I
Matthew Ruiters: Oh, like a web application.
Ben Katz: No yeah, it is an
Matthew Ruiters: That's confusing.
Ben Katz: But that was, I'm very thankful we started there. I think one of the most underrated pieces of starting out in like a application, like invitation only type of model is that you are gatekeeping who you take feedback from.
And so you make sure that every single person that comes on is your ICP and therefore every data point. is truly representative of, okay, if we only had people that are the best of what we're trying to build for in the market, what would our numbers be? And like every user you talk to gives you very specific feedback and this is the type of person that we're trying to build for.
And so we really need to take that to heart. And that has been really powerful and helping us stay focused on where we need to go, what we need to do, et cetera. When we open it up, I expect all of our numbers to go down because we're going to be, we're going to open it up to anybody that wants to be able to apply.
And there'll be some people that are good fit and some people that aren't a good fit and that's okay. That's how those things go. But the end of the day, like we still just need to keep trying to deliver value to our users as much as possible. I see a world in the future where we have a social experience that lets users compete with each other, no matter how they like to work out.
But before we. Dive into that. We need to make sure that the single player mode is the best in the market.
Jason Jacobs: feel free not to answer this if this isn't public information, but how much have you raised so far and also why do you need the money
Ben Katz: I'm not gonna answer anything specific on that. We raised a little bit, obviously, people know how much you make in YC, we raised a little bit outside of YC as well. We are using the money to basically get to. Bring the app to market, we needed to have runway for marketing. We need to have runway for hiring somebody.
If we felt that we needed to it was an opportunity for us to build this product and take the time that it takes to do it right in order to actually bring it to market, as opposed to just being forcing ourselves to try and monetize too much, too soon, and potentially diluting what the value proposition was to be from the start.
I think for example. framework that I have in my head. Sorry, I'm going to opine for a second. One framework I have in my head that I think a lot about is I think for an app like HYBRD, I think there's. A high likelihood that the future for maximizing monetary value of the company is a freemium model.
But as soon as you introduce a freemium model, you have to start focusing on this game of where do you put the value before the paywall or after the paywall. And I don't want to play that game. I just want to play the game of how do I build value at all and then worry about that later. And being able to have a little bit of extra money make, lets us make decisions like that.
And be thoughtful and intentional about our growth in order to make sure that we're really solving the user problems before we try to do things that will help us scale.
Jason Jacobs: and how do you think about capitalizing the company directionally? Do you think it will follow the typical venture path or do you feel like the fact that these tools help you gain so much efficiency might Reduce the capital requirements necessary. And I guess along those lines, if it reduces the capital requirements necessary, does that in your mind mean that you'll raise less or might you still go and raise more than you need to go faster?
Ben Katz: Yeah, I think that the capital requirements will be less the biggest spend. I one of the big shifts that I see in like this space in particular is that I think the capital requirements for development talent will go down, but the capital requirements for like user acquisition costs will probably go up.
And so you'll still need money. And Will we end up needing more money? Potentially. And we want to put ourselves in a position to be able to go and raise more if we think that is what is best for the company. But we also want to put ourselves in a position to just reach cash flow, break even off of what we have raised so far.
So we're trying to stay as lean as possible and grow as fast as possible while doing that. And once we start to see. Enough data points that suggest that we should start to pour gasoline on the fire is when we would start to think about, okay let's go and actually do that and then raise additional money to be able to do that to a greater extent.
Jason Jacobs: Have you thought about distribution and If so, how do you think about resourcing for that distribution, and will AI play as big a role on the go to market side as it's been playing on the product development?
Ben Katz: We've definitely thought a lot about distribution. Right now, all of our distribution is organic which because none of us have an existing audience is very small. And that's okay. And when we actually do a go to market, we'll have to spend money. Part of that will be on influencers, part of that will be on traditional media, part of that will be, just to fund various sponsorships, events, partnerships.
We've got a whole slew of things that, that we're planning on doing. In terms of will AI make that more efficient, in the long run, I would say probably. I think that. Right now we have yet to see any efficiencies there because we haven't been doubling down with like on, on the marketing side yet. A couple things that I am optimistic about are on the creative side, I think that obviously paid ads on a Facebook or an TikTok, etc.
is a very big, you need a bunch of different creatives, you need to turn those out, etc. I'm looking forward to a day where we just film a workout with all of our co founders and some other folks, etc. And have a bunch of existing B roll of screen recordings of the application displaying value propositions, etc.
And we just feed this. Like content database into an AI tool. And it just spits out a hundred variations of that content rather than paying somebody to actually go and edit all of those different cuts. And then testing all those different cuts and managing things like that.
Jason Jacobs: Does that exist? Does that exist today?
Ben Katz: not that I have seen, there's a bunch of There's a bunch of tools that kind of do it, but they're not what I need yet, is how I would describe it.
But it will exist, without a doubt. And then there are other companies that are making some pretty crazy products in the advertising space. One of our batchmates, Unusual, does highly personalized We're basically like they can optimize a landing page around long tail keywords that people are searching for on Google.
So if somebody was looking for Oh, like what is the best CrossFit application for X, Y, Z? Like very, very niche. Search and then they click on it and then they landed on HYBRD like our entire landing page could be like transformed using AI to match that search. And so I think that there are opportunities for ad spend to become more efficient based on tools like this as well.
And then there's also the can AI just manage the campaigns on their own and then you don't have to pay somebody and you just monitor the AI managing the campaigns, etc. I'm optimistic that there will be efficiencies with the marketing side, but we haven't really dipped our toes in there yet.
Matthew Ruiters: I was just smiling a bit here because one of our best mediums has been LinkedIn. Which I think is Slightly ironic or funny because I think, yeah, unintuitive because people don't normally think of LinkedIn as like a fitness app like marketing platform, but it, it's been, yeah, definitely pleasantly surprising to, to see that go pretty well.
Jason Jacobs: Nice, and what's the timing on launch, guys, if
Ben Katz: we're looking for April.
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome, and where will people be able to find it when it's out there? Is that iPhone first?
Ben Katz: Yes, iPhone first. It's on the iOS app store already for pre download. And then you can also apply for a membership if you want early access at HYBRD. app. HYBRD is spelled H Y B R D.
Jason Jacobs: Great, and for anyone listening that's intrigued How can we help you? Any asks? Any people that you want to hear from? Any homework you want to give to listeners?
Ben Katz: Anybody that trains this way, we'd love to talk to you whether you want to become a member or not. Shoot me a message, always looking to do user research, user interviews, help understand how people that do care about both strength and cardio train and what are their pain points and what can we build that will help solve those,
Matthew Ruiters: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: Anything I didn't ask that you wish I did? Or any parting words? Ben? Rooters?
Ben Katz: Do hard things.
Matthew Ruiters: That's our slogan.
Jason Jacobs: I like it.
Matthew Ruiters: yeah, I think the only parting word I would say is, I think a big theme we spoke about today was just getting your hands dirty and digging into it. And I think a lot of prompting goes into solving the problem, but I think a lot of people forget you can ask the AI to help you figure out how to prompt or how to do these things.
And so I think it's about. Understanding that workflow and that there's more forks in the road than you may see, than you may think.
Jason Jacobs: All right. I'm looking forward to staying posted on your progress, and I'll keep you posted on my progress, too. It sounds like we're both on a journey, but rooting for you guys. Wishing you best of luck. Thanks so much for making the time to come on the show.
Ben Katz: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for having us. It was great to chat.
Matthew Ruiters: 100%.
Jason Jacobs: Thank you for tuning into The Next Next, if you enjoyed it, you can subscribe from your favorite podcast player. In addition to the podcast, which typically publishes weekly, there's also a weekly newsletter on sub stack at the next, next dot sub stack. com. That's essentially for weekly accountability of the ground.
I'm covering areas I'm tackling next and where I could use some help as well. And it's a great area to foster discussion and dialogue around the topics that we cover on the show. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week!