The ad literally starts with your app, front and center.
This is Swupnil, the CEO of Swing Vision.
And this is not the first time their app has made it to Apple’s stage.
We became the number one app for tenants on the watch.
And Apple ended up featuring it on their website when they launched a series four
In a sea of apps, being on Apple’s side for highlights or stories or stage can, in
all the sense of the word, make or break your company.
It's usually a download spike of like maybe 10 X of your normal daily downloads. At least that's, what's been for us.
Swing Vision is one of my favorite companies today, and it was founded by first-time entrepreneurs.
I love their story not only because it’s a product I use almost every day, not because
they managed to raise money from some of tennis's biggest stars, followed by a $2M round led
by Tennis Australia; but because they figured problem and solution from the get-go, assembled
an incredible team, and bootstrapped until the right time to raise
In retrospect, all their choices seem obvious, but those options are not obvious when you
are building.
I sat down with their CEO a few weeks back, and here’s their story- along with their
secret to making it to Apple’s stage again and again
I'm a lifelong tennis player and I've always been kind of into the data and the stats and
everything.
And the fundamental problem I had was I wanted a way to basically track my game and improve
improvement.
And there wasn't an easy way to do that
This guy wasn’t pitching to me, he was just
telling me how the company got started.
But this would just make a killer problem slide.
It talked about the why, it talked about a problem he found in the market, and it talked
about his expertise in the matter.
Now, Swupnil used to work at Tesla.
I was working in autonomous driving.
Um, I was specifically working on tracking objects, so like cars and pedestrians around
the Tesla is using computer vision and artificial intelligence.
To investors, the fact that him and is co-founder, who is also an engineer, were willing to leave
cool, well-paying jobs to pursue this, is also a very important signal.
But that is of course not enough to raise money.
Early versions of the app were all bootstrapped.
How did you find your first thousand customers say?
Yeah, so the first thousand was when we were working on swing as a kind of part-time project.
So this is, I was still in grad school doing my PhD.
I was out in New York and I basically.
Wanted to just make a watch out
we just organically started getting a bunch of people like you, who basically were just
looking for some way to track their tennis on the watch.
Um, and as you said, there weren't a lot of apps out there.
I think our design was like the best ease of use was the best.
We kind of got a lot of traction that way and basically became like the number one app
for tenants on the watch.
Now Swing’s fundraising story is pretty cool.
The first money came from retired tennis players, most prominently this guy.
Andy Roddick.
I’ve talked about this plenty of times, but your NETWORK as a founder is also incredibly
valuable.
You don’t raise money from Andy Roddick by just having a cool app.
I had a friend in high school who ended up playing professional and S. His physio, I
guess somehow knows James Blake.
Um, so that was kind of a connection there.
And as physio, she was an avid user of the watch app, coincidentally.
So he was like, oh, I love swinging.
Like, yeah, I'll make an introduction.
We met James at like this country.
Um, and I had like a small, like pitch deck prepared, which was basically talking about
how, you know, we were working part-time on this watch app.
We were featured in the series four, um, website.
So apple really likes what we're doing.
I've worked at Tesla.
Like I had the credibility, so we tried to like frame it that way.
And then we basically said, but the real thing was.
Is this video analysis app, it's going to be able to track your shots, do line calling,
do all this kinds of amazing things that like no one thinks is possible with an iPhone.
And so it was like the craziest idea to do that.
We pitched it and James, like, she just loved it right away.
He was like, this is amazing.
Like when I was a pro I would've loved to have this, um, you know, in professional matches,
obviously they have Hawkeye, but like most matches, first of all, don't have Hawkeye.
It's just, if you're in like the big tournaments and then even if you're like, If you're going
any more time to practice, um, you don't have anything, like, there is no hot guy when like
random queen Switzerland, right?
So it's like, that's what James is basically telling him.
It was like, they have nothing like, even the pros of the thing.
Um, and so I was really surprised about that.
And so he taught a lot of potential there.
I mean, obviously he started any recreational parent can use it, so like, it's just so scalable.
And so we were like, maybe we can try to get one more professional player.
Um, and so then he invited me to Texas and this exhibition match that he was playing,
um, a bunch of tennis.
So, uh, I was there in a locker room with him, basically.
Like he was busy going in and out and play matches and coming back to the locker room.
And then, um, any erotic was there as well.
And the gym career was there and John McEnroe.
So they were all there.
Like all four of them kind of rotating and fighting.
Uh, that's pretty crazy.
So it's just the four of them and me in the locker room.
And then I just pitched to all of them and John, McEnroe's not understood at all.
So how did, so now tell me, I want to talk about the whole, the whole apple thing.
So you said your first feature was apple.
I may, I may remember this, the website of apple watch series four, right?
That's the first one.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, that was pretty cool.
We were like right next to Nike.
It was, yeah.
I kind of remember I was using you by then.
Like I, I already had, and I'm like, oh, these guys are teacher.
That's awesome.
Um, how did that happen?
How does apple find you?
Do they tell you that they find you.
Yeah, that one was pretty interesting.
So, um, well, so first of all, it was like a re like someone at apple who like reached
out to us, like before that actually.
And he was like, oh, like, we really love what you're doing on the apple watch.
We think it's so cool.
Um, and we didn't, there was no expectations in that initial meeting, honestly, but it
was just kind of like, we love what you're doing.
We'd love to just like, stay in touch and like, see, see how it goes and like help you
make the app better.
So that was what they said originally.
So I was like, oh, that's cool to have just like someone like kind of like an advocate
for us.
I made sure to make good apps.
And they would always just like, you know, what technologies are using noise, always
you're planning to adopt, like, or using Carmel or you using, you know, Siri kit, what are
you using in the app?
So they're always trying to like push you to use the latest technology and like in the
right way, um, almost.
But then yeah, as we got closer to the series four lines, then they reached out and asked
for like some assets from us for the watch.
They didn't really specify what it was like, they didn't, they're not going to tell you,
like, it's a new watch, even though everybody knows, but they don't say that obviously.
So we had no idea, honestly, like we had no context for what this is for.
Like, I don't know if this is just going to be on the app store.
I don't know what it's going to be for.
We just get asked and then surprise.
We were on the tiers for website.
We'd love to just like, stay in touch and like, see, see how it goes and like help you
make the app better.
So that was what they said originally.
So I was like, oh, that's cool to have just like someone like kind of like an advocate
for us.
I made sure to make good apps.
And they would always just like, you know, what technologies are using noise, always
you're planning to adopt, like, or using Carmel or you using, you know, Siri kit, what are
you using in the app?
So they're always trying to like push you to use the latest technology and like in the
right way, um, almost.
But then yeah, as we got closer to the series four lines, then they reached out and asked
for like some assets from us for the watch.
They didn't really specify what it was like, they didn't, they're not going to tell you,
like, it's a new watch, even though everybody knows, but they don't say that obviously.
So we had no idea, honestly, like we had no context for what this is for.
Like, I don't know if this is just going to be on the app store.
I don't know what it's going to be for.
We just get asked and then surprise.
We were on the tiers for website.
do you guys have like a watch party for the apple events?
I'm sure you do.
Yeah, we were all kind of just watching our team like distributed, but yeah, I don't think
it was watching TV.
Like we're all just like spending the slack channel, you know?
Cause we're just like, oh, I got like stuff that was cool, but this, this, you know, it
was crazy because we've been in the keynote twice, which is like unheard of, we were in
the watch portion and the iPhone switching portion.
So that, that's why I was like an even bigger surprise.
I was like, I did not expect like what app gets featured twice.
So this relationship with Apple gives you a 10 X downloads, it is a complete one
way relationship.
When Apple wants to feature, you they'll call you and you don't have to call them ever.
Right.
No, not really.
Yeah.
That's not really how it works.
Um, I think that's how it is for most of their apps.
Like I think it's just, they will reach out.
I mean, the initial conversation, they have to be the ones initiating that.
And then, um, and then anything that happens from that point on, they have to initiate.
I mean, you know, I can definitely like ping them and be like, Hey, we're working on this
cool feature.
Like, it might be nice for this thing or this product or whatever, but like, I don't think
it actually has a lot of weight when I say.
Um, and so I realized, like, I just don't really do too much of that.
I mean, we still keep them informed of our roadmap and we keep them informed of like
what we're planning to build in the future.
So envision, and then if it finds a way to align, they'll reach out to us about it, but
it's all completely been.
Um, and then that, that initial call to like, I think they reached out because we really
focused on like the design to watch out.
It just took like a really, really good job, I think.
Um, and, uh, that really stood out to them and obviously, they appreciate that they appreciate
simplicity and like good design.
Yeah, but it's, uh, it's kind of cool, but also sad because it's like, you, you can't
really have a say in it, and it's a little bit, obviously a lot, a lot of luck involved
too.
You have to hope that they find your app.
But I think there's a lot of clearly there's a lot of things you can do if you kind of
do the right things, you'll at least kind of get shown to them.
I think they're like really like the team at Apple and also the app store team is really
good at like looking through the, all the apps on the app store.
Doing a really good job of like, finding like the really good ones.
Um, and so like if you've built like a really solid app, like I think eventually they will
not take notice of it, you know, eventually if you get like enough people leaving like
I really nice reviews or they see like a lot of usage of it or a lot of downloads.
And that’s that.
I honestly usually tell these stories myself but I think is Swupnil does a great job
of doing his own story. Definitely better than me, so
We uploaded the full interview in our Lessons module inside Slidebean.
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If you’re a tennis fan, you should be using swing tennis already, link in the description.
See you guys next week,