Founder Playbook · Sub Club by RevenueCat
10 tactics from Anton Derlyatka
Turning Gamification Into a Retention Powerhouse for App Growth — Anton Derlyatka
Watch the full episode“About 70% of the world population do not have that ability and they need to be approached because you know all of the fitness industry is based on that pretty much that very healthy concept of yeah you get you need to get more responsible you need to get moving.”
70% of People Lack Intrinsic Fitness Motivation — Build for Them, Not the 30%
Anton observed that the entire fitness industry — from gym memberships to wellness apps — is built around intrinsic motivation: you want to be healthy, so you act accordingly. But 70% of people don't have that internal drive. Sweatcoin was designed for the majority, not the minority, using external incentives (literal rewards) to substitute for intrinsic drive. This insight shapes which product you build: if your target user lacks the intrinsic motivation your category assumes, you need to engineer an external trigger system.
“There's two things you can do to earn sweat coins you can either start walking or you invite a friend for five sweat coins and that created quite a lot of that intrinsic virality where we made the earning sweat coins essentially earning sweat coins is the user experience.”
Solve Cold Start by Embedding the Referral Mechanism Into the Core User Journey
Sweatcoin's referral program wasn't a separate screen or a growthy pop-up — it was one of two primary actions on the core 'earn' screen, right alongside walking. This made inviting friends feel like a natural part of the product, not a growth mechanic bolted on. Once Anton had the currency (the coin) to fund referral rewards, growth could be self-sustaining. The structure transferred from being stuck at 40K users to growing at 300/day within months.
“We created a small curated list where there would be like four products only every day and there would be a new product every day so essentially 12 products weekly and we had a good enough network to find 12 different brands that would give us some value in kind.”
Curated Scarcity Solves the Supplier Cold Start — 4 Products a Day Is Enough
Rather than trying to build an Amazon-style marketplace of thousands of products (which requires enormous supplier relationships before you have users), Sweatcoin launched with a tight daily rotation of 4 products — one new one each day. Getting 12 willing brands was achievable at near-zero scale. The scarcity also made the marketplace feel curated and urgent rather than overwhelming. Once user numbers grew, brands started queuing to be featured, inverting the supply-demand dynamic.
“We experimented to some users actually the threshold was three times a day and then if you try to allow them to watch it more frequently then the retention drops but actually one to three times actually retention and engagement improved it's completely counterintuitive.”
Rewarded Video Improved Retention — But Only Up to 3 Times Per Day
Anton's team found that adding rewarded video ads (earn 1 sweatcoin per video, optional) improved retention for about 20% of users — but only when capped at 1-3 views per day. Above that threshold, the effect reversed. This maps directly to gaming industry knowledge around rewarded video mechanics, where the reward loop adds value until it becomes noise. The lesson for non-gaming apps: the right monetization can actually improve engagement metrics, but dosage matters more than availability.
“There were some people that maybe had like 10,000 followers which is not insignificant but there was no way for them to monetize... we created a special marketplace level that would only open up to users that had invited 30 people successfully.”
Mid-Tier Influencers Had No Monetization Path — Sweatcoin Built One Into the Product
Sweatcoin discovered that early power-users bringing in hundreds of installs had social audiences of 5K-50K followers — not big enough for traditional brand deals, but not small either. Existing influencer platforms required agency intermediaries and had opaque ROI for the influencer. By creating a secret marketplace tier that unlocked after 30 successful invites (with escalating prizes up to a flat-screen TV for 5,000 installs), Sweatcoin gave these mid-tier creators a direct, transparent monetization path inside the product.
“You need to create what we call a ground swell... that is best done when you do it through the influencers that you're friendly with but those influencers need to develop a content that's very native to the channel... then it's being picked up by the main thing by the user to user virality and then the organics kick in.”
Virality Is Uncontrollable — But You Can Engineer the Sequence That Triggers It
Anton describes a three-stage process to turn sporadic viral spikes into a somewhat repeatable engine: (1) ground swell from friendly native-content influencers, (2) velocity of user-to-user invites increases until algorithm pick-up, (3) app store organics compound the spike. You can't predict when a spike happens, but you can seed the conditions repeatedly. Sweatcoin went from uncontrolled 30K/day spikes followed by crashes to stable, consistent growth.
“The moment you reframe and you say these are not steps these are coins and here's your balance and your balance keeps on growing and you're actually quite rich... even now I'm looking at my balance my balance is like whatever 10 15,000 sweat coins makes me feel good.”
Reframe Steps as Coins to Create a Balance That Accumulates and Locks Users In
Fitbit showed you daily step counts that reset to zero every morning — psychologically punishing. Sweatcoin reframed the same steps as a growing currency balance that never decreases. The same 10,000 steps feel meaningless as a daily metric but feel significant as accumulated savings. Anton still checks his own balance compulsively. This reframe applies broadly: any app that tracks progress can choose between the 'daily score' model (which resets) or the 'accumulation' model (which compounds retention through sunk-cost psychology).
“How much do you value your sweat coins at... people then would say anywhere between one and 5 cents and then we ask them how much would you sell your sweat coins from and guess what the answer was... 50 cents to a dollar.”
Users Value Their Own Coins at 10x What They'd Pay for Someone Else's
When asked to price their own sweatcoins versus what they'd pay to acquire someone else's, users revealed a 10-50x asymmetry: they'd buy at 1-5 cents but wouldn't sell below 50 cents to $1. This reflects the emotional value of effort-earned progress. It's also why sweatcoin deliberately didn't make coins fully fungible: a discoverable market price would destroy the perceived value. The more a virtual currency feels 'earned' rather than 'purchased,' the more psychologically potent it becomes.
“We built a product with inherent limitations... we would always set a ceiling on the number of sweat coins you can earn on a given day because of that we introduced a bunch of restrictions early on that we actually can lift or remove.”
Subscription Lifts Existing Restrictions — It Doesn't Take Features Away
Sweatcoin embedded free-tier limitations from the beginning — not as an afterthought paywall but as part of the initial product design. The subscription simply removes those pre-existing ceilings. This is the reverse of the common mistake where apps add restrictions on existing behavior to justify a subscription, which users experience as something being taken away. Building with limits from day one means subscribers feel they're unlocking potential, not recovering something that was stolen.
“In order for gamification to work well there's got to be an underlying experience that's actually good for the people and they know it if the gamification is used for you to watch more ads you may be successful shortterm but long term it's not going to work.”
Gamification Only Works If the Underlying Experience Is Genuinely Valuable
Anton warns against gamification as a manipulation layer on top of a mediocre product. Duolingo works because learning a language is intrinsically valuable; Sweatcoin works because walking is genuinely beneficial. When gamification serves an underlying experience users already believe in, the game mechanics amplify that belief. When gamification is purely extractive (designed to drive ad views or increase session time for its own sake), users eventually recognize it — and the backlash is proportional to how long they felt deceived.