Episode 5, Maria Ly
membership, if you sign up with your samsung account and then further just to add, because we have such a good relationship with the samsung health team, all that data that you're doing, you can share between applications, you can have that sort of a large overview of your health profile within the samsung health application as well tony morelan 12 08 oh, that's wonderful so let's talk a bit about the development of the app what is the workflow? what is the process for you guys, when you created workout trainer? maria ly 12 17 i guess for starters, we use kind of agile development practices and a lot of brainstorming, we currently use android studio and we host all of our contents in the cloud and on top of that, obviously, we use the latest tools with within the samsung sdk id kind of environment tony morelan 12 40 sure, sure so when you first created the app, how long did it take? you know, is this an app that took, you know, a long time to create? or was this something that came pretty quickly and easily to you, maria ly 12 50 i would say that the first very early version of our app took about six months but as you guys know, app development is never as straightforward as you would like and you're always evolving your app and making it better and better and so throughout the years, we've added more features tightened up our flow improved our ui ux experience so you know, it all depends on what your app is aiming to do and offer, and try to use, you know, the best tools possible and rev on it and keep in mind that people like good user experience so even if it's a utility app, you have to think about your customers and get their feedback early on yeah, you tony morelan 13 33 know, the one thing that i will say about when i used to work at trainer was the ui was wonderful i mean, it's because you're in the middle of a workout and so you want something that is simple and easy to use with just a nice, clean interface and that's one of the things that stood out for me with workout trainer maria ly 13 47 well, thanks it's always a work in progress tony morelan 13 50 so let's talk about discoverability because i know that is one of the hardest parts i mean, it's one thing to go and create an app and build it and publish it but the hardest thing is to get people to actually see it and use it so what have you guys done related to discoverability? maria ly 14 05 for us, we have different channels to get discovered a lot of it has to do with be partners with certain discovery channels, but also with our community so for instance, you know, people can do workouts and invite their friends and challenge them to workouts so sort of creating that, like word of mouth has been very helpful for us get discovered through a grassroot approach and then also, you know, sometimes we have different partners where we can sell our app into verticals like within health care, or corporations, or specific areas, or times of the year for instance, samsung and symbols workout trainer can do sort of a collab or a promotion period tony morelan 14 55 yeah, yeah and i'm sure you guys are using the galaxy store badge is that correct to help promote it and weren't people directly to the app on galaxy store? yes, we are for sure wonderful and i'll make sure to include a direct link to that in the in the show notes for, not just that for, but for many of the other areas that we're talking about i loved what you said, as far as you know, inviting a friend and building that community because i know when it comes to workouts, a lot of times people don't have the motivation to do it themselves and they need to be held accountable so you know, if you find a friend that says, hey, if you work out all workout, and when you guys can work out together, you know, in sort of motivate each other to work out, that's what really gets you into a good routine as far as fitness so how many people would you say are using workout trainer, maria ly 15 43 we've seen over 30 million users come our way and, you know, on a day-to-day basis, we're seeing 10s of 1000s of workouts being completed and these are, you know, long form workouts so people are not just going into our app, and you know, jumping away, they're actually finding good content, relevant content for them to do and play for a long period of time, be it, you know, five to 20, to even, you know, 45 minutes long tony morelan 16 08 that's wonderful that is great and that is one of those key things when it comes to you for app developers, they want to create an experience where someone is not just coming in, you know, and like playing a game for a few minutes, and then they're gone retention is such a key component to creating a successful app how do you guys generate revenue, maria ly 16 29 we're going to trainer is a free application, and we offer in app purchase subscription that would be the pro plus membership option so that's offered at 699 a month and it's a reoccurring subscription and we also offer our one-on-one online training platform and the trainer sets the price and on average, it's between 50 to $200 a month, and we take a platform fee tony morelan 16 52 i love that that that you offer that that opportunity for people who want to really, you know, find that personal one on one trainer but yet your app also is available at an affordable price just for the general community i think that is that is great, because it makes it easy for people to give it a try and see if they like it and then decide maybe they want to, you know, get more involved with the app maria ly 17 13 oh, for sure and sometimes our trainers offer one on one training with free trials so we offer a free trial period as well tony morelan 17 19 oh, that's great that is that it's that's wonderful yeah so what advice would you give developers looking to bring their app to galaxy store? maria ly 17 29 oh, i would definitely encourage folks to get on the samsung platform because, as you guys know, around the world, like there are so many people that are using samsung devices, be it the smartphones, tablets, or the smartwatches and so being on the platform will just bring more visibility to your application and it's an opportunity to grow your user base naturally tony morelan 17 52 tell me what is in the future first gimble maria ly 17 55 so we've focused on creating great content and we're going to continue doing that working on providing a platform where people can access more multimedia content from trainer created content workouts created and led by your famous youtube fitness celebrities, and so forth so for us with workout trainer, we want to create and serve the best content for you so that personalized experience where you can have instant access to follow along content for your fitness journey tony morelan 18 28 that's, that's wonderful you know, this this past year, there's been a really big push for diversity and inclusion tell me what is kimble doing related to that? maria ly 18 38 i think from the start with scramble and growing our early team, i always wanted to have a group of great folks not just like industry, people, but trainers and everybody that has been involved to reflect the people who are actually using the application and so, you know, i was not specifically seeking out extreme diversity, but by just me wanting to talk to all kinds of folks from around the world trainers who had, you know, a focus on high intensity training versus pilates, yoga studio style backgrounds and we have so many different trainers demonstrating our exercises, our exercise database library, i believe has grown to be the largest out there with trainers who are very diverse, you know, they look like me and you and all the other folks who use the application so i hope that the application offers content that feels diverse in the type of content it provides, and also the friendly faces who are demonstrating the exercises tony morelan 19 47 that's great so recently, we did a blog feature on you for international women's day you know, being a woman leading a tech company tell me what advice would you give young women looking to start a career are in tech, maria ly 20 01 you know, more than ever before, women are breaking barriers so, you know, having their voices heard within tech within athletics within all sorts of fields, you know, having them be out there doing the work that they love living their best life and if that means, you know, being a leader in technology, or you know, a developer, an engineering manager, there are so many roles within tech that you could pursue and if you have an early appetite for some of the math and science classes, you know, a technology career could be for you so just pursue it and explore it, and you could be your own boss, even, there are so many opportunities now more than ever, i would say, where you can have the mentorship and support and encouragement from not just, you know, the leaders, the your male counterparts, the females in the space, who maybe have been there for a few years, even for me, you know, i do like advising and investing in women led companies in something that inspires me because i want to see the young females take charge and create amazing products for our future generation and, you know, my children even i'm excited for the future and what it can bring for all folks tony morelan 21 18 yeah, no, that's, that's wonderful in that blog, i'm going to link to it it was a great interview; you actually went into great detail on some of these areas that would really help inspire women and young women to really get started into this tech industry so maria, it was excellent to chat with you and learn much more about you know, workout trainer and all the great things that you guys are doing it's gimble let me ask you, what is it that you do for fun when you are not working? maria ly 21 45 well, i have two kids, they can be quite busy on my off hours, we are doing a lot of different activities for instance, over the weekend, i took my son to his first gymnastics class, and then we went skiing because we're in salt lake and it's the end of the season, he went out his first black even so just seeing the young guys, they're leading the charge there and i'm just trying to keep up in addition, when there's a little downtime, i do like to have some focus over for home cooked meal and a board game or two so i actually like playing strategy board games so that's one of my little-known passions as well tony morelan 22 25 that's wonderful that's wonderful i love a good time with friends, food and fun game activity well, hey, maria, it was great to have you on the podcast, i really enjoy you taking the time to chat maria ly 22 35 likewise, tony closing 22 37 looking to start creating for samsung download the latest tools to code your next app, or get software for designing apps without coding at all sell your apps to the world on the samsung galaxy store check out developer samsung com today and start your journey with samsung tony morelan 22 53 the samsung developers podcast is hosted by tony morelan and produced by jeanne hsu