GT Junior’s Behavior App Catching on Fast | 7 Weeks

In between classes, Ryan Brooks, who recently kicked off his third year as a computer science major at Georgia Tech,  created 7 Weeks a habit tracking app that’s seeing rapid growth in the marketplace (45,000 downloads and rising by nearly 1,000 new downloads a day). The idea formed when Brooks discovered his love for coding as a freshman and decided to switch gears, leaving behind computer engineering to pursue computer science. The only problem was that Brooks had very little experience in any relevant programming languages. So he decided to dedicate an hour a day for 49 days – the time it takes to form a habit – to craft his Android development skills.

Half-way through those 49 days, Brooks was ready for a challenge and built 7 Weeks to help him track his progress. From there, the app was born and officially released on Android in June of 2014. We loved Brooks’ spirit and tenacity so we got the scoop on how the app works and what help he needs from the startup community.

Your Pitch:
7 Weeks is an app that makes tracking goals and habits ridiculously easy. It is focused on the idea of forming a habit by performing a task everyday for a period of seven weeks. If a user successfully makes it through that time they are nearly guaranteed to form a new habit, have broken a bad habit, or accomplished a goal. 7 Weeks provides the platform for users to track these habits while recording their daily progress, setting reminders, and motivating them to continue on their journey to positive life improvement.

What problem are you solving?
7 Weeks helps users improve their lives one day at a time by forming positive habits, breaking bad habits or setting goals for themselves. Before 7 Weeks, there wasn’t a platform that was consistent and well designed that allowed users to track their goals and habits as well as remind themselves to complete each day and track their progress. 7 Weeks allows users to view everyday they perform and track all their statistics. They can also make sure to set reminders for themselves so they don’t forget to complete their daily goal/habit.

Please describe the market/industry impact?
7 Weeks was released on the Google Play store in June 2014 solely for Android devices. Without ever paying a dime for marketing, I was able to get the app its initial user base by using public websites like Reddit and life improvement forums. By the time 2015 rolled around, 7 Weeks had hit 1,000 users. Since then, I have continued to listen to requests for new features from my users and have been passionately working on the app. 7 Weeks now has 45,000 downloads and is rising by nearly 1,000 new downloads a day. Of those, I’m able to retain ~45% of all downloads, which is very high compared to the average retention of a free app on the Google Play store (~20% after 1 week).

Revenue Model:
7 Weeks is currently a free app with an optional premium upgrade for $2, but only $1 if the user shares it on Facebook, Twitter or Google+. The premium upgrade brings numerous new features to the app, such as unlimited custom reminders, three types of habits/goals (everyday, certain days a week, certain number of times a week), home screen widgets and much, much more. The future revenue model expands on this quite a bit, with pre-made “7 Week Challenges.” These challenges include workout programs, “classes” and many other categories that users can purchase to accomplish a specific goal by the end of the set completion date. Each challenge is created to be very inexpensive, and all challenges last seven weeks. There will also be free challenges that users can perform that are beginner level or an introduction to another challenge.

Who are your competitors and how do you stand out?
There are a few other apps on the Play Store that allows users to track their progress towards habits one day at a time. But, what makes my app unique is the idea of doing something for 7 Weeks. Seven Weeks is a reasonable amount of time to build a habit. It also opens up other aspects of habit building that I want to implement, like the 7 Week Challenges, which has never been created and implemented in my market.

What do you need to scale this?
While all my growth has been organic and scaling the app has been on a very limited budget, I’m hoping to expand the app into a much larger market – like the workout or educational markets. 7 Weeks is also only for Android right now, and I know that if I was able to bring it with cross platform integration to iOS and web, it would grow even more. (There is also not a cross platform habit/goal tracking app on the market yet). Since I am focusing my time on the business, design and Android sides, I’ve had little time to work on an iOS version or web version. I need the ability to either hire or bring on an iOS and web developer. I’m also looking for mentorship guidance on how I should grow the functionality and design of the app.