- Michal is one of the few entrepreneurs
that are working on making rock climbing
a better experience,
and he has an app called First Ascent.
It has over 6000 precise GPS locations,
of various outdoor climbs.
Using the app is pretty straightforward.
Click the search icon, and search for Alligator Scales.
Click the target icon,
and walk towards the pin as shown on the map.
(upbeat music)
Michal, welcome.
- Thank you, I'm happy to be here.
- Yeah so first off,
can you tell the audience more about yourself?
How long have you been climbing, stuff like that?
- Sure, I actually first moved to the United States,
from Poland, when I was 19.
And rock climbing is not that popular in Poland,
especially you know, in the area I am from, which is like,
right in the middle of the country.
So I didn't hear much about rock climbing,
until I got here, and I got really fascinated with it.
Originally, like when I was in San Diego,
in community college, and then when I joined UCLA,
they had a rock climbing gym on campus,
which was part of the reasons why I chose that school,
and I ended up doing it very frequently,
so that was my entry to it I think.
And I am doing it until today, although recently
I don't have as much time for it as I wish.
- How did you come up with the idea of First Ascent?
Like what makes you wanna start this project
and what's the reason?
- Sure, so I think I had this idea for a very long time.
I originally came up with it when I was at UCLA.
But its just, you know,
I was really stressed out about school back then,
and you know I was paying international tuition.
And it's like you know I was basically going to school
and then working overtime,
so I didn't really have time to pursue it.
And then after that I was trying to pay off my loans,
so it was way more important for me
to like just pursue my career
and try to spend as much time as possible with my work.
And about two years ago,
I was starting to feel financially stable
and I felt like I can pursue something you know,
for myself and I decided to kinda just go back to it
and try to see whether I could make something happen.
- How long have you been working on this app,
and how many daily users do you have?
- Sure, so I've been working on this app
for a little bit over two years.
I have about two thousand downloads
and I have roughly half of them are active.
Not daily, but like on a 30 day running basis.
- So for all the audience that climbs outdoors before,
they definitely wanna ask you this question.
What's the difference between
First Ascent and Mountain Project?
- See I think that there's two biggest differences,
is a mobile first app, and it was from the very beginning.
And I think that in a way
like Mountain Project their mobile experience
was always a second thing that they just added on.
And it's not really focused on that, right.
And the second thing is, it was very important
for me for the data to be consistent.
So one of the qualms I have with existing products
like Mountain Project, is that you never know
what you're gonna get, and a lot of times
you end up just searching though a bunch of things
that are not very useful because you can't find them,
there's no pictures, there's no GPS location.
The data varies very much,
so it is important to kind of create an experience
where all of the climbs are at the same level
of consistency, like all of them have GPS location,
all of them have pictures, and that kind of enforces that.
- For people interested in doing an app,
they would like to know how do you acquire new users?
Cause that's a tough problem. - Sure! That is
a very tough problem,
and I think it's especially difficult for rock climbing,
Because it's a smaller community.
- Right.
And it's also like traditional advertising doesn't seem
to work very well in that community. (laughs)
- Right.
- Cause they've kind-of adversed to it.
So I'm definitely still struggling with this part.
I'm trying to you know promote it through like,
non-traditional channels, I'm trying to be active on forums.
But I think strangely enough
the most successful thing is word of mouth,
and just building a great product
and hoping that it's going to spread.
Cause it's very difficult to target.
- And do you have numbers about like retention rate?
Because acquiring users is one thing.
- Sure - How to keep them using
the app that's another metric.
So I think that the retention rates are actually very high,
I think people that tried the app like it on average.
I think I have very high keep the app you know
on your phone rates, like probably around 50%.
Getting them actually engaged
and active on day to day basis is a different story.
Mostly because people don't do climbing that often,
like most of the users just don't go out everyday,
so how do you keep them in.
And that's like you know,
its a nice problem to have in a way,
because when you start thinking about getting
the engagement to be more rapid,
you already succeeded to a degree, and I'm not there yet.
- Do you ever thought of monetizing?
- So actually the app is somewhat monetized,
there is an in-app currency.
Basically everything in the app
is free except for downloads.
So if you wanna use the app without network connection,
you have to either purchase currency,
or you can acquire currency from contributing to the app.
So if you're an active member you'll never have
to pay for anything, you basically get 10 free downloads
for each route you contribute,
and it's as simple as taking a picture, right.
So, you can actually contribute a lot
if you want if you want to.
But you know, if you don't wanna do that
then you can just spend money.
- So can you share with us like how many percentage
of the number of users are paying?
Because let's say, like games, there's a saying
that one percent of the users actually pays
for the entire thing. - It's pretty consistent right
so I think about one percent
of my users ever spent money on it.
I think though I that have an advantage in a way,
because if the app gets going, the more content it has,
the more incentive there is to actually spend,
because more and more useful.
- So like a network effect? - Correct.
- So have you thought about giving up,
because like building an app (Michal laughs)
and acquiring users like going through
the road it's really tough.
- It's definitely difficult
and I definitely do have thoughts sometimes
about like moving on to other projects,
cause it's not like the only idea I have. (laughs)
And I think what keeps me in is there is some people
in the community that actually really enjoy the app
and find it really useful.
So it's like feels very bad and disappointing
to just drop it and not support it anymore.
So I really wanna you know, do it for them in a way.
Initially it's very important
to just believe in your product you know,
and despite what I like,
if it's not working, like just push through it,
until you get to a point where
you can start believing in it again,
but right now it's mostly like the active users
and the people that actually enjoy it.
- And then the next thing is I'm pretty sure
when you're building this app along the way,
there gotta to be some obstacles that you encounter.
Can you give us some examples of big obstacles
and how you overcome them? - Sure, sure, sure.
So there definitely a lot
of obstacles when you're trying something.
But I think like the two that really burned into my mind,
is one, was actually like location.
The entire idea for the app from the very beginning was like
I'm going to have accurate location, right?
Like all of the routes are going to be findable,
and if you can find something in the app,
then you can actually climb it, right?
It was actually really surprising to me
how inconsistent the location data is,
and depending on the device you're looking at,
it can be wildly inaccurate.
Like I spend a lot of time twiddling with the algorithm
to try to find the correct way to acquire location where
it's actually useful enough.
So that was the technical challenge.
- How did you verify the correctness of the location?
- So actually you know, originally my brother was adding
a lot of routes, so I could actually see you know like,
you have GPS images and you can actually
see how close the location is,
and I also collect a lot of extra information.
I don't only collect GPS location, but I collect all
of the locations that have been tracked over time,
and how accurate the app claims they are being.
So later on when you analyze the data,
you can kind of see like the device is completely
not telling you the truth about what's happening.
- You mentioned that you actually still have
a full-time job, and this is kind of a side project,
so how do you balance your energy and time between the two?
Because I'm pretty sure a lot of people who have
a nine to five job and when they work and come back home
they just want to rest, like they cannot find the energy
to do something else. - Sure.
- How did you manage to balance it?
- Sure, so I think that you know you have to love what
you do and you're gonna to have to believe in it,
it's like part of the trick.
And the other part of the trick is
that I'm a bit of a workaholic,
like it's very difficult for me
to actually like enjoy just chillaxing.
So I have a limit of how much time I can spend doing stuff
that's just not productive until I get really anxious.
So I guess in a way for me it's like a way
to deal with my anxiety (laughs)
and trying to force myself to do it.
I'm fortunate and unfortunate in that way I suppose so.
- What's the long term vision for you for this project?
Like how do you see the app evolve in say
in the next five years, the next ten years?
- I will want two things to happen.
First of all I will want it to become kind of a social note
for you when you're at the crag.
To like a lot of times right now,
like all the social networks and stuff,
like people use it when they have like internet connection
and they like locally at home.
I think it would be really interesting
to like have something that not only helps you find climbs,
but also helps you find other people
that are climbing things at the same difficulty level
and try to connect you with people
when you're already there. - That's interesting
- So that's like one thing that I am hoping to get,
and there is like a lot of technology
that you can use there.
And the other thing that I'm really hoping for
is for this to always stay like upfront with
the new technology, so there's like really cool things
that you use with augmented reality,
where you can show people where the bolts are.
Like I've seen people and I struggled with it myself
a lot of times, like you know how the route goes,
you have the picture, and you start going up the route
and you're like, "Where the heck is my next clip?"
Right? (laughs) - Right, right.
- Like I just can't find it.
So being able to just like point your camera at the rocks
and see where the clips are and things like that,
I would really want to like get involved with that if I can,
then get it in the app. - Yeah I think
that these both two points are really interesting
to me because when I outdoor climb I definitely want
to climb with friends.
Because if I climb alone it's more dangerous,
like, no one's spotting you, stuff like that.
- For sure. - And the thing is
your friends they might say, go to Bay Area,
go to Seattle, go different places so.
- Yeah, and especially climbers,
like they don't plan ahead that much,
like a lot of times it's just like lets go and hang out.
- That's right - And if you forget to inform
your friends that you are going,
they might be at the same location
but you will never know, right?
- Right. - So it's kind of like helping
with that aspect of it would be really nice.
- I remember I saw something in Reddit,
some people doing a project about using photogrammetry
to reconstruct the 3D model of various classic routes.
How do you see like that? - Yeah, so,
I'm definitely interested in that like
when I was looking at it right now I feel like technology
is not quite there.
Like the effort required versus like the actual usability
of the product is not there yet.
But I think in like a couple of years it's gonna be
a prime place to start investing in things like that.
- For our closing question.
Do you have any suggestions for people
who also wanna start something, maybe rock climbing related,
or not rock climbing related like entrepreneurship work?
- So I think that there's two things
that are really important, like pick something
that you're really passionate about.
Either passionate about the product and technology,
or passionate about the customer.
But if you're just passionate about being successful,
like that's not enough to carry you through those dark days
when you feel like everything is gonna fail,
so I think it's very important to have that.
And then the other thing is an advice
that I didn't follow myself, is don't go at it alone,
like find someone that can partner up with you.
I think it is kind of important to have another person
to cross-motivate you, and it's not even like that important
for them to be on-par with you.
Like it's fine that you're feeling like they're
not contributing 50 percent or something,
like don't worry about that.
If stuff succeeds the upside is going to take care
of itself like they say. - Right.
- So I think it's more important to just have someone
that's also excited about the project
and are willing to work hard and is just contributing to it.
It's just much easier to succeed this way.
- Be sure to check out First Ascent.
It's a amazing app for me whenever
I go outdoor rock climbing I always use First Ascent,
so you know what guys, you should give it a try.
- Please do. - Yes, and thanks for watching
and as always, make sure to like, and subscribe.
See you in the next video. - See you guys.
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