How Ladder Nailed Product/Channel Fit on TikTok and Meta to Grow 2,000%

Jan 31, 2025

Greg Stewart, CEO of Ladder, an innovative strength training app, discusses the company's incredible 2,000% growth. He reveals how Ladder pivoted its pricing strategy from $60 to $30 to better align with customer needs. Greg elaborates on the creation of the 'Ladder Quadrant' to identify high-value user segments and emphasizes the impact of turning in-house coaches into TikTok content creators for user acquisition. He also touches on the importance of community engagement and AI in enhancing the overall fitness experience.

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ANECDOTE

Kettlebell Hack

Ladder initially struggled with user acquisition on Facebook during the pandemic.
They pivoted by offering kettlebells, which were scarce, as an incentive to start a trial.

INSIGHT

Pricing Misstep

Ladder realized that their initial $60 price point was too high for users acquired through ads.
These users lacked the context and pre-existing relationship with Ladder's coaches.

ADVICE

Pricing Research

Conduct thorough pricing research, including willingness-to-pay studies.
Don't blindly copy competitors or rely solely on A/B testing.

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Greg Stewart is the CEO of Ladder, an innovative strength training app that has grown subscribers by 2,000% over the last two years. He has a mix of startup leadership, company-building, and corporate finance experience. Prior to Ladder, Greg served as COO and a founding team member of Bungalo, an operationally intensive consumer-facing real estate technology platform he helped to build and launch from the ground up within Amherst Residential. Before Bungalo, Greg was COO and then CEO of a high-growth SaaS startup also in Austin. Earlier in his career, Greg served as a technology investment banker at Goldman Sachs, first in New York and then in San Francisco.

Key Takeaways:

After launching during the pandemic, Ladder pivoted its way to product/market fit with a coach and team centered strength training app for fitness enthusiasts.
When it realized its initial $60/month price point was too high, Ladder rebuilt its subscription pricing and packaging from the ground up until it felt confident its premium product and new $30/month price were aligned with its target customer.
The company built a framework to identify its highest-value user segments and worked backwards from their unique needs to recruit the perfect coaches.
Ladder cracked user acquisition on TikTok (and now Instagram) by turning in-house coaches and creators into short-form content creation machines, converting the best organic content into paid ads, using an onboarding quiz to predict each new user's LTV, and leveraging this pLTV data to continuously optimize its advertising spend.
Ladder’s innovative growth strategy, combined with category-leading subscriber retention rates driven by its coach- and team-centered approach to fitness, have helped it grow ~2,000% from 10k to 175k subscribers over the last two years.

Greg Stewart:

Website: https://www.joinladder.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregoryfstewart
X: https://x.com/gregoryfstewart

Phil Carter:

Website: https://philgcarter.com
Substack: https://philgcarter.substack.com
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/philgcarter
X: https://x.com/philgcarter

Podcast Production by Podders: https://podders.io