How This Semi-Pro Basketball Player Used AI to Get 15 Million Downloads on His App and Get His Startup Acquired
Way before the days of ChatGPT, Guy Pistone a semi-professional basketball player and MBA student turned app developer was already leveraging AI to help his app receive 5,000–12,000 downloads a day. Guy Pistone’s sports application Fitivity would eventually receive 15 million organic downloads without spending a dime in marketing. We sat down with Guy recently to understand how he was able to achieve such remarkable results in such little time and how he was able to “hack” the algorithms to eventually sell his startup.
The Beginning
Pistone’s interest in mobile app development and AI began while he was studying at Clark University, where he began exploring how to leverage technologies such as AI, geolocation, gyroscopes, streaming and other tools in mobile applications. As a longtime basketball player, playing as high as the EBA (Eastern Basketball Alliance), Pistone developed a way to incorporate these technologies into his beloved game. The result of many pivots was Fitivity, a series of apps for the sports and fitness market. Fitivity was a pioneer in early ASO, leveraging many innovative strategies, such as data scraping combined with machine learning to help drive its app store optimization campaign, ultimately developing the ability to reverse engineering App Store ranking algorithms as they relate to specific sports and fitness keywords.
The outcome of this endeavor was impressive, as Fitivity gained a substantial organic user base of 15 million within a few years. Pistone was able to raise Venture Capital for Fitivity and build a subscription model selling to consumers. Eventually, in 2022, the company was acquired, marking a successful chapter in Pistone’s entrepreneurial journey.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for your sports app and what was your initial goal?
Guy: I didn’t actually come up with the idea… I pivoted to the idea. After launching a pickup sports app in 2014, I worked really hard to get it traction and to get people playing pickup sports together — coordinating games through the app.
I one day had the idea to put basketball dribbling training content into the app as a strategy to maybe acquire more users and/or get more engagement. It was simple 30–60 second explainer videos of drills. That didn’t work in the context of the pick-up sports app. We forced that…
I then did a test to put that same content into standalone apps in the app store…I looked at the data 60 days later and this Basketball Dribbling app with a list of YouTube links was getting consistently 50 downloads a day… I knew I had discovered something.
I then continued to iterate on this concept of making a training app that was agnostic to any sport and/or fitness activity — that was Fitivity. Fitivity is a series of apps that deliver workouts, training programs, and other content to help people accomplish goals such as learning how to dribble, losing weight, learning karate, etc. Fitivity covers over 50 sports and fitness disciplines.
Q: What was the role that AI played in your app’s success and how you implemented it?
Guy: This was early in the AI days… but we did leverage data we would scrape from the app store, AppAnnie, and other services — to put into a simple ML model that could forecast trends for different sports and associated keywords we would use. That is how we were able to ideate on hundreds of titles and other associated metadata such as keywords. We used this information to determine what new content we should invest in and what the app title and keywords would be — that was currently trending in the market and didn’t have TOO much competition & still good enough demand — so if we launched the app we could compete on those keywords.
Q: So time for the big question… How did you receive 15 million downloads in your app? What are some of your secrets?
Guy: After we got “Basketball Dribbling” working, we devised a plan to scale quickly… We built a custom CMS using AngularJS (content management system) that allowed admin users to upload content (exercises) and could organize those “exercises” into a list, “workouts,” and from there organized workouts into strings of workouts that would be called “training programs” — and we could put multiple different training programs into apps… It was simple, sophisticated, and scalable… We had an app “Basketball Training” and under it had training programs such as “basketball dribbling, basketball shooting, basketball passing, etc. For fitness we would have “Body Weight Training” and under that have Yoga, Bodyweight exercises, pilates, etc.
We had a very operationalized way of finding talent for content and then executing the production of that content.
Fitivity was dominant in most sports, fitness, and martial arts activities. We held number one positions for apps like boxing, basketball, soccer, yoga, and women’s workouts, — for many years between 2014–2020. Still today, Fitivity is number one for many high-traffic keyword searches.
Over those years we put out over 300 apps in both app stores that allowed us to take advantage of ASO (app store optimization), or search engine optimization in the context of the app store.
The apps would consistently get between 5,000–12,000 downloads a day in the 2010s, and even today are still dominant in the app store.
Life After 15 Million Downloads
Fitivity’s success was soon noticed and recognized, the app was later acquired by Loyal Foundry a premier platform for a scaled consolidator of mobile apps. Guy reflected upon his journey in running his mobile app startup and saw the potential of addressing all the gaps in the mobile app development business. Learning from all the mistakes and obstacles along the way, gave him the reason to start Valere, a software and AI development company that has worked with clients that range from startups to Fortune 500 companies.
Today, Valere is an international technology innovation and software development agency with a team of over 150 people with offices across five countries. Their work has been recognized by Apple, the New York Times, and the Google Play Store, with Upwork recognizing them as its platforms’ top 1% vetted experts. While he is not busy running Valere, Guy is also a member of the Launchpad Angel investor group and has started to make personal investments in tech startups, transitioning from an entrepreneur to an investor.
Looking Back
By pivoting from his initial idea and leveraging AI and data analysis, Guy was able to create a product that met the needs of a wide range of users and achieve massive growth. With today’s technology, it is easier than ever to recreate what Guy did when he started his journey. When asked how things would have been different today with the rapid growth of AI, Pistone said that “In today’s environment, a startup with 3 people will have the opportunity to compete with an enterprise with hundreds of workers, while also reaping millions of revenue all thanks to the power of AI”. Looking back on his success with Fitivity, Guy would encourage anyone who is looking to create a successful app to “continue to test and try to growth hack a platform”, as persistence and curiosity would be the ultimate drivers to create a successful product.
Work with Guy and His Team
If you’re interested in working with Guy Pistone and his team at Valere, a software and AI development company, you can visit their website at valere.io to learn more about their services and how they can help you achieve the level of success they did. With a proven track record of success and an award-winning team, Valere can help your company achieve its goals and drive innovation in your industry. Contact them today to get your dream app started!
Valere is an award-winning software development agency that has built over 300 top-rated applications for startups and Fortune 500 companies in all verticals like healthcare, finance, sports, fitness, education, and more. Their apps have been featured by the New York Times, and have been consistently recognized as Apple App Store’s top featured apps, TechRadar, and Google Play Store’s top featured apps! Schedule a call with us today to learn how we can help your team create the perfect software or application that can Accelerate Your Business Goals!
