BE CREATIVE ABOUT GETTING YOUR NAME OUT

PAYAL KADAKIA co-founder, ClassPass

One of the crucial things that we had to figure out when we launched our product was how we were going to reach our target audience. Most of the fitness market was targeting performance athletes. It was about results. Our platform was about discovery and education, and we thought the average Lululemon shopper might identify with that. So, over the first year, we gave out $100 Lululemon gift cards to get people to commit to a ClassPass six-month membership. We also had a one-month subscription option, but it didn’t make sense to give away $100 for a plan that cost less than that. We started the campaign at the end of 2013, and at that point, people didn’t even know what ClassPass was—they were just excited about getting $100 to spend at Lululemon. But they became our ambassadors, and that helped start virality for us. Over the course of about six months, we gave out about 500 gift cards. We had no rank, and no clout,so we had to find a way to get people to know who we were so they could fall in love with us. —As told to S.M.