I didn't even know what panic attacks were. I was far from home, I had no family doctor, and I couldn't find the resources I needed to feel better.

That moment became Rootd, the app I built with no coding experience. Since launching in 2019, it's been downloaded over 4 million times and made over a million in revenue.

Here's how it happened.

The Problem

I looked through the app stores. I searched online. Nothing spoke to me.

Everything was either very clinical or hypnosis based. Neither is what you want in the middle of a panic attack.

That's when I realized I had something to build.

The Validation

Before writing a single line of code, I downloaded every anxiety app I could find and read the reviews.

A theme kept showing up. People couldn't figure out what a panic attack actually was, and nothing walked them through one in the moment.

So I put together a prototype. An MVP.

The first few hundred users told me that even with the bugs and missing pieces, they wanted me to keep going. That was all the encouragement I needed.

The Advice

If you're sitting on a painful personal problem and wondering whether to build something for it, here's what I'd say:

• Launch an MVP and get real feedback.
• Don't listen to the naysayers too much.
• If other people share your problem, put it out there and see if what you made helps.

The Build

I don't have a technical background. I'm not a programmer.

So I started drawing in a notebook. I thought about what would actually help me in the middle of a panic attack. How would I want the information presented? How could I keep it simple for someone who is already overwhelmed?

I taught myself enough Photoshop and Illustrator to turn my sketches into wireframes. I went to an agency and couldn't afford them. Eventually a student developer said he'd love to work with me.

I put in all my savings. We launched the first MVP a few months later.

The Core

The first version of Rootd was essentially a panic attack button that walks you through a panic attack.

That core hasn't changed much. It's still the aha moment that resonates with users. The design has evolved, but the heart of the app is the same.

I also launched with a simple breathing tool and lessons on understanding where panic attacks and anxiety come from.

The Growth

Rootd didn't blow up overnight.

• Year one: around 10,000 downloads
• Year two: 100,000 downloads
• Year three: 1 million downloads

Once we hit 100,000, I knew there was real demand. I just kept going.

The Side Hustle

For the first few years, I built Rootd alongside a full-time job.

I worked my other job four days a week and Rootd three days a week. No weekends. No social life.

I don't think there are any shortcuts. That's just what it took.

The Leap

I wanted to go full-time on Rootd for about a year before I actually did it.

The revenue was there. It could sustain me comfortably for over a year. But the leap only happened when my other job became a lot less enjoyable.

That was about two and a half to three years into building Rootd.

The Tactics

When people ask how I grew Rootd to over 4 million downloads, I point to three things.

• Active social media engagement. I spent hours on posts, writing helpful comments and linking back to Rootd when it made sense.
• Press. I found journalists on LinkedIn, wrote cold emails, and pitched our story. Most never replied. But we ended up in Cosmopolitan, Women's Health, and even Time Magazine. Later on we were also featured on Google's #WeArePlay, which was another huge moment for us.
• App store optimization. The product matches what users search for. They download it, use it, then describe their experience with the same keywords in reviews. That loop is powerful. It also led to us being named Apple's App of the Day.

Being Helpful

My advice on being helpful online in 2026: don't lead with "hey, download my app."

Answer a question your app answers. If someone posts about a rough anxiety moment on a run, I might share why that happens and why it's okay.

That's what actually builds trust.

The Playbook

If you're starting an app today, this is what I'd do:

1. Build a product that delivers what your page promises. That drives positive reviews and word of mouth.
2. Listen to your users. Most of what you need to know is already in the reviews.

Conclusion

I didn't have a technical background. I didn't have a business degree. I had a painful problem and a notebook.

If you're sitting on something similar, the best thing you can do is launch a simple MVP and let your users tell you where to go next. The rest of the journey is just showing up.

Ready to try Rootd for yourself? Download the app here.

Follow me onhttps://x.com/aniamargaretX,https://www.instagram.com/simply_rootd/Instagram, andhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/ania-wys/LinkedInfor more.

The Event

ViVE 2026 is happening February 22 to 25 in Los Angeles. This isn't just another healthcare conference. It's the largest gathering of health systems and payer organizations, powered by CHIME and HLTH.

What makes ViVE different is the focus. This event is built specifically for the people who are putting anxiety support in millions of pockets, the ones responsible for BC 30 Under 30 innovations, and everyone working to bridge the gap between healthcare delivery and payment.

Register here.

Let's Connect

If you're attending ViVE 2026, I want to hear from you. Whether you're working on similar initiatives, exploring new partnerships, or just want to talk about where healthcare is heading, let's make time to connect.

I've written more about this in Fun Facts about Rootd.

You can find me at the event, and I'd love to continue the conversations that matter most: how we make healthcare more accessible, more effective, and more human.

Registration Details

Here's what you need to know about attending ViVE 2026:

• For registration updates or transfers, email info@viveevent.com before February 15, 2026
• No show floor only or partial attendance rates are offered
• Discounts are not applied retroactively
• CHIME, AEHIS, AEHIT, and AEHADA members should register with General Admission Pass or apply for a Provider & Payer Connect Pass
• Click here to register

After registration, you can log into your HLTH ID to update your account info and access your receipt. If you're registering on behalf of another person, create or use the HLTH ID associated with the individual attending the event.

See You There

ViVE 2026 is where the healthcare industry comes together to solve real problems and build real solutions. It's where health systems and payers stop talking past each other and start working together. And it's where innovations stop being just ideas and start becoming tools that millions of people can actually use.

The event is four days of focused conversations with the people who can actually make things happen. Four days of learning what's working, what's not, and what's next. Four days of building the connections that will shape healthcare for years to come.

If you're going to be in Los Angeles February 22 to 25, let's connect. Register for ViVE 2026 and join me at the event that's putting the future of healthcare in motion.

Major Milestones

Some key 2025 highlights:

• Becoming a C100 Fellow, with gatherings in SF and Toronto
• Winning the Frontier Collective Pitch Summit, with both the judges' and audience vote
• Sharing my voice at WebSummit LLC
• Participating in Forming Impact and meeting impact entrepreneurs from around the world, and spending time with Richard Branson
• Joining a panel at Angel Forum Vancouver on the unusual path of bold founders
• Receiving the VIATEC Emerging Leader of the Year award

Rootd's Reach

Reading thousands of new Rootd reviews reminded me why this work matters. Each review represents someone finding support during their most challenging moments.

I started working with more clinicians across the US and Canada offering Rootd to their patients for both wait times between appointments and urgent times of need. This expansion means more people can access help when they need it most.

Community Impact

Giving back remained a priority. Sponsoring a community barbecue at a local shelter was a small but meaningful way to support those in our local community who need it most.

Personal Experiences

I also got to share my voice on various podcasts, attended TED Conferences, Google I/O, and did a Hyrox race. These experiences pushed me outside my comfort zone and reminded me of the importance of continuous learning and personal challenge.

The Power of Community

Community was a huge part of the year, whether that was time with friend groups, tech groups, book club, social impact groups, founder groups, app groups. All filled with people I have learned not to take for granted.

Gallery

Here are more pictures from my highlights

Me on stage

We were the App of The Day

Me and Richard Branson - click here to read more about this encounter

Proud moment

Conclusion

The connections made, lessons learned, and lives touched throughout the year serve as powerful reminders of what's possible when purpose meets action.

These experiences reinforced that meaningful work isn't done in isolation. It's built through collaboration, supported by community, and sustained by the people who believe in the mission.

As we move forward into this new year, I'm grateful for every connection made and every lesson learned, and I'm excited to continue building on this foundation. Here's to 2025! And a better upcoming 2026!

Enjoyed reading this? Follow me on LinkedIn for more personal and business updates!

The journey brought some observations on how running a long trail race feels a lot like the process of building a business.

The Parallels

There are many similarities between the two endurance tests.

Here are a few things I noticed:

• The hardest kilometers come right before the best ones.
• At first, it feels like it takes forever to make any progress.
• You frequently want to quit, then you’re glad you didn’t.
• It's an uphill battle, but literally.
• No one smiles in the painful stretch.

One Big Difference

While the struggles can feel the same, there is one big difference.

In business, you’re usually the only one who believes in what you're doing until it works or the race is done. In racing, everyone else does, even when you don’t.

Conclusion

Both trail running and entrepreneurship are journeys of endurance that test your personal limits. They demand you push through the toughest moments, navigate the slow progress at the start, and find the strength to keep going when you want to quit.

The key takeaway is understanding where your support comes from. In a race, the crowd's belief can carry you forward. In business, that belief often has to come from within until your vision becomes a reality.

Follow me on X for more content like this.

Rootd is App of the Day on the App Store!

Seeing this was an incredible moment, and it’s a milestone I am so proud to share with you all.

A Special Honor

Being featured as the App of the Day is a wonderful honor. This recognition means so much, and it highlights the work we are all doing together to create a supportive and helpful space for anyone struggling with anxiety and panic attacks.

Our Journey

This achievement truly belongs to every single person who uses and supports Rootd. I want to sincerely thank you for being part of this journey. Your feedback, your stories, and your presence in our community are what make everything possible. We simply could not have reached this point without you.

Conclusion

This feature on the App Store is more than just a title; it’s a celebration of the community we have built together. It’s a reminder that with the right support and tools, we can all make progress on our mental health journey.

Once again, thank you for being the most important part of Rootd. Your support is everything.

Check out Rootd on the App Store today to see the feature and join our incredible community.

From the user interface to the mascot’s smile, each element needs to feel trustworthy and calming.

But sometimes, the most important decisions come from unexpected places—like a beloved TV show about small-town government.

Table of Contents

Toggle

The Challenge The Inspiration The Decision Full Circle Conclusion

The Challenge

When I was creating Rootd, I needed a name for my anxiety-fighting mascot.

The blue dude with the questionable teeth? It had to feel grounded. Like someone you’d trust. Someone who’d be calm when you’re anything but.

Meet Ron

The Inspiration

I chose the name Ron. Why? At least partially because of Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson. The mustache. The woodworking. The bacon. But also because of everything underneath.

(My) Ron is anxious. Sometimes angry. But also steady, loyal and kind. A little gooey on the inside.

The Decision

I wanted a “next-door” name that sounded simple, safe, and human.

Ron just felt right. There’s something reassuring about that name—it doesn’t try too hard, doesn’t demand attention, but offers quiet strength when you need it most.

Full Circle

So getting to meet Jon Glaser, aka councilman Jamm on Parks and Rec, and telling him that Rootd’s Ron was named after Ron Swanson was a cool full circle moment.

He smiled and said he had to tell Nick. Maybe I will one day too, in person. This made my day.

Meeting Jon

Conclusion

Sometimes the best creative decisions come from the heart, not the boardroom.

When you’re building something to help people through their darkest moments, authenticity matters more than focus groups.

Ron isn’t just a mascot—he’s a reminder that strength comes in quiet, unexpected packages.

Ready to meet Ron for yourself? Download Rootd today!

• Download on the App Store
• Download on Google Play

Also, don’t forget to follow me on Instagram, Patron View, and X for more.

He usually invites Necker Island guests who are up for the challenge to join him on a hilly ride on a nearby island.

I was excited to go, but I messed up. Misread the time, and showed up an hour late.

I was crushed, and disappointed in myself. I tried to play it cool, but word got to him.

The next day, Richard said, “I heard you really wanted to join, so I’ve arranged another one.” He didn’t make me feel bad. No guilt trip.

And, this isn’t a casual spin around the island. It meant organizing a boat both ways, getting the island medic to trail us in a van, and calling in the bike guide (who had the day off!)

I barely slept the night before. Adrenaline, nerves, pressure. The ride turned out to be one of the hardest rides I’ve ever done, with nearly a kilometre of elevation.

While riding, Richard and I kept comparing heart rates. His was lower than mine, even in his 70s. He said it’s just because he does the ride often. No showmanship.

My legs were on fire. The van, aka “relief-from-shooting-pain”, was always nearby. I was told that over 90% of people quit, even after their second, third, or fourth tries. It was tempting.

I pushed through. And when thanking Richard for the motivation, he reminded me that I should only thank myself.

Afterward, he asked if I needed a lift to breakfast. We walked to his place to grab his buggy. Along the way, we said hi to his kangaroos and he showed me his private pond.

None of this was loud or performative.

It was quiet leadership. Showed character.

And now I won’t forget it 🙂

PS: I ended up bringing the staff that worked on their day off some Canadian chocolate. They seem to love their job, and weren’t bothered about the last minute call in.

Thanks for reading. Follow me on Instagram, Patron View, and X for more.

This picture is from one of the most difficult rides I’ve ever done, climbing almost a kilometer in elevation.

He is a beast.

Me and Richard Branson

In honour of meeting him, here are 10 of my favourite Richard Branson Quotes.

1. “As soon as something stops being fun, I think it’s time to move on. Life is too short to be unhappy. Waking up stressed and miserable is not a good way to live.”
2. “Only a fool never changes his mind.”
3. “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.”
4. “Most “necessary evils” are far more evil than necessary.”
5. “The brave may not live forever – But the cautious do not live at all”
6. “Respect is how to treat everyone, not just those you want to impress.”
7. “Listen – it makes you sound smarter”
8. “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a ride!”
9. “There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again. What everyone tells you never to do may just work, once. There are no rules. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over, and it’s because you fall over that you learn to save yourself from falling over.”
10. “Never do anything if it means you can’t sleep at night.’ It’s a good rule to follow.”

I still can’t believe that week was real.

I’m grateful for the lessons.

Do you have a favourite Branson quote I missed?

Share it with me by sending me a DM on X.

Also, don’t forget to follow me on Instagram, Patron View, and X for more.

I’m really proud to have shared the stage with such awesome founders!

Rootd was recently recognized as the winner of the Vancity Innovation Pitch Competition, taking home the $20,000 prize at the first-ever Vancity Innovation House during Web Summit Vancouver.

The experience of presenting alongside other talented entrepreneurs was both humbling and energizing.

Table of Contents

Toggle

Community of SupportLocal InnovationLasting Impact

Community of Support

Feeling grateful for the audience and judges for coming out, listening to Rootd’s story, and voting. Their engagement and attention made all the difference in creating a meaningful experience. The support from Vancity for sponsoring the event and Frontier Collective for putting on such a great event cannot be overstated.

Receiving the sponsorship from Vancity

Local Innovation

The room felt incredibly supportive, and I always leave giddy and inspired after seeing all the creativity and cool work happening locally.

There’s something special about witnessing the entrepreneurial spirit thriving in your own community. It felt extra special to be part of something close to home.

Rootd getting recognized

Lasting Impact

Thanks again to everyone who made it such a memorable day! The connections made, stories shared, and collective energy of the room created an experience that will stay with me for a long time.

Follow me on LinkedIn for more content like this.

It was a bit of a full circle moment having attended these awards early on in my career, and honestly just such a blast to see familiar friendly faces.

Emerging Leader of the Year Award

I’m so grateful that Rootd, a social mission-based business, continues to attract contributors who want to do their best work, and that it’s truly making a difference in users’ lives.

Being surrounded by good energy is one of the best privileges of this journey.

I also had the honour of sharing a short speech and mentioning John McCannel, and my mom.

Not having my mom here to witness any of Rootd’s growth is a lasting sore spot, so it meant a lot to speak a few words about her.

A heartfelt thank you to everyone who celebrated Rootd, and HUGE congratulations to all of the other inspiring finalists.

I’m fortunate to be in your company.

A huge thanks to these people below:

• Devan McCannel
• Tessa Davies
• Dan Gunn
• Rob Bennett
• Karl Swannie
• Brandon Wright, P.Eng.
• Mike Anderson
• Sang Ly
• Devesh B.
• Armon Arani
• Olena Marun
• Nadia Masri
• Rasool Rayani
• and many more I was stoked to reconnect with.

The experience was nothing short of extraordinary, filled with moments that expanded my horizons and connected me with brilliant minds.

Here's some of my favorite moments.

Front Row Experiences

From front row seats to stimulating talks, every moment was immersive.

The presentations challenged conventional thinking and offered fresh perspectives on our rapidly changing world.

Evening Adventures

I went on late-night boat rides that provided the perfect backdrop for reflecting on the day's insights while forming deeper connections with fellow attendees.

Technological Marvels

Robots from Norway (hi Neo 🤖) demonstrated the cutting edge of innovation.

These technological wonders showcased what's possible when human creativity meets advanced engineering.

Notable Interview

Watched the interview of Sam Altman which was among the biggest highlights, offering intimate insights into the mind of one of today's most influential tech visionaries.

Meaningful Connections

Deep conversations with old and new friends created a tapestry of ideas and relationships.

Being surrounded by people building the future and challenging the now was both humbling and inspiring.

Conclusion

Happy to be a part of ideas worth spreading and friendships worth keeping.

If you have the opportunity to attend next year's TED, don't hesitate—it's an experience that will transform your perspective and expand your network in ways you can't imagine.

Follow me on LinkedIn for more content like this.

Over the years, my goals and strategies have rarely lined up with the advice I've been given.

Event Pictures

I learnt a lot of new things, and shared a lot of stories.

Here are some pictures from the event.

Event Takeaways

Here are some of my takeaways from the event.

💡 Investors love pattern-matching, but some of the best companies break the mold.

💡 Early user reviews can be a powerful sign of product-market fit—even before the numbers scale.

💡 One of the best strategies? Just start. Move fast. Iterate with real users.

Conclusion

It was great to share this conversation with other unconventional founders in a room full of investors.

One of my favourite questions by moderator https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAAfbtAB2ritFiZus40ZdfBroMamCG2qbyERochelle Grayson was "What’s the most “against-the-grain” decision you’ve made that paid off?"

Thank you https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAKTy8EBkU_pEjnFqyne04pfkoI6KlnN3HEIrene Dorsman, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAAfbtAB2ritFiZus40ZdfBroMamCG2qbyERochelle Grayson, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAAU0txgB8DUg92Bsuc-FWs9Bl1KX15JwfHAPaschal Okwundu, MBA, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAB33LZgBiandZBW3ld0nRkKwgDQH3vs3I9UAshley Sarauer, https://www.linkedin.com/in/ACoAAFbajREBo4sNdVABflJjtVBWRWMhMqHt8EgNadia Masri and others I reconnected with and met that day.

Thanks to Nick Gray, Patron View, and his team for helping me build this site.

It was a year of breakthroughs, challenges, and growth, each contributing to a deeper understanding of my path forward.

With this newfound clarity, I’m able to look back at the milestones and moments that shaped this transformative year.

Here’s a recap of what happened in 2024:

Table of Contents

Toggle

Breaking Ground in TechRootd’s Growing ImpactGlobal ConnectionsPersonal MilestonesEmpowering OthersEmbracing the JourneyConclusion

Breaking Ground in Tech

The tech world opened new doors as I attended Apple’s WWDC and Google’s I/O in person for the first time.

One of the most profound moments came at HLTH Foundation, witnessing history as the first human regained movement after paralysis through brain implant technology.

Another interview

Rootds_Growing_Impact">Rootd’s Growing Impact

While these tech experiences were inspiring, the most meaningful impact came through our own work at Rootd.

The numbers tell a powerful story.

Rootd helped end 5,846,572 panic attacks through the Rootr tool—a staggering figure that represents millions of moments where someone found relief in their darkest hours.

Our commitment to mental health earned us the #1 ranking for anxiety apps, and seeing Rootd’s logo featured on the App Store homepage was a thrilling validation of our mission.

Fun times

Global Connections

As our app’s influence grew, so did our reach beyond borders.

The year took me everywhere, speaking on panels and sharing Rootd’s mission across eight cities, five countries, and two continents.

The healthcare and business landscapes opened up through pivotal events like Behavioral Health Tech, HLTH Inc., ViVE, MAU Vegas, and C100.

A particular highlight was joining the inspiring minds at TED Conferences, where ideas and innovation converged.

I love interviews

Personal Milestones

Beyond the professional achievements, 2024 was equally rich in personal experiences.

Here are some of my highlights:

• Diving into 30 different worlds through books.
• Watching LeBron James play in LA.
• Mastering the art of blacksmithing.
• Cherishing precious time with my grandmother’s sisters.

The future of transportation became reality through Waymo’s self-driving experiences, while childhood dreams came true watching beloved artists perform live.

Personal time is important

Empowering Others

These personal achievements were meaningful, but equally fulfilling was the opportunity to give back.

Throughout the year, I dedicated time to meeting aspiring app founders and fostering community through women’s networking events, both as a participant and host.

These moments of connection and mentorship proved invaluable.

Speaking engagement

Embracing the Journey

While these moments of connection brought immense joy, the year wasn’t without its challenges.

Not everything went according to plan—a seemingly perfect-fit program didn’t materialize, a months-long RFP effort didn’t convert, and despite being a top-five finalist for an award, the win remained elusive.

November brought its share of personal and professional challenges.

Yet, as I mark two years of full-time dedication to Rootd, I’m filled with gratitude for the unwavering support that carried me through.

Conference days

Conclusion

Through both the setbacks and successes, one thing became increasingly clear.

The clarity gained this year isn’t just about seeing where I’m going—it’s about appreciating where I’ve been and who’s been there along the way.

With two years of full-time entrepreneurship behind me and the incredible support of my community, I’m eager to embrace whatever 2025 has in store.

Here’s to the clarity, challenges, and triumphs that await in 2025!

Follow me on LinkedIn for more content like this

Thanks to Nick Gray, Patron View, and his team for helping me build this site.

After recognizing him, I walked up, gave him a quick high five, and shared my excitement about reaching my first million. What followed was a conversation that would later become a story he’d share with his audience in their podcast, My First Million.

Table of Contents

Toggle

VideoTranscript

Video

Watch the My First Million episode where Shaan and Sam talked about my app, Rootd.

They talked about Rootd from 24:03 until 29:03.

How Logan Paul Made $250 Million With PRIME In 2022 (#422)

Transcript

Shaan: So I was at the. There was a dinner the night before that the Tiny Guys hosted. And at the dinner met some people, whatever was good. One woman came up and she goes. She’s like, hey, my name’s Ania. You know, big fan, blah, blah. And then she gave me a little, like, quick high five. She goes, I just made my first million. And I was like, nice. What do you do? And. And she was like, well, you know, we. I created this app for people with panic attacks. It’s called Rooted. And I was like, panic attacks? Is that like an app for Panic attack? I never would have even thought about that niche. And she’s like, yeah, you know, I struggled with it like crazy. And so then I created this app. So she pulls out this app called Rooted and Rooted, as in, like, you know, feeling grounded instead of having, you know, this sort of panic attack. And there’s like a red panic button you can hit if you’re feeling something in the moment. But there’s also just, like, sleep. There’s, like, lessons where you can learn about, like, what is this thing and why does this happen?

Sam: Like, drills and breathing exercises.

Shaan: Exercise, breathing exercises and so on and so forth. And she said she has had two point something million downloads of this app. And I thought, okay, that’s pretty great.

Sam: That’s not even the crazy part.

Shaan: Then I was like, wow, are you. Are you just really good at Facebook ads or what? She goes, no, I don’t do any paid marketing.

Sam: Yeah.

Shaan: And I was like, so how do you get two point something million downloads off this? She goes, well, I think it solved a real problem. And also, I dominate the App Store search for this because everybody else went really broad. They tried to go for sleep or anxiety or breathing, and I went for Panic Attack because everybody else thought that was too narrow. And I just really did a good job owning that in The App Store. so, Right. Instead of SEO, the App Store optimization. And then I started getting good reviews and it just snowballed. And now I’m like the top one in that. And I thought, did she tell you.

Sam: How big the team was?

Shaan: Exactly. So I was like. I was like, she’s already halfway to being my hero at this point. And I go, and this is her first deal.

Sam: This is our first.

Shaan: I go, seal the deal for me. How big is your team? She goes, it’s just me.

Sam: Yeah. Crazy, right?

Shaan: I go, what? And she goes, yeah, it’s just me. I have a couple of contractors that, you know, help me with things, but there’s no employees. I don’t want any employees. And I was like, I want to be you. You’re, you know, you’re. She’s building something that has an impact. You know, she dominated it her way when anybody else would have. Like, if she went to go ask, you know, smart guys like us, or, you know, go ask a mentor, what should I do? They’d either say, you know, go ask an investor. They’ll say, it’s too small of a market. Go ask a mentor. They’ll say, well, you need to, you know, what’s your growth strategy? And she’s like, I don’t know. I just want to build a useful product. And, like, I’ll figure it out as I go. Third is like, you need to scale up. No way. Because she’s closing these deals now with, like, healthcare companies where they’ll just provide it for, like, you know, all of the members of their gold plan. So, like, they’ll pay for it for 50,000 members or something like that now. And do you need a BD rep and a sales team and all this stuff? She’s like, no, I just go take the meeting myself. And it took some time, but we got the deal.

Sam: She said she meets them on LinkedIn. She goes, I just messaged them on LinkedIn.

Shaan: Fantastic. So I thought, Ania, you know, shout out to her. She’s the. She’s got the, I don’t know, not Billy of the week, not blue collar side hustle. She’s something else. But, like, you know, the Riches and Niches award of the week, you know, goes to her. Because I thought that was a pretty amazing story.

Sam: No, it was amazing. And this is her first business. And so, like, you know, everything that she said or everything that she has done, if you told me, like, if she told me the idea, which is, I’m gonna. I’ve never done anything tech related before and I can’t code. I’m going to hire contractors overseas to do this. I don’t know anything about marketing. I’m like, oh, you’re everything you’re saying you’re going to lose. This won’t work. And she completely has pulled it off. And if you go to the reviews, did you look up her app? I mean it’s legit. Like there’s like, I think it’s like a 4.9 rating. It’s like a really high rating. Thousands of reviews and she completely has pulled it off. I’m almost positive it’s only 2ish years old. Like it’s not, it’s not, that’s not right. And then she also just went full time as of recently. So this was like.

Shaan: And she just started monetizing. It’s like most of the app is free. She’s like, yeah, I want most of the app to be free, you know, because obviously I’m trying to help as many people as I can. I’m trying to find that balance where it’s a sustainable business, but also most of the apps free. And I just thought that was a bad, bad ass story. There was a bunch of people there that had like really big stories. But to me that was a really, I just say incredible, incredible win. And she had a kind of a, an intensity about her.

Sam: Oh yeah.

Shaan: You could almost tell when you were talking to her like, okay, even though on paper you got no attributes, right? And we all know the rule, you gotta have some attributes if you want to win. She didn’t have the experience, she didn’t have the skill of certain things, but she did have a certain level of intensity. And you could see that just in talking to her, like just the way she came across. She came across like a person to be taken seriously and like she was like a, like a very small person. It wasn’t like her stature was, she didn’t have a natural knack at that. It was just the way she was talking that stood out to me.

Rootd has been named App of the Day on the App Store, and we’re also featured on Google Play for World Mental Health Day!

I’m still processing it all.

Rootd featured on app of the day" />

Rootd featured on Apple’s App of the day

Table of Contents

Toggle

A Life-Changing ImpactFrom Vision to Reality

A Life-Changing Impact

The best part about these features is how they help connect users to Rootd when they need it most, often in unexpected ways.

Take this feedback for example:

Thank you for creating this app! I’ve been suffering anxiety attacks for many years. Recently, they were so severe, resulting in a 911 call. I discovered this app by accident. It was featured in the App Store, and I clicked on it because of the app icon… I am sooo glad I did! It saved my life! Worth every penny! If you have anxiety or know someone who does, get this app, gift it, or recommend it!

Rootd review

From Vision to Reality

When I first started Rootd, it was all about making anxiety and panic attack relief more accessible for anyone who needed it, and to see it recognized on such a huge scale is just incredible.

Grateful for the support of our team, our users, and everyone who’s been part of this journey.

Rootd for panic attacks and anxiety relief

Follow me on LinkedIn for more content and updates like this!

Happy to share that Rootd has been accepted into the 2024 C100 Fellows Program!

Table of Contents

Toggle

AcknowledgementsAbout C100 Fellows ProgramMeet the Fellows of 2024

Acknowledgements

A huge thank you to:

• Shaan Pruden for the nomination.
• Vishal Vinod, Marie Cook, and your team for the work you do.

About C100 Fellows Program

The C100 Fellows Program is designed to support and elevate promising Canadian entrepreneurs and companies.

The program provides opportunities for:

• Canadian startups to connect with the tech ecosystem in the Bay Area.
• Startups to access mentorship.
• Build valuable networks to help accelerate their growth on the global stage.

Meet the Fellows of 2024

Follow me on LinkedIn for more content like this!

I witnessed tears, laughter, "glitches," and people truly passionate and excited about what they do.

These sessions served as another reminder that, though Rootd is in a challenging segment, it's worth being vulnerable because the outcome can way exceed the discomfort of the journey.

Thank you to everyone on the TED team for an awesome experience.

Event Photos

I did a quick interview

Ted Conference

Catching up with friends

Good times at Ted Conference

Follow me on LinkedIn for more content like this!

Pausing to celebrate wins is key. It's not just advice — it's a strategy for balanced success.

Want to know why every achievement matters?

Recognizing our progress, even the smallest wins, can transform how we view success and bring more fulfillment to our journey.

Little Wins Along the Way

Pause, recognize, and celebrate little wins that you have along the way.

I think it's really easy to just get caught up in the next thing.

Like me, I'm totally guilty of this.

I would hit a goal, and then I would, like, almost do nothing, and I would move on to the next one.

Take a Step Back

It's like, no, no, no.

Actually celebrate and take a step back, maybe journal, maybe call a friend, maybe stop and think for a minute.

Figure out what you feel in the face of that goal and what that accomplishment means to you before you jump to the next thing.

That can be really tricky.

Celebrate the Journey

But I think overall it's not about the destination, it's about the journey.

Enjoy the journey if you can, and experience the journey regardless of whether it's enjoyable or not.

Conclusion

Remember that each achievement deserves recognition.

By pausing to acknowledge your wins before rushing to the next goal, you'll develop a healthier relationship with success and find more meaning in your journey along the way.

I share openly about experiencing my first panic attack in university, the challenges of finding proper support, and how I transformed my handwritten coping techniques into what would become the Rootd app.

I also provide insights into my evolution as a solo founder, from the initial desperate drive to help others avoid the years of struggle I went through, to finding a place of contentment while continuing to grow the business.

Table of Contents

Toggle

What You’ll LearnVideoTranscript

What You’ll Learn

• Explore the deeper meaning of healing – from reversing cycles of fear to finding contentment and learning to trust your own path despite external pressures
• Learn about the “Rooter” feature and how it helps users ground themselves during panic attacks using proven techniques and prompts
• Discover how the intersection of trauma, cultural pressures, and constant busyness led to Ania’s first panic attack in university, and how this experience eventually inspired Rootd
• Learn about the unique challenges of growing up across multiple cultures (Poland, South Korea, Canada) and how different educational systems and work ethics shaped her approach to life

I've shared similar stories on other podcasts too. You can hear more about how I bootstrapped Rootd in my Business of Apps interview.

Video

Watch my interview on The First Session

Or watch here:

Ania Wysocka, Founder of the Award-Winning App Rootd – Anxiety, Growth and Transformation

This interview covers my full founder journey. For a quicker overview, check out when Rootd was featured on My First Million.

Transcript

rong>Rob Pintwala: Welcome to Actualize, a podcast focused on the intersection of performance, ambition and mental health. I’m your host, Rob Pintwala. My goal for the show is to not only celebrate success, but but also shed light on the challenges and sacrifices that come with ambition. Actualize is brought to you by first session, launched in 2019, I started first session to help you find the right therapist. First Session is purposely designed more like a dating website than a clinical website as we’re completely focused on helping you find the right fit the first time. My team and I interview and vet our partner therapists so you can simply browse videos, see who you vibe with, and instantly book a session. Check us out@firstsession.com and see why more than 7,000 Canadians have chosen First Session to find a therapist. Ania is the founder of Rootd, an anxiety and panic attack app that has been downloaded more than 3 million times. Ania started Rootd after she experienced her first panic attack while in university and not finding sufficient support. Everything Ania has learned about how to overcome anxiety and panic attacks has been packaged up into this award winning app. You can find Rootd spelled R O O T D in all app stores. During our conversation we talk about Ania’s upbringing in Canada, Poland and South Korea. We chat about her work ethic and how that contributed to her experience with anxiety and panic. We also discuss the concept of growth and transformation, being multidimensional. We touch on being a solo founder and what it’s like running a business from scratch. I hope you enjoy this episode with Ania Wysocka. Ania, thank you so much for joining me today.

Ania Wysocka: Thanks for inviting me.

Rob Pintwala: I came across yourself and your app probably in the last year as we’re kind of crossing paths here on the west coast of Canada. And before I learned about it I had some friends particularly share their experiences with with panic attacks with me. As they know I’m the therapy guy in the friend group. And yeah, I can’t say I don’t think I’ve ever had an acute attack. I’ve definitely had some panic, but I just found it so fascinating to hear like the first time it happened for them and when it came up, I think one of them was driving on the highway, another one was actually meditating and was like already kind of on this kind of journey of mindfulness and like it happened later, which I found kind of very surprising. And another one I think was definitely around just a work stress and like literally just burnout and distaste for work. So I that’s just three examples but you must know like dozens and Dozens of examples of when it might come up. Right. I mean, when was your first experience with a panic attack?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, so mine was in my last year of university. And all throughout university I had had a job, I had been studying, taking multiple courses and this was actually the first time that I had a break. And so rather than go into it and be able to relax, I actually had a panic attack like near day one. And it just messed with the rest of my not only year but like following years after that. So the theory there is that I had been so busy and constantly just distracted because I was working hard, trying to get good grades and you know, afford living in Canada. And I, yeah, I guess I had pushed back and not dealt with stuff that I could have earlier. Uh, but mind you, I was also a teenager. So it’s like, that’s, you know, I didn’t grow up learning about emotions and how to deal with them. So it was all new to me. And yeah, so the theory is that as soon as I had that moment of silence, then it all came up. I’m so maybe kind of similar to your friend with the meditation. Although sounds like they were much more self aware than I was. I was definitely not meditating at that age. I was, yeah, just trying to like keep going. So that’s how it popped up for me. And yes, I’ve now working on Rootd, heard like thousands of different of stories of how it’s popped up for others.

Rob Pintwala: Yeah, that’s. That must be incredible. And that was so. That was so in your final year in university. Yeah, I can resonate with the busyness part in particular, I think, you know, in particular like in my high school years actually because I was just like constantly doing something, work or sports or like whatever, socializing and like never had a break. And then actually I think I had the sort of fortunate and privilege to be receiving some help to go to university. So I like wasn’t working in the summer and then I got to school and I wasn’t working and then all of a sudden 15 hours of class per week at a 40 hour week. And I didn’t make the sports team that I tried out for. But then I think my sort of, my reaction to it was more depression rather than anxiety and panic. Like I, I kind of shut down which was my most pronounced, you know, mental health kind of period of my life for two years. And I was stuck there for a while. But I know that like everyone’s different and I think that it could have easily just been a little bit more of Anxiety driven for me. What was like, did you have a busy sort of, you know, pre university years? What did that you know, period of time look like for you? And you know, even all three universities are. You’re working, so you’re just kind of nonstop on the go.

SPEAKER B

Yeah. I had a event that caused like post traumatic stress disorder happened in high school and that’s what I didn’t really deal with or address in university. And so I think that this was like a delayed reaction to that.

Rob Pintwala: Wow .It. And you didn’t necessarily realize that’s it was traumatic and sort of manifested in PTSD until later.

Ania Wysocka: I knew it was traumatic and I saw a few counselor just like whatever the university provides, but you see them for a few sessions and then you’re on your own kind of thing. And that’s just as, you know, like with the structure of bringing support to students or low income, it’s like very. Unfortunately, you don’t get to create a connection with that therapist for a long time. Right. You only get so many sessions. And so I personally don’t think that was very effective now looking back as an adult. Right. And at the time I was like a teenager dealing with this stuff. So yeah, not only did I not have that prolonged support, I also just like didn’t even know how to talk about it. And yeah, yeah, it was all new.

Rob Pintwala: Wow. And it’s. I. The language that you’re using before is like sort of the theory is, you know, maybe like kind of the explanation for sort of why that might have come up for you, like the panic attack. It’s so interesting that it sounds like the busyness almost could have been sort of like the coping mechanism. Right. And. Or it could have been in the place like that. That’s kind of what you’re saying. Just a quick interruption to chat about my company first session. Have you had a less than ideal experience looking for a therapist? There are lots of options out there, but it’s hard to know where to get started and who to trust. My company first session focuses entirely on creating the best experience finding a therapist. We vet and verify each therapist we work with, interview them on camera, and allow you to browse on your own time to see who you vibe with. You can see updated availability and book directly with them. No phone calls, no email back and forth, run through videos and find the right therapist for you. The first time@firstsession.com definitely.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah. I mean it gave me a sense of control in a time where I didn’t feel a ton of control and the things I could control were like school and work and. Yeah, that’s quite consistent for me. And the reason why I say theory is because this is like after talking to counselors now, after being able to look back, you know, hindsight is 20 20. You get to analyze things that happen to you and make theories as to why they happen. And that’s just something multiple counselors have supported that theory of. You know, there was finally some quiet after all these years of busy. And so all of that stuff came up that I was.

Rob Pintwala: Yeah, I don’t need to dive too much into your past, but I’d love to just give listeners a little bit more context of. Yeah. Where you came from and like kind of maybe where rooteANthis kind of like, you know, neat, like work ethic kind of came from. Like, were you, were. Did you go to high school in Canada? Did you just come for university or.

Ania Wysocka: I just came for university, but I was born here, but then I moved to Poland when I was little and that’s where my grandparents were. So I was sent to go live with them for a little bit. Not sent like in a bad way. It’s just like for practical reasons at the time. And then I did middle school there in Poland and I did high school in South Korea and then I came to B.C. from South Korea and I’d never been here before, so I just showed up with two suitcases.

Rob Pintwala: Wow.

Ania Wysocka: At 17, that in itself was probably, you know, quite traumatic. And that’s definitely not something I had acknowledged at the time. I just had to get busy with school.

Rob Pintwala: Yeah.

Ania Wysocka: And adapt culture.

Rob Pintwala: And by. So by yourself you showed up. Yeah. And what. Just for a little bit more context, like, how would you describe the sort of culture in Poland, in South Korea and in Canada? Like, I mean, I’m, I’m. This could be a huge bias, but I have, you know, some awareness that South Korea is like a hard working culture, like very hardworking. And Poland definitely as well. Like, would you say any differently or how would like, do you think that kind of shaped your upbringing?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, definitely. So I’d say in Poland the education system is quite a few years, I think ahead. So when I first got there, I was like in shock. In sixth grade, just like, wow, these guys are doing like algebra and geometry stuff that I wasn’t going to do until like 8th grade in my, or 9th grade in my American school that I went to in Korea, but I went to like a Polish, Polish school. And yeah, that was incredibly challenging at first. It was like a shock to the system and I had to, like, catch up. And so I would, like, stay up late as a kid, like, steady. And I remember my grandpa used to say, like, if you don’t turn off the lights and go to bed, I won’t wake you up for school. Like, that was the one threat that worked for me because I was like, I can’t get more behind. So I think that was distilled into me. I think my mom just observing her from an early age, she’s always had multiple jobs as well. She, you know, graduated from one of the top schools in Poland, but then went to Canada where it wasn’t recognized her degree. And so she had to have a lot of, like, kind of odd jobs and from coffee shops to retail, and she, like, stacked them on. And so as a kid, I thought maybe she didn’t want to spend time with me or whatever. But then as I grew up, I was like, oh, now she was like, working the whole time. And so that I think probably contributed to work ethic, just seeing her do that. Living with my grandparents, they had really high standards for. I mean, I was in middle school, so it’s not like they were like, pushing me like, wild, but they definitely had high standards for just me in general and how I was to behave and kind of learn and go to school and everything. And then in Korea, you’re right as well. Like, I went to an American school, so I wasn’t in that Korean system, maybe, thankfully, in a way, because I didn’t have all of that extra pressure on top of like, what I obviously already put on myself. But I did. I was surrounded by that culture. And it’s very common to see kids leave school very late because after school they go to another school. Yeah. I even taught English at schools where, you know, kids that were teaching were like 9 to 11, and they were there at like 7 to 9pm at night. So, yeah, a lot of, like, a lot of hard work, I’d say a lot of, like, the idea that you can get so much done in a day. So, like, why not do it?

Rob Pintwala: Wow.

Ania Wysocka: I think that type of mentality, yeah.

Rob Pintwala: I grew up with, wow, that’s impressive. And. And so I, you know, I’ve heard a little bit about your story of, like, how you started, rootd. And it sounds like, you know, sort of just out of filling your own. Filling your own need. Right. And I’d love to just hear your perspective on that around. Yeah. How you just, like, started. I mean, it sounds like, so resourceful in terms of getting, you know, the right kind of Structure in place to, like, support yourself and maybe as part of that story, like, how long? Because I’ve also heard you. You say on. On another podcast actually, that sort of things have changed or anything that, like, sort of your anxiety is in sort of a better place now. Right. So I was just curious, like, how long, uh, you were kind of battling those types of panic attacks and that heightened anxiety. And, like, was that, like, were you kind of, like, building at the same time or how did that look?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah. So I’ll just say on the. On the other thing, though, like, as great as it was, having that modeled, that work ethic modeled, I do. I don’t know, like, what the answer is for that, because it obviously led to burnout. And I wish, like, there was an external event that I mentioned as well that contributed to it, but, like, I think that there’s so much good and also just letting kids have fun and. And not stress. Right. So I don’t actually know what was it? This is just my story. This is what I experienced. But who knows, like, what the answer is and, like, how to find that balance out there? So I’ll just put that out there. Yeah. In terms of Rootd, though. Yeah. So I. When I first had that panic attack, I just had no idea what was going on. I had heard of panic attacks, thought it was just people too stressed out, didn’t realize, like, how debilitating they could be. And so I took to my phone to see if there was something there that could help, and there wasn’t. There was just, like, a medical app and a hypnosis app, and neither of those really vibed with me. And after talking to my doctor, I was super disappointed because he gave, like, no information. And it was a struggle. I was really feeling like nobody was giving me answers. And I guess going back to that sense of control that I love to have, like, I just felt like I didn’t have it. And so I found a lot of comfort in reading books on anxiety and panic attacks. And the one that really resonated the most was, like, a cognitive behavioral point of view. So that’s largely by, like, Dr. Claire weeks back in the day. She’s one of the first doctors to be like, hey, this is treatable, and it’s not something that’s permanent. It’s like a behavioral condition. And that gave me so much hope at the time, like, day and night. When I read his words, I was, like, probably crying or something. I don’t know. I don’t remember. But I remember that it was, like, a transformation for my life, because I went from, like, just feeling desperate, like, things will never be okay again, to then having hope. And unfortunately, it took me many years, though. So I was not, you know, an example of someone who, like, got over it. Cause I, by the time I even found that stuff that was starting to help, it had already been a couple years. So, yeah, it took a really long time. And it wasn’t until I was finally integrating some of those practices. And then some didn’t work for me, some did. So Rootd as a culmination of, like, what worked for me personally. It is, like, quite a personal app in that sense. It’s definitely expanded over the years, but when it first started, it was, like, extremely personal. It was written exactly how it made sense to me. And I’m not a psychologist or a therapist, so I had it all reviewed by clinicians before I published it. But it’s still very. Yeah, just a very personal app in that way.

Rob Pintwala: It’s incredible. When you launched the app, was it like, is it something that you’d actually, like, be able to test? Cause I know it has, like, a feature that actually you call it the. Is it still called the SOS feature?

Ania Wysocka: It’s called, like, the rooter. Because the idea is, like, Rootd is about getting grounded in the ground, like a tree. Right. So then when there’s a storm, you’ll topple over. And the rooter. Yeah, just like every tool is a play on words, and so the router is just like what roots you in.

Rob Pintwala: That moment that is intended on the user engaging with during a panic attack.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah.

Rob Pintwala: And were you able to build that feature, like, and test it with your own panic attacks?

Ania Wysocka: It was more so like having a notebook where I had all those prompts written down. So for listeners, the rooter, it shows you different prompts to sort of guide you through a panic attack and activate the parasympathetic nervous system, get you out of that heightened state again. And it shows a number of different prompts that you can forget when you’re in that heightened state. Right. Like, really, you know, rational thoughts that, you know, you’ve survived every panic attack to date, and these do when this isn’t going to last forever. Things like that are extremely comforting to hear when you’re in those moments. So I would have them written down in my notebook and physically carry around my notebook, challenge myself. I mean, my panic attacks were so bad that I struggled to leave the house. And so I, upon leaving the house, would need to, like, read these things. I’m trying to get on a bus. I would need to read them. Like, I couldn’t travel. I couldn’t public speak. I didn’t do anything that I used to love to do during this period of my life. So I. Yeah, I did it in notebook form.

Rob Pintwala: That’s so cool.

Ania Wysocka: And then also all the wireframes for Rootd were also drawn in those notebooks. I still have them somewhere. I should pull them out so that people were asking for, like, photos of that. I should probably find it and do that.

Rob Pintwala: That is so cool. Yeah. I mean, I’ve interviewed a lot of therapists now, and I was thinking about when you were speaking there, one therapist just, like, was speaking about anxiety in general and how it sort of just like builds upon itself and like, kind of, you know, I guess, like cumulates and compounds. And it sounds like. Yeah, it sounds like if you’re in this kind of trap of like, panic, you know, panic and anxiety, that it can easily just turn into this, like, wheel that just. Probably just feels like it just keeps on spinning. Right? And like, you just. You’re just. It’s like you’re stuck in it, which must be so difficult. Um, so that’s something that you. That you created that. I’m also curious to kind of like, step out of this a little bit or come to another perspective. Know there’s kind of like that kind of cbt, like tools. Sounds like a lot of like the thought that you put into Rootd. And I understand there’s like a lot of like, education in there too, to like an awareness for folks. So you kind of have this like, you know, people use the word like cope or treat. You know, it’s kind of like step by step process, which sounds like is quite necessary to kind of, especially if you’re like, experiencing those acute events to like, kind of settle your nervous system down. But then I’m curious where also like for you maybe personally, where besides kind of like knowing the steps and knowing the tools, if there was any kind of like, you know, lifestyle changes, you know, kind of. Even if it’s like diet or exercise or, you know, mindfulness or movement or community, and then if there’s been any like, kind of, I don’t know, like deeper work, I guess you could say. I mean, even just the way you were speaking about your story, you know, kind of in like. So that kind of like maybe deeper work or maybe there’s a different word for it, plus kind of like lifestyle, plus kind of like having all the tools, like, how do you view? And maybe I’m missing Some parts. Like, how do you view all of that as kind of the. As the path to, you know, overcoming some of these more acute, like, challenges and getting to like, a. Another level of, I guess, wellness, maybe as a word. Like, how do you see the combination of those things? Yeah, totally.

Ania Wysocka: So Rootd, really. A combination of pretty much all the above, except maybe community, because at the time, like, it is really hard to reintegrate with friendship. You also lose a lot of friendships when you go through a big change like that. I don’t know if you experienced that during your depression, but often when you go through these periods, you leave behind friendships that were associated with whatever kind of contributed to making you sick. And that can lead to a lot of loneliness. And I say sick loosely, like, you know, lead to this change where you need to. Yeah. When. Lead to this place where you want to make this change and. Yeah, I’d say all the above. You know, we talk a lot about diet and exercise. Movement was pretty key for me. I’ve done the same workout routine for like, eight years now, zero variation. But I still love it and just worked for me. And I started doing it when I was experiencing the panic attacks, probably, you know, for running, I’ve always ran on and off. Like, I used to be in cross country, so my distances have gotten much longer. But in terms of, like, schedule, same.

Rob Pintwala: Schedule for eight years, that’s primarily running. Sorry, I’d love to hear a little bit more about the routine.

Ania Wysocka: Well, it’s just that on Monday, I do, like, hit workout for legs On Tuesday, I do a run. On Wednesday, I do hit workout for arms on Thursday, I do a run Friday, full body or just. That’s my rest day, depending on how much I want to hike and run on the weekend. And that is just what I’ve been doing. And that was actually. It’s 20, 20, 23, so it would actually be closer, like more like nine years that I’ve just been doing the same thing.

Rob Pintwala: I love that.

Ania Wysocka: But yeah, so that’s a huge part as well, I think in general, self care. So a few of those things you mentioned, I think we can group those into the category of self care. When you are anxious, experiencing panic disorder, depressed, or experiencing other similar things, you stop caring about yourself as much. Your whole world sort of revolves around this issue you’re experiencing. And so there’s a lot that you miss out on in. Like, the UN calls these, like, activities of daily living, or it’s the World Health Organization that calls that activities of daily living. So that’s as simple as making yourself a meal, showering, cleaning up the space around you, grooming, you know, getting a haircut, et cetera. Like these are things that we tend to stop doing when we’re in these difficult places and they actually contribute to our self esteem in many ways. You know, the care that we put in the space around us that does reflect on us. And so little things like that we’re all about. Yeah. Building back that self esteem so that those are the external things that you could do. So we mentioned diet, movement, caring about your space and yourself. And then obviously there’s so much internal work. So like you said, the deep work that you know, in Rootd, there’s a few chapters on like changing the way you talk about yourself to yourself. So self labeling, you know, rather than saying I’m an anxious person, which is like this all or nothing thinking, I say, hey, I’m a sensitive person that’s like, you know, pretty artistic and I’m going through a really rough time right now. And it’s just such a different way of speaking about yourself. Right. It’s just showing yourself much more respect. So all of those, all the above were part of my journey and are talked about and Rootd also. Some like values were like figuring out like who I really am as a person too. I struggled with all this stuff when I was pretty young, so I didn’t really get to have a chill. Like my 20s were pretty awful to be honest. So I didn’t have that like self discovery expiration time that maybe my peers would have had in a different way. So I sat down, sort of wrote it out like, you know, what are my values? Who’s super important to me, what do I want out of life? And that’s something that can change every year. So it’s almost encouraged to keep doing it every year. But that was a part of the deep work as well. Yeah.

Rob Pintwala: I’m curious a little bit more about how you’ve learned and what you’ve learned about the users and like maybe just to give folks some context, like how many people use your app. I think it’s an incredible number.

Ania Wysocka: So we hit that 3 million download mark recently.

Rob Pintwala: That’s. That is massive. Wow. It’s like larger than some countries.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah. Super cool because when I was launching it, I just didn’t even know if like one other person would download it. You know, I didn’t launch into it with like a business plan or like with an MBA background. It was more so like this needs to exist and I really wish it did because pattern Cadets don’t have to take as long to heal as they did for me.

Rob Pintwala: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s, that’s just incredible. Well, I’m curious around kind of the users. When I hear you speak about all this, I just think of like someone who’s so resourceful and like determined, doesn’t, you know, never gave up. And also like, doesn’t take insufficient advice. Maybe like, you know, like counselors or whoever. Your doctor who wasn’t very helpful. You know what I mean? It’s like I think of. And maybe this is just unbiased and I was born in Canada and you know, with our healthcare system here, but like, I just get the sense that like younger people, and I’m in my 30s now, so even our generation is, is much more sort of resourceful when it comes to sort of. Maybe that’s the Internet, but just not listening to your doctor necessarily. I shouldn’t say, like not listen to your doctor, but just also making sure you’re doing your own research. Right. And you strike me as someone who’s just like gone down that path like big time. And I’m curious if you’ve noticed a difference between sort of the older users of Rootd and folks that are maybe, you know, older than 40s, 50s, 60s, maybe older, having anxiety and panic attacks. Like when you were speaking about the whole myriad of things to work on, bring your life maybe to another level that maybe less severe anxiety and panic. Do you, do you notice a shift at all between younger and older people’s and their willingness to kind of do all the things versus, oh, I just gotta follow these steps or listen to my doctor or take this medication or something like that. And maybe I’m just loading this question too much with my own opinion, but yeah, yeah, not.

Ania Wysocka: It’s hard for me to like, note the difference. Like, the feedback I get is the user reviews and then I see some analytics, right? And that’s like more anonymized aggregate data. And it’s not that there’s a big difference in the way folks use the app, but I think a lot of older people will leave a message or a comment and say, I really wish I had this 10 years ago, I wish I had this eight years ago, et cetera. Whereas the younger people, they’re just grateful. They’re like, hey, I love this. Like, this character’s so cute. I’m finally going back to school again or whatnot. So I think, yeah, it’s just maybe the time they’re finding it in their lives, like for people now they’re just googling it really quick, right? And they find it instantly. And for older folks that have gone through the system and now they’re looking for maybe more supporting tools and supplemental tools, they’re just like, oh, why didn’t I have this before? And, yeah, I kind of felt the same when I read about cognitive behavioral therapy for the first time. I’m like, what the heck? Why did nobody tell me about this before? Why did I have to find this in the library?

Rob Pintwala: Yeah, yeah. I’m cur. I’m curious if you’ve, you know, if you felt any on the business side, you know, So I have been running my business for about five years now, and I definitely go through waves of motivation. And I think, like, the idea actually came from my partner and her challenge of finding a therapist. And I’ve always been a big kind of mental health advocate, and I mentioned a little bit about my struggles at university and. But I find that sometimes, like, you know, I’m focusing on a problem that’s just trying to keep it focused on finding a therapist. Right. And I think that, you know, I recently got out of, like, another kind of two years of therapy in my life, but now I’m. I’m not in therapy, but I’m thinking about the next steps, right. Of kind of, like, personal growth and that sort of thing. So I guess what I’m trying to say is, like, sometimes I have a harder time resonating with my, like, product as, like, at first I was, like, a user and, you know, like, in therapy all the time. And I think I’ll be in therapy for the rest of my life. But I’m curious if you’ve had that experience now that you’ve saying kind of you’re experiencing, you know, this panic, and you’re like, such an expert because you obviously built this whole program, right? If you ever have that kind of trouble of maybe, like, being it almost becoming less personal, and maybe, like, your personal goals are kind of moved on from this or how. Or, like, how do you stay motivated? How do you stay with it?

Ania Wysocka: That’s a good question. I’d say that I’ve been beginning to feel parts of what you’re describing. Just because I no longer am experiencing anxiety and panic attacks, I still go through waves of, you know, just like, everybody dealing with stuff. But, you know, I’m now able to travel and do all these things that I wasn’t able to do. So that has maybe felt a bit less personal. But I think at the court, this is just recently, though, Right. Like, so the past, well, a couple years have been awesome, but now this whole past year has just been so different than the year before that. And so I hear what you’re saying, but I do still feel very inspired by it being like my baby, which I know is like, kind of lame that entrepreneurs call our startups that, but it does feel like that because everything in Rootd was like, you know, really handcrafted. And I have yet to really get a bunch of outside content. Like, everything in there is really stuff that I’m familiar with. I think if we were to start expanding, then it might feel less like something that’s a hundred percent mine, like the way you’re saying. And maybe if we expand to other problem areas that I’m not as familiar with, then that would also contribute to that feeling. But for right now, it’s still all the content that I’m like, so familiar with. And a big motivator are the user reviews. That’s huge. I mentioned that I’m traveling. At this last conference I went to, somebody came up to me in person and was just gushing about the Rootd app, that they couldn’t have their job if it wasn’t for Rootd because they’re required to fly a lot. They have a fear of flying, so they use Rootd. Finally they’re able to get in planes. And she was saying all that stuff before she knew I was the founder. And so that was really sweet to like, here. And every now and then, obviously, majority, 99.9% of the feedback again, is online. But I do meet people that use Rootd in person and they share their stories or they’ll tell me how their dad is using it or their kids are using it, and they just want to say thanks. And I find that, like, super motivating.

Rob Pintwala: That is awesome.

Ania Wysocka: The when and don’t actually. This thing my partner made for me, it’s all Rootd user testimonials. It’s just obviously a small sample of them. But the idea was to, like, turn back and just read these when I’m having a crappy day, just to, like, remember why I’m doing it.

Rob Pintwala: That’s such a good idea. I need to do that too. Yeah, it’s when you’re. I just find when you’re working, you know, in the pixel world, you know, in the app or in the website. Right. You’re just. Especially when you’re working, you know, as a solo founder, single founder, without any sort of teammates that are invested as much as you are in it. I just find that, yeah, it’s really easy to get removed from why the why and also like the impact. Right. And I think that a lot of, you know, a lot of folks are okay going through or have different motivations, but I think if you start something because it’s solving a problem and you want to like stay connected to that and I think it’s a phenomenal idea to have those user testimonials. Tell me a little bit more about starting the company by yourself and growing it initially by yourself and how you’ve like, what have you learned about community? And you know, maybe just to drag on the question a little bit more. Like I know myself, I’ve had like pretty much four different times when I like almost had a co founder and like gone down the path. But like I’m here, I am still just me. Had you experienced anything similar? I like, have you been looking or how do you fill that gap of. Yeah, loneliness, I guess.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, I guess feeling pretty alone while I was growing up. Like I just, it’s like almost a constant and that has maybe in a weird way helps. I’ve definitely had moments where I’ve just been up against like a big problem in the business and been pulling my hair out and being like, wow, what do I do? Like, were people right? Like, because when I was starting everybody said you needed a co founder. It was almost like non negotiable. In fact at the time people weren’t even interested in investing in companies unless they had two co founders. There was like some sort of trend or something. Maybe it came from the Valley, you know, those ideas of, of you know, what makes a real company. And I, yeah, came up to those, or up against those types of situations quite a few times over the past five years. But I’m not sure exactly what is it that makes me like get through it. Except now at this time that we’re speaking, I’m back to thinking like, yeah, there’s absolutely no need for a co founder at the moment. So yeah, just sort of keep getting through it. But I’d say like the Internet is your best friend. Obviously there’s so much awful stuff on the Internet. But like it has taught me almost everything I know about business, about apps, about marketing, about B2B growth, all of that. Like literally everything is online. Like you can find it if you look for it.

Rob Pintwala: How do you, I mean it sounds like in your upbringing and just, you know, you someone and you referenced this before, that’s put a lot of pressure on themselves. And how does that look today? Like how do you Stay accountable to like, your goals or like, do you set, you know, hard goals and rigid targets or are you, you know, just kind of like, want to continue to grow? How do you, like, look at your business now and your growth there?

Ania Wysocka: I did for like the first four years. And yeah, it was like I needed to do them. Like, I would think about it all the time. Like, before I went to bed, like, it drove me, it motivated me. And now I’m much more chill, I think maybe because I hit those goals. And so now I’m like, oh, like, what’s next? Like, it’s kind of a fun time to be able to take time, like a step back and be like, okay, what are the next goals? But I certainly, thanks to Ruta, thanks to all this progress, like, I don’t have desperate need for it right now. Whereas I think at first it was came from like quite a place of desperation, needing to heal, needing to get this message out, needing, like quite a few people were like, this isn’t going to work. Maybe I had a chip on my shoulder about that. I needed to, you know, show them that it would. That type of thing. Like, I don’t have that right now. Currently I’m feeling quite content with what where root inside and what it’s achieved. There’s always more growth to be had. Obviously 3 million is just scratching the surface. Even though it’s so many, it’s still just scratching the surface. But I guess because I’m not venture backed as well, I don’t have that external pressure on anything. And it’s. Yeah, I just really want to get this out to people who can benefit from it the most. Which may sound corny, but like there is just like that’s the underlying core of Rootd. And so now working with larger organizations that’s like, been really cool and really like values aligned. And it’s just made me feel like the early days of Rootd again, where it’s just all about getting it out to people, making sure the content’s awesome and making sure people are enjoying it versus worrying about growth in a specific number.

Rob Pintwala: Yeah, that is. It sounds like. I mean, it sounds incredible. Like almost like a gift just to be able to feel that contentness. Right. I mean, it sounds like the beginning of this story stemmed from not being able to sit with any sort of contentness. Right. So now you’ve kind of achieved that and that’s incredible to wrap things up. I heard you say, I think the word heal a few times and I know for me personally that word has grown on Me a lot since I kind of entered into this mental health space. And at first I was like, well, heal. Like what’s, you know, like that sounds like there’s gotta be something wrong in order to heal. So that’s kind of like, you know, that’s a bigger, that’s a bigger step to even like accept that. I’m curious what that word means to you. Heal and your use of it over that. Has that changed?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, it’s a good question. Probably. I haven’t sat down to think about the word in particular, but I guess you’re right. Healing implies at first a self awareness that not everything’s okay. And then for me, healing has largely been about reversing the cycle that we talked about, reversing that cycle of fear and even starting like more of a cycle of like chill. And that has been a big part of healing. I lost my mom at a young age and so that is still like a very. Feels like open wound at times. And that as I. A lot of people say that grief comes in waves, I’d say that’s probably quite accurate for me. And the goal is like for that to always look and feel a bit different when the waves come crashing again. And it’s not like a goal that I like. Like it’s a more like a calming goal. Like that’s something that I talk about with a therapist versus set as a goal. So maybe I didn’t use that word correctly, but yeah, that is a part of healing, a part of being able to find contentness. You know, I mentioned that I’m pretty chill about my goals with Rootd right now. But like people around me are like, I like this. You’ve got to like take it off now or like, you know, do set this 10 times higher. Set the bar 10 times higher. So I think healing is also being a part of it is just listening to my own goals and inner voice versus like feeling peer pressure from those around me. All of those are part of healing. So I don’t know if I answered that question correctly, but I think that’s.

Rob Pintwala: Like so much wisdom in that response. So. And I, after now knowing some of the folks that I can picture, you know, giving you, giving you some of that encouragement or kind of pressure, I. Yeah, like that is hard to still trust yourself and to listen to yourself and yeah, thanks for sharing that part about the grief. I think, yeah, that’s really deep and special. So this conversation has been really nice. So thank you for sharing your story and your passion and yeah, how do you spell Rootd and where can people get it?

Ania Wysocka: So you spell Rootd R O, O, T, D. So no E. And you can get it on the app stores both on Apple and Google Play. And yeah, you can also find us online on social, on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, you name it, we’re there.

Rob Pintwala: Amazing. We’re going to link all that, too, in the in the notes here. So, Ania, thank you so much, and I hope to see you around soon.

Ania Wysocka: Awesome. Sounds good. Thanks, Rob.

Rob Pintwala: Take care. Thank you for listening to this episode of the actualized podcast. You can find the show notes for this episode as well as all other episodes at first session. Com. Podcast. If you like this podcast, please leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Thank you again and we’ll see you next time.

I shared how I built it from scratch and grew it to hit a million users. The secret sauce? I kept things focused on anxiety support, talked with users everywhere, didn’t give up on App Store submissions, got some press coverage, translated the app, and made it super easy to use.

The best part? Reading reviews from people saying Rootd helped them get back to their normal lives. As someone who isn’t even a developer, it’s amazing to see how this app went from helping just me to helping people all over the world.

Table of Contents

Toggle

What You’ll LearnVideoTranscript

What You’ll Learn

• Understand the importance of authentically connecting with users, from responding to reviews to incorporating cultural nuances (like changing character names for different markets)
• Get insights into bootstrapping as a non-technical founder handling multiple roles from content design to marketing
• Learn how positive user feedback can serve as motivation through challenging times as a solo founder
• See how focusing on helping users rather than profits first can lead to sustainable business growth and meaningful impact
• Learn how a personal struggle with panic attacks during university led to the creation of Rootd, an anxiety and panic attack relief app that now helps over 1 million users worldwide

I've been fortunate to share Rootd's story in many places. Shaan and Sam discussed it on My First Million.

Video

Watch my interview on The App Promotion Summit

Or watch here:

How we bootstrapped to 1 million users with Ania Wysocka, Founder At Rootd

Building Rootd taught me a lot about perseverance. I reflect on similar lessons in what trail running teaches you about business.

Transcript

rong>Host: This is the Business of Apps podcast, bringing you actionable insights from the leaders of the global app industry and the world’s fastest growing apps. You can find more app news, data. And analysis over@businessofapps.com

Business of Apps Host: Welcome to the Business of Apps podcast. On this show we invite app industry professionals to cover various topics and we promise to do our best to keep it both insightful. Bypreev in this episode we have Ania Wysocka, founder at Rootd. Ania, welcome to the Billions of podcast.

Ania Wysocka: Thanks very much for having me.

Business of Apps Host: Awesome. Thank you for coming. It’s great to have you on the show. Okay, let me set the stage for everybody. Anxiety. If this word doesn’t tell you anything, lucky you. So many people on this planet are familiar with anxiety. Essentially it’s a fear of what is about to come. It’s a dread or something you anticipate. Sometimes your feel of anxiety is justified. On many occasions it is not. And what it works, it triggers a panic attack. But there’s a way to calm yourself down, to be able to deal with it. Today, Ania will tell you a story of connecting her panic attack and anxiety relief mobile app Rootd with a million people who needed help to deal with these issues. But first, as always on this show, before covering the story of the app and the path of getting connected to over 1 million people, let’s talk about you first. Ania, please tell us about yourself.

Ania Wysocka: Well, I am a Polish Canadian. I grew up abroad, living in different countries. My mom was a math teacher so we traveled and moved around a lot and I went to university in Vancouver in Canada. I studied international relations. I love to run, I love to work on projects that destigmatize mental health. And yeah, I have a really personal connection with Rootd and why I started it.

Business of Apps Host: Now I didn’t know that you lived in Vancouver. I envy you. This is one of the places on the planet that I really like to live, at least for a few years. Vancouver is one of the places probably even better than Barcelona in Spain or kind of on the same par. For me that’s.

Ania Wysocka: It’s very beautiful. It’s very beautiful. The one thing was it rained. It rained so much. So you have to kind of either have an escape plan for the winter or just have a lot of self care practices like an app like Rootd, really. So to help you get through the winter months.

Business of Apps Host: Oh, got it. Okay, now let’s talk about the story of Rootd. How did it start? Please tell us about the genesis of the app.

Ania Wysocka: So I was in my fourth year of university when I experienced my first panic attack and I really didn’t know what a panic attack was before then. I thought that maybe when people were experiencing something like that, they were just overly stressed out. I couldn’t relate. And I was extremely surprised as to the sensations I was feeling in my body. When I asked a doctor about it, they said, no, you’re okay. Which led me into even more questions to figure out, okay, well, what just happened? And I really didn’t have any resources. I didn’t have a family doctor. I was on student loans, so I couldn’t afford traditional therapy. I was far away from home. I was there on my own, studying at university. So I really struggled and it became really debilitating, debilitating for me. So fast forward a few years. I learned a lot of different tips and techniques to help me understand anxiety and where it comes from and really just learn to manage it in my daily life. And that is the premise of Rootd. At the time, there weren’t any apps on panic attacks. It was more like hypnosis apps or apps that were very medical and nothing that really spoke to me. So that is how and why I started Rootd.

Business of Apps Host: You know, when you said that there was no app like that at this moment, it really reinforced for me the idea that for some reason, even so many concepts, so many ideas were realized where were used to build apps. Since 2008 when the app Store was launched, so many photo filters, calculators, financial apps, games, a lot of ideas were really were used to build an app before. Many essential things. Many things are more kind of profoundly useful for us, like an app to help you to deal with anxiety where you don’t have anybody here to help you and your smartphone can be that thing that can actually help you to deal with this very complex problem. For some reason, they didn’t come to people saying a whiteboard to develop an app. And the story like your kind of what? I would expect somebody would create an app out of necessity to help herself or himself to deal with it. That’s a personal experience which leads you to create an app that is so useful for so other people in the world. Once the app in the App Store, they can download it and we all.

Ania Wysocka: Have our phones on us at all times. So it just really, you know, it really made sense to me.

Business of Apps Host: Absolutely. I’m glad that you managed to launch the project. Yeah, I wish the circumstance was way better. And it was for you, just academical interest, Just probably a psychology professional out of curiosity for a project. But that’s life on many Occasions, apps like that created out of desperate need for help. Now, I would assume the road for the, you know, to reach the first million of users wasn’t easy. You tried many things. Let’s focus on stuff, on things that did actually work for you. Now, I watched your Talk at the APS London 2022 conference several weeks ago, and I saw you were highlighting six things specifically that worked. So let’s walk the audience through all of these, starting with the first one, which is focusing on a niche. What is all about.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, so when Rootd first launched, the main focus was on panic attacks as opposed to anxiety. Even though there is some overlap, you know, a lot more people are actually looking for support with anxiety than they are with panic attacks. However, that’s a much more higher volume, higher difficulty keyword. So because Rootd was so specific with panic attacks, I was focused much more on that niche of panic attacks. So we started ranking highly within that small niche. And then over time, as we started adding in more tools for general anxiety, that’s when I started incorporating the keyword of anxiety as well. And so you can kind of see in that chart that I shared in the talk, the ranking for panic attacks was high pretty much all along, and then increase, increase till we were number one. And then the ranking for anxiety started really low, but over time started increasing again to the point where we’re number three for anxiety in the states, which is our biggest market, and where we’re most focused. So that is what I mean by focusing on a niche.

Business of Apps Host: Right. And this is. We can kind of make a case holistically. For any app developer creating an app, there’s always, there’s always this kind of a fork between going to your specific niche or going broad. And obviously when you’re going broad, you’re reaching out to a bigger audience, bigger market, but the competition is greater. When you go into the niche, it’s the opposite. But you’re not expecting to reach the, you know, the same scale, so many users that fast. But the idea of the app, the audience you’re trying to reach makes a difference. So, yeah, I totally see, like, generally you should think about it this way. Things that show up, they come up in people’s lives more often. They have a greater demand, they have a bigger audience, but have a better competition. Like you said, with anxiety, people do experience it, unfortunately, quite often. Luckily, panic attacks are not hitting them that often. So that’s why you have the difference between going broad or going niche. So in your case, you started with a niche and reached your first audience and then started to expand it broadly.

Ania Wysocka: Right, yes. And I think that’s one key point there, is that as a bootstrapped app, it made a lot of sense for me to get users who are downloading the keyword and they’re getting what they searched for. Exactly. Because I think sometimes the risk when we go too broad is that people download the app and be like, well, this isn’t what I was looking for. And they’re not going to leave the five star review, they’re not going to recommend you to friends and family. And being, getting reviews and being recommended is huge for a bootstrapped app. So that’s another reason. Yeah, I would focus on this niche first.

Business of Apps Host: So you’re aiming for that situation when somebody is just pointing this, his finger, her finger on the screen. That’s the app I’m looking for. That’s it. This is the one.

Ania Wysocka: Exactly. Yep.

Business of Apps Host: All right, next up is engaging the app user’s base. So what is it? What was about this point?

Ania Wysocka: So again, as a bootstrapped app, this was largely me really just going on social media, engaging with people, different accounts on Instagram and Facebook groups, you know, that talk about anxiety, talk about panic attacks and sharing some tips and tools and information from Rootd and then engaging with those people, commenting on posts. I was really doing like. It took a lot of my time, but slowly but surely, those followers started to come back to Rootd’s page, started following, started working on more and more content for that. And in addition to social media, I also kept up with responding to every single user’s app review. A lot of the reviews that came in about the actual content in the app were five star reviews. So I was so happy to see that and have that validated. But if there was a bug or if users were complaining about, you know, the fact that there’s a paywall, then I really relied on engaging with them and starting a conversation, hoping that they’ll email me. Because, you know, it’s kind of one sided in the app store. You don’t really get to see who that person is. They have a unique username there. And I relied on that to kind of keep increasing that rating because people would sometimes change their rating from a one star to a five star. They had a great experience. And I learned that people really, you know, they want to be respected, of course, they want to be engaged with and they want to feel important. So I just did a lot of that through all different mediums. So that’s what I meant by that point of engaging with users.

Business of Apps Host: Yeah, I totally get what you’re saying. It’s awesome to have, you know, five stars or views right away. But if you can fix a problem for somebody and he will go reverse 180 saying, I gave the app one star because there was a problem, but the owner of the app get back to me quickly help to address my issue. And now I’m just super happy. This is kind of even more desirable situation when you can fix it for somebody and he will be even, you know, more loyal users to your of your app because of that situation.

Ania Wysocka: Definitely, yeah.

Business of Apps Host: Store submissions is what is next up. So you, in this point you were telling the story of how you submitting the app to the App Store to be featured, right?

Ania Wysocka: Yes. Yep. Using the promote URL.

Business of Apps Host: Oh, using the promo URL. So you’re saying inside the app or.

Ania Wysocka: That’S something that Apple just if you look up like submit for feature App Store, it’ll pop up. It’s just the URL that they use. So they ask you questions like what do you want to share with us? What’s the story? And when are you releasing your update? And I, yeah, so I continuously did those stories, but I never, I didn’t hear back from anybody. And so naturally I got discouraged and I felt like, okay, I only have 24 hours in a day and I have so many things to do, like should I keep doing this? But I kind of read other people’s blogs and I read different people have been featured and it wasn’t very clear always the indicator of what led to their feature. But they did say that they submitted stories regularly. So I just went at it. Every single month I submitted a story, I always had an update going out and I always would try to tie it back to some global event or just something that could be interesting. And then sure enough, it took many submissions. But finally I did hear that callback. I got an email saying, hey Ania, one of our App Store editor saw your story submission and since then Rootd was featured multiple times. We’ve been App of the Day in the us in Canada, been featured in a number of different collections, had Developer Spotlight in the US So these were really great for organic growth as well.

Business of Apps Host: And I remember discussing with somebody on this podcast before, a couple of years ago actually. And that was when you’re submitting your app to be reviewed and featured by Apple, if I remember correctly, should have some materials, some graphics, some text in hand so they can use it for featuring of your app.

Ania Wysocka: So that’s actually. Yeah, that’s only if they actually Want to feature you though. So Apple will let you know if they need images, otherwise they don’t ask for it right away. It’s the amount of times that you’ll get a feature based on your story. Submission for me anyway is not always equal, so I definitely don’t prepare images every time. It’s only if they get back to me and they say, okay, we’re considering promoting you. It’s never 100%. They always have the right to back out if they want to. So they still ask you though, can you please prepare these images?

Business of Apps Host: Got it. Now the next point is sending a press release. I used to be part of app marketing agency Just a quick story in 2009, 2015 for six years and press release was one of the one of the things that we’re selling to app developers to promote their apps. And I remember by the end of my time at the company that tool was kind of kept losing its team year by year, months by month. And by now I was under impression that it doesn’t work anymore. I mean it’s still there, you can still order sending a press release. But the expectations of people when they’re, you know, pushing their apps using like trying to connect their apps with user using paid acquisition, app store optimization, influencer marketing, whatever, the press service kind of a not in the reader, but apparently for you it did work. So how was it?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, so I guess that is kind of funny that it did work. It maybe it sounds a bit more like a traditional media tactic, but really it started off with just realizing that, you know, locally in Canada where it was in bc, it could be a story, you know that like the often local papers want to feature local entrepreneurs. So that’s how it started. And that was the first one I did when Rootd first launched and it got picked up by a few papers again locally in bc. And then later on I was just more so like well what’s stopping me from going a bit more broad? And so I engaged with a release distributor and sure enough many magazines in certain areas are like, oh, we only cover local entrepreneurs so we can’t cover this. But best of luck, sounds like a really needed app. And I just kept pushing, pushing and going and then finally yeah, more and more outlets covered it. Some of the bigger outlets that you know, I shared there in the presentation like Healthline or Time magazine, they actually, well, Time specifically I just got like an anonymous email sent to me being like we just want to verify some facts. We’re with Time. And so I responded to the questions they had and then I didn’t hear back and I tried to follow up like, hey, so what’s going on? Are we going to do an article or something? Nothing. They didn’t respond to me. It wasn’t until like months later that I found Rootd mentioned in their article. So yeah, it all varies. I think that I never regretted sending out a press release. Sometimes the results were quite immediate. Even if it’s like sometimes just a smaller blog, it’s still, you know, another backlink and another mention. And they do have their own audience of course and kind of like you know, rule number one, the focusing on a niche, a niche blog is, is a good place to market as well. And then sometimes it would surprise me with really great bigger stories. So yeah, I’ve actually really enjoyed that medium.

Business of Apps Host: That’s great. I think it’s a matter of setting expectations to write for yourself as a developer. Some things like some apps, they do address big issues, some address small issues. Press release may still work. It’s just a matter of how much engagement you’re gonna get. If this is something like in this case, they have to help so many people. I would assume you should expect that in theory, if you find the right editor, the right journalist whom her his bid is to cover this kind of topic, he will be, he will get interested or she will get interested and grab your top your app to make a publication. But don’t be discouraged even if your app isn’t addressing that big issue, it’s just the outcome will be less, but it still will be there. It’s just do not expect setting a press release about your app that is actually, I don’t know, calculator or a small utility that is going to get on the same scale as an app that helping people to address anxiety, that is a worldwide issue. So it still works in both cases, but the outcome will be different. Yeah.

Ania Wysocka: Yes. The press releases weren’t just about Rootd being an app. It was about how it relates to a global event or what it signifies as well. Yeah, sure.

Business of Apps Host: Okay, moving on. Translation is next. As much as we like speak English, the whole world does not speak only English. There are other countries with other languages, other markets. And there’s a reason why there are so many versions, so many mirrors of the App Store and Google Play for other countries. And going international was always kind of on the to do list for marketers who want to go broader when they feel there’s a big competition within the market inside their country and they still want to reach out more people and connect them with their app. So how was going the translation process for your app?

Ania Wysocka: So I think again, might have done it a bit in reverse where I actually started translating Rootd before I had any really hold over the local market that I was in in Canada or the U.S. so I started off because somebody sent me a World Health Organization article as a user in Brazil and they shared, you know, all these stats about what’s going on in Brazil and about how there’s like a mental health epidemic at the time around anxiety and panic attacks. And the article shared some stories that I could just. The descriptions were so vivid. I could really relate to it personally. And it brought me back to that time in university that was so difficult and confusing. And I just sort of took the opportunity and said, you know what, let’s get this out in Portuguese. And it wasn’t even necessarily with a marketing plan in mind. Although by that time Rootd had grown enough that I would get the random odd comment, you know, on Google Play, especially with a user review, saying, hey, this should be in Portuguese. So like I already had a few of those. So I knew that there was some interest. I saw, you know, online Brazilians were downloading Rootd and that’s how the first translation happened. So I actually worked with a translator online. And then a friend, a Brazilian friend, ended up helping me record the audio because I couldn’t even at that time afford voice actors or anything. Now since then it’s all been replaced. But yeah, that’s how I started off was just, yeah, just finding resources where I could. Right. Because I couldn’t access some of the more traditional ways of doing it. But the downloads in Brazil just really started taking off afterwards. It really didn’t require as much of like a paid effort on my side on social. I engaged a lot more with Brazilian accounts for a while, but that’s kind of all I did to kind of get it started. And till today, Brazil and Portugal are significant downloaders of Rootd.

Business of Apps Host: Awesome. You’ve just given a really great hint for other developers. Even though you’re in, you know, you’re the reason why you’re in a business to make money first. But this is not should be your sole goal to be in this business. Remember that you’re helping people to fulfill specific needs. It’s the like making a profit. This is kind of a consequence of your effort, of your wish to help somebody, to either trying to, you know, help to help to resolve the problem you had or just seeing some opportunity to fix something for somebody. And when you’re operating under this approach, and you can see that the same problem is kind of a global. And you can actually, you can see the way how you can go international with your app, reaching out local people who will be helping you to not only translate people, but understand the psychology, the culture of that country, how better it presents your app, how not to, you know, be kind of a clunky, you know, American, Canadian, in a country where the app will be still useful, but not that useful because there’s a cultural difference. You had to adjust your app a little bit or more than a little bit. So reaching out people, local people who will be helping you to guide your app through that process is really helpful. So that’s a great hint. Help first and money will be your reward.

Ania Wysocka: One example, quickly there for Brazil is, for example, the name of the main character, Ron in the app. It just didn’t translate well, apparently. And the Brazilian translator couldn’t even really explain why, but he just said, ronnie, it needs to be Ronnie. And I was like, you know what, I trust you. Let’s go with Ronnie. So that’s one example of like a cultural difference and something that, you know, you can’t get from Google Translate.

Business of Apps Host: Yeah, definitely not there. You have to talk to real people and know the language and we will help you with that. Absolutely. Okay, onboarding. This is the next item on your list of six. Did you manage to get it right from the first go? Was there any learning curve for you?

Ania Wysocka: I’d say definitely not. I’d say it’s still an experiment till today. But basically what I did was move around the onboarding screens and the order of them and sort of test different flows, how people should be first introduced to the app. Is it more tech space? Is it more action based? So I played around with a number of different things and thankfully each time it got better because I think there’s some time a risk where things are going well and then you make a change and it gets worse. For me, it incrementally improved, but the biggest benefit I had was when I actually moved the paywall closer to the beginning and it was a free travel paywall specifically. And I was really worried that people would get offended, I would get a bunch of bad reviews. But really there is a way to bypass the page and it is optional. You know, everybody that pays for the app really helps make it better. Right, because that’s where the revenue comes from to keep investing in the app and keep looking for more tools and keep updating it and making it better every time. So I was very surprised to See that Very, very, very few people minded that at all. I had maybe reviews that were around the paywall being there like enough I can count on my hands, you know, like really not a lot compared to how much revenue ended up coming in and really helping me distribute.

Business of Apps Host: Right. Okay, now obviously having so many users, can you recall any stories about getting feedback, being praised or probably criticized for possibly not getting something in the app experience right from the first go?

Ania Wysocka: Yes, definitely for both. I’d say the positive ones, like the reviews that share, that Rootd has helped somebody improve their life, it’s helped them go back to school, it’s helped them go back to work, it helps them sleep at night, it helps them in their relationship. Those reviews are so amazing and motivating and they’re really what, yeah, what keeps me motivating. When the day is long and hard and I’m up at night and everybody else feels like the rest of the world is sleeping calmly and I’m stressed and working, then I’m like remembering those user reviews, right. And I actually find it to be something that we give as a tip and Rootd is to start off your morning with some journaling or positive thoughts. And sometimes those user reviews are part of my morning routine because they are these positive things that are really motivating for me. And then on the criticism side, I mean those bugs that I mentioned earlier, whenever there’s a bug, like it was really hard to see because as a non technical founder, like I did root its content design, wireframing, marketing, business development, all of that. But I’m not fully in charge of the technical stuff. And this is not in any way to criticize the developers. I just, you know, sometimes bugs happen and they happen in big apps, they happen in small apps. That’s just a way of development. But it is really hard to then not be in control. You know, I have to rely on others for that one. So that’s really hard for me sometimes. Another thing is the criticism would probably be just the fact that there’s a paywall at all. So sometimes we’ll get a review and it says this app is amazing, it’s helped me so much, but there’s some content that requires payment. One star. And I’m like, how, why, why, why are you leaving a one star review that’s going to affect our ranking so much? And anyway, so yeah, those are the stressful ones, but the positive ones, when people share how rude it’s affected them is just unbelievable. Like super motivating. And you want to see what I mean you can go read them. They’re so cool. I’m so excited that they exist.

Business of Apps Host: Yeah, yeah, I totally get what you’re saying. Just as good as it gets when you can read that your, that the, your work actually help is helping somebody and the reward is there. You can, you can, you can pick up their emotions from the, from the lines they’ve left on the app store. The review. Just a very quick thing you said about the bugs. There is kind of a. I think it’s a statistical number. If I remember correctly. There’s always one error for every 10,000 K. 10,000 lines of code. It’s unavoidable. It’s a human factor. Roughly speaking. Every 10,000 lines of code will contain an error. And so it doesn’t matter if developer is sitting somebody in Cupertino, Apple’s campus or small startup. Statistically people do mistakes and there’s always that mistake sitting in somewhere in this 10,000 lines of programming code. So just, you know, human factor. Androids do not program apps yet. Okay, that’s good to know.

Ania Wysocka: I should see how many code. Yeah, thank you.

Business of Apps Host: Just remind us that we’re human beings. As much as Apple tries to create their, you know, and Google as well to create the process of developing apps either less chances to make a mistake. It’s kind of a mathematically not possible to narrow down so to kind of eliminate the chance of making a mistake. Okay, that was the last question to address the major topic on the table and where the second part of the show where I ask every guest just a few quick questions so the audience of this podcast may know these people a little bit better. So these are just small quick questions and the first one goes like this. What smartphone do you have now? Have you been switching between iOS and Android or just iOS or Android all the time?

Ania Wysocka: So I have a iPhone 11 and I also have an Android phone, but it’s more so. It’s more so just for testing for the app and it’s not for personal use. I switched to iOS probably like seven years ago and I am one of those people who just has not gone back. I have an Apple Watch, an iPad, a MacBook. I’m very much iOS but I do have Android devices to test and make sure that Rootd runs well on them.

Business of Apps Host: All right, so basically you’re on the iOS side. What was your first mobile phone? You know, in the era before multi touch smartphones.

Ania Wysocka: It was a Nokia and maybe you can help.

Business of Apps Host: Yeah, yeah, I’m just going to say the flip phones, that time frame. Oh the flip phone.

Ania Wysocka: For flip phone. So the first phone ever was Nokia 310, the brick one. And then in terms of flip phone, it was a Motorola Razr.

Business of Apps Host: All right, got it. Now, imagine today you left your iPhone 11 at home for whatever reason. If you’re out, what would be the most missing feature for you?

Ania Wysocka: Naturally, it would be Rootd. And the reason for that is that a lot of the coping techniques that I still use are on Rootd. And that’s kind of why I created Rootd spy habit. But in case that’s, you know, not the quote, not the answer that people want to hear, the other thing that I’m very reliant on is Google Maps. I used to just navigate my way around a city, a new place, with no problem. But I think now I’m too reliant on Google maps, and I look at it all the time, and I would probably get lost without it.

Business of Apps Host: You know, Google Maps is one of those apps that people mention, I guess, the most. And there’s a good reason for that. On top of the number of apps people use on a daily basis, there are these five functions that apps fulfill in our lives. Some social media, instant messaging, search for information, E commerce, and navigation. Maps. So maps is one of the top five apps categories that, you know, so many people rely on daily basis. And yeah, I would put myself in the same camp with you. Google Maps would be the one for me too. Okay, just a final question on this small set. What new app technologists are you most excited about? Thinking about it, in a way. Wouldn’t be great if my iPhone 11 could do that. Could be software, hardware. Not necessarily something more, something bigger, but something that would kind of adjust smartphone better with your lifestyle probably.

Ania Wysocka: So I think what excites me is the intersection between hardware and software and the physical and mental aspect of using our phones. So for example, different technology we have now around monitoring, sleep monitoring, what we eat, and how that’s affecting our bodies. So also wearable technology like the watches. I find that really exciting right now, and I’m kind of brainstorming early some intersections of how that could also relate to Rootd and what Rootd does for people. So, yeah, that would be what excites me the most right now.

Business of Apps Host: That’s a really interesting concept. Fingers crossed we’ll be able to do something tangible from that. That’s great.

Ania Wysocka: Thank you.

Business of Apps Host: Okay, before I let you go, just very final question, which will be this. How can people get in touch with you and get more information about what you do?

Ania Wysocka: So Rootd is on all social media channels and the URL is Rootd or app. And then for me personally I am on Twitter and I believe my twitter handle is Ania Margaret 1. Like the number one, the digit one. Probably if you look up the Rootd hashtag or something on Twitter you should be able to find me. But yeah, it’s Ania Margaret and my first name, last name, you could find me there on Twitter and on Instagram. Simply underscore Rootd. And yeah, happy to always take questions and just learn more from people that are listening to a podcast like this. I feel like you probably all have great ideas too.

Business of Apps Host: Terrific. Thank you for coming and thank you for spending this time with us. Ania. Thank you. Bye bye.

Ania Wysocka: Awesome. Thank you so much.

Business of Apps Host: And that was Ania Vasoca, founder at Rootd. To listen to more Episodes, subscribe to our podcast on itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Podcast. Just search for Business Hub apps and you will find us easily. Remember we release Episodes on Mondays, so subscribe and you

will be able to get new Episodes on your smartphone, tablet or computer as soon as we release them. And please don’t forget to leave us your view or comment on itunes. It is highly appreciated and all episodes will also be available on businessofapps.com thank you for listening. See you next week.

Host: Thank you for listening to the Business of Apps podcast. For more, head on over to businessofapps.com.

For more information, see these links:

• Cartier Women's Initiative Home Page
• My 2023 Fellowship Profile

The Cartier Women’s Initiative is an annual international entrepreneurship program. Their goal is to drive change by empowering female impact entrepreneurs.

See below to watch the video, read some notes, and more.

Table of Contents

Toggle

VideoTranscript

Video

Ania Wysocka – Simply Rooted Media Inc. – 2023 Fellow – North America

Transcript

Ania Wysocka: When I experienced my first panic attack. Like many, I had no idea what was happening and what I really wish existed was an accessible and affordable resource.

Rooted is anxiety and panic attack relief in your pocket. It contains immediate relief tools to help you in the moment. It also has a sleep support tool, active visualizations, a journal tool, lessons on what anxiety is, and it’s all gamified so you collect points as you go.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we decided to offer subscriptions for free. When the war in Ukraine started, we quickly mobilized to translate into Ukrainian and Russian users.

Share that Rooted helps them get back to work, go back to school. The app has been downloaded over 2.3 million times in over 150 countries.

My hope is that Rooted reaches over 10 million users in the next five years.

In order to achieve universal access to healthcare, we need tools that are affordable and instantly accessible.

#WeArePlay celebrates the global community of people creating apps and games businesses on Google Play. Teams of all sizes – founded by coders since childhood or tech newbies, based in busy cities and smaller towns. Discover their stories and how they are improving lives, locally and around the world!

The video has over 2,000,000 views which is incredible! Thanks to Google for featuring me and my work with Rootd. Watch the video on YouTube here.

[image: http://aniawysocka.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ania6-800x368.png]

[image: http://aniawysocka.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ania5-800x368.png]

[image: http://aniawysocka.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Ania4-800x368.png]

[image: http://aniawysocka.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ania3-800x412.png]

[image: http://aniawysocka.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ania2-800x412.png]

[image: http://aniawysocka.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Ania1-800x412.png]

Here are some screenshots from the YouTube video.

Video

#WeArePlay | Ania | Rootd | Canada

Transcript

Ania Wysocka: When I was in my fourth year of university I experienced a panic attack, came completely out of the blue and the fear of it happening again gradually made my world smaller and smaller.

I didn’t feel that drive that I had beforehand. On top of struggling with panic attacks, my mom passed away and it was extremely difficult for me.

I was losing the parts of me then I know that my mom knew and loved at the time. I would carry around a bunch of materials and books that helped me feel better and I realized that this should be on my phone because my phone is always on me.

So I started Rootd for panic attack and anxiety relief just in my living room.

I didn’t take on any funding. It’s been a very personal and important journey for me and seeing how many more people it was helpful for helped to me continue to be brave and strong about what I was experiencing.

Rootd is now in over 150 countries with over 10 languages available in the app. It’s been downloaded by over 2.3 million people and has a 4.8 rating on Google Play.

It’s just so awesome to see that people have been able to take something that I created on my couch and they use it and they carry it with them every day compared to years ago.

Now I am back to saying yes, I’m doing all these things that I never thought I’d be able to do again. Taking some time to keep checking in on my own mental health.

Still very important to me and some things that I do are I go for runs. Ultramarathons have a lot of parallels when it comes to running a business.

You are in it for the long haul. You go through a ton of different moods and experiences throughout the journey. You go from thinking that you need to quit to pushing through that wall and having the best news for your business or the best energy for the next kilometer of your run.

I’d love for Rootd to continue to help people worldwide. I’d love to reach over 10 million downloads and keep doing this and keep letting people know that there are alternatives when they are struggle.

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Eric Dyck on the DTC Podcast to share how a personal struggle led to creating an app that’s now making a meaningful difference in people’s lives around the globe.

Listen to my interview on their Youtube channel here.

Table of Contents

Toggle

VideoTranscript

For more about my experiences speaking and sharing Rootd's story, see my reflections on attending TED 2025.

Video

Million Users</a> in the Age of Anxiety" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xAyKv1FaZ2U?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen>

Ep 265: Rootd – Ania Wysocka: Helping a Million Users in the Age of Anxiety

This interview was a chance to share lessons from building Rootd. I explore similar themes in what trail running teaches you about business.

Transcript

rong>​​Ania Wysocka: I actually designed and built Rooted for myself. Initially, I was in my fourth year of university when I had a panic attack out of nowhere. So I took to my phone to see if there was something there that could help and then I couldn’t find anything. I went to the doctor. They told me I was okay, which left me more confused. I started taking to the library to try to learn different things about anxiety and panic attacks and ended up lugging around these books around campus with me and wherever I went until I said, man, this should really just be on my phone. So that’s where the idea for Rooted came. And then I’m doing much better. And people around the world are getting to face and manage and work with their anxiety through Rooted as well. We’re now at over 2 million downloads.

Eric Dyck: Hello and welcome to D2C Podcast.

Speaker: I’m Eric Dick. Today we’re finding our center with Ania Wisaka, founder and CEO of Rooted, the app that offers relief from panic attacks and anxiety in your pocket. With Rooted, Ania solved her own problem.

Eric Dyck: And created an app that’s now helping.

Speaker: Over a million users.

Eric Dyck: In this podcast, you’re going to hear how Ania used App Store optimization to.

Speaker: Rank number one on panic attacks and how a big red button made all.

Eric Dyck: The difference, as well as how a simple change in onboarding increased the paid.

Speaker: Subscriber rate for Rooted 6x. Hope you enjoy this one.

Eric Dyck: On with the show. Are you ready to grow your audience and revenue? SendInBlue is a multichannel marketing platform that empowers businesses to create stronger customer relationships, create personalized emails, captivating SMS campaigns, chat, custom landing pages, quick signup forms, automated workflows, and more instantly. Curious to learn more, sign up today@sendinblue.com DTC and enter promo code DTC to get one month free on a premium plan. Do it all with SendinBlue.

Speaker: Ania, welcome to the D2C podcast.

Eric Dyck: Can you start?

Speaker: I gotta say, you’re the first app owner we’ve had on the D2C podcast. We’ve dealt with a lot of physical goods, a lot of services. The first app that we’ve had on huge, huge market. I come from the app marketing world, first of all.

Eric Dyck: How you doing?

Ania Wysocka: I’m doing pretty good. I. Yeah. Rooted won an award yesterday, so that was a great start to my day, like knowing that and having celebrated it yesterday.

Speaker: Tell me about the award.

Ania Wysocka: It is a global impact Business Owner of the year award. You can see it here a little bit. There’s some fingerprints on it because it was being passed around but yeah, so it’s by the Innovators and Entrepreneurs foundation, and they found some. Basically encouraged businesses in Canada to be nominated and hear what kind of impact they’re having around the world. So it’s pretty cool.

Speaker: Tell me about Rooted’s impact around the world.

Ania Wysocka: So we’re now at over 2 million downloads and the biggest market being in the US and then also, you know, all of these other markets. Like, we’re translating to 10 languages now, so it’s, you know, huge in Brazil, you know, all in Europe. And yeah, it’s also in traditional and simplified Chinese, so.

Speaker: So if you’re helping 2 million people around the world with their anxiety, that’s. That’s definitely some great global impact. I feel like we’re in a real age, as Arcade Fire says, a really age of anxiety. It’s a bit of an epidemic. Can you start with a little bit of why you built Rooted?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah. So I actually designed and built Rooted for myself initially. I was in my fourth year of university when I had a panic attack out of nowhere. At least I didn’t know what they were. So I took to my phone to see if there was something there that could help. And then I couldn’t find anything. I went to the doctor. They told me I was okay, which left me more confused. They just didn’t have the time and resources to help me. And, you know, I learned this later on, years later, but in the moment when you’re suffering with that, it’s, like, really challenging. So I started taking to the library to try to learn different things about anxiety and panic attacks, and ended up lugging around these books around campus with me and wherever I went until I said, man, this should really just be on my phone. So that’s where the idea for Rooted came. And then, thankfully, you know, it’s been quite a few years now, but I’m doing much better. And. And people around the world are getting to face and manage and work with their anxiety through Rooted as well.

Speaker: And so, just a quick distinction. There’s generalized anxiety, which I kind of referred to the age of anxiety. But then there’s real acute anxiety. It’s funny, it was probably like two or three, two or three years after university for me, and I. And it was the first time I ever had a reaction with anxiety where it’s like I felt out of control of my body, even to an extent, whether it was through my breathing or through. And that. That feeling of being out of control of my anxiety or whatever I was going through tended to cascade like it could, like, it could get worse and worse because I’d be like, oh, man, I’ve never felt like this before. That must be weird. Oh, man, I must be. There must be something wrong with me kind of thing. And it really kind of triggered myself into a bit of a spiral. I remember going to the doctor and him just being like, you’re fine, you know, like a lot of. A lot of that. So I’m interested in, like, how. What about your app is working for people really well.

Ania Wysocka: So there’s a few things like you mentioned, there’s generalized anxiety, and then there’s the more heightened state of actually experiencing a panic attack, which it sounds like you did. So you know how bad they can get. And the tools that people are really using in the app, if they’re experiencing a panic attack, it’s that red button. It’s like this SOS button in the app and that walks them through a panic attack. And it’s based on cognitive behavioral therapy, and it basically is interactive. Depending on how you’re feeling, sometimes you might want to actually challenge the anxiety because that can ultimately help heal. But sometimes you just want it to go away so you can feel better. Right. If you’re in a busy subway or you’re camping, like, you don’t want to deal with it all the time. So that’s the most popular tool for panic attack experiencing people. And then in terms of anxiety, there are lessons on anxiety and panic attacks. So it works for both. And they actually go through what the physiological sensations are, what sort of mental effects panic attacks have, and they explain a lot of the stuff. That sounds like both you and I were super confused when the doctors were like, you’re okay. It’s like, well, no, something’s going on and I don’t know what it is. The lessons help explain that, and that does bring a lot of peace to people who are experiencing it for the first time. And then there are more general tools for anxiety, like breathing, visualization, journaling, sleeping, and it’s all gamified, so you collect points as you go.

Speaker: Very cool. And it’s a monthly subscription app as well, right?

Ania Wysocka: It’s annual, monthly, or there’s a lifetime plan as well.

Speaker: What does it run you a month, essentially, when it works out between the yearly and stuff. What does it actually cost per month?

Ania Wysocka: So it’s six bucks a month or 60 a year.

Speaker: Amazing. You’ve got 2 million users. Well done. First of all, congratulations.

Ania Wysocka: It’s premium, right? So not all those users are paying by any means. It’s like there’s a ton of free content in the app and then they can choose to subscribe.

Speaker: Very cool. What was V1 like when you decided, okay, I gotta get this off my bookshelves and into an app? What was your process like and what, what did V1 look like?

Ania Wysocka: The process looked a lot like me drawing in my notebooks and trying to figure out how to wireframe an app. Essentially I went to an agency and I told them what I wanted to do. They were fully behind it, but I couldn’t afford what they actually quoted me. So I realized that I had to just do a lot more of it myself. I’m a non technical founder, so I had to also find a developer, like a contract developer. And yeah, it looked a lot like Wireframing. I used Photoshop to do the designs which like, you know, I don’t think people would do now. You’d probably use Illustrator, other Figma, you know. But it worked for me at the time it was pretty scrappy, but the MVP itself was the router button. So that SOS button I told you about and the lessons. So it didn’t include the other tools.

Speaker: And then how long upon launching it did you realize that you might have something here?

Ania Wysocka: Really pretty quick. It was pretty cool. And thinking that, you know, when I launched it, I thought if it could help one or two other people, that would be really cool because I’ve been suffering for years and this has been total crap, like just so debilitating for me. And then within just a couple months, people were leaving feedback saying like, wow, I’ve tried so many different tools and nothing helped me in the moment like Ruta did. And so to see those words was just extremely validating and it really contributed to Rooted’s organic growth, how people naturally responded to it.

Speaker: How has it done organically, like how? I remember I worked for a gaming company, Tiny Mob. I don’t know if you remember that back in the day in Victoria.

Ania Wysocka: I remember the name for sure.

Speaker: And we launched, I remember launching. They had some contacts at Apple and it was sort of like a Clash of Clans competitor. They were trying to take down Clash of Clans, which was a big challenge and but I remember they had, they had, they had. They were on the radar of Apple and so when they launched, they were featured actually I think in both the US and Canada. We drove over 100,000 downloads. I think in the first like couple days of the launch. It didn’t have the legs that particular company. But how did the actual launch go? Like was, did you have you just have it been like a slow, a slow burn to grow to 2 million or.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, I’d say definitely not 100k in two days. That sounds like features were really different back then. Like they used to have when you were featured in the App Store, it would just show for everybody all at once. But now it’s all personalized. So like my App Store content is different from yours, so the features don’t give as many downloads anymore. But that sounds really cool and I’m a little jealous. But yeah, it was pretty slow. I mean, I just went on social media I was engaging on. Back then it was Instagram and Facebook really? Because this is back in 2018, so I was doing a lot of commenting, liking entering discussions a little bit on Reddit, all of that to really drive those first users. And I also did some local pr. You’ll find that a lot of people like pr, maybe sounds a little funny for a startup, but you’ll find that in your local city, like a chamber of commerce or your local tech accelerator, they do want to promote local tech. And so they did share those stories when I sent the press release. And I do think that gave a little bump as well.

Speaker: Very cool. What other growth tactics have kind of worked in the, in the app game? Are you, are you running Facebook ads?

Ania Wysocka: I’m not currently, no. No. It’s like 95% organic right now. So it’s really a lot of focus on App Store optimization. Rooted ranks number one for panic attacks and then it’s either number two or three for anxiety, like depending on the day. So that’s a big part of it. I think one thing there to note is that I focus on panic attacks even though it was a way lower search volume keyword than anxiety. And it’s kind of interesting because when you’re a founder and you know your thing works, you do want to use like the most active keyword, right? Because you’re like, this is for anxiety. But then I also knew that I was going up against like venture backed startups and I’m like, yeah, I’m probably like, it’s still new. Not so many apps were out about anxiety yet. Because again, that discussion about mental health didn’t happen until later. But it was enough that I, yeah, focusing on panic attacks just worked better. And so I was able to rank high with panic attacks first and then over time with anxiety. If you look at the charts and.

Speaker: It’s such a real fit with your, with, with one of your central features with that sort of like the button right which is sort of this. This feeling of actually solving that problem or really addressing that problem. So actually tying, you know, that initial feature set to the term panic attack probably was pretty profound for people because it’s like, there wasn’t anything like that. You know, there’s probably other places where you could get resources on panic attacks and anxiety and that kind of thing, but that. I don’t. I don’t want to say novel. The novel, not novelty. The novel idea that you kind of came up with for that button was probably a big part of the success.

Ania Wysocka: Yes, I think so, too. I think it was just about like, you know, you want to get your product in front of as many people as possible, and so you’re tempted into using these bigger keywords sometimes because you know that people with anxiety might also have panic attacks. And this way more people see it. But yeah, you’re totally right. That smaller, smaller percentage that are actually looking for panic attack support are really the right people, and those people are often the power users that then go on to share and promote the app. So I’m really happy that, you know, we did end up focusing on panic attacks instead of anxiety.

Speaker: You mentioned App Store Optimization. I remember back in this, when I was at the company was like, 2013 or something, and I remember feeling very in the dark about how to go about optimizing one’s listing. Can you talk a little bit about that process of App Store optimization and what you found that works?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, I’d say it’s still a little bit in the dark. You know, like, there’s no clear list of exactly what it is, but definitely the product page and the keywords used in the product page. There’s obviously the title, the description, the subtitle, and your images also go into it. The reviews, what people are leaving, how they’re interacting with the app, and then also what keywords they use in their user reviews. Like, do they match your product page? Are you. You know, is your product page actually leading people to the content they think they’re getting? Yeah, those are the main things that I focused on.

Speaker: And then when it comes to a freemium app and getting people to actually to upgrade to the paid version, what have been sort of your wins on that side of things?

Ania Wysocka: That’s a really tricky one. And it actually came up yesterday at the ceremony because we were talking about social impact, and it’s like, well, sometimes social impact and business building and growth and monetization, they clash. Right? Because you’re leading your company with these values of wanting to provide A resource but at the same time it’s really expensive to have and maintain an app. So that’s a little tricky because I think I at first was like walking on eggshells around the users around monetization I was offering so much for. I didn’t want to offend anybody. I wanted to make sure people had access to things that they might otherwise not afford because like there are other resources for anxiety that are super expensive. So it took me a while, but it wasn’t until March 2021 that I did a simple hack that increased revenue by six times. And it was just to move the free trial page to the beginning of the onboarding. That’s it.

Speaker: From where?

Ania Wysocka: From like just being in the app. So basically you had free content in the app, but then if you want to add or look at additional stuff then you have to subscribe and then that’s when you would see the trial page. But just by moving it to the beginning of the onboarding, yeah, it increased by six times and was able to just be able to do so much.

Speaker: More and just lead with like hey, there’s a not being shy about it, right? Like you wanting to help. I understand that mentality of like want to get it out there, help as many people as possible and being shy about oh you might want to pay for it kind of thing. Very Canadian of us. Right. But to put it front and center in the, in the application to see a six fold increase, that’s incredible.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, yeah, it really was. And I think that’s really where the bread and butter lie is like that onboarding optimization and like doing experiments during that, Those first like 20 seconds you really have the user there. That’s where a lot of conversions happen. Actually.

Eric Dyck: These days it’s expensive to get shoppers to your store so when they do show up, you want to make the most of each order. Thankfully, there’s Aftersell Post Purchase Upsell, the most popular upsell app on Shopify. With Aftersell you can create targeted on brand post purchase offers that maximize your AOV. Trusted by over 6,000 merchants, including hundreds of Shopify plus stores like Brewmate, True Classic Tees and Good American. After Sell has generated over $50 million in revenue for their merchants. We’ve partnered with After Sell to create a special offer for DTC listeners. Visit aftercell.comdtc for a 10% off lifetime subscription to After Sell and white glove support for plus merchants. On top of that there’s a 30 day free trial. So there’s zero risk to installing that’s aftercell.com DTC and so how does growth work now?

Speaker: Is it like it’s. Is it on rails to some extent. When you’re, when you’re, you know, you know, obviously you need to continually evolving the product, keep servicing the product, make sure it’s. The reviews keep flooding in. But with its place on the App Store right now, it probably has a fair amount of momentum and growth.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah. So it’s still primarily organic. I’m thinking that for Q4, with prices being really high with a lot of ad spend, I was going to sit this one out and focus a lot on the in product funnel, which again is that onboarding experimentation and trying to see if I can increase some conversion rates within the app itself. And specifically those conversion rates typically for apps will be like your install to sign up, your install to paywall view and then your paywall to trial and your trial to paid conversion basically. So those four are kind of what I’m focused on for this quarter. And then I do want to get set up though and experiment a bit more in Q1 with ads.

Speaker: Yeah, well, like if you like what’s your growth rate? Because I feel like I looked at some PR that you had that when you hit a million users and looking now you’re at 2 million. Like what, what’s your growth rate like? Like what if you weren’t going to invest heavily into ads, you know, at the start of next, like by the start of next year, where do you.

Ania Wysocka: Think you’d be at by the start of next year?

Speaker: Yeah.

Ania Wysocka: So basically it took like three years to get to a million and then it took one year to get to 2 million and now it’s at like 2,150,000. So I think that within a year and I measured that from October because that was like the launch and then it’s weird, it like it’s also my birthday and then the big things happen around my birthday. It’s like a weird thing. But I think that by next October it would be at over 3 million.

Speaker: Amazing. How big is your team now?

Ania Wysocka: So it’s myself and some contractors, they’re kind of all over. They’re awesome though. They’re basically. I’ve got two junior contractors for software development. They’ll do like front end work and then two more senior software developers that are more full stack and they’ll work on refactoring the app itself. And then I have an awesome social media person, she does my TikTok now and engagement on there because I totally slept on TikTok. I should have jumped on it earlier. I do have a little regret because I, yeah, I was totally given the heads up and I just like ignored it. I was like too busy or whatever. But now we’re experimenting with it. It’s actually really fun.

Speaker: You have such a good founders, you’re such a good founder and you have such a good founder story as related to your product. Have you tested that? Like, have you tried being the face of the app at all? Have you stayed away from that?

Ania Wysocka: I haven’t. I have in PR now, Like, at first I was so uncomfortable, but like, you have to understand, nobody even talked about panic attacks then. And I did not want to be the face of it in the sense that like a. I didn’t think it was about me. I wanted it to be about like the app mascot Ron, which you see back here, and be. It’s just like a vulnerability. I didn’t want to be like the panic attack person, you know. But now, since then, I’ve really learned that showing your face, telling your story can really help connect to users and it also makes users feel a bit less alone. So there’s a huge win in sharing your story. But I have not. On social media, I’ve done podcasts like this, I’ve done some YouTube style like panels and boot camps and I’ve done the PR stuff, like actually sharing my, my photo there. But other than that, I haven’t like actually gone on social media. It’s in the plan, though. It’s on my to do list. But it’s like, I don’t know, it’s a little uncomfortable.

Speaker: I understand, like I’m, I’m like, it’s. I’m on camera every day, all day. But when it comes to like an in conversation and in conversation, I feel 100%, but I have this. I don’t know, it’s imposter syndrome or what of just like turning the camera on me, like, you know, and speaking to it directly without talking to a person. I don’t know what that is.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, I guess when you don’t get feedback from the audience, it’s challenging. Right. When you’re public speaking or right now we’re having a conversation and we know the other person’s listening and nodding and when you’re just speaking to a screen, for me, it’s much more difficult.

Speaker: Yeah, I concur. So you’re going to try some ads, you think, in Q1 or in 2023. Is that something you’re just going to do on your own? You’re just going to sort of to start, you’re just going to get it out there and see how it goes.

Ania Wysocka: I have a contractor who I’m onboarding right now. We’re just going to kind of prep a bunch of creative for that launch. And I also have connected with the team at Bravo. They’re basically moneylenders and kind of like clearco and Rooted actually won an interest free loan from them for like a month of spend. So that’s kind of how I’m gonna kick it off is with them. And then their value add is that, you know, they have worked with so many different apps and they can provide and yeah, just provide some advice really.

Speaker: I think it’ll go really well. I think I remember when we were doing this Clash of Clans competitor, we were getting installs way back when. I remember Clash of Clans was getting. They were. My rep told me that Clash of Clans was getting hundred dollar installs and we were getting $50 installs just because we were kind of nipping at their heels and our ads were playfully calling them out in some ways. But I just feel like there’s just such an audience. Like what is the. What. What’s the biggest audience for this?

Eric Dyck: Is it older people?

Speaker: Is it younger people? Gen Z’s millennials? Who’s. Who’s really taking to the app?

Ania Wysocka: Mostly it’s a bit of a mix, but really the primary audience will be females between 24 to 35. But with TikTok and I think a big trend of anxiety and youth now, which is pretty sad. But I do see the number of unknown age rising and unknown is typically people under 18 because we don’t collect anything on them.

Speaker: Interesting. I saw on your website you have like some of your favorite stories. You’ve got like families that use it and like young kids that are already sort of using it.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, yeah. So I think that was the youngest paying user of ruta is like 6 years old and that’s her parents pay for it. And they sent in a message saying hey, this is so helpful. It’s like the only thing we found that works with our daughter. And then our oldest paying users like in his 70s and his kids sent us a note being like he’s finally doing better. And the nurses at the care home wanted to say thank you. And yeah, so it’s pretty awesome to have this like wide range of use cases for rooted and there are certainly risk use cases I didn’t even think of. You know, when I was launching it, it was just primarily for my demographic because that’s just what I knew. I wasn’t going out and doing a bunch of user tests. I wasn’t going out and surveying or anything. I was really, like, scratching my own itch. So it’s still cool to hear those stories, but definitely the majority is females, 24 to 35.

Speaker: You know, a lot of the brands, the D2C brands that I interview, a lot of them are thinking about building an app. You know, tapcart, you can sort of build an app, make your. Make your Shopify experience into an app. I was wondering, as an app, do you have any thoughts or plans to expand into physical goods, into services, into marketplaces, into anything else?

Ania Wysocka: I think that at first I was excited by everything, and then now I’m just trying to focus more. So I have been saying no to a lot more things and, like, partnerships and stuff, not because I don’t want partnerships, but just because anything that, like, takes work and you don’t know if it’ll actually work. Like, I want to focus on what’s working. And that’s a bit different now compared to at the beginning. But, yeah, I think in terms of physical things, like, sometimes our friend Hamza, for example, made this, and it’s pretty cute. It’s like a physical version of Ron. And users ask for things like this all the time. They want a plushie or they want something that will, like, emit a calming scent. And that’s definitely on my mind. I’m thinking about different types of apps, like maybe in the VR space, you know, something like that. But nothing else. Like, no other marketplace at this time?

Speaker: No very.

Ania Wysocka: Unless VR app is technically a different marketplace, but it’s still an app.

Speaker: I don’t know. And so that could potentially be a place where people. Like a Metaverse place where people calm down.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah. Hang out with this guy.

Speaker: That’d be pretty sweet.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, like.

Speaker: Well, he’s got goggles on. I’d have goggles on. It’ll be a Metaverse party. Yeah. Very cool. So how big can this thing get?

Ania Wysocka: I ask myself that question every day. But the goal is to get to, like, 10 million users and see what happens along the way. Till then.

Speaker: Amazing. What kind of. You mentioned partnerships. Like, what would an ideal partnership for this look like? Do you have partnerships with different health facilities or care facilities or different health professionals? What kind of partnerships would you be interested in in the coming years?

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, so probably the most exciting partnership is with healthcare facilities. And the reason is it’s that way to kind of bridge that gap between social impact and the monetization that I mentioned earlier, where it’s not actually the people who need it that are paying for it, it’s people who are meant to care for them, you know, so that is a really great relationship when those partnerships form. And we just finished a pilot with a health insurer and we’re moving on to the next stage of that. So that’s pretty exciting. And yeah, just sort of seeing how we can work with different larger corporations that want to support people with mental health. That’s the ideal partnership.

Speaker: Nice. And I can just see ads working if you can get that. If you can get your funnel dialed to the point where, you know, it all makes sense financially. Like, I just see ads for this kind of thing all the time. For calm. Do you consider calm a competitor?

Ania Wysocka: Not really. They’re incredible. I think they’re awesome. But they, like, meditation is different than panic attacks.

Speaker: Totally.

Ania Wysocka: They’re a competitor in the sense that they’re in the health and fitness space and I love seeing what they’re doing and learning from what they’re doing. But I wouldn’t say they’re like a direct competitor. They’re also venture backed, so it’s like a total different story when it comes.

Speaker: Because they’re kind of like a Netflix in a way. They’re coming out with new, you know, new sleep stories all the time, new things that kind of come out.

Eric Dyck: How much sort of.

Speaker: What’s the content flow for Rooted? Like how much new content is going into Rooted? Or is it sort of like, here’s the stuff you need to get through this?

Ania Wysocka: There’s definitely less updates than like, it’s not about updating the content as much. It’s about updating the features and the app itself and the tools. But we do an update at least once a month. And I’m adding in audio content. Yeah, roughly once a month. For example, now I’m working on visualization for the World cup that’s happening in the next two weeks. So I’m translating it into German, Spanish, Portuguese and French. And it’s going to be a visualization for athletes that struggle with anxiety and panic attacks. Because as we learned during the pandemic, a lot of them open up about that and how that can be quite debilitating for them before a game. So that’s an example of content that we add, I think also thinking of sounds, like calming sounds, white noise, different music, that sort of thing. We also add frequently.

Speaker: Very cool. If we were to give you $50,000 to scale rooted as a grant, you don’t have to pay back. Where in 2023 would you put that, Would you put it all into ads?

Ania Wysocka: It would be split between working with the developers on some new features that I have planned and ads.

Speaker: Yeah, very cool. Can you speak at all about the new features you’re planning or the shape of them?

Ania Wysocka: A lot of it is around, maybe these aren’t features as much because around that experimentation that I told you about, I want to remove the need for authentication when a user signs it. So basically you don’t have to sign in. There’s a lot of people that are still hesitant about associating their email even though we actually don’t use it for my. Like we’re, you know, compared to what we’ve probably could do more marketing with it. We don’t. But I still understand the hesitation that users might have. So I want to remove that process and just have that process be a bit easier to basically sign up and get started with. Rooted. And yeah, I won’t speak to the features just yet.

Speaker: Got it. I’m curious because you’ve been, you know, I’ve worked with you when you’ve been at previous positions. You’ve kind of been in tech for a long time, but you’ve really made the leap to entrepreneurship. Like how has your life changed since becoming an app success?

Ania Wysocka: I don’t know that it’s changed so much except for, you know, since the pandemic, even when I was still in a full time role. Like I just think that the freedom of really choosing my own schedules, quite profound. Like that’s probably the biggest change. And then since I have been full time on Rooted, I mean I’m 100% on my own schedule. Like that’s the coolest part. I mean I don’t have to do meetings if I don’t want to do meetings. Like it’s, it’s lots of fun. I really value that. I value basically being my, the warden of my time, you know, and not having anyone else do that. I’d say that’s the biggest change. But in terms of success, like as an app. Oh, I guess I get invited to cool events and stuff. That’s pretty cool.

Speaker: Yeah. I saw you met Sampar the other day.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, yeah. In San Francisco. I also got to tour the Apple hq, which is really cool.

Speaker: Very cool. Well, remember the little people?

Ania Wysocka: What was your name again? That’s true.

Speaker: Nice. Well, it’s super nice catching up with you here. I think I just, I think apps, they’re such an attractive business. I feel like like the fact that you’ve got this team, you’ve got a team of three or four with contractors and that, and that you’re reaching this many people, having this profound an impact on people is pretty, pretty special.

Ania Wysocka: I think it’s so special. I think tech in general is just so special to facilitate these types of resources and access to resources. And I think that maybe one day I’ll have like more of a full time team. But right now I just enjoy it so much that everyone’s doing their things, they’re contributing when they can and where they can and I just find it really fun. I’m really enjoying this newfound, again that freedom with time and I want everybody else to have it too, that I engaging with. But yeah, I think the goal is to just sort of do it in this way for as long as possible.

Speaker: I heard this morning about Elon ordering all of his staff back into the office and it gave me, it didn’t give me a panic attack, but it gave me a little pang of like, ugh, like, I’m so glad that we’re a fully remote team that I can fully make up my team. Only time I go in my hours, the only time I go into the office is for like social events, for happy hours and, you know, fun stuff like that and that. And that honestly was. Has been a huge weight off of me cognitively. Like you just all of the, you know, getting to, getting to work, just all of the, all of the interactions that go on on a daily basis, like, I don’t know, there’s part of me I need to get out into the world a little bit more. But part of me has just been so grateful for the ability to focus on things. Working from home has been a big win for me.

Ania Wysocka: Yeah, me too. Me too. I value this so much and I think it’s partially why I went into something tech related. I obviously couldn’t have predicted the pandemic and remote work being so popular, but the idea of being in charge of my own time is just so appealing. And now more of us have that and that’s really cool.

Speaker: Nice. Well, one of these days I’ll run into you in the real world, but until then, it’s been awesome to catch up. Thanks for coming on the podcast today.

Ania Wysocka: Awesome. Thank you. Cheers, thanks for having me.

Eric Dyck: Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode.

Speaker: If you’re not a subscriber to our newsletter, you can do that right now.

Eric Dyck: At Direct to Consumer all one word co. I’m Eric Dick and this has been the D2C podcast. We’ll see you next time.

Things you may want to know

Fact 1:

Our youngest subscribed user (that we’ve heard from) is 6.

Her parents practice the breathing tool and visualizations with her daily, and share that Rootd has helped her more than any other tool they’ve tried.

Fact 2:

Our oldest subscribed user (that we’ve heard from) is 70.

His family, therapist, and social worker have shared gratitude that Rootd has helped him take control of his anxiety and panic attacks.

Fact 3:

I started Rootd to solve a personal problem, and while it’s certainly most popular among my demographic, it’s also reaching people in more places and across more walks of life than I could have imagined.

Hope you enjoyed learning a little more about Rootd.

Follow me on X for more content like this!

Click each image for high-quality, print-ready file.