In April 2020, a lot of people suddenly needed to work out at home.
Aaptiv already made audio fitness classes for people training away from a gym. The app had running, strength, and other guided workouts. When gyms closed and normal routines stopped, that existing product saw a large and immediate change in use.
On April 14, TechCrunch reported Aaptiv's company figures from the early COVID period. Traffic was up 100 percent. Engagement was up 200 percent. Members had completed more than 30 million classes.
Those were company-reported numbers during an unusual moment. They show a sharp increase in use. They do not tell us that every new user stayed, that the business doubled, or that the situation was easy for the team.
I was Aaptiv's CTO and product leader during that period. The product had to keep working while usage changed quickly and the people building it were dealing with the same shutdown as everybody else.
My exact title in April still needs one final employment-record check because later profiles use more than one version. The company and public profile record consistently place me over technology and product. That is enough to describe the scope without adding a title that may belong to a different month.
At-home fitness was not an abstract market category in March and April. People had lost access to gyms, group classes, tracks, and normal schedules. Some had small apartments. Some had equipment. Many did not. A workout that could run through a phone and headphones had an obvious use.
The company also announced a new enterprise channel. Aaptiv would make its content available to employers, health plans, and other partners. An API would let outside products connect customers to Aaptiv's classes.
That changed more than sales. A direct consumer downloads the app, creates an account, and uses the product under Aaptiv's own experience. An enterprise or API partner brings different requirements. Account access, content delivery, data, reporting, support, privacy, and the partner's own customer experience all need clear ownership.
An API is useful only if another system can depend on it. The content needs stable identifiers and the access rules need to work. Partners need documentation and support. Product and engineering teams need to know what data can move between systems and what has to stay protected. The public announcement establishes the channel. The detailed implementation still belongs in the internal record.
The TechCrunch report also said Insight Partners provided more funding. The public article did not disclose the amount. There is no need to fill in a number that the source did not publish.
From the outside, this could look like a clean COVID success story. Demand went up, engagement went up, and a new channel opened. Inside a product organization, a spike creates work. Infrastructure has to handle more use. Content has to stay available. Customer questions change. Data needs to distinguish a temporary surge from a lasting change in behavior.
The two percentage figures measured different things. Traffic described visits or demand reaching the service. Engagement described what people did after arriving. The public report did not state the precise baseline window in the research packet, so the article should keep the company's published percentages and avoid rebuilding the calculation.
The company had spent years building the app and its content library before that month. The April numbers did not appear because the team reacted to COVID in two weeks. The existing audio product, mobile infrastructure, trainers, and class catalog were already there when people needed them.
The enterprise move was also bigger than a short-term response. Employers and health plans could use digital fitness as a benefit even after gyms reopened. The API created a way for Aaptiv content to appear inside another company's product instead of requiring every customer to begin with the consumer app.
That meant Aaptiv could be both a consumer app and a content or technology partner. The same trainers and classes could reach people through different products. The company still had to decide how those routes fit together and how to measure use without treating every partner customer like a direct subscriber.
That did not make the direct business unimportant. It meant we were now serving customers through more than one route while the underlying fitness content and technology still had to work.
April 2020 was a hard month for New York and for people everywhere. Aaptiv happened to make a product that fit one immediate need. Usage rose fast. We kept the service running and opened another way for people to reach it.