"Founding is not a sprint - it's a long marathon with lots of obstacles and chicanes"

With its app, the Hamburg-based start-up FoodPal has set itself the task of combining all areas of a healthy lifestyle. If you're tired of counting calories or turning your entire daily routine inside out, FoodPal is the right place for you. In this interview, co-founder David Jakobs tells us about the beginnings of the company and explains the app's functions.

How did you come up with the idea of developing a nutrition app?

I myself always had the problem of being very thin and I found it difficult to build muscle. I quickly realized that it wasn't because of my training, but because of my diet. In order to achieve my physical goals, I started to look at the big issue of nutrition and began to try out my findings on myself. Gradually, my physical successes became visible to others - first in my family, then in my wider circle of acquaintances. I started to coach others and created nutrition plans for them using paper, pen and Excel spreadsheets.

By taking into account the many individual needs, the workload became so great that I could only serve a handful of clients at a time. That's why I was looking for a solution to make personal coaching and nutritional advice scalable.

With the help of Alexander Lüdke (co-founder), this idea then became a reality - artificial intelligence and a complex algorithm provide users with the kind of personalized and effective support that only a personal nutritionist can.

What is special about your app, what do you do differently?

FoodPal's philosophy as a coach is to focus on the user as an individual with all their wishes and needs and, based on this, to create a personal nutrition plan that can be implemented sustainably and in the long term.

Usually, nutrition apps simply create a plan with suggested recipes that should be eaten. However, this requires considerable restructuring of the user's previous habits and routines. In our experience, this does not work in the long term. In line with our philosophy, FoodPal therefore adapts to the user's habits, gets to know them better and better and constantly optimizes itself.

FoodPal thus offers all the advantages of personal coaching by a flesh-and-blood nutritionist - but is there for you day after day and around the clock as a constant companion - ready to hand in your pocket.

This is made possible by the use of artificial intelligence and a complex algorithm that is constantly evolving - in combination with a wealth of experience in the field of nutrition and an extensive recipe and food database. We laid the foundations for this with FoodPal version 2.0 in September 2021 - but this is just the start of something really big.

Who is the app suitable for?

Nutrition apps are now a dime a dozen. Most of them either require you to meticulously type in every single gram of food you eat - which many users find annoying and time-consuming - or there is a static, fixed nutrition plan that you have to follow in order to achieve your desired goal. In both cases, this is not feasible for most people in the long term, as the effort involved is too great or there are too many restrictions on personal needs.

Losing weight, building muscle, simply eating healthier - it doesn't matter, because FoodPal has the right diet for everyone. Even for vegetarians and vegans!

What functions does the app include?

Nutrition navigation system:

We are particularly proud of the FoodPal nutrition navigation system, sounds fancy, - it is, because the nutrition navigation system helps you to stay on the target route to your desired weight, even if you get "lost".

What does that mean exactly?

Our good intentions are put to the test every day. It's your colleague's birthday and they're bringing cake, you're tempted by a delicious-smelling takeaway, or you're running out of time again and only the delivery service can save you? You can't always defend yourself against situations like this, and you also want to take part in life and not always have to say "no".

Nevertheless, situations like this can always throw you off your route and your goal moves a little further into the distance.

FoodPal's nutrition navigation system registers when you have deviated from your goal and automatically optimizes your nutrition plan, calorie intake, nutrients and recipes. So you can be sure that your nutrition plan is perfectly suited to you and your goals again, even if the craving for fast food has won out.

Pre-cooking mode:

To save even more time and work, you can activate FoodPal's pre-cook mode. This cooks your dinner as a double portion, which you can heat up for lunch the following day - perfect for busy people.

Other functions include:

• Recipe book
• Large selection of diets
• Recipe-based shopping lists
• Statistics & forecasts about your nutrients, calories and weight progression
• Alternative recipe suggestions for flexible swapping
• Tracking of sports & activities
• Extensive medical history
• Chat and live support

What were the biggest challenges you had to overcome at the beginning?

As we had little knowledge of app development at the beginning, we had to build our prototype with a hybrid framework, which meant that the layout consisted of web technologies. We then launched the open beta as FoodPal 1.0 at the end of 2018. At first, everything was stable and we were able to attract over 20,000 beta testers. However, as smartphones and their operating systems evolved, compatibility problems became more and more frequent - to put it simply: errors occurred frequently and loyal users could no longer access their nutrition plans.

Unfortunately, we were unable to solve the problem promptly with our app development expertise at the time, so user numbers plummeted and bad reviews poured in.

Fortunately, we managed to further expand and internationalize our team. This allowed us to completely redevelop and improve FoodPal. Since September 2021, FoodPal has been available in the app stores with many new features - and we are happy about every new user.

What was the most valuable piece of advice someone gave you during your start-up phase?

The most valuable advice we were able to give ourselves. Each of us founding members has also founded other companies in the past. Some projects have been successful, others have failed. The failed projects in particular are valuable lessons that we can draw on today. The two most valuable experiences were:

• Not to think directly about sales or monetization at the beginning or not to focus on this. Try to solve a problem in the best possible way and try to generate the greatest added value for the user. If the user is happy and their problems are solved, the monetization models will emerge almost all by themselves.
• Founding is not a sprint - it is a long marathon with many obstacles and chicanes. Every obstacle can test your faith in the project. Only with a lot of perseverance and willpower are you able to cross the finish line.

What has been your greatest success so far?

The biggest emotional success is seeing how many people use FoodPal and being able to accompany them on their way to "their diet" - the great messages and thanks are the biggest motivation.

In terms of operational success, we have managed to generate over 40,000 downloads through purely organic growth and are recording increasing user numbers every month.

We were able to convince an app development agency with over 200 employees to join forces with us and several well-known media and retail companies have already taken notice of us.

What are your milestones?

• End of 2018: Launch of the open beta
• September 2020: Joint venture (app development agency)
• September 2021: Release of FoodPal 2.0
• September 2022: 40,000 downloads
• In 2023, we will add more languages and develop great new features to make coaching even more personalized and promote healthy eating.

Where do you see your start-up in 3 years?

• FoodPal will be one of the five leading nutrition apps, with more than 10 million downloads.
• In addition to the DACH region, FoodPal is expanding across Europe.
• Our artificial intelligence will be much more advanced and we will be able to coach even more personally and individually and help more people.

About the people:

We are a dedicated team of three with different backgrounds and specializations, whose roots criss-cross Germany. From Hamburg to Lake Constance and back to the Dutch border.

Alexander Lüdke is co-founder and our technical mastermind, responsible for development, artificial intelligence and backend.

Thomas Stewing is Co-Founder and CEO with years of experience in the management of larger companies such as BASF and Berner.

David Jakobs is Co-Founder and CrossMedia Designer. He is responsible for UI / UX and all nutrition-specific content.

More about FoodPal at: https://www.foodpal-app.com/de/

Thank you very much!