The first time my fiance and I went to see a trainer, we were handed a book of over 3000 foods and a notepad to tally daily nutritional intake. That tedious process sparked an idea.

The Problem I Needed to Solve

I had been coding since age 10, so I decided to create my own program to make it easier to track food intake. What started as a personal tool would eventually become MyFitnessPal.

Building in My Spare Time

I launched the MyFitnessPal website in September 2005. For years, it was a side project while I worked my day job. My brother Albert joined in 2008 to handle the business side.

The Bootstrapped Years

We've been bootstrapped and profitable for years. In that time we learned to excel at being very lean and strategic. MyFitnessPal's sole source of revenue was advertising, which created enough profit to support a staff of 40.

Growth Through Partnerships

We formed partnerships with 80% of wearable fitness devices on the market, integrating with Fitbit, Jawbone, and leading GPS activity-tracking apps. These integrations helped users get a complete view of their health data.

The Outcome

By 2015, we had grown to over 80 million users. Under Armour acquired us for $475 million - one of the largest bootstrapped acquisitions in fitness tech history.

• Launch: September 2005
• Acquisition: February 2015 ($475M)
• Users at acquisition: 80M+
• Food database: Largest in the world
• Years bootstrapped: 10