How BeHard Reached $470k MRR Without Taking Outside Investment

Most entrepreneurs know discipline is important. Zakhar Azatian built an entire business around it.

After completing the 75 Hard challenge, Zakhar noticed something crucial missing from the market. People wanted to transform their lives through structured challenges, but the available tools were poorly designed. Zakhar invested $10,000 of his own money and set out to create BeHard.

Today, BeHard serves over 1 million users worldwide and generates $470,000 in monthly recurring revenue, all without taking a single dollar of outside investment.

In this interview, Zakhar shares the systems and mindset that made this growth possible. You’ll discover how he approaches creative testing at scale, why he treats marketing like a factory rather than hoping for viral moments, and what it really takes to bootstrap a mobile app to seven figures in annual revenue.

How much revenue does the business generate?

$470k MRR 

Tell us about yourself and your business.

I’m Zakhar Azatian, founder and CEO of BeHard, a mobile app designed to help people build discipline and change their lifestyles through structured challenges. 

With a background in engineering, I began my career as an iOS developer and spent several years building consumer apps that generated millions in revenue. I learned new skills and eventually became a Product Manager, then co-founded and led My Passion, a romance fiction book marketplace.

At My Passion, I grew the platform to over two million users and built a strong team from the ground up. Although it was a successful project, I wanted to make a greater impact on people’s lives, so I moved on. 

BeHard grew out of my own experience completing the 75 Hard challenge. I realized there wasn’t a simple, well-designed tool that made these types of challenges easier to follow and stick with. Today, BeHard provides a gamified system where users follow clear daily rules, track their progress, and restart if they miss a task. That structure helps people build habits, improve their health, and stay accountable.

We serve a global audience of over 1 million users looking to become more disciplined. I grew the business organically, starting with $10,000 of my own money and reinvesting the profits. We have now reached $470,000 in MRR by focusing on continuous improvement of both the product and the systems that support it.

How does your business make money?

BeHard runs on a freemium model. Users get free access to the app’s basic features. We make money from subscriptions, which unlock extra features designed to make tasks easier and boost motivation. These include tools like advanced progress tracking, reminders, deeper insights, and expanded customization options.

What was your inspiration for starting the business?

I realized that I wanted to do something meaningful that would have a positive impact and help people improve their quality of life. 

I brainstormed various startup ideas, but nothing felt right. At the same time, I was going through the 75 Hard challenge, a self-discipline program. I exercised twice a day, drank lots of water, followed a healthy diet, gave up alcohol, read non-fiction books, and tracked my progress. Doing it myself was a powerful experience. I realized that the challenge format works better than just tracking habits. At least because if you slip up once, you have to start all over again, rather than just skipping a check mark in the tracker. 

My personal experience, the potential of the challenge niche, and the fact that it really improves people’s lives led me to create BeHard.

How and when did you launch the business?

I launched BeHard in 2023, and the first version was pretty simple. It was focused on the core experience: letting users follow a structured challenge with clear daily tasks and a simple checklist. 

After publication, I noticed that the app was growing in popularity, and more and more users were completing challenges. Feedback from the audience inspired me to continue working on the product and add new features. 

Tell us about your team.

Initially, it was just me working on the app, but over time, I involved experts to address various issues related to marketing, development, and design. Currently, we have up to 10 contractors in different fields, and we all work remotely. 

How are you funded? 

BeHard has been bootstrapped from the beginning. I personally invested around $10,000 to get the first version of the product off the ground, keeping everything as lean as possible in the early days. 

BeHard hasn’t raised any outside investment yet, and we are growing by reinvesting our earnings. So far, this approach seems right for us. I feel complete freedom in the pace of the app’s development and its functionality.

How did you acquire your first customers?

Our first users came primarily through organic discovery and search. As BeHard supports well-known challenges like 75 Hard, there was already a strong demand from people looking for tools to help them stay accountable. App Store Optimization and early tests with Apple Search Ads helped us reach users who were actively searching for a solution.

We also worked with influencers in the self-improvement and fitness space. Since challenges are highly personal and shareable, this kind of content resonated well and brought in motivated users. Word of mouth played an important role too, as people often invited friends to join them or shared their progress, which naturally introduced others to the app.

Tell us about your primary drivers for growth. What worked for you in the beginning? What’s working now?

What drives me in life is the opportunity for development and growth. Long before BeHard, when I was working as a developer and later as a product manager, I always tried to take on more responsibility than my role required. I wanted to understand not just how to build features, but how products grow, how users behave, and how businesses actually work. That mindset of continuous learning carried directly into building BeHard.

Launching this startup, my main driver was the opportunity to contribute to improving people’s lives. Building BeHard, I can not only develop myself, but also help others grow. Plus, it’s a niche that I personally find interesting. Perfect mix.

My goals now are ambitious. I see great potential in BeHard as we have entered a promising niche. I’m driven by the opportunity to become the best in it. And that’s what motivates me to work hard on the product every day. 

What marketing strategies have been most effective for you so far?

We take a comprehensive approach to marketing and use several channels: ASO/ASA, Meta, TikTok, influencer marketing, and Google Ads. In the early stages, we focused on organic growth and App Store Optimization. As we grew, influencer marketing became another strong channel. Real-life examples from influencers in fitness, self-improvement, and lifestyle resonated well with our audience.

But most importantly, we’ve built a factory for creative experiments. We don’t randomly test creatives hoping they’ll go viral, but rather take a systematic approach. First, we identified the channels, then collected references — creatives that performed well in similar niches. We analyzed their messages, CTAs, visuals, and hooks. After that (and this is crucial), we adapted those references to our needs, adding a unique angle. Otherwise, if you simply copy without adding your own touch, it won’t work. We constantly analyze our audience, get user feedback about their pain points and the solutions they are looking for, and adapt our creatives accordingly.

Currently, we’re launching 500 creatives per month, but we’re gradually increasing this figure. Our goal is to launch 1,000 creatives and more. The main thing is not just to ignore ineffective ads and scale up those that perform well, but to perform data-driven analysis and use it to generate new creatives. 

Also, it is important to note that we’re a seasonal startup. People are more likely to join self-improvement challenges during the New Year period or to get ready for summertime. Therefore, we plan financially and marketing-wise for these periods to ensure that everything runs smoothly. 

What has been your biggest challenge so far, and what did you learn from it? How are you dealing with this issue today?

One of the biggest challenges for an entrepreneur is to challenge themselves constantly. If you leave everything as it is, there’s no growth. I realized this quite early on, back when I was working as a developer. 

Even before starting BeHard, I had a mindset that there’s no job I’m unwilling to do if it helps move the product forward. As an engineer and later as a product manager, I pushed myself to understand analytics, monetization, marketing, and hiring. These skills and willingness to do everything myself help me, especially considering that I am building BeHard with my own funds. 

Building a company is very different from building features. If I had focused solely on development and ignored things like user acquisition, revenue, or team building, BeHard would not exist in its current form. That’s why I continue to stay close to the big picture of the business, not just the product itself. 

What’s the biggest risk you’ve taken as a founder/entrepreneur?

I think it’s committing fully to building BeHard with my own time and money, without outside investment or a safety net. I understood that if I failed, no one would back me up. 

When you build with your own funds, you think more carefully about where to reinvest, who to hire for the team, and what to focus on than when you work with external funding. 

But it gives me a strong sense of ownership and freedom. 

As I wasn’t tied to external funding early on, I could move at my own pace, experiment more openly, and stay focused on building something sustainable. It was a difficult path, but it shaped how I think about growth and long-term impact today.

What tools do you use and recommend?

I tend to use tools that help us make decisions based on real data rather than assumptions. For market and niche research, platforms like Sensor Tower and Appfigures are very useful.

For marketing, we rely heavily on research and creative intelligence tools. Facebook’s Ad Library and TikTok’s Creative Center or trends dashboards help us understand what formats and angles are currently working on each platform. Tools like AdSpy are also helpful for spotting patterns in competitor ads. On the acquisition side, we work directly with platforms like Apple Search Ads, Meta Ads Manager, and TikTok Ads Manager to run and measure our experiments.

What is the most rewarding aspect of being a founder/entrepreneur?

For me, entrepreneurship has always been about the opportunity to make positive changes in people’s lives, solve problems, and create something innovative. Knowing that a product we built is part of those stories is incredibly meaningful. I love interacting with our users and getting feedback on how their lives have changed after the BeHard challenges. Some have become more disciplined, some have lost weight, some have quit drinking, and some have achieved their goals. This mix of seeing changes in other people’s lives and constantly developing myself  makes my entrepreneurial journey feel worthwhile.

What advice would you give to other aspiring entrepreneurs?

Firstly, find your niche. Don’t get caught up in what sounds trendy right now or the niches your friends are building startups in. Your niche should be interesting to you and have real signs of demand. That is, it should have users, products, and revenue in the space. Once you’ve found it, ask yourself if you can compete with the existing players in it. If the answer is yes, it makes sense to try.  

And the second tip is, once you start generating revenue, reinvest it wisely. For example, invest in specialists who will drive your growth. In our case, it was a marketer. Even part-time experts or consultants can make a big difference early on.