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Aja Beckett
Company
Shotsy
Location
Portland, Oregon Metropolitan Area
Bio
Aja Beckett is a Portland-based iOS engineer and founder of Shotsy, a companion app for people taking GLP-1 medications, built around reminders, dosage tracking, widgets, and progress insights. She leads product, engineering, and growth, after previously building iOS features at The New York Times (The Athletic) and shipping multiple apps as a freelance developer. Earlier, she co-founded Civil Co. and worked at TED Conferences as both a software engineer and online community manager.
Aja Beckett is a Portland-based iOS...
description
Shotsy is the #1 companion app for people taking GLP-1 medications, helping users manage their weekly injections and stay on track with their treatment. Our mission is to support our community with tools, insights, and empathy that make every shot count.
Shotsy is the #1 companion app...
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Actionable Takeaways
Build for the Problem You Actually Have:
Shotsy was born from Aja's own experience of getting a GLP1 prescription and being left entirely on her own. The best consumer products solve a problem the founder has lived — authenticity of need translates directly to clarity of product.
Reddit Is a Launch Channel — If You Belong There First:
Aja was already an authentic member of the GLP1 subreddit before she had an app. She didn't show up to market — she showed up because she needed help. When she posted for beta testers and then for launch, the community responded because she was one of them. Authenticity earned the amplification.
App Store Optimization Is Marketing:
Getting the keywords, screenshots, title, purchase screen, and name right on day one meant Shotsy built organic ranking from launch. Aja's seven apps of experience meant she knew exactly what not to do — and the foundation she laid on day one didn't need to be rebuilt.
The Only Group You Have to Answer To Is Your Users:
By choosing a freemium subscription model with no ads and no data sales, Shotsy's only obligation is to be useful enough that users pay for premium. This alignment between business model and user interest removes the competing pressures that push companies toward extractive behavior.
AI at the Development Layer, Not the User Layer:
Shotsy uses AI to speed up code reviews, ship features faster, and reduce bottlenecks on a small team. It is deliberately excluded from the user-facing experience — in a health context, accuracy and privacy are too important for AI to speak directly to users without human oversight.
There Is No Outsourcing Taste and Judgment:
Even in software development, where AI is doing more and more, the decisions that matter — what's appropriate, what's understandable, what genuinely benefits users — still require human judgment. AI accelerates the path to those decisions. It doesn't replace them.
Product-Led Growth Requires a Product That Actually Works:
Shotsy has 25,000 five-star reviews and over 100,000 paying subscribers without buying a single ad. That is only possible when the product itself creates the word-of-mouth. People shared it on Facebook groups and subreddits because it solved a real, felt need — not because it was marketed cleverly.
GLP1 Is a Platform, Not Just a Medication:
The range of benefits GLP1 users are experiencing — weight, blood pressure, cholesterol, sleep apnea, mental health, reduced cravings for alcohol, cigarettes, compulsive behaviors — means the companion app has an expanding surface area. Shotsy is positioned at the center of one of the most consequential health shifts of the decade.
Conversation Highlights
Aja Beckett, CEO and founder of Shotsy, didn’t set out to build a company. She got prescribed a GLP1 medication, found herself completely unsupported after leaving the doctor’s office, and built the companion app she needed. Two years later, Shotsy is the #1 companion app for GLP1 users — 1 million+ downloads, 100,000+ paying subscribers, 25,000 five-star reviews, available in 185 territories across 18 languages, with zero paid advertising and no data sales. In this episode, Aja shares how a Reddit post became her launch strategy, why her 7th app was the one that finally worked, the business model that lets her answer only to her users, and why she has made a deliberate decision to keep AI entirely out of the Shotsy user experience — even as she uses it aggressively to ship faster on the development side.
Topics Discussed
- Aja’s background: iOS engineer, independent app developer with 6 prior apps before Shotsy
- Her personal GLP1 journey: prescribed medication, life-changing results, no support infrastructure left her on her own
- Building the companion app she needed — and discovering it was what everyone else needed too
- Shotsy’s growth: #1 GLP1 companion app, 1M+ downloads, 100K+ paying subscribers, 25K 5-star App Store reviews
- Global reach: iOS and Android, 18 languages, paying customers in 185 territories
- The broader benefits of GLP1 medications beyond weight loss: blood pressure, cholesterol, sleep apnea, mental health, reductions in cravings for alcohol, cigarettes, compulsive behaviors
- Regulation and health data: brought in Chief Science Officer Eric Praxis, formerly Chief Science Officer for Informatics at the FDA
- Privacy-first business model: no ads, no data sales, freemium with premium subscriptions as the only revenue model
- Launch strategy: authentic Reddit community participation, beta tester recruitment, organic word-of-mouth from day one
- App Store expertise: keywords, screenshots, purchase screen, title — got it right on day one and didn’t need to touch it
- Pre-seed venture capital raised in year one to resource growth and maintain the #1 position
- Team: 5 full-time + 4 contractors, 100% remote, US-based, no one in the same city
- AI in development: faster code reviews, quicker feature shipping, reduced bottlenecks for a small team
- AI deliberately kept OUT of user-facing experience: health context, privacy concerns, accuracy risk, no unsolicited medical-adjacent advice
- 2026 goals: maintain #1, expand pill support for oral GLP1s, more data charts and medication level curve visualization, community and social connection features
