Ask HN: I've spent $1M+ building a fitness app. Now what?

# I've spent $1mm+ building a fitness app. Now what?

## Situation Report:

- I've been bootstrapping a consumer-grade (native iOS + Apple Watch) fitness app for the past few years, and I've spent over $1mm (not including my own time; that's real post-tax cash money) getting to this point.

- I'm a solo founder with a ~20 year professional background in building + shipping enterprise software products, and the vast majority of my focus has been on building the app itself (with the help of a lean team of contractors and freelancers.)

- The app itself is fairly polished and perfectly usable. It's in the App Store right now, I use it daily, and there's a small trickle of users. However, there's no clear signs of PMF or traction yet -- and that's essentially the problem to be solved.

- If time and money were no object, I would love to continue working on this app indefinitely. I'm obsessed with human performance + fitness, and building this kind of product is fun. I believe in the longer-term potential to turn this into a viable business, though I don't have a line of sight to that yet. (And at the same time, I'm just getting a little exhausted trying to do so much for so long with so little support!)

- Practically speaking, I can't keep putting time + money into this forever, I don't think I can/should try to raise outside capital until I can show some clear traction with what I've already built -- and I'm increasingly starting to second guess myself and wonder if my current strategy for launching and monetizing a B2C app as a solo founder might just be a fool's errand.

So, I'm thinking about how to honestly assess the situation and determine what's the next best step for finding PMF...

## Considerations

Some of things I'm considering (which are not mutually exclusive)

- Start trying to recruit a co-founder with a penchant for fitness + legit passion for marketing to help find traction + go to the next level

- Go into code freeze (e.g. taper expenses to the lowest possible level), take a holiday break to freshen my perspective, and (at least temporarily) reframe this as a side-hustle in the new year with most of that energy going into marketing

- Start building a pipeline of potential acquirers who might be interested in picking up from where I'm at and frame an offer around the source code + registered trademarks. (e.g. increase my luck of getting acquired or acqui-hired)

In general, I'm leaning towards a strategy where I freeze the product for a while and put 99% of the time + money + energy into marketing for purposes of finding PMF.

(I don't think trying to raise outside capital right now makes sense given market conditions or the lack of demonstrated traction, but that might be a limiting belief?)

## Ask HN

Anything else you'd add to the list of possibilities, or any strategic advice you'd offer from prior experience?

Good thought! I haven't been rigorous about this yet, and that sounds like a tactical + practical next step. Anecdotally, I think I am currently churning most of the users. Do you have any thoughts on how many users would be a minimum threshold for a legit cohort analysis?

Financially, I don't need the app to produce income to keep my life on track...but the opportunity cost of continuing to sink so much time + life force into it is substantial (even in comparison to sunk costs), and that's one of the factors I'm increasingly thinking about.

I really like the idea of doubling down on getting high-quality interactive 1:1 feedback like you suggested, and that is something I can easily do on a daily basis to build more signal about how to dial in PMF in an intentional way.

I heard a quote once (Justin Kan, I think) that went something like this: first time founders focus on product; second time founders focus on distribution.

I might just be the extreme version of that quote ;)

I'm very concerned that as a solo founder you've put this much effort, money, and time into something that doesn't have PMF. Validating ideas is basically the first step of a business, and if you can't validate demand and secure PMF, then it doesn't really matter how much money or time you put into the project.

Real talk: it's entirely possible that you've wasted $1MM on a product that nobody wants.

But given that you have an app that works, and given that you built the app for yourself first, I think it's fair to assume there are other people out there that are like you and would find this app useful. With that in mind, I think the absolute right thing to do is try and identify your target demographic, market the hell out of it (as cheaply as possible) to specifically those people, and get some recurring revenue to subsidize the costs as you expand from there.

Any work you're doing now is basically unvalidated work. You have no idea if people will pay for it, if people even want it, or if they are turning off users. You don't know what price point makes sense.

You need to get some humans in the mix and find out whether your product is viable and whether people will use it. Once you get that validation, you'll have more of a direction to head that will satisfy actual prospective customers, which you can then hopefully convert into paying users.

I wish you the best of luck and I'll be looking out for your app, as I'm also a bit obsessed with fitness. Good luck!

That's awesome advice, thank you!

You are sharing some concepts and ideas I've been digesting, so that's encouraging.

> This is assuming that your app has any actual value it offers. If your app actually offers any value then achieving PMF is simply a Marketing/UX and distribution problem

I like that. Simple, clear, and actionable. Writing it on a post-it now :)