My workout app earns –$1000/month. I decided to build a new one
Hey HN A little over four years ago, I built a weightlifting app for 5/3/1 with the goal of making $1000 total. Five months later I had reached that goal and made it to the top of HN [0]. It’s been earning between $1000 - $1300 every months since. After that a lot happened. I got a job, then had kids, so I put the project on ice. When I grew too disappointed with my job, I decided to try to raise some money and build on the success of my 5/3/1 app by addressing the main feedback I kept getting: the ability to create your own programs. Thus, Vis was born. The initial idea…
What it does
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN A little over four years ago, I built a weightlifting app for 5/3/1 with the goal of making $1000 total. Five months later I had reached that goal and made it to the top of HN [0]. It’s been earning between $1000 - $1300 every months since. After that a lot happened. I got a job, then had kids, so I put the project on ice. When I grew too disappointed with my job, I decided to try to raise some money and build on the success of my 5/3/1 app by addressing the main feedback I kept getting: the ability to create your own programs. Thus, Vis was born. The initial idea was to create a platform where gyms and trainers could build programs and define them using formulas so they could be derived from parameters like 1RM. I built what I think is the best workout editor out there, but I quickly found out that B2B sales is hard (or maybe I just suck at it). It also just didn’t feel like a big enough sell for gyms. So I pivoted and decided to focus on the iOS app for now. You can check it out at https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vis-next-generation-workouts/i... It builds on the strengths of my previous app with a workout experience that focuses on what you are doing right now instead of a spreadsheet-like UI. Rescheduling workouts is now a breeze with a Jiggle Mode style interface. And it is now a fully native SwiftUI app (as opposed to Flutter), which made it easier to use stuff like Live Activities so you can work out from your lock screen. Right now it comes with well known programs like 5/3/1 and more, and it will soon have the ability to create your own, powered by the same engine. It has been quite a journey and I wouldn’t recommend doing this with two young kids, but I am really proud of what I built. Please check it out and let me know what you think! [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31508009
Does the same job
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I am a software developer and in the last few months after recently becoming a father I was barely finding time for a proper workout. Recently I was reading about new research on Snack Exercises and how beneficial mini workouts of less than 2mins every so often, during the day are to our body. So, I decided to build an iOS App for me and others to help with this. The app generates a list of exercises that I need to tick to complete daily or loose my streak. The algorithm takes into account muscle groups and balancing the exercises to hit most main muscles. I also stayed going through all…
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Care to share a screenshot and the 'killer feature' of any of your personal, self-built productivity tools? eg. I made my own calendar and money-tracker last year - there are no other users, it makes no money, I have no plans to make it public, but it holds my life together :) http://i.imgur.com/h2keJDg.png GREAT BECAUSE... it tells me how much I'm going to get paid this month. Absolutely no ulterior motive here (ie. I'm not canvassing opinions for a productivity app startup or anything), just interested.
- AAAn app that takes your money if you don't reach your goals2024 · goaliemvmt.com · ▲50
My wife and I just launched this app because we had so much fun with a fitness challenge we did we some friends recently where everyone put in $100 and defined their goals, then only the people who met their goals split the pot. It made us realize there's really no better motivator than money. It's better on mobile screens right now as we just designed for mobile screens for now. And we did manage to put it up on both app stores - it's low in the ranks but you should be able to search it by "Goalie challenges". We built it using the leanest tech stack - Ruby on Rails, server-side HTML (no…
- ISI spent 2 years building an iOS app no one asked for2025 · basamasa.github.io · ▲7
i built a heart rate zone training app for runners. ios + apple watch. custom zones, real-time haptics, post-run graphs. all the “smart” stuff you’d expect. but i never talked to a single runner before building it. not even myself lol. started as a thesis → kept building → added features → added a paywall (€4/month!) → launched it → and yeah… no one cared. zero feedback. zero users. just code in the void. i recently made the whole thing free. not trying to “sell” anything now — just seeing if it’s actually useful, and listening this time. curious how others handle this. ever build…
- IRI replaced my premium workout app with vibecodeDec 2025 · strengthquest.lovable.app · ▲9
I was going through my app subscriptions and realized I was paying $15 for a pretty good workout app, which seemed a bit high to me. As a software engineer who is also well versed in claude code, I realized that I could likely vibecode a very similar app, or even build something more to my liking. I challenged my self to build something roughly equivalent this afternoon. Workflow was: start with a detailed spec from Claude code describing many of the features common in workout apps. Then paste this into lovable to have it build out the initial mvp. Once that was built, I used claude code…
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