Ask HN: I've spent $1M+ 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?