Show HN: My new running app, Vima
itunes.apple.com
itunes.apple.com
It has a nice, kind of Yahoo-weather like feel to the app. For a commercial success, I think the app does not even embody 1% of the necessary work:
* Without some sort of web+mobile experience, you are way behind everyone else that is established in the space (runkeeper, runtastic, strava, mapmyrun).
* The competitors are well-funded and start-uppy - so, even as you perhaps start to add necessary features like route-making, elevation-correction, etc - they will still be innovating and making new stuff.
* You integrated with Pebble, but the other hardware in the space probably makes more sense (like heart rate watches), so that's more work. Or nutritional stuff like MyFitnessPal.
For the marketing, I'd say:
* The app ends up being a demo because of the restriction on number of runs, while the competitors offer something fully functional, including Vima's paid features, for free. Is this going to work?
* The name is probably bad - take it from the guy who likes greek mythology for names. If it's a running app, you might as well say so. Runtastic, Runkeeper, MapMyRun - there's a theme here.
* I don't see any way I can join the community, so Vima can email me later and follow up to see why I'm not using the app after I downloaded it.
I've thought about making a fitness app, and I have some infrastructure such that I can get to market with a more feature-complete product than Vima, in just a few weeks. It's a big brawl to walk into though.
>Without some sort of web+mobile experience, you are way behind everyone else that is established in the space (runkeeper, runtastic, strava, mapmyrun).
perhaps, but I'm not convinced the web features are that exciting or necessary for success. (Note that I make apps for a living, but I don't need 1 app to carry all of the weight. It would be nice to have a huge success that turns into something more, but it isn't required)
>The competitors are well-funded and start-uppy
Yeah that sucks. I agree.
>The app ends up being a demo because of the restriction on number of runs, while the competitors offer something fully functional, including Vima's paid features, for free. Is this going to work?
I have no idea honestly, but I've had success with this style of limitation in the past. I STRONGLY considered no limits, but I wanted to do it this way to start. I can remove the limits later and only make people happy. Can't start with no limits and go back easily.
Also, I hate banner ads. So ugly. So not useful. With no limit I'd really have to put ads in it. which may happen, but I'd love for this to work. It's an experiment.
>The name is probably bad - take it from the guy who likes greek mythology for names. If it's a running app, you might as well say so. Runtastic, Runkeeper, MapMyRun - there's a theme here.
Possibly, but you've also got Strava and Endomondo as counterpoints
>I don't consider this an "MVP" for a running app.
I think that's pretty harsh. We are obviously competing against mapmy and runkeeper etc, but that doesn't mean we have to make the same app. I believe that there is a market for a simpler version that does the basics (time, distance, maps, etc.) with an easier to use interface. We have some more advanced features planned, like interval training and more charts etc, but the idea we were going for was the simplicity. Now, the monetization strategy was an entirely new experiment that may or may not work. It's a lot cheaper than the competitors options, but as you pointed out doesn't do as much.
For me the web interface is essential and I think it is for a lot of other people. People like to share their life with everyone. When I go running, I post a live tracking to facebook (not necessary), and then when I finished running I post automatically the data to Facebook. I want everyone to know I just spend X calories and ran for X miles. I enjoy the fact that everyone can click on the link, and view the map of where I was running.
I'm sure this is not a requirement for everyone, but a web interface is for me.
The app has a post to facebook option, including screenshot of the map trace. I guess having the ability to scroll and zoom the map might be interesting, but it doesn't seem like it'd be a requirement.
I could very well be wrong on that though. Let me know if I'm missing something.
EDIT: Here is a screen grab of what the facebook post looks like for reference http://cl.ly/image/2O3d2Q1v2i1b
Posting an image of my course + time to web would be enough for me and prevent the need for building a web version when some novel functionality might be a better investment.
Would you prefer unlimited runs free with ads, or as is and just make it a 1 time paid app? Also, what would seem reasonable for that 1 time number, for you?
If you're curious, Vima is Greek for "Pace"
There are a lot of people who like Strava and RunKeeper and the others, but there are also a lot of people that don't want to login to run. They don't want to have their run data on a server somewhere. They just want a great app that lets them keep track of their exercise progress. We are hoping to carve out a niche for those people.
Hopefully keeping things as simple as possible while still providing as many of the other great features we can. Things like the voice updates while running are a good example. It's a great feature that a lot of people love, but it doesn't change the interface one bit.