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The bigger change was the difference per state, nearly double. (I paid it 100% out of pocket after I left my employer)

My apologies, let me clarify. We guarantee that we will provide value by offering a money-back guarantee in the first 7 days. If you don't find value, you don't need to pay.

Many gyms work really hard to lock you into long-term contracts, where you need to provide adequate reason to unsubscribe. With Charge, you're not locked into something long-term, and it's much easier for you to leave. From a business perspective, this requires us to continue to provide value for our customers, which is exactly what we're trying to do.

Don't take me at my word though, I'd love to hear your feedback. Would you be willing to try it out and let me know if you found value in the coaching?

Great question. We built the app in Native Swift, with UIKit, since when we started SwiftUI was not yet available.

Since the release of iOS 13, we've built all of our new screens in SwiftUI, so we're now more than 50% on the new framework.

The Android application is in Kotlin

Pre-ordered one on Kickstarter. Still have no idea what I'm going to do with it, but the tagline got me. Hope it's awesome!

From a company perspective, that's our main goal. If we don't give you value, you don't say subscribed. If we do give value, we have runners that stay with us for years.

While class sizes may differ, right now they're definitely smaller, allowing for a lot of time per coach. That will change with time, but it's our mission to provide as much value as humanly possible to our users.

Great points. Ideally, we want to target all three phases.

When training for a race, we want to offer classes that fit well into your training schedule. When you're not training and just going out for a fun run, we want to offer the most engaging experience out there.

We're still early, but that's our thought process

Great feedback. I completely understand that the price point may not be for everybody. We've done our best to keep the pricing competitive while still being able to pay our coaches fair wages. We've also tried to look at it from both our costs, and value added.

We do offer 20 different classes each and every day. Users who purchase an annual subscription can get an entire year of content, thousands of runs for less than a pair of competition running shoes.

Even for a runner that only uses our application once a week, they pay under $5 a class for a live certified coach, curated playlists (that cost a decent amount for copyright), live streaming data and other costs.

At scale these things may become more economical, and we may be able to offer a lower price.

We do offer an On-Demand option if you'd like to see what it's like on your own!

If you're someone who prefers running by themselves, this may be the best of both worlds. You can see what a live run would be like, without needing to think about the live aspect.

I agree, purchasing it was not the hard part. It was the cost changing by state, specifically for Illinois.

I was previously employed by a company in the state of Michigan, and to match the same coverage was not even possible on healthcare.gov. The closest thing was nearly double the price, and when you're going through your first pregnancy, you take a ton of other factors into account.

In hindsight we probably didn't need the advance plan that we had, but it was (and still is) a major portion of our expenses.

We do require an injury waiver for all users to agree to before accepting to hearing coaching advice

To be totally honest, health insurance has been awful as a contractor, and as a start-up entrepreneur. I was working for this large company for over a year, but because I was labeled as a contractor, health insurance was not provided. I have a healthy family, yet we have to pay a ton of money because we're not on a corporate plan.

The solution to the problem was saving up money. I built up 6 months of runway where I knew my family could go without income. We made it last 7 months, and then I found another job to pay the bills while I continued working on start-up.

After literally years of trying to do both, Charge is finally at the stage where it can pay the bills and be my sole focus, but there was way more blood sweat and tears that went into it than I would have ever dreamed.

This is exactly it. I love Strava, however, if I want to feel like i'm connected with people. I'm definitely not a marathoner, and I'm someone who needs the motivation to put on my shoes in the morning.

Knowing that a coach is going to guide me, and that they see I'm signed up is great, but knowing that there's other people running at the same time make it even better.

Thank you very much for the kind words!

Regarding Android, you hit the nail on the head. Nearly all of our customers were coming from word of mouth. Runners wanted to have their whole club do a run together, and not having an Android app made it impossible.

In addition, we've had requests for in-person races to offer a virtual option through Charge. This allows us to grow our user base with a unique go-to market strategy, and wouldn't be possible if we couldn't serve 50% of runners

Thank you for the kind words. Two notes for the live classes:

1. For me personally, having the runs scheduled has been one of the biggest reasons for me being successful on the platform. I plan all of my runs on Sunday nights, and they're on my calendar so I don't miss them. 2. If you can only run at another time, we do record many of the classes, and allow you to listen to them anytime you would like. You still get access to the leaderboard because we keep track on how far users have gone at different points in the run.

Thank you for the kind words. As of right now, we don't have an option to meet-up through the app, but we do have many users that are organizing their own meet-up groups via our Facebook Run Club.

As a developer, I would love to have this! However, after talking to our users, the biggest thing that we consistently hear is that they love the community, and the coaches.

For example they can talk with Coach Amy on social media, chat with Coach Rory on Clubhouse, and see Coach Justin making a funny TikTok. The relatable coaches may not be the reason that runners are coming to the app, but they're definitely a major reason into why they stay.

Great points. We do use the accelerometer and pedometer data in the phone to give the coaches many key parts of data such as cadence, average pace, stride length, and more.

Regarding form, one of the best ways that we've found to fix it is by doing routine "form checks". During this part of a run, a coach will walk you through your posture, and make suggestions. An example would be something like this:

"Let's take a minute and look at our feet. Where is your foot hitting the ground? If it's on your heel, focus on leading on the center of your foot." They would then proceed to do the same with your arms, shoulders, back, and more.

While we can't get exact data here, we can provide runners with a way of actively thinking about these form issues.

We're streaming the audio through a server that tracks which song is played, and records each one. We actually use the same technology that powered internet radios back it the Winamp days.

On the software side, we use Djay pro, which can forward the song id along to the server for recording the data.

Great point, thank you. We have one that we're working on now!

Each running coach is choosing the music, and adjusting things like tempo based on what the specific workout is.

Regarding copyright, we keep track of each song played, and the number of people that listen. We then send this to the large music groups each quarter, and pay royalties.

We actually have several run clubs that run with Charge Running. You can share which class your joining with your Run Club and see everyone on that same leaderboard and chat room.

Regarding pricing, that's definitely a fair point, and something I think we could easily change. Thank you for the feedback

Wow, thank you so much for the kind words. I'd love to chat more! Feel free to email me at matthew (at) chargerunning dot com

Great point, thank you!

Because this is a live experience with a coach in your ear, there is a cost involved

I've had the pleasure of seeing Apollo work in person a few times, and the words in this article don't even properly describe it.

If you haven't seen it already, check out his TED talk, where he does the exact routine mentioned in this article: https://www.ted.com/talks/apollo_robbins_the_art_of_misdirec...

Also, check out the movie Focus (with Will Smith and Margot Robbie). Apollo was a big part of that movie, and makes a cameo, as well as designed all of the steals in the film.

I'm Matthew, the CEO of Charge Running. We've been building our app for over a year now, and today, we launched the culmination of all of these efforts. We believe that we have the best way for you to run your first 5K, by providing motivation and excitement through live group fitness classes from your phone.

HN Viewers, get an extra month free: Use Contact Support and send the code "HN-5K" to get two months free to use our platform, no CC required! After that, continue on for only $9.99 a month.

"Cellebrite, a Petah Tikva, Israel-based vendor that's become the U.S. government's company of choice when it comes to unlocking mobile devices, is this month telling customers its engineers currently have the ability to get around the security of devices running iOS 11."

The USA is using tax dollars from Americans to pay someone in another country to unlock American's phones.