I Built & Launched A Running App Just A Few Days [With Full Time Job]

Lasse Schuirmann

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Published: April 17th, 2022

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Lasse Schuirmann

Founder, SameRun

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SameRun

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from Hamburg, Germany

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I’m Lasse, I started SameRun because of a napkin idea we had a couple of weeks ago.

I founded a couple of startups before. Like the journey of many founders, mine started with a startup that never really made it to the market (the mandatory first failure startup). I then founded FounderBlocks, which by now has grown to be a startup factory producing about 2-5 software products per month. With that company, I (and we as a team!) got good at turning an idea into a full product very quickly. (I could never have done that before going through this journey of launching >50 products with this team).

With FounderBlocks in place, I started confounding several other startups in early 2020 via our Next Day Ventures initiative.

My mid-term goal is to essentially be able to create complete companies in very little time. With FounderBlocks we got the product development part covered, we also already have a lot of blueprints ranging from contracts over sales templates to employee review agendas and the collection is growing every day and being used by more of our startups weekly.

With all that under the belt, we recently had this napkin idea of SameRun and I was able to get an app out in very few days without working full time on it - read on if you want to know how that’s possible and if to date you’ve always thought that launching a startup would need half a year and 500k Eur budget.

The first version of the app had one button that could join a global shared ‘test’ channel

The first major update allowed people to set runs with date and time to a global list

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I’ve been personally running a lot this year - I’m currently training for a marathon time trial and running 5-6 times/week. However - I (like many others) hate running alone.

Due to the whole covid pandemic, we started running “via phone” regularly, where we’d call each other and do various types of runs together. That would range from intervals (where we’d go all out and only needed each other to go through it together) to really easy runs where we’d chat about anything that comes to mind.

Somewhen in July this year, we had the random thought of turning that into an app. That idea was sufficient to build the prototype over a couple of evenings after work, which we took for a test run later the same week.

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

We went through the most minimal development process we could think of and kept talking to as many people as we could about it.

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a really good quote for founders”

As mentioned above, the first trial run with the app was mere days after the idea spun up. Then, the app didn’t even have the concept of multiple runs, users, or anything - one would just open it and push a button and be in one global run for everyone. But if we hadn’t tested that early, we wouldn’t have noticed a couple of bugs and usability issues we could immediately fix.

About a week later we had our first MVP ready. Then, we had already talked with people from running clubs and running shoe stores about it and found the following assumptions to be true and key:

Trivial: People would be open to trying it out
Not so trivial: when pitched with the idea, people would be able to reflect the value of it
E.g. when prompted with “We build an app, that allows you to run together with friends wherever they are”, they would respond with “that’s great, it helps me to motivate myself to run more and makes running less boring”

After another week or so we had several people from running clubs plus various others using the app, some of them actively promoting it and pulling other people in to run with them. (Occasionally people would already use it for biking too!)

Now, we’re seeing that it’s really weird for people to make public runs where everyone can join. It’s a bit similar to how (I think) Facebook, in the beginning, determined that a user would need 4 friends to stay on facebook and use it. We believe it’s similar with SameRun: people will be much less likely to churn if they follow a bunch of other users (and get followed) who post runs so they build their little community.

Based on that feedback and those insights, I’ve sat down again and built a whole set of social media features (following, contact invites, feed) within I think the equivalent of about 4 working days.

The key here is that, where other startups spend like half a year to conceptualize, build and discuss, we just listen to our customers, build that (and not more), launch it and then go into listening mode again.

It’s a bit like test-driven development: you stop assuming people need things and give them just what they ask for without anticipating at all what they may need next or in addition.

Describe the process of launching the business.

There were no (significant) costs (The biggest was maybe the Apple account registration fee.) We just sat down, threw the idea on the table, and I built the first version. The first website was just a copy of another random website with changed texts.

Don’t keep your ideas secret. Secret ideas are bad ideas. Let people help you in turning them into good ideas.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

The key to attracting customers for SameRun is to make the onboarding smooth and straightforward. A user usually gets a profile link or direct link to a run from a friend. They can view it without having to log in and commit to the run by just confirming their phone number which makes an account.

This gradual onboarding leads more people than expected to create accounts because it is so simple.

On retaining and engaging them - we haven’t fully figured it out yet, but in this case, it’s a social thing. We can send them notifications for things other people do but also reminders to get active again if they get stale. The much better thing though is to tell them about things their friends and followers plan rather than just sending them empty marketing letters.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We have no idea how we’re going to make this profitable :) I tend to focus first on bringing value to people, we truly believe that if we help people, we will find some model to monetize it eventually.

Right now we have a running community that is growing weekly, fully organically without marketing effort. Since we built SameRun I’ve never needed to run alone anymore - so my personal goal is already achieved.

For now, we’re going to focus on building and growing our community, based on the traction we see there we’ll be collecting more feedback, and eventually, our customers will tell us what they need and it will become apparent to us how we can monetize it. Here, again, the customer feedback is at the center of everything, rather than us throwing out ideas that may be hit or miss.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

I have learned a lot throughout my past startups. One thing that got emphasized again for me was how speed can be the biggest advantage we as startups have. On most of the days where I worked on the project, I oftentimes pushed a-release-a-day.

Apart from that, I’ve also learned two new programming languages - I’ve not been doing any serious coding work for like 5 years and that was very refreshing.

I’ve also for the first time tried cutting a video:

Again here, I was surprised about what’s possible within just 3 hours of total work, with no video cutting experience, and no existing video material. A lot of things can be done with 80% quality by just setting yourselves a deadline like “in 3 hours”. Whatever result is thereafter that time is the definition of the quality you need as a startup.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

This app, like many other newer FounderBlocks apps, is written in Flutter. In this case, using Firebase as a backend.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Talk to Everyone!

Don’t keep your ideas secret. Secret ideas are bad ideas. Let people help you in turning them into good ideas.

Build only what you NEED, not what you WANT!

If you want to build an app for people to run together, think about the stupidest thing there could be: build an app that has one audio channel. Then, test it, listen to the feedback, and iterate.

If you’re a first-time founder (“firstie”), get someone with experience.

My first startup failed. The third startup is usually where things start to be more fun. Many people don’t get there because they get frustrated.

If you want to cut the line, you can get actual serial entrepreneurs to join you. That’s why we founded FounderBlocks and this experience is also the reason why we can launch an app in 2 weeks whereas most companies and startups take half a year or longer without even achieving much more.

You can talk to us or others, it doesn’t matter, just find someone who has 3 (or more) startups under their belt and let them be your pacers and accelerate you.

Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?

Not right now for SameRun, however, you might be interested in the VIPERdev article on StarterStory (VIPERdev has by now rebranded to FounderBlocks).

Where can we go to learn more?

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