Post a 'Should I build this?' video about the app before building it

Alejandro SanchezWell, it was a a roller coaster, and we we did lose a lot of money first, and then we we, you know, we tried a bunch of things. So, I was trying to validate a bunch of different ideas. The idea that blew up was this idea. And let me quickly show the video, actually.

VideoIf you could stop your doomscrolling addiction by doing 20 push-ups. There's this AI thing that can actually track how many push-ups you do. Now, if you pair that with a social media blocker, now your doomscroll doesn't start until you did like 20 push-ups. Just slap your phone against the wall, and once it detects 20 push-ups, you get 20 minutes of screen time. So, basically, no push-ups, no scrolling. Should I build this? Let me know in the comments. I post every day. See you tomorrow.

Alejandro SanchezAnd, yeah, pretty much this randomly blew up. And, you know, many people just wanted to see me build this. And And then, I I went on YC Co-Founder Match, and I met Mario. And he just happened to already build a screen time app. And we just started building this, and we just started building an MVP. And we made a launch video as well.

Joseph Choi… you know, they didn't really care as much about like viral TikTok. You guys are making 30k a month, that's amazing, like combined the product with the distribution. Can we go back to that one TikTok? Like why do you think that one TikTok went viral? Also the interesting thing about it is that doesn't even show a real product. It's just, you're just talking about a pain point and like the idea of what the app could be before you even built it.

Alejandro SanchezSo, you know, it actually didn't go viral on Instagram, but probably that was because I had a pretty new account, wasn't very warmed up. But uh TikTok generally, you don't need to warm up an account, you can immediately go viral. I think it's just, you know, the concept. The concept was very interesting, and these algorithms are very sensitive to novelty. And I think this this concept is more or less like a novel idea. There were apps before this, like uh Clears pace that did something similar. Uh, but in Europe, especially, this this concept wasn't very widespread. And also doomscrolling, this whole doomscrolling epidemic is on the rise, right? And many people want to quit doomscrolling. And so this sort of sells this dream of, "Oh, you can quit doomscrolling, and at the same time, you can become fit. You can replace your …

Mario Ortiz ManeroYeah, and and at the end of the day, as well, like doomscrolling is is an issue that we've had a lot. Like in in in social media, in order to succeed, I'm convinced now that you have to like really get into them that person's mindset of like, "Who do you want to sell the app to?" right? Like, you have to be hyper-specific. You have to know the problem, you have to know everything about it. And we just happened to know like to to be in this state, …

Joseph ChoiWhere did this Where did this original video come from?

Alejandro SanchezJust YouTube. I I just googled AI push-up counter, and you know, that's it. I mean, and people can already like see the app in front of them.

Joseph ChoiInteresting.

Joseph ChoiJust randomly riffing, do you do you feel like this has potential to to kind of funnel into different types of apps? I wonder if you could use the same marketing principle of having this eye-catching kind of like diagram thing, and then, like do you think that this could apply to other niches?

Alejandro Sanchez100%. I would always suggest, before you even build a product, you pretend you already built it, or you find something that is very similar to it, and then you just basically you know make a video about it, or like you make several videos about it. And if you can get one video to go viral, then you you build an MVP, and you start building the app. But before you build anything, you should always validate the idea, and the best way you can do this by pretending you already have a product.

Mario Ortiz ManeroYeah, and the the skeleton specifically, it's what worked for us to make it appealing. But yeah, like, I'm not sure like what other applications it could be. Like maybe for for posture tracking, I could imagine it working, or like something like looksmaxxing, but like it just happened to work for us, like this this skeleton.