I built a task app for women with ADHD where the to-do list changes based on your period. Here's what I learned.
I have a close friend who has ADHD. She'd spend Sunday nights building the perfect task list — color coded, time blocked, the works. By Tuesday it was abandoned. Not because she was lazy. Because on day 2 of her period, doing 8 tasks felt physically impossible, and the app had no idea.
That was the thing that broke me. Every productivity app assumes you have the same energy every day. You don't. Especially if you're a woman with ADHD.
So I built Lunar.
What it does:
You check in each morning: your cycle phase and energy level. That's it. The app then filters your task list to only show what you can actually handle right now. On your period, low energy?
It shows you 1-2 light tasks. Ovulation, feeling sharp? It surfaces the deep work.
There's a button called "Do This Now" — one tap and you get your most appropriate task for that exact moment. No decisions, no guilt spiral.
Where I am:
- Shipped 6 weeks ago, soft launch only
- ~40 users, no paid marketing yet
- Freemium — free tier + Pro at $10/mo
- Just launched https://trylunar.in
What's working:
The women who get it, really get it. I've had messages saying "this is the first app that doesn't make me feel broken." That's the whole point.
What's hard:
Explaining it to anyone who doesn't live this experience. "A task app that knows your period" sounds weird until it doesn't.
Also , I feel the ADHD + femtech overlap is a tiny niche. Finding those users without paid ads has been the real challenge.
What I'm figuring out:
Whether to go deep on ADHD (compete with Tiimo, Focusmate) or deep on cycle tracking (compete with Clue, Natural Cycles). Right now it sits between both which is either a moat or a problem.
Would love honest feedback from anyone who's built in health/wellness or ADHD space: what channels actually worked for you to find your first 100 users?
Website: https://trylunar.in
App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lunar-adhd-cycles-focus/id6773340318
How has your friend been using your app, and how has that improved her life? The impact that you make on your early customers is going to be the biggest validator for your product.
Credit where due, I actually read your privacy policy and you got the basics right: no ad SDKs in your third-party list, encryption at rest, an explicit "we never sell or share health data.
That already puts you ahead of most femtech.
The non-obvious gap is that a general "we don't sell" policy does not satisfy the newer health-data laws.
Washington's My Health My Data Act treats menstrual data as consumer health data and requires a separate health-data privacy policy plus explicit opt-in consent before collection, and it has a private right of action so users can sue directly.
There is no revenue threshold, which is what catches small apps.
The FTC's Health Breach Notification Rule (updated in 2024 to cover cycle apps) adds breach-notice duties, and if you list in the EU or UK, cycle data is special-category under GDPR and needs its own consent basis your policy does not mention yet.
One small thing to check: push goes through OneSignal, so if any notification text names the cycle phase, that health-inferable content is leaving the app through a third party.
None of this is a stop sign. The point is the privacy work you started is also your strongest acquisition angle in femtech.
"Here is our separate health-data policy, here is exactly what we store and what we never do" is the trust signal these users actually choose on.
TBH, This is the most useful comment I've gotten since launching, genuinely didn't know about Washington's My Health My Data Act or the FTC's 2024 update covering cycle apps specifically.
The OneSignal point about phase-inferable content in notification text is something I'll definitely take a look at priority
Working on a separate health data policy. Happy to share it with you once its done, if you're comfortable.
Glad it was useful, and yes I would genuinely like to see the policy when it is ready.
One thing that might help while you draft it: under Washington's My Health My Data Act, "consumer health data" is defined broadly enough that inferences count, so a cycle phase derived from usage patterns can be regulated data even if the user never typed a health fact. The FTC's period and fertility app cases (Flo, Premom) were also less about a breach and more about data quietly flowing to third parties (analytics, ad SDKs, push providers) without clear consent. So the highest leverage step is usually mapping every place data leaves the app before you write the policy, because that map is what the policy has to honestly describe.
Keep me posted, this is a space I follow closely.
The positioning question is actually your biggest lever for finding users right now. "ADHD task app" puts you in a crowded space. "Cycle-aware productivity" puts you in an empty one. That empty space is your advantage for acquisition, not a limitation.
For your first 100 in a niche like this:
Reddit communities (r/adhdwomen, r/TwoXADHD) are where these users already talk about the exact frustration you are solving. Do not pitch. Write a genuine post about the insight, something like "I realized my ADHD productivity crashes mapped almost exactly to my cycle phases." People will find you.
Therapists and ADHD coaches are your distribution channel, not social media. One therapist who recommends your app to clients is worth 50 tweets. Find 5-10 who specialize in women's ADHD and ask them to test it with one client. If it works, they will tell their network.
On the moat-or-problem question: go deep on ADHD first. The cycle awareness makes you different within ADHD tools. But ADHD is the problem people search for. Nobody searches "cycle-aware task app." They search "ADHD task app that actually works." The cycle feature is why they stay, not why they find you.
The ADHD-first framing makes sense, that's the search intent, the cycle feature is the retention hook. I think I've been leading with the wrong thing in how I describe it.
The therapist/coach angle is something I hadn't seriously considered as a distribution channel.
Did you use something similar when you were finding your first users? I'm very curios to what that outreach actuallylooked like in practice
"The first app that doesn't make me feel broken" gave me chills, that's the kind of feedback most products never get. The energy-based filtering feels obvious in hindsight, which usually means it's a good idea.
That genuinely means a lot.
It's the line I keep coming back to myself when I question whether this is worth building. Glad it felt relatable.
I'd be careful treating this as a channel question too quickly.
The interesting question may not be where the first 100 users come from.
It may be what conclusion deserves confidence before deciding whether Lunar is primarily an ADHD product, a cycle-aware product, or something else entirely.
Those sound similar, but they can lead to very different interpretations of the same user feedback.
I wouldn't make that call casually from the current signals.
You're right, and I appreciate the reframe.
I think I jumped to "how do I find users" because that feels actionable. But the honest answer is I don't have enough signal yet to know what Lunar primarily is.
What I do believe is that the women who resonate most mention the cycle-aware filtering first, not the ADHD framing. But I don't know if that's because the cycle angle is genuinely the core value, or just because it's the most novel thing to describe.
The ADHD framing is what made me build it. The cycle framing is what makes people share it. Whether those are the same product or two different ones, at this point, I don't really know
What would you look for in early signals to make that call with more confidence?
Possibly, but I'd be careful answering that directly.
The reason I stopped short earlier is that I don't think the useful part is the signal itself.
I think it's the decision sitting underneath the signal.
That's one of those things that can look validated long before it's actually understood.
I wouldn't try to unpack that properly in a thread.
If you're curious, drop your email and I'll put together the tighter version.
The quote "this is the first app that doesn't make me feel broken" is your entire marketing pitch — lead with that everywhere. On finding your first 100 users without paid ads: r/ADHD on Reddit is genuinely receptive to founders who show up with the story you told here (not a pitch, just "I built this for someone I care about and here's what I learned"). The ADHD + cycle tracking overlap isn't a niche problem — it's actually your moat, because neither Tiimo nor Clue can copy you without a complete pivot. I'd also try short-form video showing the actual morning check-in; "why my to-do list finally works on my hardest days" is the kind of content that finds exactly your user without a marketing budget.
The 'broken' line wasn't planned.
She actually said it to me unprompted and I had to stop and write it down. That's the line I use now when I explain what Lunar is trying to do.
The r/ADHD suggestion is on my list . I've been hesitant because it can go wrong fast if it reads as a pitch. But the way you framed it, leading with the story not the product, feels right. Going to try that this week.
The moat point is something I keep coming back to. You're right that neither Tiimo nor Clue can copy this without a full pivot. I think I underestimate that because I'm too close to it.
Many thanks for responding regardless, means a ton