Lightweight Fitness App
Science Based Training App
Hey IndieHackers 👋
I’ve been in fitness for 11+ years, growing a YouTube channel to 850k+ subs along the way. What I saw over and over again: most people struggle with confusing, overhyped, unscientific advice.
Content creators like us are even more confusing!
So I built Lightweight App, a simple app where you click on a muscle and instantly see the best science-based exercises.
📊 Today:
– 500,000+ registered users (%90 Turkish market)
– 13,000+ paying annual subscribers
– $0 spent on paid ads → all growth has been organic through content + community
🎯 Next step: scaling to the US market in 2026.
I’ll be sharing what worked (and what didn’t) as we grew to half a million users, bootstrapped. Would love to connect with other builders who are growing consumer apps without ads!
7 Comments
That’s pure content + community magic...
Thank you, brother.
Super inspiring 👏
What surprises me the most is that you reached 500k users with $0 spent on ads.
Was the biggest growth driver YouTube at the start, or did word-of-mouth take over once the user base got bigger?
I’m currently building a tool (Kaelis AI) and I’m trying to figure out if I should double down on organic content or focus more on targeted communities early on. Thanks a lot for sharing your insights 🙌
Thank you!
I have accidentally done the right thing, started a YouTube channel before everything. This allowed me to understand the needs of people and hone my skills as a fitness expert. People will tell you what to do after some point. It's getting easier.
Please don't think years of YouTube content are necessary. I've seen other creators spread up way quicker these days. But I can tell, becoming a trusted brand may take 2-3 years. However, fellow app developers can get downloads instantly if their product is cool. But our product is not so cool; it needs a lot of work.
Without money spent, we product owners need to find a way to present or even teach our products to people directly. Paid downloads are less likely to be buyers. Raving fans are generated through communities. YouTube allows us to get family-level closeness with our audience sometimes. They know when my child was born. They support and believe in us. Write down nice comments. And sometimes, some people hate on you with no reason, but all of these help.
Good luck with the Kaelis AI, I am on your waitlist :) IMO: focusing on your own YouTube channel would be better, since you are in control, and it is going to help get you in the targeted communities as well!
Any indie hacker reading this, please explain your product in its simplest form by uploading a long-form video to YouTube. No other platform is as good.
Wow, thank you so much 🙏 Really appreciate you joining the waitlist. I’m still early, but seeing support like this keeps me pushing harder!!!
Nice. I've been seeing a bunch of workout/training apps of late, so I'm curious what are your guys doing 'differently' to get such promising results?
Congrats on what yo've built so far!
Thanks! What makes us different is that we’re content creators first. As an app business, we’re honestly pretty weak — that’s why we don’t make much money yet 😅.
But as content creators, we’re strong: we do our own research, I’m the national powerlifting head coach in Turkey, and our team is #1 in the field here. Here’s some of the scientific background we rely on while we were creating exercise information: (can't post link, but basically we have a science team)
Because of this, we’re equipped to publish our own studies and spot future trends rather than just recycling what’s already out there.
On the business side, though, we’re still learning. No proper pricing/paywall strategy yet, and we’re constantly trying to improve UI/UX with outside help.
In short, we come from the fitness world, while many competitors come from the developer-business side. That’s our edge, but also our challenge.