Maxout

When we started Maxout in 2020 it was mostly a fun project. It was a small idea to replace pen and paper and we had tons of time caused by Covid—19. But we also set ourselves targets and these targets, I believe, were the reason that made me close down Maxout in 2021 again, just a little more than a year after I started.

The targets of achieving certain numbers in one years time made me ignore facts, made make stupid mistakes and in the end made me turn the initial idea into something that I wasn't enjoying myself working on anymore.

And Maxout had to be closed down.

But the love for the initial idea didn't vanish. I kept on using the app and the more I used it, the more ideas I started developing again that could be of use for it. And it made me realize something. Maxout is and always has been an app that mainly solved a problem for me. And these problems still exist.

I am looking for something that assists me with tools and knowledge to organize and maintain a healthy lifestyle while not giving up on the fun in life. I need an app that helps me with staying consistent and make steady progress and, at the same time, reduces the effort to eat and train healthy.

I can achieve this with a mix of many different apps but there is none on the market that combines all of it and at the same time is simple enough to use without unnecessary gimmicks.

So from today, I am going to pick up working on Maxout again.

This time, it is just going to be me. At a much slower pace. And the only target group for the initial version of the app is going to be just me.

Let start the work on Maxout 2.0

We finally invited the first batch of users. Having 50+ people on the waiting list was awesome but we also had a good amount of people on the list that were a perfect fit for the current focus of the app.

So there we go, people are invited. Now let's see how many convert to users and active users.

Next goal ➡️ 100 subscribers!

One of the first steps to release the project to the public was us creating a waiting list for everyone interested. We launched the most minimal homepage with a button to join.

This would lead to a form asking the visitor to fill in their email address and why they want to use the app. The latter question is our initial indicator who is the best fit for the app (and also what people are looking for the most).

We soft-launched the site in December but we didn't promote it actively yet.

Today we still reached 50 subscribers which is a lot more than I expected at this point.

➡️ Next goal: Get 100 subscribers and get 10 users invited!

So far, I have been the only user of this app. I've been planning my workouts and I've been implementing features that I felt like I need for this app. And I'm happy with it.

So I would share my workouts on Instagram stories or Twitter. And people would start asking what I'm using here. And the idea grows that there might be others that also want to use this app.

So I start to write a 3000 words document of a launch plan with all the things that I would have to do before I can finally launch.

Up until now the data of the app was all stored on the local storage of a device. But this starts getting annoying, whenever I switch devices, I can't use my app anymore because the data isn't there.

I need to build a back-end.

Lucky me, my brother has been talking about learning more about Python so I convince him to join me. He kicks off a Python Flask project to build the back-end for this project.

For the first two weeks, I work in the simplest way possible: I add all my workouts in a JSON file of my personal website and render all the workouts in a list. And when you click on a workout, you see the details.

This concept seems to work but adding the workouts manually becomes really annoying. I decided to create an independent app so that I can add my workouts from my phone.

It's a pandemic going on and I'm put on furlough for the entire month of April. My manager suggests that I should explore new things that could benefit my developer career in the long-term.

Another thing that is happening during that time: The #Burpril challenge, 100 burpees every day. So every day, I'm planning my workout in a way that it incorporates 100 burpees.

That's when I get the idea for Maxout. An app that I can use to plan and schedule my workouts. It's a project that I want to use for myself only, for now.