u/Coldhbz

I’ve been building a mobile app where users earn coins from their daily steps and compete on weekly leaderboards.

Main idea is making fitness feel more like a game instead of just another boring step tracker.

Current features:

Step tracking
Coins for walking
Weekly rankings
Gold / Silver / Bronze rewards
Premium subscription features
Social competition system

Tech stack:

Replit
React Native / Expo
RevenueCat
Clerk auth

I’m currently working through the play store publishing process and improving retention/game mechanics.

A few things I’d genuinely love feedback on:

What would make you open an app like this every day?

What features would instantly make you uninstall it?

Trying to build this properly instead of rushing another generic fitness app.

Three months ago, I thought I had the perfect SaaS idea.

AI business assistant.
Automated replies.
Lead capture.
Smart workflows.

I was convinced people would throw money at it.

So I did what most indie founders do:

Bought a domain
Designed a nice landing page
Added fancy animations
Built features nobody asked for
Kept saying “one more feature then I launch”

After weeks of work…

I finally showed it to people.

Most responses were:

“Looks cool.”

That sentence destroyed me more than criticism.

Because “looks cool” usually means:

they won’t pay
they don’t need it
they don’t understand the value

Then I realized something painful:

I spent more time building than talking to potential users.

So I changed everything.

Instead of coding:

I started DMing businesses
Asked what annoyed them daily
Looked for repetitive tasks
Tried selling BEFORE building

The crazy part?

The simpler ideas got more interest than the complex AI features.

One café owner literally told me:

“I just want customers to stop asking the same questions on WhatsApp.”

That single sentence gave me more clarity than 3 months of coding.

Still building. Still learning.

But now I understand:

A SaaS doesn’t win because it’s advanced.
It wins because it solves an annoying problem.

Anyone else learn this lesson the hard way?