NEUROFIT

How We Turned Personal Burnout Into A $70K/Month Wellness App

January 4th, 2025

Who are you and what business did you start?

I'm Andrew Hogue - my wife Loren and I are Co-CEOs of NEUROFIT. After experiencing Complex PTSD and burnout as a 3x tech founder, I combined my Caltech CS background with recent neuroscience literature to build a data-driven solution for stress management. The NEUROFIT App helps busy professionals prevent burnout through quick, science-backed exercises that reduce stress - by 54% in one week, for our average active user.

What makes us unique is our focus on measuring and regulating the nervous system without any wearables needed. Our users include high-performance professionals in tech, finance, and healthcare who need evidence-based solutions that fit into their busy schedules. To date, we've helped 60,000+ users across 100+ countries and trained 500+ health professionals in our methodology, and we currently bring in around $70K/month.

My image

How do you come up with the idea for NEUROFIT?

For Loren and I, the "aha" moment came from both my journey with Complex PTSD, and our mutual experiences with severe burnout - as co-founders, we set out to solve our own problem first, so we knew the problem was real.

Growing up in a highly neurodiverse home around autism, bipolar disorder, and anxiety, I naturally developed a strong interest in how technology could better support mental health at scale. But it was my own lived experience that showed me the gap in existing solutions - most of them focus on the mind, when burnout is a physiological issue - so the real solution lies in the nervous system.

Through my work at companies like Snapchat and Headspace, I saw how traditional wellness approaches often fell short because they didn't address the physiological aspects of stress. After I learned that 80% of our nervous system carries information from body to brain (not the other way around), and through Loren's years of work as an applied somatics coach, we realized we could use technology to help people measure and regulate their stress response directly.

We validated this approach by analyzing millions of stress-related datapoints and working with Loren's health professional community early on to refine our methodology. The data was clear: when people could measure their stress levels, know what was contributing to it, and access quick, targeted exercises and coaching to shut off their body's stress response when needed, they showed clear improvement in both subjective wellbeing, as well as physiological metrics like heart rate variability.

How did you build the initial version of NEUROFIT?

We started by building out a digital coaching app that would help you measure and balance your nervous system. Initial costs were bootstrapped out of pocket, with savings, credit cards, and a family+friends round - we were able to stay lean with development, as Loren and I designed the product ourselves, and I coded it end-to-end - mostly while we were living out of hotels:

My image

The first version of the NEUROFIT App took around 3 months to build. It took a lot of long hours, but flowed out pretty quickly once we got started.

My image

I built the first version using CapacitorJS for cross-platform compatibility, Golang for the backend, and some light ML and statistical analysis for personalization. The first version was somewhat rough around the edges:

My image

We knew we were onto something special when my HRV doubled after just 6 weeks on the app!

My image

Funny enough, the hardest part wasn't the technology - it was striking the right subjective balance between rigorous science and keeping the user experience simple and accessible enough, so that anybody could pick it up and "get it" imediately. We've found that stigma has created a high barrier to entry when it comes to burnout and mental health, so our vision with NEUROFIT is to take what historically has been convoluted and academic knowledge, and make it as simple, practical and accessible as possible.

Our initial business model was B2C subscription, but we quickly saw demand from health professionals wanting to use our tools with clients. This led to developing our professional training program and platform alongside the consumer app, and what naturally emerged was a B2B2C flywheel, where health professionals would sign up, they'd refer the app to their clients and community, and other coaches would find out about our health professional platform.

How did you launch NEUROFIT and get initial traction?

We soft-launched by pre-selling a live virtual workshop to Loren's health professional community. About 20-30 of them signed up, and we took them through some live body-based somatic exercises like Body Tapping that are designed to shift your nervous system state within minutes, and gave them a complimentary year of app access as a thank you, to try the product and give feedback.

The reception was much stronger than expected - some of them had actually dug around on the App Store beforehand and already tried out the app before the workshop :) They also ended up sharing really valuable feedback with us about the app's simplicity and accessibility - which we'd intuitively felt was needed in this space, but hadn't necessarily been validated.

This revealed a powerful network effect - as they began recommending the app to their clients organically. Our main early adopters were female therapists and coaches looking for tools to help their clients between sessions - and they ended up loving the app for their own well-being too, so we quickly leaned into this more.

What was the growth strategy for NEUROFIT and how did you scale?

Loren has created an excellent certification training program for our health professionals, so we're very fortunate that we've been able to sell it profitably just off cold Facebook/Instagram ads so far. That's allowed us to distribute the app through mainly health professional referrals so far, which has helped us build up a strong and authoritative brand, and also allowed us to scale the app to 60K+ users and multi-6-figure ARR without any significant paid app acquisition, and a natural B2B2C flywheel motion has developed from this.

We also have a newsletter that's built up to around 50K subscribers, which has helped with re-engagement as well as validation of potential new product features and offerings as we've refined our health professional platform and the app over the next year.

Another source of organic growth for us has been shareable educational content within the NEUROFIT App - we've found that people have a natural affinity towards sharing what they learn as they go through the process of balancing their own nervous system.

SEO and educational social content are the other channels we've found to work well. I've also built out an AI pipeline that helps draft new content and translate it into all 30+ of our app languages - allowing us to reach users in many international markets (we have paying app users in 80+ countries now - and Germany and Sweden have been natural early adopters for us early on). We've been digging into AI agents to further our distribution efforts in early 2025.

What were the biggest lessons learned from building NEUROFIT?

In some ways, we've been very fortunate product-wise given recent timing - for example, built up chronic stress from constant online stress, increased uncertainty, post-COVID, geopolitical tensions, etc - I think the buildup of the last few years has really opened people's minds around mental, emotional and physical well-being. Now more than ever, people want a product that just works - and that can prove it with hard data.

Some learnings that jump out after the last couple of years: - Personal experience teaches you things that book learning can't - so build something that solves a problem you've experienced deeply and personally. - When in doubt, simplify your product to increase clarity. Customers will both pay you for a single feature that they actually want or need, and not pay you for 15 features that they don't need. So, start by identifying that single valuable feature, and then build out from there.

One closing word of advice - take care of your body and nervous system! This means 10 minutes each of exercise, mindful stillness and social play every day, avoid unneeded online stress and socially draining interactions, and take quick somatic exercise breaks (Body Tapping is great for this) to reset whenever stress levels start getting high.

Sustainable success requires managing your own stress levels in the long-run first. Your ability to think clearly and make sound decisions directly affects your company's long-term trajectory - and amid the uncertainty of building a startup, your nervous system is one variable that's largely in your control.

Discover Similar Business Ideas Like NEUROFIT

	Idea	Revenue
Cal.AI	AI-powered app for effortless calorie tracking.	$667K monthly
AdviNow Medical		$200K monthly
SelfDecode		$200K monthly
Christian Hypno...	Scripture-based relaxation app for Christian mothers-to-be.	$10K monthly
Qolty		$100K monthly
Doctrina		$90K monthly
MoveWell		$1K monthly