Build a portfolio of niche health apps by solving your own problems

Executive overview

Presh built three health and wellness apps in under a year, growing from zero to $120K ARR with over 1,500 paying subscribers. His approach is deliberately narrow: every app targets the same audience of health-conscious wearable users, which lets him cross-sell new products to an existing customer base instead of rebuilding distribution from scratch. He validates ideas by identifying personal pain points, ships an MVP quickly using AI-assisted tools, and treats each successive app as a practice rep that makes the next one better. Margins run near 80–85% because tooling costs only ~$300 per month and Apple takes a 15% cut below $1M revenue.

The repeatable edge is building for a single audience across many products: you only have to earn trust once, then distribution compounds with every new launch.

The three apps and what they do

• GoPolar tracks cold plunge and sauna sessions via Apple Watch or iPhone, surfacing heart rate trends and water temperature data per session.
• Sunseq monitors morning sunlight exposure and vitamin D accumulation, including a live lux meter pointed at the sky.
• Posture AI scans the user with their phone camera and flags posture problems (head tilt, shoulder imbalance) with corrective guidance.
• Tempo, launching next, aggregates all wearable and lab data into a health-span score and adds an AI companion focused on a single user-defined goal.
• All four apps share the same core audience, so existing users are warm prospects for every new product.

Key business metrics

• $10,400 monthly recurring revenue across three apps, all subscription-based.
• 20,000+ total downloads, mostly organic via App Store search.
• Free-to-paid conversion of 8%, higher than average for paid apps because the niches are specific.
• Day-30 free-to-paid retention at 61%.
• Tool costs ~$300/month; margins roughly 80–85% after Apple's cut.

How Presh finds ideas

• Every app started as a personal frustration: no good cold-plunge tracker existed, so he built one.
• Passion for the problem matters because app development is hard — genuine interest drives the extra polish that compounds into better reviews and downloads.
• Working for seven years at a startup accelerator gave him front-row exposure to thousands of founders, which built confidence that he could do the same.
• Staying inside one domain (health and wellness) means accumulated knowledge about users, channels, and competitors carries over to every new product.

The five-step launch playbook

• Step 1: identify a genuine passion or deep personal interest — for Presh this has always been health and wellness.
• Step 2: surface a specific problem you encounter naturally within that interest; it will come organically if you pay attention.
• Step 3: build an MVP fast using tools like Lovable, Replit, or Bolt — avoid overthinking the solution before you have real feedback.
• Step 4: plan distribution on day zero; find a creator in your niche or become one by talking about why you built the product.
• Step 5: put in the reps — first products rarely break out, but each iteration compounds skill and the third or fourth version is usually the winner.

Tech stack and tooling

• Design: Figma.
• Mobile development: Claude Code and Xcode.
• Backend and database: Supabase.
• Subscriptions and paywalls: RevenueCat.
• Analytics: PostHog; crash monitoring: Sentry.
• Project management: Linear.
• Landing pages: Framer; MVP prototyping: Lovable.
• Video editing: CapCut; general AI thinking: ChatGPT.
• Customer support handled via iMessage to keep overhead low.

Why a portfolio beats a single app

• Building multiple niche apps for one audience means each new launch markets to people who already trust the brand.
• Each app is a practice repetition: Sunseq shipped with noticeably better execution than GoPolar because of lessons learned.
• Revenue is diversified — no single app is a single point of failure for the business.
• A product studio mindset removes pressure from any one app and reframes early launches as learning investments rather than bets.