Brothers Nicolò and Sebastiano Ammendola, based in Italy, built their home fitness marketplace app, Kappa Trainup, using Bubble's no-code web app creator. Kappa TrainUp lets fitness instructors and personal trainers offer live and recorded private or group classes to people seeking an at-home workout. Kappa Trainup has gained over 1,800 trainers within weeks after launch, and garners an estimated 28,000 daily users.
Tell us about your app and what it does.
Kappa TrainUp is a marketplace for fitness activities and personal trainers. On one side there are people who want to train, and professional trainers on the other. Training sessions (one-to-one or for groups) can be live or recorded.
Our platform allows trainers to earn money from home, and sportsmen to start (or continue) their training journey from the comfort of their living room.
How does your app work?
Being a marketplace there are two sides to our app: one for personal trainers (our sellers) and one for sportsmen (our buyers). Trainers can create their account and schedule live sessions (one-to-one or group) and/or upload their recorded classes.
On the other side, we have sportsmen who can register, find a trainer or session and book their spot if it's a live or purchase access to a recorded session, just like purchasing a song on iTunes. Trainers can also set their rate for on-demand sessions and sportsmen can request a session for the time and date that best suit them.
Tell us a little about your background and how you discovered no-code tools like Bubble.
I come from a mixed business/coding background (I studied business and coded in my free time). After graduating from college I started out in consulting, then founded an online school for STEM subjects, then joined another startup in the edtech space, then founded Kappa TrainUp.
I've been following the no-code movement for a couple years. I discovered Bubble a year or so back and started working with it right away and literally fell in love.
Why did you build your app on Bubble?
Because, no matter the tools used, one of the key characteristics of a startup is the ability to easily and promptly make fast corrections to your direction without stopping.
In the previous years I found myself (and my companies) slowed down by technology. Building tech - that most of the time was buggy and comprehensible only to the one who wrote the piece of code - was lengthy and costly. I believe that while you make tech you should always aim at writing as little new code as possible. There's no point in re-writing any code that somewhere, someone has already written. I believe that to be true in general. Imagine having people writing the same story or the same book or the same song fifty or a hundred times. No one in his right mind would consider that a smart allocation of resources. Also considering the fact that usually those who write code are equipped with great problem solving skills that could easily be applied more productively elsewhere.
Bubble cuts by at least an order of magnitude development time and cost. Only those who have built stuff the “old school” ways can truly appreciate the impact of nocode/lowcode tech.
What have been your milestones or successes so far?
We have over 1,800 trainers registered so far (in less than 6 months) with no advertising or marketing effort. They are mostly based in Italy but some spread all over the world.
Our greatest accomplishment so far is being able to help hundreds of them to keep earning money and making a living even if locked down, with gym shut or worse going bankrupt.
When we first launched our service it was free for everyone in a collective effort to help out and do our part. We even hosted a charity campaign through which we raised thousands of euros for hospitals in our region (Piedmont) and Turin in particular. We could do it thanks to our sponsor Kappa sportswear that's been supporting us since our very launch.
What are your future plans for your app?
We are looking for funding and partnerships to scale up ops and go abroad.
We are 110% confident that if it worked like it worked in Italy, we could literally boom abroad.
Learn more about Kappa Trainup: Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn
About Bubble
Bubble is a leader in the no-code movement. Bubble offers a powerful point-and-click web editor and cloud hosting platform that allows users to build fully customizable web applications and workflows, ranging from simple prototypes to complex marketplaces, SaaS products, and more. Over 500,000 users are currently building and launching businesses on Bubble - many have gone on to participate in top accelerator programs, such as Y Combinator, and even raise $365M in venture funding. Bubble is more than just a product. We are a strong community of builders and entrepreneurs that are united by the belief that everyone should be able to create technology.
Do you want your app featured by Bubble? Reach out to us and tell us about your app. In addition to this series, we sometimes select our best apps to showcase on our website.
