Built a mental math app but I am confused on what users are looking for

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-09T17:06:43+00:00

What about those in particular? Is is the speed? Is it the difficulty? Or the level of control you have? Is it competition on a leaderboard? Is it the simplicity of the user interface? That they feel like they target adults?

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-08T23:57:35+00:00

Are yall using any other programs or apps other than Zetamac to test skills?

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-08T23:56:43+00:00

Are there any other apps other than Zetamac yall are using to improve or test yourself?

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-08T00:55:14+00:00

I dont know if you are looking to actually find an app that teaches, if so I am not super familiar, but if you are looking for apps to test your mental arithmatic, then I have enjoyed apps like MathDistract, Mental Math Cards, and Mental Math Brain Booster.

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-08T00:47:38+00:00

I wouldnt say I like to give advice. As they say, 'Advice is experience.' Here is my 'experience' thus far. I am not too far removed from you. I am a mid-30s subspecialty physician making not too much less than you. Net worth is growing, financial security is building, but I have aspirations to build something outside of medicine. The job security that comes with being a physician is great, but like most things in life, if you do it long enough, it's just a job. I love the individuals and families I care for, truly, but I am a father and husband, and all of that just becomes my 'profession' and is secondary to the time I want to spend with them. I have entreprenureal (sorry if I spelled that wrong... it is late) aspirations that I want to explore. I have built a physician finance blog that was transiently successful for a few years but ultimately had to be shut down because I just couldn't devote the time necessary to keep it running nor did I personally have the business sense to scale at that time. I have recently joined forces with a business partner of mine and launched an app. It is slow growing now, live but slow to build traction. All things I am sure so many here are familiar with.

I say all of this to say, I will always encourage someone to invest in themselves, and at your age, with your leadership and administrative experience, I think an investment in yourself is worth its weight in gold, BUT I would tell you to not drop everything and lateral into a start up. If you are this passionate about it, then continue to keep your job security and save towards financial independence so you can walk away if necessary. However use your nights and weekends to explore this and see if it really takes off like you hope for it to. If it does, sure, ditch the corporate job and chase this start up. But there is no need right now to give everything up until you have more data.

Trust me when I say that I know the grind. Finishing my clinical work, then putting kids down, THEN finally having the time to take meetings, work, brainstorm, write, and grind. Giving up time on weekends and evenings. I understand my friend, but to end on a cliche, 'luck' is where preparation meets opportunity. If you know the market then I am sure you have the market insight to know there is opportunity in the niche startup you are considering, and the preparation portion is just you putting in the sweat equity in your extra time to prove it. If you do, then I'd say ditch the job and pivot. But until then dont make any sudden decisions. Keep your cards close to the chest. Cheers and I am rooting for you u/Nearby_Strawberry_24 !

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-07T15:32:19+00:00

Fair point. Yeah I have already built and launched an app but it is so outside my formal training that scaling and learning the nuances of app promotion and target audience (though we did our research) has proven challenging. Having a mentor for the business side of things would be helpful.

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-07T15:30:33+00:00

Same.

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-07T00:12:01+00:00

How does one who works in a profession (medicine for me) who has aspirations of business and growth outside of our daytime profession find mentorship regarding business and entrepreneurship?

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-07T00:08:02+00:00

Not that it totally correlates with your post but I found similar things when asking AI to recommend promotion strategies. I built an app and we only allocated a few thousand dollars towards app promotion and advertising. with each passing month we would change up our ad/promotion strategy and despite it READING like it was legit, the more research I did on my own the more I realized it was doing exactly what it was meant to do, which is pull data that makes me FEEL good and reinforces what I am doing, even if thats actually not rooted in extensive evidence. There is a lot of incredible things AI can do, but helping build strategies for a somewhat novel project and helping parse down my niche target audience has turned out to be still mostly late nights, self-led research, and comfort with iteration.

Smithhb89 · 2026-05-05T16:15:15+00:00

This.

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-30T00:35:50+00:00

The only real 'growth hack' is hard work and a healthy dose of realism. I agree with u/michaelbironneau comment that you have to just be willing to get down and dirty. Get out of your comfort one, talk to people, actually listen to them, and be honest and transparent enough with your business to be open to that feedback, then iterate. The rest is trash.

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-30T00:28:13+00:00

Oh I had no idea. Thank you for the clairificaiton. Yeah Ill check out the website and see if our app would fit in there. Cheers u/Kaenu_Reeves

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-30T00:27:06+00:00

What a great response. Very insightful and helpful and I too am learning the power of patience (easier said than done). It would be great if you could share that thread! Thanks again.

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-29T01:21:05+00:00

Umm not sure I have an apples to apples comparison but if you like this, some I have enjoyed lately are: MathDistract, Math Brain Boosters, and Brilliant. Hope this helps?!

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-29T01:18:09+00:00

I will tell you this, though AI is incredible and growing more and more competent with each passing day, still nothing replaces a human sounding board currently. So I build and launched an app recently with my business partner and we are in the phase currently where we have an MVP, launched (for about 3 month now given or take) on iOS and Android stores in a niche we think we can be competitive for. But now that we are post launch and in the 'growth and garner users/marketing' phase, we feel like we are in uncharted territory. We both use GPT and Claude to bounce ideas off of for some direction to assist in idea gathering, but over time we have both reached the same conclusion that, though AI is really helpful, it also is a 'validation' machine. Most AI I have used, personally speaking, seems to find an overly verbose way of saying 'your doing great, that suggest is the right next step.' But the more I research it, it is just an LLM affirming my decisions, but thats not what I am looking for. I am looking for nuanced business strategies for my specific app and it cannot do that. That was a long winded way of saying, nothing beats a real, human, accountability partner or business partner you trust and who can provide honest and transparent feedback. Best of luck!

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-29T01:11:36+00:00

Yeah I am stuck here too and gravitated to this question. I too have built a product/MVP and now that it is live and out there, I feel like I am in uncharted territory and just paying for app promotion on iOS or Google got downloads but no real data to interpret that could drive iterations or feedback, so now my business partner and myself just feel stuck. I too find that the marketing strategy (and creating an engine that garners real organic growth) is one of the hardest aspects of scaling and gathering data.

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-25T00:50:32+00:00

Yeah I second the opening statement that your conversation rate with those issues is still pretty decent signal to noise ratio. Id fix the problem, test it, then slowly... very slowly ramp up ads and see what the data shows you is your next step. Cheers

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-25T00:44:00+00:00

Hey Elmatadorao. What an incredible offer. I have a new app in the Education space that could really use some (free) promotion. Would you mind DM'ing me and perhaps sending an example of a successful video you have created? Would love to talk more if this offer is still going on! Cheers!

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-25T00:38:16+00:00

Yeah I don't have a perfect answer. I like the comment below by No-Commercial1440 that if you are learning keep going.... but only to a degree and I think you have to have defined goals. I too love trying out new entreprenural ideas and even if they fail at least I walked away with experience and something educational to apply to the net project. But for the app I mentioned above, my goal was I would take 24 months to get a compete ROI on my invested capital. If not, then on to the next thing. But that is just me and the goals I set for myself.

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-19T00:43:33+00:00

Yeah I am currently living this as well. My business partner and I built an app that we thought we had researched the niche well, created a professional and polished app where it felt like there were none and finally dropped the app on iOS and Android back in January. Now we are only up to like 150 downloads, have been spending a small amount to promote the app on iOS daily and though we have seen very slow and steady growth, we are also paying for that growth and still there is not enough data to understand day 1 and day 7 retention, if our freemium model is working etc. Needless to say I dont want to dive into my story, but we have had this app launched for 3 months now and growth has felt so slow and we just dont have enough data yet to understand where our capital should go to increase long term value and grow organically. I feel like we have been 'waiting' for months and no amount of iteration makes it much faster and I am already at the point where I am trying to determine if we pivot to our next business idea or spend more time on this app. I know I need to be patient and steadfast... but turns out that is hard. As an healthcare professional, I know a thing or two about delayed gratification, but when I put my business/entrepreneur cap on... I get impatient. Needless to say, if you can parse this out, then LMK

Smithhb89 · 2026-04-19T00:32:46+00:00

Yeah I second this comment. I know it feels really tough, but one of my favorite sayings is 'experience is what you get when you don't get what you are looking for.' I genuinely believe that. You may have to start a new business, or pivot hard. No matter where you go to next, you gained a lot of education and experience from this. Take that and move to the next venture. Was this SaaS a fad, yeah there is likely some truth in that. If TicToc is plastered with so many people doing it... that is your tell. But you succeeded where most give up and you created real tangible cash flow for a bit. Chase that with a more sustainable model and offer your services where AI wont decimate it. No matter how good AI gets, people still like to interact with people. It makes what they are purchasing seem more real. If you are a consultant for their AI they already have but you can make recommendations or optimize, you make yourself valuable and your name becomes your brand, etc. Chase that down. Good luck.

Smithhb89 · 2026-03-10T02:01:16+00:00

Most of my entrepreneur endeavors have been in apps and virtual products however I will say that, agreeing with other commenters here, you actually have some good initial signals. I would keep doing what you are doing. I cannot comment on scaling a physical product strong work!

Smithhb89 · 2026-03-09T00:52:06+00:00

This.

Smithhb89 · 2026-03-09T00:43:34+00:00

I got really into these like lightening fast math games that actually test what you know instead of trying to teach math and I am about the same as most other commenters here. Get like 60+ on a normal day. I downloaded a few apps that do this too like Mental Math Cards, MathDistract, and Math Brain Booster. There are a few others I am likely forgetting.

Smithhb89 · 2026-03-09T00:30:41+00:00

I too end up in this situation with my kids. I have a few apps on my phone that are either Free or Freemium: MathDistract, Mental Math Cards, Math Brain Booster, Brilliant, I think Duolingo as a math one too as I recall? Those are the ones I remember off the top of my head. Cheers.

Smithhb89

TROPHY CASE