Why I built MoveWith

The problem

I have ADHD and find joy in high intensity movement - surfing, HIIT, sailing. That combination leads to frequent injuries, usually an overuse injury that needs physical therapy to rehab and prehab. I spent the better part of a decade trying to do my physical therapy exercises and failing in the most predictable way possible. I would do them the day before each appointment, skip them the rest of the week, and tell myself I would be more disciplined next time. I would completely stop them once I was “better” despite knowing they were important maintenance, and only restart after the next injury + pt cycle.

Reminders did not help, habit trackers did not help, and the exercises themselves were not hard nor time intensive. The starting was hard. This is the gap most fitness apps refuse to admit exists. The problem with home exercise programs and at-home workouts was never knowing what to do, it was generating the activation energy to begin, and there is exactly one thing that reliably lowers that activation energy for most people: another human being depending on them to show up so they can also do their own exercises.

What MoveWith is

MoveWith is body doubling built specifically for fitness. You book a 25-minute session, get matched with another person who is also working out, and you both do your thing on video. No coaching, no classes, no judgment about what you are doing or how fit you are. Just the parallel presence of another person doing the same kind of activity at the same time, which is the entire mechanism that makes body doubling work and the entire thing that has been missing from fitness apps until now.

What I believe

• Showing up is the whole game. Not motivation, not knowledge, not the right training plan. The activation energy required to start a workout is what derails most fitness habits, and the only thing that reliably lowers it is another person being there.
• Body doubling for fitness deserves its own product. Focusmate is great for desk work and there are other apps doing nice work for body doubling around chores and household tasks. Fitness is a fundamentally different context and needs its own dedicated space, not a “moving” toggle bolted onto a desk-work app.
• Skin in the game is what makes “free” actually work. Most free apps end up full of people who signed up and never showed up, which is fine for a podcast app and ruinous for a body doubling app. So the app costs $1 a week after a free trial, small enough that nobody is gated out, real enough that nobody books and forgets. And I built in a big incentive to be consistent: three sessions a week next week free, because the version of MoveWith I needed when I was struggling to stick to my PT should stay available regardless of whether someone has a spare $4 a month.

Who’s behind this

My name’s Emma. I’m a product manager with more than ten years of experience in tech. In March 2026 I was laid off with a generous severance package, and with the rise of AI tools it’s finally possible for a solo PM to build and ship a real app that solves a niche problem. I’m not trying to make this my main source of income, I’m not trying to build a body doubling empire, and I’m not trying to turn this into a venture-backed growth story. I am building MoveWith because I’ve wanted it to exist for close to ten years, and this was the first window in my career where I had the time, the runway, and the tools to actually make it. If MoveWith helps you stick to your PT, be more consistent with home workouts, and break the cycle of getting stuck on the couch while your exercise equipment stares at you from a pile in the corner, I will be thrilled. That is the whole goal.