April 2, 2020 The Making of Wizard.Fit Part 3 – 40 Yoga Instructors, 1 App Sprint

THE WHIRLWIND SO FAR

Welcome back to our 5 part series covering the making of Wizard.Fit, a new fitness app. We’re going from concept to MVP at hyper-speed with entrepreneur Soofi Safavi and on-demand talent from the Topcoder Community. Read and listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of the story, and hear the latest update from Soofi and Topcoder VP Clinton Bonner.

SPRINTING TO APP MVP WITH ON-DEMAND TALENT

Last time, we discussed technologies Soofi and Topcoder are using to run a 100% remote team, including technologists, project managers, marketers, and yoga instructors who are beta testing the app and providing rapid feedback. Tools like GitHub, MarveI, Topcoder’s platform, Slack, and others are enabling rapid collaboration and communication. We also touched on the tech choices Soofi is making for Wizard.Fit, including things like the PayPal integration and integration with the Zoom API. Soofi’s goal is to bring a new experience that replicates the studio environment as much as possible, allowing instructors to lead form-intensive workouts in a way that’s never been possible before.

WHERE WE ARE NOW

Here’s what’s happened with Wizard.Fit in the last 7 days:

• Front-end Dev is nearly done (small updates remain)
• Paypal integration is finished
• Zoom integration is nearly done
• UI design is perfected through 3 rounds of rapid iteration

ABOUT THOSE 40 YOGA INSTRUCTORS 

A key piece of a sprint like this is the ability to share a design or prototype and get rapid feedback, then pivot and iterate accordingly. Soofi has a group of 40 yoga instructors he’s communicating with who are giving feedback. They’re completely distributed, so he’s created Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube accounts for Wizard.Fit to push out video demos of the UI to the group. Then they’re coming back with questions about the app’s functionality and helping guide the dev process in real-time, which is incredibly valuable.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR WIZARD.FIT

The goal is to have a working MVP live for the group of 40 trainers to start using by the second week of April 2020 (about two weeks from now). In Part 4, we’ll cover the launch of the MVP and hear from some of the instructors who are helping shape Wizard.Fit as it comes to life in a matter of weeks. 

MORE WEALTH, MORE HEALTH

For Soofi, Wizard.Fit was born of the immediate need to solve a devastating problem—a huge community of fitness instructors suddenly facing unemployment in the wake of the Coronavirus. But he hopes that in the long run, the app will grow to be an amazing global platform for fitness and wellness.