Sterki

Sterki was a coaching platform for sports coaches to work with athletes online.

Online coaching is a growing industry - particularly with more niche sports where the best coaches aren’t available locally. There aren’t many platforms for coaches to choose when expanding their business online. And I noticed that a lot of coaches don’t even use any software to run their business - they would literally use a spreadsheet, whatsapp, and paypal. There are even horror stories of people paying for months of coaching and getting ghosted with no recourse.

This project started off as a marketplace for coaches to sell their training plans online, but soon pivoted to becoming a complete platform for online coaching.

Sterki was also my first major foray into web based SaaS. I spent a few weeks learning Django and built the MVP of the marketplace before continuting to build more features for the coaching platform.

I spent way too much time working on building the platform itself instead of finding people to use it. I think this is something that a lot of software people fall prey to. It’s far easier to get into working on the next feature and to say ‘I’ll work on the marketing and customer outreach next week’. I did spend time looking for potential users, but ended up not finding any willing to use it.

I used Sterki myself as a tool for planning and tracking my lifting. It’s been a decent experience, but there are certainly some issues that need ironing out.

The idea is still really appealing to me. Especially now that I’ve learned more about building a SaaS business. I have ideas for a STERKI V2.0. But nothing concrete yet.

Sterki was left alive for far too long after I stopped work on the project. I think it was because it was my first attempt at a SaaS and I was somewhat attatched to it.

I killed the project, but replaced it with a static landing page.

Status: 💀