Founder of Buump Active and mum-of-two Rebecca McGoff was drawn to tech entrepreneurialism after finding it hard to get back into fitness.
She felt the need to develop an easy-to-use app that enabled fellow mums to make friends, meet up, get active and achieve their goals.
In March, the new entrepreneur found the National Lottery in agreement, funding the app with almost £350,000 through Sport England.
Now the app is in app stores and its creator is planning for a bump in users.
McGoff told BusinessCloud the journey from idea to app store had been an emotional rollercoaster.
“Being a single mum of two children with a full-time job, the last few months have been exhilarating, exciting and exhausting too, but we are all absolutely thrilled that Buump Active is now available on the app stores,” she said.
The app, which has now been through its first iterations with the help of agencies and freelancers, quickly received 2,500 pre-registrations, a small fraction of the numbers she hopes to gain with the help of funding and new partnerships.
“We’re launching with this cohort of mums and of course have milestones for the coming year,” she said.
“We’re targeting already active women who become mums, or those who want to prioritise their physical and mental wellbeing after becoming a mum, so we’d love to see a user base of circa 40,000 mums in the first year.”
Having already caught the attention of the National Lottery, the app is also part of the ‘This Girl Can’ campaign, developed by Sport England to promote sport among women, and has parterned with online fitness class firm fiit.tv.
“We’ve also seen support from individuals such as the parkrun founder, Paul Sinton-Hewitt, Samantha Faiers from TOWIE and The Mummy Diaries and her best friend Frankie Bachmann – a fellow mum entrepreneur and wife of Watford keeper Dan Bachmann.”
Gold medal-winning swimmer Karen Pickering OBE has also shown her support for the app.
“A former elite athlete and active mum herself, it’s great to be able to have people like this to help us tell the story with more ‘influencers’ getting on board as we go.
“This is the first version of the app and I can’t wait to get feedback from users as to the features they want next.
“We’ve already got more developments in the pipeline and I think it was important to recognise that they can come after the initial launch and that’s OK.”
Alongside plans for new features, and ramping up PR and marketing, McGoff hinted that funding may be on the radar for the firm after launch, but that the company was at home in its native Manchester.
“This city is embracing, warm, pioneering and we are fortunate to be part of it,” she said.
“I’ve loved the learning experience which it certainly has been, and coming to realise what a supportive business community there is in Manchester.”
Buump Active can be downloaded for free for iOS and Android, and social communities can be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.