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Gate distracting apps behind push-ups, turning a familiar phone habit into a highly demonstrable consumer app.
1.5M users (figures attributed in the video to Alejandro's LinkedIn; not independently checked)
They validated the behavior with a video before writing code, then turned the audience's demand into a rough app within about two weeks.
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Alejandro had tried two earlier startups, Lamora, an AI tool for therapists, and Product Visual, an AI product-photo generator; neither took off. In May 2025 he began posting daily about phone addiction, mental health, and coding. On day nine, a simple pitch for an app that would make people do push-ups before scrolling reached more than 80,000 views. The idea became Push Scroll: choose distracting apps to block, press a phone against a wall, and earn screen time by doing push-ups. Alejandro brought in Mario Ortiz Monero, an engineer who had built a related app, Speed Bump. They opened a test to 200 registrants and shipped the first rough version in about two weeks. The launch video drew over 100,000 views and an estimated 20,000–30,000 downloads. The video attributes $1.4 million in annual revenue and 1.5 million users to Alejandro's LinkedIn. Those figures are founder-attributed through the narrator, not independently audited.
The first audience came from Alejandro's daily posts, not a paid launch. He spent several days talking about phone addiction and small coding projects before the push-up idea earned more than 80,000 views.
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Data credibility: The video attributes $1.4 million in annual revenue and 1.5 million users to Alejandro's LinkedIn. The profile was not independently checked and the figures are not audited. The other video and download counts are creator-reported. The transcript says the first roughly $5,000 the app made was spent on influencers, but it does not establish gross margin or subscription pricing.
Push Scroll launched with two free days; paid users arrived as the offer expired while the launch video kept circulating. That creates a clear conversion moment: a person has already selected blocked apps, tested the push-up detector, and felt the cost of being locked out.
The flywheel came from a product people could understand in a single clip. Alejandro and Mario borrowed the shape of successful consumer-app videos, then converted it into their own demonstration: a phone stays blocked until its owner does push-ups.
The early setback was an influencer campaign: the first roughly $5,000 the app made went into creators, and the spend produced few downloads. That miss pushed the founders toward making their own content, where they could change the hook and demonstration without paying for every attempt.
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