Personal trainers struggle to find clients. Clients struggle to find qualified trainers. Train Market was built to fix both sides — I delivered the research and product foundation for the investor pitch.
A founder with industry connections came with a clear hypothesis: personal training was fragmented. Trainers struggle to find clients. Clients struggle to find trainers. Discovery relies on word-of-mouth, gym affiliations, or Instagram scrolling. Neither side has good tools.
I ran the full product development lifecycle — seven user interviews across three segments, personas and empathy maps, competitor analysis, information architecture, context framework, feature roadmap, and high-fidelity mockups.
Scope discipline over feature completeness
Every interview surfaced new features trainers wanted: scheduling, video calls, payment plans, referral programs, gym partnerships. The context framework filtered these through one question — which features support the business goals, which drive investment, which actually support a user need, which just sound good? The hardest part of the project was knowing what not to build for the pitch.
What the research found
Three compounding problems for trainers: no digital presence beyond social media, no unified system for scheduling and billing, and no credential verification. Trainers want more than a marketplace — they want a suite of tools that keeps clients on platform.
For clients: finding a trainer means asking friends, searching Instagram, or hoping the gym assigns someone competent. Reviews are scattered, credentials unverifiable, pricing opaque until the first awkward conversation. They don't want another app — they want a trainer who manages everything for them.
Reflection
If I did this again, I'd spend more time on the gym owner segment. Two-sided marketplaces are difficult when communication and payments aren't sticky enough to keep both sides on platform. Gym owners seemed to benefit most if they could onboard their entire roster — but many had already built custom apps or used white-labeled options. The founder used these deliverables to pursue investment.
