Episode 90 · 2021-07-17 · 40:20 · Original in Finnish
Young Entrepreneurs | Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka | Negotiator 90
Originally published as “Nuoret yrittäjät | Niklas Snäll Waltteri Helisalo Luka Mansikka | Neuvottelija 90”
Upper-secondary students Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka from the international business programme at Lauttasaari secondary school won an entrepreneurship competition with their health app Nudvi. The idea came out of a school course, and the trio realised it was too good to leave as coursework. The episode's core is a product insight that recurs in several forms: existing health apps demand too much manual entry, so only the most enthusiastic users keep going. Nudvi's premise is to collect the data from elsewhere — the phone and connected devices — rather than requiring a separate smart ring. The host brings his own Oura data, the pricing of intermittent fasting apps and the history of gym programmes, and the conversation closes on the freemium model, the role of community in a premium service, and why a mobile app displaces browser services. The channel's first three-guest episode.
Core theses
- Manual entry is what kills retention in health apps, so the product decision that matters is where the data comes from rather than what is shown.
- Requiring a separate device narrows the market to people already committed; collecting from the phone does not.
- In a premium health service the community is the part that retains, and the measurement is the part that attracts.
- The competition win came from treating a school assignment as a product, which is the whole story in one sentence.
Watch and listen
Key moments
- 00:00 — Opening teaser: apps, smart rings and the training boom of the pandemic
- 01:45 — Classmates from Lauttasaari secondary school's international programme introduce themselves
- 03:22 — The entrepreneurship competition stand, and pitching to Slush's chief executive
- 05:01 — A health app without separate devices: the phone collects the data
- 06:52 — Google Health, Apple Health and the three basic pillars
- 08:18 — Oura experiences: sleep quality, resting heart rate and the effect of alcohol
- 11:08 — Gamification, or awareness of your own situation
- 12:07 — Nutrition: intermittent fasting apps and tracking meals
- 13:57 — Training programmes, and the problem of busy people
- 15:21 — Too much manual entry kills the usage rate
- 16:30 — App or web: mobile displaces browser services
- 18:56 — Your own devices, heart-rate vests and smart garments in football
- 21:45 — Melatonin, magnesium, blue light and ASMR
- 25:04 — Supplements, and an all-round coaching system
- 27:17 — Hintsa Performance, Oura in Formula One, and networking
- 30:23 — A limited company, the team, and freemium or premium
- 33:19 — Community as part of premium: Facebook, Discord and Clubhouse
- 37:52 — Coming trends: smart rings and the home training boom
- 39:33 — Closing words and contact details
Summary
Upper-secondary students Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo and Luka Mansikka from the international business programme at Lauttasaari secondary school won an entrepreneurship competition with their health app Nudvi. The idea came out of a school course, and the trio realised it was too good to leave as coursework. The episode’s core is a product insight that recurs in several forms: existing health apps demand too much manual entry, so only the most enthusiastic users keep going. Nudvi’s premise is to collect the data from elsewhere — the phone and connected devices — rather than requiring a separate smart ring. The host brings his own Oura data, the pricing of intermittent fasting apps and the history of gym programmes, and the conversation closes on the freemium model, the role of community in a premium service, and why a mobile app displaces browser services. The channel’s first three-guest episode.
The retention problem is the product
Every health app can show you a chart. What separates the ones people keep using is how much typing they demand, and the trio’s insight is that the entry burden — not the analysis — is where users are lost. That reframes the build: the hard engineering is in acquisition of data, not in presentation of it.
No extra device
Requiring a ring or a watch selects for people already invested in tracking themselves, which is a small and already-served market. Taking what the phone already has is a worse dataset and a much larger addressable one, and the trade is made deliberately.
Coursework treated as a product
The origin is a school exercise the three decided not to hand in and forget. That is not a charming detail; it is the decision that produced everything else in the episode.
Watch
The recording lives on the Neuvottelija channel: Nuoret yrittäjät | Niklas Snäll Waltteri Helisalo Luka Mansikka | Neuvottelija 90. A Finnish edition of this episode is published at www.neuvottelija.fi.
In depth
The Neuvottelija AI editions carry a long-form write-up of this episode: English · suomeksi.
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People and topics
Guests: Niklas Snäll, Waltteri Helisalo, Luka Mansikka