How Shipaton turned Mansour Mahamat’s hobby app in to a business

As part of this year’s Shipaton, we’re highlighting stories from past participants to show what’s possible when you commit to building in public. Whether you’re aiming to sharpen your skills, launch your first product, or maybe even win, these interviews are meant to spark ideas, share learnings, and inspire you to take part in Shipaton.

We’re also including their tips on how to get the most out of Shipaton, from choosing the right idea to managing your time to pushing through the inevitable bugs and blockers.

Concluding our Shipaton interview series: Mansour Mahamat, a frontend developer from France living in Sweden. He first started coding in 2019 and has over the years worked on a variety of web apps and projects. Last year however, he came across Shipaton and decided that it posed the perfect opportunity to branch out into mobile development. Before he had only done simple tutorials, but he was missing the notch of building a full mobile app.

So as Shipaton kicked off last year, Mansour Mahamat opened the SwiftUI documentation and started building and learning more about the technology by doing that. It wasn’t long before he was also documenting his progress in TikTok, one of the only participants to do that last year. Originally he had a simple goal of learning English by talking about his app, and building a mobile app, but what he ended up building was an actual business around his app idea.

Building the app

Mansour has been practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu for years and has a black belt from it. So when it came to coming up with an idea he didn’t have to think for long and decided to combine two of his passions. His idea actually came to him while after a training session:

The idea struck me after a particularly intense rolling session. I was lying on the mat, exhausted but exhilarated, wishing I could capture this moment and track my progress over time. That’s when it hit me — why not create an app that could do just that?

His idea was to build an app to log techniques and progress while going Brazilian jiu-jitsu training. Originally it was supposed to be a personal tool, with the MVP having two core features: logging training sessions and visualizing the progress from those.

However the app started growing as he shared it with his BJJ gym mates, who provided valuable feedback and suggested new features. He ended up building for example AI coaches and community leaderboards, which further boosted the adoption. The last days of Shipaton he spent on polishing the UI and improving the user experience and performance of the app.

From Swift to React Native

Mansour decided to build the first version of BJJ Evolve using SwiftUI, as a learning experience. Although he found working with SwiftUI pleasant and fast, he decided to rebuild the app in React Native after Shipaton. He wanted to be able to iterate new versions of the app faster and also build an Android version. Maintaining two apps in different programming languages would have been too much work.

Building in public: morning shift edition

For Mansour, consistency was everything. He carved out time by waking up at 5 a.m. every day before work, giving himself two uninterrupted hours to learn, build, and push his project forward. That routine carried him through the most intense parts of Shipaton, helping him hit milestones without burning out.

But building was only half the story. To find users, Mansour didn’t just rely on the app store. Before even shipping, he created a waitlist that grew to 300 people in just two weeks. His secret weapon? TikTok.

By posting daily videos about his progress and mixing in snippets of his training as a black belt, he quickly built authority and trust. What began as a way to practice English became his breakout marketing channel. Soon, gym peers, competitors, and even strangers online were downloading his app.

“Building something is easy. Finding users is hard. TikTok made people see me not only as a developer but also as a black belt who understands the sport. That made them trust the app immediately.”

Post-Shipaton: side project into a business

In addition to converting the app from SwiftUI to React Native, Mansour also added multilingual support — first French, then Spanish — after seeing downloads spread across the world.

Continuing to work on the app has paid dividends. Today, 5–6 gyms actively use the app, supported by a companion web platform for coaches. The system allows managing students, handling subscriptions, and publishing schedules, while athletes track progress from their phones. What started as “just a Shipaton project” has become a real business with daily new downloads.

Advice for Shipaton participants

When asked what advice Mansour would give Shipaton 2025 participants, he emphasized passion, consistency, and community: pick something you’re passionate about

“You need to love the problem you’re solving. Otherwise, you’ll get bored after two weeks. I’ve been working on this project for over a year, and I’m still motivated.”

He also tells shippers to focus on being consistent and sticking to it.His 5 a.m. routine and regular updates kept momentum alive. Many others started building in public but stopped after 10 days. He advises posting updates on whichever platforms your community uses, whether Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, or TikTok. 

“You can build the best app, but if no one sees it, you’ll struggle.”

Plans for this year’s Shipaton

For this year’s Shipaton, Mansour is shifting gears. While he had initially planned to build a boxing app powered by AI, the demand from his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu community changed his direction. Over the past months, gyms reached out asking for a more customizable solution — one built specifically for coaches and their students.

That feedback sparked a new project: a B2B version of BJJ Evolve designed for gyms. Unlike the original app, which was consumer-focused, this new version centers on coaches. It includes a social-style feed (similar to Facebook) where trainers can post updates, share schedules, or communicate with their athletes. Students receive push notifications directly in the app, keeping everyone connected in one place. To support subscriptions and gym-specific monetization, Mansour is also integrating RevenueCat.

He’s documenting the journey on YouTube, bringing the same build-in-public approach that fueled his BJJ app’s growth. His goal: replicate the power of consistency and community, while evolving the product into a more professional, gym-first tool.

Reflecting on this evolution, Mansour sees it as a natural progression:

“Shipaton opened the door for me last year when I built a personal app. A year later, it became professional. Gyms are using it, and now I’m taking it even further with a dedicated B2B product.”