Power Couple

Goals that bring you closer. A shared goal accountability app for couples.

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Inspiration

Three years ago, I became a mom. My husband and I love being parents to our little toddler, but somewhere along the way, we stopped making time for the things that made us feel like ourselves: reading, working out, yoga, and creating art.

When we started making room for those things again, even 2-3 times a week, we felt so much better. We felt like ourselves again. Having each other’s encouragement helped us keep going.

That became the idea behind Power Couple. For Shipaton, we set ourselves two goals: build an app and make time for the things we loved. The app became our way of bringing those goals together.

What it does

Power Couple is a goal accountability app for couples. It helps couples work toward their goals with sweet encouragement and a surprise gift to look forward to.

  1. You choose a goal and a weekly pace that fits your life. Your partner can join your goal or choose their own. Then you each pick a surprise gift for the other, which stays wrapped till you finish your goal.

  2. You can start a live session when you're working on your goal or check in after you’ve finished, add a photo, and cheer each other on. Over time, those check-ins become a shared record of the effort you’ve put in.

  3. After you've been consistent with your goal, you get to open your surprise gifts! You’re working toward something your partner chose just for you, and choosing something you hope will make them smile.

How we built it

Power Couple currently has a native iOS app built with SwiftUI. Firebase handles authentication, shared data, photos, and backend functions. A native Android build is currently being built out.

I integrated RevenueCat for subscriptions, with one membership covering both partners. That felt right for a product built around doing something together.

OneSignal powers the moments that connect one person’s effort to the other: session updates, photo check-ins, personal nudges, cheers, reminders, and celebrations. On iOS, Live Activities bring an ongoing session to the partner’s lock screen. These interactions bring fun and encouragement to the present moment.

I also used OneSignal Journeys to help couples get started and come back to the app after an inactive period. As someone who previously worked in marketing automation, I found the experience of building journeys and templates in OneSignal (through the dashboard and MCP) very straightforward and delightful.

I'm currently a solo app founder and stay-at-home mom with a corporate marketing background. All code was created with Claude Code and Codex! My husband tested the app extensively as a power user before launch.

Why Power Couple should win the Keep Them Coming Back Award by OneSignal

The best reason to come back to a goal isn't a reminder from an app. It's the person you love noticing that you showed up and cheering you on! Power Couple is built around that idea, and OneSignal is what carries it from one phone to the other.

Implementation. OneSignal is the key to how partners reach each other. Live sessions, photo check-ins, cheers, nudges, reminders, gift hints and weekly celebrations all run through it, and three Journeys are live.

User value. Our notifications carry emotional value from your partner: their photo, their caption, their progress this week, and their own words when they nudge or cheer you.

Resourcefulness. OneSignal Journeys follow one person at a time, but in our app a moment belongs to two people. So when something happens that matters to the other partner, our server sends them a custom event. That way one person's action can start a Journey for the person who needs it most. Partner joined reaches whoever sent the invite at the exact moment it pays off, and Fresh start welcomes both partners back after a missed week without blaming either of them.

Depth. We went beyond standard push. Our server starts a Live Activity on the partner's phone, so they can watch the session happen on their lock screen and cheer mid-workout. Phones that can't show a Live Activity get a regular push instead. Photo check-ins arrive as rich notifications, Liquid fills in names with friendly fallbacks, and tags and segments keep each Journey in step with where the couple really is. Every send carries a unique key, so a retry never delivers the same moment twice.

I built Power Couple so couples could keep making time for themselves. OneSignal is how their encouragement reaches each other when it matters most, and gets them to keep coming back to the app.

Challenges we ran into

Technical challenges were overwhelming to me as a non-coder. I realized halfway through that I should have coded my app in React Native so that it would be compatible with Android. Thankfully in today's AI age, it was fairly simple to translate my iOS app into native Android and I'm currently testing it on my new second-hand Samsung Galaxy phone! Cross-platform compatibility remains my biggest technical challenge to make sure the app feels seamless if partners are on different platforms.

The other big challenge was figuring out the right incentive structure and visual layout so that partners are motivated to stick to their goals. I talked to people in my social circle who used goal-tracking apps to understand what helped them stay consistent and what made them stop. Along the way I had to scrap 3 prototypes that made the app more complex than it needed to be. My goal was to make the app simple to use and visually uncluttered.

These challenges ate into my Shipaton time and while I'm glad I launched, I would have loved to have spent more time marketing my app and getting live user feedback.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud of turning something we struggled with as parents into an app we can use together. Building Power Couple during Shipaton gave us a reason to return to the things we loved and support each other along the way.

We brought together personal goals, photo check-ins, and wrapped surprise gifts in an experience that feels like us. Seeing a check-in reach the other person’s phone and getting a cheer back made the idea feel so sweet.

My husband and I have used the app consistently over the past two months. I’ve read three books, and David has returned to yoga and painting. Seeing it help us make time for ourselves makes me excited to share it with other couples

What we learned

I learned how much work goes into making an app feel simple, delightful, and easy to use. With AI, it is very easy to add a ton of features to an app. It is much harder to edit down and simplify. The experience became clearer when we focused on choosing a goal, showing up, encouraging each other, and having something meaningful to look forward to.

Personally, this project reminded us that making time for ourselves can be something we support each other in. A little regular encouragement can help turn an intention into part of everyday life.

What's next for Power Couple

1) Learn from more couples. We want to understand how Power Couple fits into their everyday lives, where getting started feels difficult, and which moments help them keep showing up. We’ll use that feedback to refine onboarding, improve reliability across devices, and make reminders more thoughtful.

2) Lean into founder-led organic marketing and expand into paid marketing. My husband has a full-time job and I'm a busy mom, and we have plenty of real moments to share about building the app and using it as parents. I want to get better at editing videos in CapCut to post fun reels on Instagram and Tiktok! I also want to get very good at paid marketing on Meta and Tiktok, by using what I learned in corporate marketing. Eventually I'd love for this to become a profitable app and hire people to grow it.

3) Cross-platform testing across iOS and Android. This is to ensure that those users have a positive experience with the app and every couple can try it out!

4) Testing paywall design and monetization. Currently I have a hard paywall with a 7 day trial. I want to explore different price bands and pricing structures as well as value proposition messaging to drive higher pairing and subscription rates.

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