“The trigger that's most important for us is just boredom and existential horror. We want people to be seeing stuff in our app when they're just bored in line at the store or at home on the couch and they're about to open Netflix but they open us first instead.”

Health apps have no natural daily trigger — so boredom is your only viable hook

Paloni identified that most health and wellness apps lack a real-life event that compels users to open them daily — unlike Uber (need a ride) or RoboKiller (spam call arriving). Athletes and sick users are exceptions because something happens every day prompting app use; everyone else has no trigger. Welltory's solution: treat boredom-induced phone-opening as the primary trigger, and design the app to compete with TikTok in that idle moment rather than expecting users to show up with a wellness goal.