Tsemp started at the gym. The three of us – Kenneth Minkinen, Stefan Närhi and me, Pietari Risku – trained together and kept running into the same problem: the workouts were fine, but tracking progress was a mess. Too many people walk into the gym without a plan, do something, and never know whether they're getting stronger. We wanted something better.
This is how we've built Tsemp so far, what has been hard, and why the app goes by a shorter name outside Finland.
Three roles from day one
We founded Tsemppi Fitness Oy in Helsinki in 2023, when we started planning a training app together. The roles fell into place quickly:
- Kenneth (CTO) was already a skilled developer, and he builds the technology behind Tsemp.
- I (CPO) focused on the interface and user experience. Today I also write the app's training content and this blog.
- Stefan (CEO) learned the industry inside out, ran marketing and built our network long before there was an app to show.
What we share is the gym: between the three of us, we have more than 15 years of weightlifting experience.
We went through countless plans and interface designs. Life was busy at the same time: school, and the military service that is mandatory for most young men in Finland. Tsemp was built in the evenings and on weekends, one piece at a time.
Pietari Risku working on Tsemp at a monitor and laptop, coffee cup in hand
Beta in February 2026
Through our website we collected a list of people who wanted to test the app first. When we released the beta in February 2026, around 150 people were on that list. About 40 of them still use the app today.
That is the most important number we have so far. Our beta testers didn't get a finished product. They got an unfinished app with bugs and missing features – and many of them stayed anyway. Their feedback has shaped the app more than anything else, and many of today's features came straight from their requests.
What has been hardest
I asked the team, and all three of us gave the same answers.
The competition is fierce. There are plenty of workout apps, and the big players have budgets a small team can't match. We have to be better at one specific thing: making sure you always know what to do at the gym, and with what weight.
Finland's economy is struggling. Unemployment is high and many people have little room in their budgets. When a household cuts costs, a workout app subscription is an easy thing to drop. That's why we work hard to make sure the app is worth what it costs.
Funding is hard to find. Not just for us, but for many Finnish startups. There is a lot of uncertainty around both the economy and where AI is heading. So we've built Tsemp on a small budget and counted where every euro goes.
Why Tsemppi became Tsemp
From the start, we wanted to take the Finnish word tsemppi to the world. To us, it means encouraging someone to keep going. It doesn't really translate into English: it isn't just motivation and it isn't just "good luck" – it's something in between.
In June 2026 we spent about four weeks in San Francisco, and that's where we noticed the problem: Americans found Tsemppi really hard to pronounce. A name has to work when you hear it once out loud and then try to find it in the app store.
So we compromised. In Finland the app is still called Tsemppi, but internationally we use the shorter Tsemp. The word and its meaning stayed. It just got easier to say.
I'll write more about the San Francisco trip, and why we decided to expand to Sweden, Denmark and Norway, in the next post.
Where we're heading
We want to make training clear, motivating and effective for everyone. In practice, that means an app that gives you the exact weights and reps for every exercise, shows your progress clearly and encourages you to keep going. That's also why we filmed the app's exercise videos ourselves – 306 of them so far.
A handheld camera filming a Tsemp exercise video at the gym
In this section of the blog, we'll share openly how Tsemp is built: what our user data has shown, what we've changed and what we've learned.
Your first workout is free, then a 7-day free trial. After that, Tsemp costs €9.99/month or €69.99/year.
Pietari Risku is a co-founder and CPO of Tsemp, responsible for the app's design, user experience and training content.
Author
Pietari Risku
Co-founder and CPO
Pietari Risku is a co-founder and CPO of Tsemp. He is responsible for the app's design, user experience and training content, and writes the Tsemp blog.
