jaredcollett

very cool I had not heard of Flow, are you sure there's not a service that offers the same thing w/ customizable messages?

Haha, yep, pretty solid rewards

Not necessarily, you could trust the accuracy of an activity tracker like fitbit, garmin, etc. Or the user could submit photo/video proof voted on by users. I think the more difficult side of the problem is consistently providing a reward that is valuable to he user.

Go get 'em!

Mr. Reeves! Holy sh*t, I'm honored! I hope I didn't come down too hard on Beeminder, I certainly didn't mean to. I honestly think you guys are one of the only companies with the balls to do penance right. Imho I really don't think the majority of people understand just how powerful it can be.

On another note, so much of my research that has gone into this has come from your site. You guys are an amazing example of brave transparency. What you guys have shared publicly has been incredibly helpful to me while trying to posture with a way to innovation in this space. So thank you so much for that!

I appreciate you chiming in here as well and the resources you shared. I'd love to run other ideas in this space past you as I'm sure you have more experience than just about anyone.

Lastly I'd also love to pick your brain on Pact, I'm curious if you have any insight into what happened? It seems like it's been abandoned, but it still has a ton of users that want to use it.

Thanks for the extra input. The concept sort of exists, but is not easy to understand or is accessible for most people imho. The closest app was Pact in 2012-14, which had huge success, but now appears to be abandoned.

This is really great input. I agree that the charities would have to be delicately balanced in order to be motivating and tasteful at the same time. There are a lot of ways it could go wrong.

What would you think about, instead of the charities having the money go into a bank that you could earn back over time. Say after a month you've paid $50 in penalties, each time you're active you earn a portion of that back. Also, let's say there's attrition on the funds over time, you only have so much time to earn the money back before it's gone for good? This is a 4th option that's been coming up after talking to others.

p.s. another thought could be that your friends can steal your bucks if they're hitting more of their goals than you?

Thanks so much for taking the time to read and respond. I think this is a great idea. I just got feedback yesterday from a girl who said fitbit itself wasn't motivating, but the 'Workweek hustle' with her co-workers was crazy motivating. So yeah, imagine that with money on the line. Or within companies, it could be time-off or other sought-after/dreaded things.

This idea also opens up the doors to a B2B sales model which we all know is a completely different experience from B2C when bootstrapping.

Thanks again, if anything else comes to mind, I'd love to hear it

Hey, thanks for taking the time to check this out and give your thoughts. I completely agree with you that in general we want to think of ourselves as having self-control, and in a lot of aspects we do, some of us more than others. It's kind of like the 'place something on top of my keys the night before so I don't forget it' approach. In the evening, this would be easy to remember, I am sharp and aware, but in the morning, I know from past experiences that I'm not as sharp and need a little help. What I want now, vs what I want later.

I think both positive and negative reinforcement are effective. It obviously depends on the person, situation and other factors. My thought with this idea is that the positive re-inforcement aspect of activity when it comes to activity monitors is already being tackled by the big companies, fitbit, garmin, apple health, google fit, etc. However on the 'penance' side of things, it's underrepresented and the options are far from streamlined and easy imho.

My opinion on Beeminder is that it's designed for highly-technical people. The idea would be to present a solution that is similar to Beeminder that anybody can easily understand and use. There are also other highly motivating aspects that beeminder doesn't use such as social accountability (fitbit), charities (StickK and many others), and competition (fitbit, apple, etc.).

Thanks again for the thoughts and inquiry, I'd love to keep the convo going. My current goal is to flesh out any lingering thoughts on how the idea could be improved so that I can create more of a polished model to present to the public and gage interest.