4 ms·

Nice work! This is a great idea and something I've thought should exist since getting interested in CBT a few months back. Before even trying the app, here are

Nice work! This is a great idea and something I've thought should exist since getting interested in CBT a few months back. Before even trying the app, here are some thoughts. - On pricing: $4/mo seems like a difficult price point to build a business around, and it doesn't reflect the value you're offering. People pay hundreds/thousands per month to therapists to improve their mental health. If outcomes from using your app compare favorably to a therapist, shouldn't your pricing reflect that? $4/mo makes me think 'toy', not serious therapeutic tool. For people to be willing to pay anything for an app like this, they have to be convinced it can really work. But if they are convinced, they'll pay a whole lot more than $4/mo. I would consider freemium (so people can try it out and see the value) and then a much higher price point (maybe $50-100/mo?). You might get undercut by competing apps, but if you're clearly the best one, I think many people will want the best option and won't be very price-sensitive if they believe it can really help. - On branding: while it's important to mention that the app is based on CBT so you can piggyback on the awareness people already have about CBT, I think referring to it as a "Cognitive Behavioral Therapy app" severely restricts your market to people who already know what that means, which I'd guess is a very small slice of the people who could benefit. I would try to lead with the benefits--feel better quickly; easier, cheaper, more effective than a therapist; evidence-based; etc.--and save the more technical/jargony stuff about CBT for supporting info. - On stigma: I would also try to avoid positioning this as something mainly for people experiencing a 'mental illness' like clinical depression/anxiety, but rather something that everyone can benefit from and use to feel better and improve their lives, regardless of how they currently feel. I think many people who don't consider themselves to have a serious problem still engage in cognitive distortions and could see major benefits from using CBT techniques, so I would try to include these people in your messaging as well. While going from bad mood to good mood is obviously valuable and desirable, so is going from good mood to great mood. But if you make it seem like using the app is effectively self-identifying as 'mentally ill' or even just 'feeling bad', many folks in the latter camp will be turned off, so that's something to be careful about.

flaque 7y ago
WOAH thank you for the in-depth feedback dude! On Pricing - Agreed. This pricing mostly came out of a bit of nativity on my part. I assumed that wanting to make something accessible meant being really cheap. But we're very quickly realizing that both we won't be able to sustain this price and also that by having this price, we're basically telling people it doesn't work. The reason why we haven't done too much on pricing quite yet is because it JUST started working as of a few weeks ago. We technically had it working a month and a half ago, but we messed up heavily with the rollout. Due a bug, it involuntarily canceled everyone on Android and then messed up our attempt at grandfathering existing users as "free-forever." We might try freemium in the future, but at the moment we don't have the resources. In our past experience, freemium products tend to be basically two products where one is trying to sell you on the other. In a purely-paid model, every hour we spend on making a better product directly contributes to keeping the business alive. Since we're so small, we don't have the hours to spend yet. On branding - This is super true, but when we tried to just say "therapy" or "feel better" people thought we were talk therapy and then got upset that there wasn't any talk therapy. If you say "CBT" the folks that have heard of it LOVE the product and the folks haven't we can explain what it is from a blank slate rather than trying to change any past stigma or misconceptions about therapy. But this is something we're still not that great at. Figuring out how to do it well will be a lot of our core focus in the coming months. Especially considering our current website is basically a wall of text: https://quirk.fyi https://quirk.fyi On Stigma - This is exactly what we want to do, but haven't been very good at it yet. If you're reading this, CBT can probably help you, regardless of any specific condition. > While going from bad mood to good mood is obviously valuable and desirable, so is going from good mood to great mood. But if you make it seem like using the app is effectively self-identifying as 'mentally ill', many folks in the latter camp will be turned off. That is a REALLY good way of framing it. Holy moly, I'm gonna steal that. This advice is amazing! Thank you so much! Seriously!
- subpixel 7y ago
  Some pushback on pricing: this app is a vitamin, not a painkiller. $4/mo is a perfect price for an app I may use daily for years and years with varying levels of engagement. Like Day One (price: $3.99) or TeuxDeux (price: $3/mo), both of which are quite successful. Charge $10/mo or $20/mo and your churn will increase as people think "haven't used that in weeks, waste of money" and cancel. Additionally, I think the term 'open-source' and link to GitHub have no place in your marketing materials at this point. You're gunning for the public now, and your support channel is going to be clogged with questions about why open-source does not mean free or how to install from GitHub. (Also, this is awesome!)
  - flaque 7y ago
    > I think the term 'open-source' and link to GitHub have no place in your marketing materials at this point. You're gunning for the public now, and your support channel is going to be clogged with questions about why open-source does not mean free. Agreed, basically only using the open source terminology in dev environments like hacker news. So in our screenshots and marketing materials, it's definitely not going to be anywhere. We've expanded outside of just hacker folks at this point and some folks got really worried about privacy because they thought "open-source" meant that the their thoughts would be shared publicly.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  I think the price is great and you should keep it. It's the perfect solution for a teenager who really needs help but doesn't want to talk to anyone about it, and doesn't want to tell their parents. I feel if something like this could ever be demonstrated to be as good as/almost as good as therapy, it should be run by a foundation with draconian data privacy rules and offered for free to everyone. This "make some programmers a lot of money and suddenly introduce us to a new future where we don't understand any of the implications of our new incentives" model is really getting tiring and often scary.
  - drcongo 7y ago
    All of this ^
jwr 7y ago
I'll post my comment here, because I agree with everything written above and I wouldn't be able to state it as well as @danenania. As for pricing, I would add a second point of view: price the app in a sustainable way right from the start. Estimate the realistic number of subscribers you can get, and set the pricing so that you can continue to develop the app. Too many apps price themselves too low "because otherwise nobody will buy", and end up disappearing anyway, because they weren't able to survive on the small amount of money. I don't have experience with consumer subscriptions. I can only say that in the B2B SaaS world, I don't think you can build a sustainable business with pricing below $40/month. The consumer numbers are likely lower, because you can get more customers with a smaller support load. But I don't think $4/month is a realistic price point.
zdrummond 7y ago
Offhand, I feel your advice is contrary. You suggest increasing the price because "If outcomes from using your app compare favorably to a therapist, shouldn't your pricing reflect that?", but then the next two points on brand and stigma suggest opening it up to all people who want to feel great. I think you need to choose one. You are either a niche therapy compliment/competitor (price insensitive) or a mental wellbeing tool for a broad audience (super price sensitive). I personally hope you keep to the lower price point. I think overall you will do more Good and reach more people. Even if you don't make a unicorn, $4/month from 5% of your market, is still $20M/month. Also, final note, many people suffering from mental illness can not afford therapy. Even $4 would be hard, $50 is impossible.
- flaque 7y ago
  I think he's definitely correct that we're too cheap right now, but I agree that you can still make quite a company and still be dramatically cheaper than any reasonable option. There's definitely a middle ground.
- danenania 7y ago
  I wouldn't call therapy a niche market. Therapy apps might be currently, but if they can disrupt the current therapy model to a meaningful extent, they won't be niche for long. While I don't have time to look for better data on this, a quick google turns up this 2004 survey via https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey: 'A similar poll released in May, "Therapy in America 2004," and co-sponsored by Psychology Today magazine and PacifiCare Behavioral Health, found that an estimated 59 million people have received mental health treatment in the past two years...' 59 million people (in just the US... in 2004) is not a niche market! And these people are paying a lot. The problem with trying to be a "mental wellbeing tool for a broad audience" isn't just the market being super price sensitive, it's the market being unwilling pay anything whatsoever, which leads to ads and selling personal data (yuck). "Even if you don't make a unicorn, $4/month from 5% of your market, is still $20M/month." Right, but how will you reach 5% of your market? I don't see much virality here, and $4/mo gives you no room for customer acquisition costs. "Also, final note, many people suffering from mental illness can not afford therapy. Even $4 would be hard, $50 is impossible." I agree, but an unsustainable business can't help anyone at all in the long run.
sadok 7y ago
On price: $50/m would be IMPOSSIBLE for most people to pay. You are backing the $50/m with data viewed from inside your bubble. I'm part of several online groups and communities for people suffering from Anxiety and Depression and out of thousands and thousands of people there, both in the US and around the world, I'd say only 20% have the money to go to therapy. Your data showing that "a lot of people are paying a lot of money" is already biased because it's based on a particular socioeconomic segment. Do you want another data POV? "...only 70 percent [of americans] feel they have adequate access to mental health care." - https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey Please be mindful when making comments like these, as not all of us are as lucky and/or privileged as you are. OP: Your pricing is fine, probably $9 "ala netflix", that is still low enough for most people. Awesome product!
- danenania 7y ago
  Wanting to make a product cheap and therefore available to as many people as possible is a noble instinct—especially a product like this one. I totally get it. But unfortunately that doesn’t change the fact that for many reasons, selling a product at a very low price point is an extremely difficult way to start a new business. Can it be done? Yes, of course, but you better be able to either raise tons of money or acquire customers very cheaply. An app that costs 15% of what weekly therapy does and is similarly effective will help a lot of people. A company that dies because it can’t afford to advertise will help no one.
riwsky 7y ago
Though also, on pricing: it’s not just a question of what the app offers, but also of what competitors are offering, and at what price. For example: the company that did Monument Valley teamed up with some doctors to do a very similar app in this space called Moodnotes* , and priced it at a one-time payment of $5. That is to say: I am glad for Quirk’s existence - if it gets the useful techniques of CBT in front of even one person that wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, then it’s done good in the world and should be proud, and has earned that $4/month - but I understand why they aren’t using the cost of talk therapy as their point of reference for competitive pricing. * https://www.ustwo.com/work/moodnotes https://www.ustwo.com/work/moodnotes
- danenania 7y ago
  Yeah, that's a good point. I think it all comes down to framing. Are you selling a "mood-tracking app" or "a self-administered therapy system" (that happens to use an app as one piece of the system)? The former anchors you very low (too low, I would argue, to build a sustainable business). The latter anchors you against weekly $100+ therapy sessions, which gives you vastly more breathing room. The flip side is that customers will of course be a lot more discerning and demanding with the latter framing, as they should be. It will be a lot harder to get product-market fit, but if you do, you'll be able to build a great business on top of it, rather than just being another competitor in a race to the bottom.

flaque 7y ago

WOAH thank you for the in-depth feedback dude! On Pricing - Agreed. This pricing mostly came out of a bit of nativity on my part. I assumed that wanting to make something accessible meant being really cheap. But we're very quickly realizing that both we won't be able to sustain this price and also that by having this price, we're basically telling people it doesn't work. The reason why we haven't done too much on pricing quite yet is because it JUST started working as of a few weeks ago. We technically had it working a month and a half ago, but we messed up heavily with the rollout. Due a bug, it involuntarily canceled everyone on Android and then messed up our attempt at grandfathering existing users as "free-forever." We might try freemium in the future, but at the moment we don't have the resources. In our past experience, freemium products tend to be basically two products where one is trying to sell you on the other. In a purely-paid model, every hour we spend on making a better product directly contributes to keeping the business alive. Since we're so small, we don't have the hours to spend yet. On branding - This is super true, but when we tried to just say "therapy" or "feel better" people thought we were talk therapy and then got upset that there wasn't any talk therapy. If you say "CBT" the folks that have heard of it LOVE the product and the folks haven't we can explain what it is from a blank slate rather than trying to change any past stigma or misconceptions about therapy. But this is something we're still not that great at. Figuring out how to do it well will be a lot of our core focus in the coming months. Especially considering our current website is basically a wall of text: https://quirk.fyi https://quirk.fyi On Stigma - This is exactly what we want to do, but haven't been very good at it yet. If you're reading this, CBT can probably help you, regardless of any specific condition. > While going from bad mood to good mood is obviously valuable and desirable, so is going from good mood to great mood. But if you make it seem like using the app is effectively self-identifying as 'mentally ill', many folks in the latter camp will be turned off. That is a REALLY good way of framing it. Holy moly, I'm gonna steal that. This advice is amazing! Thank you so much! Seriously!

subpixel 7y ago
Some pushback on pricing: this app is a vitamin, not a painkiller. $4/mo is a perfect price for an app I may use daily for years and years with varying levels of engagement. Like Day One (price: $3.99) or TeuxDeux (price: $3/mo), both of which are quite successful. Charge $10/mo or $20/mo and your churn will increase as people think "haven't used that in weeks, waste of money" and cancel. Additionally, I think the term 'open-source' and link to GitHub have no place in your marketing materials at this point. You're gunning for the public now, and your support channel is going to be clogged with questions about why open-source does not mean free or how to install from GitHub. (Also, this is awesome!)
- flaque 7y ago
  > I think the term 'open-source' and link to GitHub have no place in your marketing materials at this point. You're gunning for the public now, and your support channel is going to be clogged with questions about why open-source does not mean free. Agreed, basically only using the open source terminology in dev environments like hacker news. So in our screenshots and marketing materials, it's definitely not going to be anywhere. We've expanded outside of just hacker folks at this point and some folks got really worried about privacy because they thought "open-source" meant that the their thoughts would be shared publicly.
asdfman123 7y ago
I think the price is great and you should keep it. It's the perfect solution for a teenager who really needs help but doesn't want to talk to anyone about it, and doesn't want to tell their parents. I feel if something like this could ever be demonstrated to be as good as/almost as good as therapy, it should be run by a foundation with draconian data privacy rules and offered for free to everyone. This "make some programmers a lot of money and suddenly introduce us to a new future where we don't understand any of the implications of our new incentives" model is really getting tiring and often scary.
- drcongo 7y ago
  All of this ^

jwr 7y ago

I'll post my comment here, because I agree with everything written above and I wouldn't be able to state it as well as @danenania. As for pricing, I would add a second point of view: price the app in a sustainable way right from the start. Estimate the realistic number of subscribers you can get, and set the pricing so that you can continue to develop the app. Too many apps price themselves too low "because otherwise nobody will buy", and end up disappearing anyway, because they weren't able to survive on the small amount of money. I don't have experience with consumer subscriptions. I can only say that in the B2B SaaS world, I don't think you can build a sustainable business with pricing below $40/month. The consumer numbers are likely lower, because you can get more customers with a smaller support load. But I don't think $4/month is a realistic price point.

zdrummond 7y ago

Offhand, I feel your advice is contrary. You suggest increasing the price because "If outcomes from using your app compare favorably to a therapist, shouldn't your pricing reflect that?", but then the next two points on brand and stigma suggest opening it up to all people who want to feel great. I think you need to choose one. You are either a niche therapy compliment/competitor (price insensitive) or a mental wellbeing tool for a broad audience (super price sensitive). I personally hope you keep to the lower price point. I think overall you will do more Good and reach more people. Even if you don't make a unicorn, $4/month from 5% of your market, is still $20M/month. Also, final note, many people suffering from mental illness can not afford therapy. Even $4 would be hard, $50 is impossible.

flaque 7y ago
I think he's definitely correct that we're too cheap right now, but I agree that you can still make quite a company and still be dramatically cheaper than any reasonable option. There's definitely a middle ground.
danenania 7y ago
I wouldn't call therapy a niche market. Therapy apps might be currently, but if they can disrupt the current therapy model to a meaningful extent, they won't be niche for long. While I don't have time to look for better data on this, a quick google turns up this 2004 survey via https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey: 'A similar poll released in May, "Therapy in America 2004," and co-sponsored by Psychology Today magazine and PacifiCare Behavioral Health, found that an estimated 59 million people have received mental health treatment in the past two years...' 59 million people (in just the US... in 2004) is not a niche market! And these people are paying a lot. The problem with trying to be a "mental wellbeing tool for a broad audience" isn't just the market being super price sensitive, it's the market being unwilling pay anything whatsoever, which leads to ads and selling personal data (yuck). "Even if you don't make a unicorn, $4/month from 5% of your market, is still $20M/month." Right, but how will you reach 5% of your market? I don't see much virality here, and $4/mo gives you no room for customer acquisition costs. "Also, final note, many people suffering from mental illness can not afford therapy. Even $4 would be hard, $50 is impossible." I agree, but an unsustainable business can't help anyone at all in the long run.

sadok 7y ago

On price: $50/m would be IMPOSSIBLE for most people to pay. You are backing the $50/m with data viewed from inside your bubble. I'm part of several online groups and communities for people suffering from Anxiety and Depression and out of thousands and thousands of people there, both in the US and around the world, I'd say only 20% have the money to go to therapy. Your data showing that "a lot of people are paying a lot of money" is already biased because it's based on a particular socioeconomic segment. Do you want another data POV? "...only 70 percent [of americans] feel they have adequate access to mental health care." - https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey https://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug04/survey Please be mindful when making comments like these, as not all of us are as lucky and/or privileged as you are. OP: Your pricing is fine, probably $9 "ala netflix", that is still low enough for most people. Awesome product!

danenania 7y ago
Wanting to make a product cheap and therefore available to as many people as possible is a noble instinct—especially a product like this one. I totally get it. But unfortunately that doesn’t change the fact that for many reasons, selling a product at a very low price point is an extremely difficult way to start a new business. Can it be done? Yes, of course, but you better be able to either raise tons of money or acquire customers very cheaply. An app that costs 15% of what weekly therapy does and is similarly effective will help a lot of people. A company that dies because it can’t afford to advertise will help no one.

riwsky 7y ago

Though also, on pricing: it’s not just a question of what the app offers, but also of what competitors are offering, and at what price. For example: the company that did Monument Valley teamed up with some doctors to do a very similar app in this space called Moodnotes* , and priced it at a one-time payment of $5. That is to say: I am glad for Quirk’s existence - if it gets the useful techniques of CBT in front of even one person that wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, then it’s done good in the world and should be proud, and has earned that $4/month - but I understand why they aren’t using the cost of talk therapy as their point of reference for competitive pricing. * https://www.ustwo.com/work/moodnotes https://www.ustwo.com/work/moodnotes

danenania 7y ago
Yeah, that's a good point. I think it all comes down to framing. Are you selling a "mood-tracking app" or "a self-administered therapy system" (that happens to use an app as one piece of the system)? The former anchors you very low (too low, I would argue, to build a sustainable business). The latter anchors you against weekly $100+ therapy sessions, which gives you vastly more breathing room. The flip side is that customers will of course be a lot more discerning and demanding with the latter framing, as they should be. It will be a lot harder to get product-market fit, but if you do, you'll be able to build a great business on top of it, rather than just being another competitor in a race to the bottom.