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What is most interesting to me is that the business model he rejected[1] is not just the one of his app, but essentially the one used by almost all therapists.

by ajb 6y ago

What is most interesting to me is that the business model he rejected[1] is not just the one of his app, but essentially the one used by almost all therapists. [1] https://github.com/Flaque/quirk https://github.com/Flaque/quirk: "Unfortunately, in order for the business to work and for us to pay ourselves, we needed folks to be subscribed for a fair amount of time. But that wasn't the case and we honestly should have predicted it given my own experience: as people did better, they unsubscribed. Unfortunately, the opposite was true as well, if folks weren't doing better, but were giving it a good shot, they would stay subscribed longer. So in order to continue Quirk, a future Quirk would need to make people feel worse for longer, or otherwise not help the people we signed up to help. If the incentives of the business weren't aligned with the people, it would have been naive to assume that we could easily fix it as the organization grew. We didn't want to go down that path, so we pivoted the company."

deleted 6y ago
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flaque 6y ago
Not at all! Therapists make more in a single session than a consumer subscription app would in an entire year, and they're limited to the amount a single therapist can accomplish. Most therapists have an entirely booked schedule; they don't have nearly the incentive to keep people longer that mobile apps do. They literally cannot handle more clients, so from a business perspective, they're much better off helping people, getting good reviews, and then charging more for the limited time they have.
- ajb 6y ago
  Although you are probably right that the situation is worse for apps, in my experience the incentive of actual therapists is still sufficient to prevent them admitting that their client would be better served elsewhere. Limited sample size, of course.
- jimkleiber 6y ago
  I really appreciate you openly talking about these struggles. I built an app back in 2012 called iFeelio for emotional micro-journaling and one of the goals I set for it was for me (and then others) to get better at expressing how I felt so I didn't have to use the app anymore. As you expressed on Quirk's Github readme, that doesn't jive with a subscription-based model: if people improve, they stop paying. I also didn't want to make the app addictive, another thing that seems to clash with the subscription model. One thing I contemplated but didn't have the courage to do was to charge a very high initial price to use the app. It was on Android at the time and I wanted to charge the max price, which I think was like ~$200, to download the app, one time. Did you think about doing something similar? What alternatives did you contemplate to the subscription model? Is there a way to price it with an anticipated 3-month retention or other time-limited retention? Would love to hear any thoughts you have on this!

by ajb 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

flaque 6y ago

Not at all! Therapists make more in a single session than a consumer subscription app would in an entire year, and they're limited to the amount a single therapist can accomplish. Most therapists have an entirely booked schedule; they don't have nearly the incentive to keep people longer that mobile apps do. They literally cannot handle more clients, so from a business perspective, they're much better off helping people, getting good reviews, and then charging more for the limited time they have.

ajb 6y ago
Although you are probably right that the situation is worse for apps, in my experience the incentive of actual therapists is still sufficient to prevent them admitting that their client would be better served elsewhere. Limited sample size, of course.
jimkleiber 6y ago
I really appreciate you openly talking about these struggles. I built an app back in 2012 called iFeelio for emotional micro-journaling and one of the goals I set for it was for me (and then others) to get better at expressing how I felt so I didn't have to use the app anymore. As you expressed on Quirk's Github readme, that doesn't jive with a subscription-based model: if people improve, they stop paying. I also didn't want to make the app addictive, another thing that seems to clash with the subscription model. One thing I contemplated but didn't have the courage to do was to charge a very high initial price to use the app. It was on Android at the time and I wanted to charge the max price, which I think was like ~$200, to download the app, one time. Did you think about doing something similar? What alternatives did you contemplate to the subscription model? Is there a way to price it with an anticipated 3-month retention or other time-limited retention? Would love to hear any thoughts you have on this!