Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents • Hacker News Board

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#51

Post by jbob2000 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:05 PM UTC

eba7keb wrote: post #22

jbob2000 wrote: post #17

How do I sign up? Where are the prices? Your landing page sent me in loops when I clicked Get Started. I'm curious who you're targeting with this product. Wealthier families tend to have nannies, who will match expertise with implementation. Middle class send their kids to daycare or after-school programs, who also match expertise and implementation. Since this service is just expertise, who are the families that a)…

Thanks for your comment! It seems some companies have a spam filter on our site that blocks our sign-up and payment sections. Perhaps try on your phone (off a work network). There should be a sign-up flow right away (try this, which might get you all the way to coach match, if it stops, then it's the filter): https://www.trustle.com/challenges/general-support We support a range of families on Trustle: While lots of p…

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I am working at my office and your assumption that the sign up flow is blocked is probably true. You may want to fix that though, because my company has 75,000+ employees, who would probably sign up or investigate this service while at work.

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#52

Post by mattrp » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:06 PM UTC

brianglick wrote: post #36

mattrp wrote: post #25

As a privacy-conscious parent with five children, all of whom are gifted in numerous ways, we do often speak with a psychologist about how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into good behavior, etc. I couldn’t imagine not having such a guide at our side in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family. However, I would also caution you - and pa…

> in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family A bit off-topic, but would love pointers to your top books / content on how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into something more positive, etc.

The kids love anything by Susan Wise Bauer. The Story of the World audiobooks narrated by her father are in constant rotation in the car and these provide a jumping off point to go deeper into topics. There are a few used booksellers on eBay that sell just about any title for $3.99, so when I see something that is related to a recent topic, I just get it. Magic Treehouse is great too - we found someone selling their entire collection on Craigslist.. occasionally I introduce challenges like how to calculate the orbit of a satellite (we all failed to find the Starlink train but we learned our mistake). We also take lots of field trips. Wildlife is an endless topic of interest... we introduced iPads and raspberry pi’s early on but this was an absolute disaster so right now it’s old school: books, paper, experiences and lots of talking.

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#53

Post by chupa-chups » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

Remove this.

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#54

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

jamiequint wrote: post #46

TeMPOraL wrote: post #38

Obligatory surveillance capitalism subthread incoming. 1) uBlock Origin blocked 30 things within a minute of loading your main page. I understand you're a startup and want to measure things, but given the extremely sensitive nature of your subject domain, this is not a reassuring welcome. 2) Privacy Policy - it looks like you've made some headway towards being compliant with EU regulations, but stopped halfway short.…

They load Google Tag Manager, Google Retargeting Pixel, Segment, Facebook Connect, and SmartLook (which looks like some kind of analytics package). This should not be controversial as this would be found on pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user analytics, it's not really something to get all worked up over. Also, I would probably recommend that small startups not put much effort into complying w…

> This should not be controversial as this would be found on pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user analytics, it's not really something to get all worked up over.

The fact that this is found on so many websites is a controversial thing already.

FWIW, all I'm doing here is providing a (however small) market signal. They're free to ignore it; no hard feelings. I am in the target market - a parent of a small child, interested in using the service and with enough spare income to afford it. But I don't like the aspects I mentioned.

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#55

Post by mattrp » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:08 PM UTC

JSeymourATL wrote: post #27

mattrp wrote: post #25

As a privacy-conscious parent with five children, all of whom are gifted in numerous ways, we do often speak with a psychologist about how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into good behavior, etc. I couldn’t imagine not having such a guide at our side in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family. However, I would also caution you - and pa…

Upvote for any parent with 5+ Kiddos!

Thank you!

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#56

Post by cjamesd » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

eba7keb wrote: post #23

cjamesd wrote: post #20

I have had basically the same idea, after feeling the problem myself as a parent of young kids. There is so much garbage on Google. Social science is always going to lack the consensus of a hard science, but we can do better than content farms that have assembled articles from freelancers who probably don't have children and are mustering up advice that's barely common sense. I hope for your success!

Yes! We absolutely agree! Did you pursue the idea at all or have any thoughts about doing so? I would love for you to check us out and let us know what you think!

I didn't pursue the idea in any meaningful way. My idea was basically expert advice codified into a flow/tree, available on demand through a mobile app. E.g., my kid is behaving badly, so I can go to the app, it asks me the questions my expert would ask me, I easily relay information back to it and receive helpful suggestions (how to control my own temper, how to interpret kids behavior, etc). Bite-sized stuff that you can use in the highly urgent/desperate moments parents find themselves in from time to time.

I bet your company, if successful, would be well positioned to make that at some point in the future. There are some tricky questions there, both in terms of effectiveness and ethics, about using an AI-powered chatbot instead of an actual expert. The experts are still needed but whether we're close to approximating human expert delivery of this type of advice with technology is an interesting question! Again, best of luck and I'll check you guys out.

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#57

Post by tomsayer » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:14 PM UTC

mattrp wrote: post #44

tomsayer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tom here (Elizabeth's cofounder.) Completely valid worries in today's world! But rest assured we have no intention of doing that. We want to use technology to make this service accessible and affordable to as many people as possible - for example being able to video chat rather than go to a physical location. But that's as far as we want to go.

Very good to hear that. How do you intend to use ML (I read one of the founders has an ML background)? Also what makes the service different from healthgrades other than facilitating the video call? How do you intend to ensure your providers follow hippa and/or aren’t charlatans? I’m genuinely intrigued... so above aren’t intended to shoot down your business.

:) We're new so these questions are great as they help us learn!

Healthgrades is for finding a clinical service; we are not a health service. We often use the term coach (which isn't a perfect term but the best we have right now.) We hope it is an ongoing relationship and not just used when somethings 'going wrong.' Another way we sometimes talk about it is that it's like a really good friend who happens to have an incredible background in child development. With that in mind, we don't fall under hippa as we don't discuss medical issues, although we aim to be at hippa level regardless.

Yup - Catalin has a background in ML. We're not working on any ML stuff right now - he's just an incredible technologist! The closest I can see right now is us being able to maintain a body of knowledge similar to how most doctors use Up To Date. We could then use ML to surface the information to the coach / expert so they always have the most up to date knowledge at their finger tips.

We want to be as efficient as possible so we can support as many parents as possible, and as effective as possible so we provide the best support. But we never want to replace the direct human connection, nor to use data in any way that parents wouldn't want - we know if we lose any trust we've got nothing!

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#58

Post by brianglick » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:18 PM UTC

mattrp wrote: post #52

brianglick wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family A bit off-topic, but would love pointers to your top books / content on how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into something more positive, etc.

The kids love anything by Susan Wise Bauer. The Story of the World audiobooks narrated by her father are in constant rotation in the car and these provide a jumping off point to go deeper into topics. There are a few used booksellers on eBay that sell just about any title for $3.99, so when I see something that is related to a recent topic, I just get it. Magic Treehouse is great too - we found someone selling their…

Thank you!

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#59

Post by tomsayer » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:19 PM UTC

gowld wrote: post #45

mattrp wrote: post #25

As a privacy-conscious parent with five children, all of whom are gifted in numerous ways, we do often speak with a psychologist about how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior into good behavior, etc. I couldn’t imagine not having such a guide at our side in addition to all the books and content we consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family. However, I would also caution you - and pa…

How do psychologists learn what's good for children without studying the population at scale?

This is probably going to be unsatisfactory as it will be a bit vague but I'm going to try ... :)

I think part of the challenge we're trying to help with is that lots of places (blogs, websites) say 'this is good for children.' Which could be true (if backed by the research) but that takes an averages approach (I love the book End of Average by Todd Rose.) It sounds a little millenial, but there is no average child and so an approach the uses averages often doesn't work.

Our experts get to know the specific family, philosophies and kids, and then bring their expertise (which includes the population scale research) to support them in a way that makes sense for them.

It's a bit like where we do population-level research on health, but we don't then expect that everyone take the same approach based on a few inputs. We still get them to talk to a doctor.

Re: Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) – On-demand child development experts for parents

#60

Post by jamiequint » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:27 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #54

jamiequint wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They load Google Tag Manager, Google Retargeting Pixel, Segment, Facebook Connect, and SmartLook (which looks like some kind of analytics package). This should not be controversial as this would be found on pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user analytics, it's not really something to get all worked up over. Also, I would probably recommend that small startups not put much effort into complying w…

> This should not be controversial as this would be found on pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user analytics, it's not really something to get all worked up over. The fact that this is found on so many websites is a controversial thing already. FWIW, all I'm doing here is providing a (however small) market signal. They're free to ignore it; no hard feelings. I am in the target market - a parent…

> The fact that this is found on so many websites is a controversial thing already.

It's controversial to you, it's not controversial to the vast majority of people. Given that, the downsides of e.g. not being able to retarget advertising, not being able to understand effectively how users are using the website (with minimal effort), etc aren't worth the costs.

Say they were to just have those trackers pre-login and post-login there is nothing, they probably lose more business trying to emphasize this arcane fact that only extreme privacy-nerds care about on their homepage versus simply just ignoring them.