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

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

#61

Post by tomsayer »

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.…

This is really good feedback! I HOPE that most of the work we have to do is in communicating what we do rather than actually what we do. But without trust we've got nothing )given this is about a parents kids) and so it's a really important thing to get right either way.

I realize this doesn't change your first impression, but the website is our 'business frontpage.' None of the service (which does definitely include sensitive information) takes place through the site.

Our PP is a bit boiler plate and I think the main thing is to make it clearer about the things you've mentioned and separate the service from use of the website. So for example we do track who clicks on what on the website using things like Segment, but we don't do that in the tech product you use to communicate with the expert.

I'd love to chat more about learning if it's in the communication or if it's what we're doing? If you're willing, could you email tom@trustle.com? (And of course no expectation to do so! You've been so helpful with what you've shared so far.)

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

#62

Post by avip »

This is indeed pretty depressing.

The ongoing disintegration of the normative human society, loss of extended family structures, and escalating segmentation of what used to be a community to different age and class groups well separated in spacetime is a world-wide disaster with far-reaching ripples.

One of the obvious consequences is for-profit organizations entering the vacuum left by communities. Of course Elizabeth et. al. are not to blame, they cannot fix reality and nor can I.

And yet... this is just depressing.

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

#63

Post by tomsayer »

avip wrote: post #62

This is indeed pretty depressing. The ongoing disintegration of the normative human society, loss of extended family structures, and escalating segmentation of what used to be a community to different age and class groups well separated in spacetime is a world-wide disaster with far-reaching ripples. One of the obvious consequences is for-profit organizations entering the vacuum left by communities. Of course Elizabe…

(I'm Tom, Elizabeth's cofounder) - I agree with the societal reflection. Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam really speaks to this so well.

While one of the changes we think about is that, the more positive one is that we now know SO much about how the young brain develops. We want parents to have access to that in a meaningful way. I often use the healthcare analogy; when someone wants support with their health (whether proactive wellness or reactive treatment) they'll often go to a doctor which is great (and why it's so bad when people don't have healthcare). Raising a child is of course different in many ways, but the internet is awash with generic, impersonal advice whereas we hope to bring back the human connection. We're excited to be able to bring this growing field of expertize to parents in a way that is deeply human at it's heart.

But yes... changes in communities are still depressing.

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

#64

Post by zoomablemind »

eba7keb wrote: post #14
jawns wrote: post #7

I'm an author of child-development books and spend a lot of time keeping abreast of research-backed parenting advice, so this is really interesting to me. It seems like you need to position this service very carefully, since there is likely not a bright line between some of the issues parents might come to you for, versus seeing a pediatrician, behavioral health provider, or other health care provider. And indeed, tr…

Lots of great thoughts here, thank you for sharing them. The line between parent support and parent coaching and behavioral health requires great care in navigation - I agree with you. Before I started Trustle, I worked both as a child psychologist in a traditional capacity, and provided video-based parent coaching. There are a LOT of parent support organizations that don't use credentialed providers because of the n…

Would your experts 'diagnoze' a child based solely on parent's presentation of issue the child/family is experiencing? In simple cases this may be reasonable, but such common issue as tantrums may be deep and multifaceted.

This brings another aspect of the responsiblity of your experts for giving any corrective advice to the parent. What is the ethical balance between giving a wrong advice vs. right advice that didn't work?

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

#65

Post by tomsayer »

nihakue wrote: post #48

Hi, looks interesting. I'm still figuring out if it's a good idea for us, but I noticed a typo in the FAQs you probably care about: "By helping you to think proactively about your goals and the environment you want to create to your family"

Thank you! Changed. I also see I said three ways in that FAQ and only have two.

Would love for you to try us! We offer a full 30-day money back guarantee as we know this is something parents want to be confident in.

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

#66

Post by OJFord »

avip wrote: post #62

This is indeed pretty depressing. The ongoing disintegration of the normative human society, loss of extended family structures, and escalating segmentation of what used to be a community to different age and class groups well separated in spacetime is a world-wide disaster with far-reaching ripples. One of the obvious consequences is for-profit organizations entering the vacuum left by communities. Of course Elizabe…

Yes, my reaction was pretty much 'Ugh, they'll probably be very successful and make a tonne of money from the 'there's an app for that' generation, but ugh.'

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

#67

Post by TeMPOraL »

tomsayer wrote: post #61
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.…

This is really good feedback! I HOPE that most of the work we have to do is in communicating what we do rather than actually what we do. But without trust we've got nothing )given this is about a parents kids) and so it's a really important thing to get right either way. I realize this doesn't change your first impression, but the website is our 'business frontpage.' None of the service (which does definitely include…

Thank you for responding. I'll elaborate more in an e-mail, but it seems that it's more about communication. For instance, the difference in amount of data collection and sharing you do through the "business frontpage" vs. actual service is critical, and I think it should be communicated directly - with a working adblocker, your analytics on the frontpage don't impact me much, but your data collection and sharing policies for the service itself are critical for me as a potential customer.

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this way, so perhaps consider describing the privacy aspects of the service itself somewhere on the front page.

EDIT:

I had a productive e-mail conversation with 'tomsayer which alleviated my concerns about the data processing surrounding the service itself. I look forward to the improvements on the site!

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

#68

Post by mattrp »

tomsayer wrote: post #57
mattrp wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

It seems like you’re being thoughtful about your approach. Another question that comes to mind - how will you curate your providers? I think that’s been a challenge for similar models in other areas - they end up with a ton of providers ... too many initially to serve the customers they have...

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

#69

Post by tomsayer »

SpecieCo wrote: post #40
awillen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is kind of a baffling response to me... how many parents are involved enough to download an app or pay for problems with their kids? Really? People download apps for everything, but you think they'd be too lazy to do it for their children? And spending money - you think parents wouldn't pay to help their kids behave better or to solve problems? They already do this - they pay for all kinds of toys/books/devices…

Most parents downloading an app to help solve an issue with their children are parents from a specific demographic, educated, with gainful employment - this limits the demographic that will use this product.

We don't really think of ourselves as an app (although we use an app to facilitate the service right now.) It's direct, personal support that provides the value; the app is the access mechanism.

We have plans to offer different access mechanisms in future to make this accessible to more people.

Our hope (and belief) is that all types of parents will appreciate having access to someone with expertise - how they access them can differ.

(That felt like a very odd way of responding but I hope it makes sense!)

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

#70

Post by tomsayer »

blue_eyes1978 wrote: post #19
eba7keb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We think there is a great opportunity to learn about efficacy in child development and parenting practices here, and are very excited by the potential that brings!

would your team be willing to allow anonymized data to be used for analysis/research papers? Or do you have that in place for in-house researchers to publish?

I think we're waayy to early for that but I hope we get to the stage where this is a question :)

My first reaction is that our goal is to support parents and we'd want to be very careful before doing anything with their data. BUT if we can support the field at the same time as being 100% transparent with our families it would be great (e.g. they'd have to explicitly opt-in.)

But again, a great problem for the future :)

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