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Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

workorpay.com

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Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#21

Post by BeetleB »

nemo1618 wrote: post #13

For all the people asking how this differs from Beeminder: my first reaction was "finally, a version of Beeminder that lets me pay $1000!" Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).

> Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).

Beeminder's model is a bit different, in that the payment amount keeps going up if you keep falling off track. The current upper amount you can pay is $7290 (as in once you hit $7290, it will keep charging you that amount).

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#22

Post by BeetleB »

khromem wrote: post #18
nemo1618 wrote: post #13

For all the people asking how this differs from Beeminder: my first reaction was "finally, a version of Beeminder that lets me pay $1000!" Beeminder is obviously amazing, but it really "loses its sting" when you can't set a penalty higher than $25 (give or take -- I don't know what the current limit is).

Exactly! I have used beeminder and stickk. But there were a few things that bugged me about them. 1) Theres no option to have a referee that isn't friends or family 2) Its automated, and no human actually checks up to see if you are staying on track. 3) You can't really set huge stakes

> Theres no option to have a referee that isn't friends or family

Has stickk changed? When it was new you could set anyone to be your referee.

> Its automated, and no human actually checks up to see if you are staying on track.

With stickk, isn't the human referee the one who checks up on your progress?

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#23

Post by the_only_law »

johnthewise wrote: post #15

I strongly believe external motivation kills the inner motivation. Maybe that is the goal here, by killing it completely so you can't ever think of depending on it(?). For me personally, I always found these kind of tools that helps trick one's self into doing or not doing things, very soul crushing. It's almost like trying to beat yourself into submission, disowning the part of yourself. If you can't make yourself t…

> If you can't make yourself to do something, maybe you shouldn't do it?

That attitude probably works if it’s some sort of leisure activity, but someone who struggles to do routine, necessary tasks might not want to just give up on them.

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#24

Post by klyrs »

khromem wrote: post #7
nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you incorporated? Are you a non-profit? How do you make money?

We are a New York LLC. We're not incorporated at the moment. We make money through a subscription model. We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. We want our incentives to be aligned correctly!

> We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing.

This is how naive good-meaning founders start evil parasitic businesses that don't realize their true potential until the buyout...

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#25

Post by vasco »

khromem wrote: post #19
johnthewise wrote: post #15

I strongly believe external motivation kills the inner motivation. Maybe that is the goal here, by killing it completely so you can't ever think of depending on it(?). For me personally, I always found these kind of tools that helps trick one's self into doing or not doing things, very soul crushing. It's almost like trying to beat yourself into submission, disowning the part of yourself. If you can't make yourself t…

The role of this is to bridge the gaps between the spikes of internal motivation. A lot of times people start working on something new and for the first few days they have enough motivation to stick with it. But when that disappears a lot of people just quit. They don't stick with the new activity long enough for the next surge of internal motivation. We believe this service can help people grind it out for a week or…

Why would you grind out something you found you don't want to do? Or on another note, if something really should get done, I think their argument is that this sort of crutch makes you lose the muscle of "just do it and get on with it".

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#27

Post by khromem »

constantinum wrote: post #8

How is this different from Beeminder — afaik popularised "commitment contract". I'm an active user of Beeminder; have 4 active commitments. More than feature to feature comparison, Beeminder has an amazing blog, and an ever supportive community to lean on to. [links] https://www.beeminder.com/home https://blog.beeminder.com/ https://forum.beeminder.com/

Beeminder is great. However, it's all automated and you cannot set huge penalties for single goals. Also, It's limited to things that can be verified from fitness trackers and other apps thats many people do not use.

WorkOrPay tries to add more human interactions. We text users daily to make sure they aren't starting slack off. We help them form reasonable goals. Do verifications manually, so the goals can really be anything.

We are a mix between beeminder and a life coach.

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#28

Post by khromem »

BeetleB wrote: post #26

$20/mo is expensive. Beeminder charges $8/mo (and they stop charging if you stop using it).

Beeminder is largely automated.

We try to offer much more human support. Such as daily texts and manual verification of goals instead of just pulling data from an API.

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#29

Post by khromem »

gnicholas wrote: post #16
khromem wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a New York LLC. We're not incorporated at the moment. We make money through a subscription model. We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. We want our incentives to be aligned correctly!

> We do not make anything from the contracts because it seemed wrong to profit from our users failing. We want our incentives to be aligned correctly! I assumed that the monthly fee was on top of a percentage fee on lost bets, which other platforms charge. You should make this more prominent on the site — aligned incentives are great!

Good point. Just updated the site to make that clear. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: WorkOrPay – Set goals, form contracts, pay a penalty if you fail

#30

Post by stansm »

I’ve recently got a loan (~35k) with the idea of using that money for marketing once I’ll be done with development. It kind of works the same way - I’ll either launch the product and pay it off early (paying just 3% of the amount in this case) or keep paying 9% interest rate for 6 years. An important difference is that this money can actually work for me, when I’ll launch the product which provides positive motivation for me.
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