Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

workorpay.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 67 posts

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

#51

Post by zarmin »

trhr wrote: post #50
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!

Since you're allowing people to donate to charities or "anti-charities," you should just allow the user to specify a % fee that goes to you. If I set up a $1,000 contract to go to some Nazi org if I fail, I'd much rather $1 go to the Nazi org and $999 to you.

Sounds like you'd be more motivated to hit that goal with the payment distribution as is.

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

#54

Post by rmbyrro »

BeetleB wrote: post #34
khromem wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. If people value this at $12/mo, that's great. It has no use for me, and will likely detract many from joining. When Beeminder raised their rates from $4/mo to $8/mo, they put in all kinds of mitigations for the customer: 1. Not charged if you don't have any active goals. 2. If you…

The bottom line are the results.

I bet many people failed trying services like beeminder. The stakes are high. If it works, the upside is huge. If If doesn't, just a couple dozen dollars lost. Experimenting is a no brainer.

If it works, 12 or 20 dollars/mo is ridiculously cheap.

I'd pay $200/mo if it works and helps me achieve more in less time. Many would be able to recoup this investment in one or two productive days...

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

#55

Post by mpalmer »

reggieband wrote: post #42

I recall a Twilight Zone movie "Cat's Eye" and a sketch from that including James Woods called "Dying For a Smoke". The premise is a man wants to quit smoking so he goes to a firm called Quitters Inc. where he signs a contract. If they catch him smoking they will escalate the punishments against him. After a few relatively tame punishments for sneaking a cigarette, he gets caught smoking again and so they kidnap his…

Originally a short story by Stephen King: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quitters,_Inc.

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

#57

Post by BeetleB »

rmbyrro wrote: post #54
BeetleB wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If people value this at $12/mo, that's great. It has no use for me, and will likely detract many from joining. When Beeminder raised their rates from $4/mo to $8/mo, they put in all kinds of mitigations for the customer: 1. Not charged if you don't have any active goals. 2. If you…

The bottom line are the results. I bet many people failed trying services like beeminder. The stakes are high. If it works, the upside is huge. If If doesn't, just a couple dozen dollars lost. Experimenting is a no brainer. If it works, 12 or 20 dollars/mo is ridiculously cheap. I'd pay $200/mo if it works and helps me achieve more in less time. Many would be able to recoup this investment in one or two productive da…

> I'd pay $200/mo if it works and helps me achieve more in less time.

Think of fitness programs. Many would pay $200 per month for one that works. But are they willing to pay that much for each one they try till they find the one that works? The data is clear that they don't.

There is little innovation in this particular offering. Why go with this service vs other ones?

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

#58

Post by khromem »

adamzerner wrote: post #41
khromem wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> However, it's all automated... Also, It's limited to things that can be verified from fitness trackers and other apps thats many people do not use. That isn't true. You can track progress on a goal manually, as well as automatically. For example, I used to use Beeminder to track how many push ups I did.

True, but if you add manually then there is no verification

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

#59

Post by neya »

khromem wrote: post #27
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…

>We are a mix between beeminder and a life coach

This sounds like a great product idea. Screw automated follow ups. I have tried it abs it doesn’t work. I would prefer a personal touch anyday!

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

#60

Post by imtringued »

vasco wrote: post #25
khromem wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

I have to do X. I don't want to do X but I must finish X. Instead of procrastinating and wasting my entire day on avoiding X, it would be more productive to do X and then do the things I am actually interested in.
Post reply on HN