Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 95 posts

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#41
post #2

I recommended Quirk to my girlfriend a few months ago. Still haven't tried it myself. You seem to know what you're doing so my only advice is to not take VC money or you'll probably be pushed into making this app a general health app that is a bit useful for everyone instead of very useful to a lot of people, for the sake of money.

Does the app store any data in their servers? I'm hardly obsessed with data privacy but I would never, ever, ever want my mental health data out there for some data scientist to play around with and manipulate.

Facebook knowing all the dumb crap I do on their platform really pales in comparison to the data privacy issues of an app. If I get a whiff of anything negative, I'm not using it. I'm suspicious already.

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#42
post #15

Nice work! This is a great idea and something I've thought should exist since getting interested in CBT a few months back. Before even trying the app, here are some thoughts. - On pricing: $4/mo seems like a difficult price point to build a business around, and it doesn't reflect the value you're offering. People pay hundreds/thousands per month to therapists to improve their mental health. If outcomes from using you…

WOAH thank you for the in-depth feedback dude! On Pricing - Agreed. This pricing mostly came out of a bit of nativity on my part. I assumed that wanting to make something accessible meant being really cheap. But we're very quickly realizing that both we won't be able to sustain this price and also that by having this price, we're basically telling people it doesn't work. The reason why we haven't done too much on pri…

I think the price is great and you should keep it. It's the perfect solution for a teenager who really needs help but doesn't want to talk to anyone about it, and doesn't want to tell their parents.

I feel if something like this could ever be demonstrated to be as good as/almost as good as therapy, it should be run by a foundation with draconian data privacy rules and offered for free to everyone. This "make some programmers a lot of money and suddenly introduce us to a new future where we don't understand any of the implications of our new incentives" model is really getting tiring and often scary.

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#43
post #2

I recommended Quirk to my girlfriend a few months ago. Still haven't tried it myself. You seem to know what you're doing so my only advice is to not take VC money or you'll probably be pushed into making this app a general health app that is a bit useful for everyone instead of very useful to a lot of people, for the sake of money.

Don’t take VC money? They are a YC company. That ship already sailed.

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#44
post #15

Nice work! This is a great idea and something I've thought should exist since getting interested in CBT a few months back. Before even trying the app, here are some thoughts. - On pricing: $4/mo seems like a difficult price point to build a business around, and it doesn't reflect the value you're offering. People pay hundreds/thousands per month to therapists to improve their mental health. If outcomes from using you…

WOAH thank you for the in-depth feedback dude! On Pricing - Agreed. This pricing mostly came out of a bit of nativity on my part. I assumed that wanting to make something accessible meant being really cheap. But we're very quickly realizing that both we won't be able to sustain this price and also that by having this price, we're basically telling people it doesn't work. The reason why we haven't done too much on pri…

Happy to help! I've been through a similar process on pricing with my startup so I completely understand the difficulty.

Makes sense on freemium--I think it's good to first make sure you can satisfy users at whatever price point is sustainable and then later you can open up the floodgates via freemium when you're ready for the volume.

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#45
How do you guarantee privacy?

I know it's open source, but I can't see how I can check that the app store version is an exact copy of the OSS version.

Obviously, I really would not like to see my most intimate thoughts end up for sale at some information broker.

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#46
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WOAH thank you for the in-depth feedback dude! On Pricing - Agreed. This pricing mostly came out of a bit of nativity on my part. I assumed that wanting to make something accessible meant being really cheap. But we're very quickly realizing that both we won't be able to sustain this price and also that by having this price, we're basically telling people it doesn't work. The reason why we haven't done too much on pri…

I think the price is great and you should keep it. It's the perfect solution for a teenager who really needs help but doesn't want to talk to anyone about it, and doesn't want to tell their parents. I feel if something like this could ever be demonstrated to be as good as/almost as good as therapy, it should be run by a foundation with draconian data privacy rules and offered for free to everyone. This "make some pro…

All of this ^

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#48
post #2

I recommended Quirk to my girlfriend a few months ago. Still haven't tried it myself. You seem to know what you're doing so my only advice is to not take VC money or you'll probably be pushed into making this app a general health app that is a bit useful for everyone instead of very useful to a lot of people, for the sake of money.

Does the app store any data in their servers? I'm hardly obsessed with data privacy but I would never, ever, ever want my mental health data out there for some data scientist to play around with and manipulate. Facebook knowing all the dumb crap I do on their platform really pales in comparison to the data privacy issues of an app. If I get a whiff of anything negative, I'm not using it. I'm suspicious already.

No, it doesn't store you mental health thoughts on any servers. They're all stored only on your device.

The caveats are below:

We collect anonymous, aggregate (as in "user-213sdfewfefwa") events. This is stuff like: > "user-awefawewa21312aef" opened the app > "user-efaoiwejf21321few" started a free trial

These are used for aggregate stats like "how many people use Quirk" or "do people read the articles?" This is recorded by the phone stores anyway, but we do this both so we can get some more Quirk-specific stuff and so we can combine Android and iOS data.

We also collect some base information on your phone. For example, what type of phone you have or what language you're using. This is basically a requirement to debug stuff; since there's a lot of bugs that crop up only on certain OS/Phone/languages.

If your phone crashes or there's an error thrown, we use Sentry to report it. This lib will collect some basic info like phone types, IPs, and then the stack trace of course.

In the future, we may provide a way for you to share a thought with a trusted friend or therapist. This has been a highly requested feature, especially by folks who would otherwise huddle around their phone during an appointment. To do this, our plan to use an expiring, private link. That means your thoughts will be stored in raw form in a DB and then get deleted within X days. This would only happen with your explicit consent and it's only for a thought you share rather than your whole list of thoughts. It's a button you have to press EVERY time, not an "automatic share my thoughts" sort of thing.

We'll also be adding a cloud-sync feature at some point so you never have to lose your thoughts when you switch phones. When we do this, all the thoughts will be end-to-end encrypted; so no Quirk employee will ever be able to see your raw thoughts.

Because we're a paid product, we have little incentive to read your thoughts or strip-mine your data. We're in the business of making you feel better; we're not reading your deepest darkest secrets to figure out how to sell you shoes or something. We don't want to know your thoughts. Unless someone explicitly tells us otherwise, we treat them like passwords.

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#49
post #45

How do you guarantee privacy? I know it's open source, but I can't see how I can check that the app store version is an exact copy of the OSS version. Obviously, I really would not like to see my most intimate thoughts end up for sale at some information broker.

You can't.

I think we're a reasonable bet because you know where the money is coming from. We have no incentive to sell your thoughts to anyone, because you're literally the one paying us.

But you'll really just have to trust us. I'm a real person behind the scenes here and I don't have any desire to read your thoughts. When I show people Quirk, I wipe everything off my phone and hand them a fresh copy. I don't want anyone reading mine either.

So we don't store them off the phone. And if we ever do, they'll be end-to-end encrypted.

Re: Launch HN: Quirk (YC S19) – Open-Source Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

#50
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WOAH thank you for the in-depth feedback dude! On Pricing - Agreed. This pricing mostly came out of a bit of nativity on my part. I assumed that wanting to make something accessible meant being really cheap. But we're very quickly realizing that both we won't be able to sustain this price and also that by having this price, we're basically telling people it doesn't work. The reason why we haven't done too much on pri…

Happy to help! I've been through a similar process on pricing with my startup so I completely understand the difficulty. Makes sense on freemium--I think it's good to first make sure you can satisfy users at whatever price point is sustainable and then later you can open up the floodgates via freemium when you're ready for the volume.

> I think it's good to first make sure you can satisfy users at whatever price point is sustainable and then later you can open up the floodgates via freemium when you're ready for the volume.

Exactly, would much rather be sustainable first.

Post reply on HN