Shine Chaudhuri
@_shinec · Boost
Thanks for the hunt @robjama! Hey everybody, we’re excited to be on Product Hunt today!
Boost is a mobile app that uses social and financial stakes, as well as data, to help you follow through and accomplish your Health & Fitness goals.
Make a goal on the app and input how much money you are willing to wager that you will reach the goal by a specific date. If you achieve the goal, you keep your stake. If you don't, you lose your money. 💸
Boost uses data collected by HealthKit enabled apps, wearable technology and the phone itself, to track your progress.
So what about the funds from unsuccessful goals? We donate a significant percentage to charity at the end of every month. We’re launching with a local charity and we will be adding more in the coming months.
@PaulYW_ and I have been working on Boost for the past few months. The app came from the desire to find the best way to stay motivated to stick to the fitness goals we set.
Consequences and incentives are powerful drivers to help people achieve their goals. Boost uses the proven concept of Loss Aversion. The idea is that losing money doesn’t feel good, so you’ll do what you can to keep it. Some studies show that our aversion to loss is twice as powerful, psychologically, as gains. 💰
Even though using HealthKit data has benefits, we really like the social element of being held accountable by your friends & family. So we’ve launched with the ability to share a summary of your goal as a Boost Card.
Set a goal, tell the world, walk your talk.🚀
We’re launching on iPhone now, and we have many plans on improving the product in the future.
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback!
3sharetweet・
Danial
@dany20mh · Student
@_shinec so technically if you achieve the goal, you don't get anything, you just not getting charge.
There is Pact App, which doing the same, but at least they give you money for completing your goal.
2sharetweet・
Ben Bowden
@benbowdene · Found DigitalBreeze.net
@dany20mh @_shinec I would imagine that sort of system could be easily abused which is why you wouldn't want to go in that direction. They could still reward the user with discounts of some sort by using something like kiip.
1sharetweet・
Danial
@dany20mh · Student
@benbowdene @_shinec Why would it be abused?
I been using Pact for more than 4 years now and I been doing my goal and if I miss my goal they charge me the money and give it to other users which they done the goal, and when I do my goal, I get money back.
You call that abuse, but you didn't mentioned even what you do with the money that you charging the user that miss their goal? to me you are looking for profit rather than making incentive for user to reach their goal.
upvotesharetweet・
Ben Bowden
@benbowdene · Found DigitalBreeze.net
@dany20mh I think they should make the profit from it. What's wrong with that?
Paying users could be a fun growth hack for the short term, but you have to be careful creating a system like that. It would be abused quickly, for example, by creating 500+ goals that could be completed in a day.
2sharetweet・
Danial
@dany20mh · Student
@benbowdene @_shinec there is nothing wrong with making profit with that, but not taking the whole thing and giving anything to user, you can set pool for the money and return at least 80% of the money to other users that achieved their goal based on easiness to hardness of their goal and keep 20% or less of it for profit and improving the system.
You pretty much easily can prevent abuse of they system by putting minimum requirement on the goal, for example Pact, you put your goal for 3 days run or walk and then you need to accomplish 10,000 steps in those days, and you will get money for those 3 days you accomplished, if you miss days you get charge for the money you said you will pay for each day.
Yes, you can sit down and shake your phone up and down or your fitness tracker to get 10,000 steps, but that's like an exercise to me also.
1sharetweet・
Ben Bowden
@benbowdene · Found DigitalBreeze.net
@dany20mh You might be right if you put requirements on it, then the question is if it even matters to the user. If I'm making $5 a year from the app for accomplishing my goals would that really be the reason that I'd use the app? Something tells me no, but that would need to be tested to know for sure. I think having large payouts would be more interesting. Setting up competitions that if people complete they get a pool of money (it's split among everyone) or one winner is picked. The thought of making $10k from accomplishing fitness goals would be a much bigger incentive then knowing you'll only get $1 for completing a month long goal.
1sharetweet・
Danial
@dany20mh · Student
@benbowdene That's what I said, but if I get something for what most of the time I'm doing, of course I take that $5 why not? as of now this app doesn't have any incentive to make me want to use it and put money on to achieve my goal and then be like hey, there you go, you achieved your goal, we don't charge you.
And you could even make more than $5 per month with Pact, right now I only have 3 days goal and I make $0.60/week, which if you do it more days like 5 days, you could get more than $1/week.
And then if you do healthy eating too, you can get reward for that too and adding up all of these, you will get something around $5/month which is almost $60/year and that's for doing what you've been doing most of the time and keeping up with your fitness routine.
As for giving the money to only one winner, it doesn't make user to choose that, because the chance you get money back between all the users that it might increase, is very low.
But pooling option is the best option here and return the money to who's completing their goal on their hardness of their goal.
upvotesharetweet・
Danial
@dany20mh · Student
@_shinec @benbowdene also funny fact is they don't even have a FAQ in their site to show what they do with the money.
upvotesharetweet・
Andreas Kambanis
@andreaskam · Founder of Nibble Apps
@_shinec @robjama @paulyw_ great idea and I like the fact it uses Apple HealthKit to track if the user has achieved their goal - makes it less likely someone will cheat! Great looking UI too - thanks for sharing! Would love to hear about some of the future plans if you can share? No problem if it's private!
1sharetweet・
Shine Chaudhuri
@_shinec · Boost
@dany20mh @benbowdene Hi Danial, as we mentioned on our post, we donate a significant percentage of the funds to charity. We're starting with a local charity and plan on adding more in the coming months that are in the Health & Wellness space. You'll find it featured in the app itself. :)
We decided not to go down the route of allowing people to earn money from the goals for many reasons, some which Ben mentioned. We know there are other apps that do that. The idea is to help you to follow through on your goals.
We don't believe in setting a minimum requirement on the goal itself, and kept it open and flexible for the individual to set.
upvotesharetweet・
Danial
@dany20mh · Student
@_shinec @benbowdene That's still not enough information, what's that significant percentage?
And we thinking about to giving towards the charity, pretty much we can use charity miles along the way, which I'm using and it will donate money based on your fitness and donate to the charity of your choice.
upvotesharetweet・
Paul
@paulyw_
@dany20mh @_shinec @benbowdene While it is true that having rewards in place offers a better incentive for accomplishing the goals, it also attracts a different segment of users. Users might be downloading the app simply for the rewards instead of really wanting to accomplish their goal; in addition, that would also complicate the whole verification process to prevent users from abusing the system as Ben mentioned above. As stated in the main post, the company donates a significant percentage of the money made from the app to charity at the end of every month.
upvotesharetweet・
Shine Chaudhuri
@_shinec · Boost
@andreaskam Thanks! I appreciate it :) Can't say a lot but we plan on adding more incentives and we're working on an Android app, to name a couple things.
upvotesharetweet・
Shine Chaudhuri
@_shinec · Boost
@benbowdene Thanks Ben! I think you're onto something :)
upvotesharetweet・