Discussion
Would you recommend this product?
10 Reviews
Maker
πππ We created a $5 promotion for the PH community. Go to settings β> billing and add the code PHUNT5 πππ
Hello Product Hunt π! We are two indie makers and we just launched our very first app.
We built this tool because, as freelancers ourselves, we struggled with being distracted by Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and other apps. There are plenty of effective tools to block distracting websites for Mac, however due to system limitations, these tools mostly do not work on iOS. Weβve built Brutu because weβve found that using a small financial incentive can be a strong motivator to keep distractions away. Itβs quite surprising how an aversion to losing even small amounts of money can make one more productive.
How can you use Brutu?
β Start 8 h timer with 30 min break to make sure to only use your phone for 30 min before bed
β Start a 25 min Pomodoro timer and quickly repeat it using timer templates
β Start 4 h focus timer with 10 min break when you can use your phone as much as youβd like
We'd love to get feedback or answer any questions!
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Do you have to connect your bank account or how it works the money? The money goes to the company (Brutu) or stays in a virtual deposit?
Maker
@borjasolerr We ask our users to connect their debit or credit card. We use Stripe to process transactions and to securely store all financial information. Users can use the app without connecting a card for the first $5.00 in charges. We are collecting the fees monthly when a user has a minimum balance of $5.00. Please see a more detailed explanation of our business model under @aguilaair_tech comment.
Maker
@brice_julia If a user gets distracted and leaves the timer Brutu is gonna charge them. We don't have functionality for winning the money back. We are unable to verify whether a user is running the timer during a work session or when sleeping.
Where does the money go to?
Maker
@aguilaair_tech Collecting fees is our business model. We were considering many scenarios. The first one would be to let users choose a charity and we would collect a percentage fee from the transaction. But this way, since you are supporting a cause you care about, getting distracted would feel less like a penalty. On the other hand, we could have enabled picking an anti-charity. We decided against it because we donβt want our work to support organizations that are discriminatory or unethical. Our goal was to create an app that is super simple and quick to use. Including this functionality would complicate our UI quite a bit. We settled on creating Brutu character, who promises to spend your money irresponsibly and who can act as users' imaginary foe.
Pro
@aguilaair_tech @pawsys could be fun to focus on the social aspect of this, where your money goes to your friends or a group account (similar to a swear jar).
The charity concept is an obvious approach but I'm skeptical that most people will feel a strong sense of connection to these orgs.
Maker
@rrhoover @aguilaair_tech Thanks for the input. I agree that the social aspect seems intriguing. Especially it feels like an effective mechanism to grow a network. I observed many services using monetary incentives and users are all over the place. Some want to send money to a friend, some to a charity, and some to anticharity. My hypothesis is that in practice users care more about whether the app is effective (in our case making people less distracted) than where the money goes to. In my view what is fascinating here is that we can use loss aversion to our benefit. Our brain is so weirdly wired that it can make an unproportionally large effort in order not to lose a couple of bucks.
Put our money in a pot, let other users win it back somehow, maybe something even as simple as a raffle every hour with users who used the app that hour. Keep enough to pay your costs, randomly disburse the rest as prizes.
