Item — HN Reader

As someone with ADHD, I’ve stayed away from this product because it is a subscription service.

I will sign up for subscription services fully well intentioned and then proceed to not use the service and forget to cancel it in time. I know myself well enough now to stay away from any product offering a subscription. There is no real “managing” it, it’s just a fact of life for me and something I live around.

An app targeting ADHD minds and not offering alternative payment options is arguably more predatory than the average free-to-play mobile app, as the founders of this app presumably know about the difficulties that ADHD cause and are either willingly ignoring it or actively exploiting it.

Even if it’s a honest accident, it leaves a bad enough taste in my mouth to stay far away.

3 comments

Thanks for the feedback. We're working on some potential solutions to this and in the meantime we refund everybody who requests one.

> Thanks for the feedback. We're working on some potential solutions to this and in the meantime we refund everybody who requests one.

A proper solution is to not charge in the meantime. I know its an aggressive stance, but the dissonance with the exploit and pricing model is strong. You should feel wrong exploiting people claiming you'll fix it later.

Wanna get paid? Find a way to do that without exploit. You'll find a potential solution a lot faster if the money stops rolling in until you do.

Either way, this is a terrible sign for your focus and compassion as business that toes the line with claiming to be a therapy or treatment for a medical condition. How can anyone believe you truly do the right thing and care? I don't think apps care about me, but an app like this that presents itself as an alternative to therapy I expect to be an exception.

For an app that _for_ folks who aren't neurootypical, accessibility should be priority #1. That it's not does not inspire confidence and suggests that you're going for an "exit" strategy, which might be great for VCs, but not for users, and without users, I wouldn't expect a lot of VC backing.

> suggests that you're going for an "exit" strategy

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? An exit strategy isn't, like, a particular type of business model that some businesses use. It's just a word for the founders' strategy with respect to exiting the business.

So, what I mean by "exit" strategy is that they're more interested in going public or being bought out than in providing long-term good (and sustainability). There's a different set of incentives in wanting to exit (high valuation, market competition, etc.) than there is with being a long-term viable, sustainable business (building a reputation, being effective, etc.). The former are a lot more common in SV (it seems to me), but the majority of businesses that survived the 90's and 00's are examples of the latter.

Real therapists operate without an exit strategy. A good therapist isn't building dependence in their clients.

An exit strategy just refers to the founders' plan, whatever that may be, for exiting the company. Most people can't meaningfully work on one thing forever, but there's no reason why you can't exit a company and leave it in good hands, with a viable long-term plan. In fact, most founders will be incentivised to do exactly that.

It seems like you're suggesting that the only way to run a company responsibly is to intend to personally be at the helm until you drop dead, like Zuckerberg. That just feels unrealistic, and like a totally bizarre and excessive criticism, when there's lots of other legitimate stuff to criticise about this company.

TeMPOral's explanation (sibling of my comment you're replying to here) is better than mine.

It isn't, really :). And 'samhw raises some good points. So let me follow up.

> but there's no reason why you can't exit a company and leave it in good hands, with a viable long-term plan. In fact, most founders will be incentivised to do exactly that.

That's not what "exit" means in startup vernacular. An "exit" is the part where you and your investors get rich. This is usually achieved through the company going public, or getting acquired by another one. Both cases are almost inevitably bad for existing users/customers. Going public usually means the company is subject to the whims of stock market players. Acquires usually means the company gets scrapped for parts (usually for people, knowhow, patents, and/or user data). Either way, the founders and investors got their reward - so they don't really have a reason to care about what happens with the business afterwards.

Now the problem is, getting to an exit isn't a sure thing - but it's something that can be optimized for. Optimizing for it eventually puts the company in a situation, where they have to diminish or even offer negative value to users - through e.g. bait&switch payment models, dropping useful features, vendor lock-in, UX dark patterns - in order to improve the main metric that increases the chance of successful exit: growth.

So when you see founders explicitly talking about and planning for an exit, what this means is that they already demonstrate they'll put making the company attractive to would-be acquirers ahead of offering actual value to the users/customers. And to be clear, it's worth reminding: marketing has a better marginal ROI than providing value, so just because customers seem to be flocking to a company, doesn't mean the company is offering a good deal. They may be just good at "growth hacking".

The worst case is obvious fraud (Theranos, uBeam), but the second worst case is what I referred to in another comment as "legal pump&dump" - companies who focus almost entirely on growth hacking while providing minimal value, in hopes they'll get acquired before everyone figures out the whole thing is bullshit.

> the only way to run a company responsibly is to intend to personally be at the helm until you drop dead

Of course not :). Another way would be to not take VC funding, focus on providing a good service for as long as you feel like, and eventually pass the business on, sell it, or shut down.

The way I see it, just taking VC funding - taking the Faustian bargain - makes you an "exit risk". One way to assuage the fears of users would be to make some legally-binding promises about the future of the company, but nobody ever does that. In time, as more non-tech people finally figure out how startups work, maybe that'll change.

Of course it is. It carries an important implication that, to put it charitably, the owners will focus on growing and selling their company, at the expense of value provided to the users. This tends to make a startup, depending on the backbone of its founders and pressure from the investors, something between a suboptimal compromise from users' POV, and a legal pump&dump scheme.

This should've been a day one offering. This alone will make me pass on this app.

Such as?

- Opt in free trial without putting in card details - Longer free trial - One-off purchase vs subscription - Web sign-up

In addition to these we also send email and notification reminders before the free trial ends and refund everybody who requests one.

Consider also “we only charge you at the end of the month if you actually used it” or so. Can be a much more difficult revenue model but user trust is way higher when you make that sort of commitment and if you are indeed struggling with getting user trust, it could be a lifesaver.

This is the only honest way to do automatic payments, and I think it should be a legal requirement for streaming services, gyms, and anything else that charges recurring fees and has the means to track usage. I would even be ok with "we'll charge you for this month, but since you didn't use it we will suspend your service and stop billing you"

I don't know of any services that do this though. So I assume they are all dishonest.

> gyms

From my understanding, the profitability of gyms is actually dependent upon some sizable percentage of people paying for a membership and not using it. If that cohort didn't exist, membership fees would have to be much higher.

Software subscriptions are different though, as the variable costs are negligible: the cost associated with providing service to each new user is next to nothing.

Personally, I'd be way more likely to sign up for a paid subscription if I knew they would automatically stop charging me if/when I stop using the service.

> Software subscriptions are different though, as the variable costs are negligible

Depends on the service. Many boast about their large or unlimited storage for user's data, but this part of their marketing relies on the assumption that almost nobody will actually use a noticeable amount of the offer.

It's similar to the dishonest, but sadly normalized practice of ISPs, where the bandwidth offered would be impossible to provide if a significant number of customers tried to use it at once.

I believe Slack has an "only pay for what you use" model? Or at least had one at some point?

And of course every cloud provider works this way, but that's not a "subscription model" anymore.

I like that suggestion, I'd be much more likely to sign up for something that used that charging model.

oh, this would be very good for the adhd mind.

even with a monthly subscription, it's really easy to completely forget about a service and move on from it entirely without cancelling it

I don't think that longer trial will help here. Rather it will worsen the problem.

Why not offer the service with a paywall? And I don't mean the awful website kind.

I mean: someone signs up - regardless of whether you want to call it a subscription - and every month on renewal, they get a notice to confirm renewal (or have to re-enter payment, though I suspect that's probably _too_ much friction).

Is that a great way to retain revenue? Probably not. But it's way better for press than what I saw when I opened this thread and was immediately turned off. It's definitely the kind of consumer-first model that I'd love to see more of, certainly from a company/app whose target is helping people...

I just got a notification for my 1-year-anniversary for subscribing to blender university.

I've never logged in.

Have you tried Privacy.com ? Even for people with no ADHD the subscription trap is very real but there are technological solutions.

Are there any hidden traps in the free plan? I know they have incentive to onboard as many free users as possible since they get part of the card fee when you use it, but people get greedy even with an opportunity to make essentially free, effortless, and ethical money.

Only ever used the free plan. I don’t think it’s meaningfully different. Only problem is that some apps like ClassPass will decline.

I made an account and moved some things over. Completely painless. I've seen it suggested a lot but I always assumed there was a monthly fee, so I never bothered. The 12 new cards a month on the free plan is already far more than I could realistically use.

I have but unfortunately it’s not available in my country. Would be a great product if it was available more internationally.