Show HN: Launched my side project: Goalfinch | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Launched my side project: Goalfinch

22 pointshanskuder17 comments

http://goalfinch.com

I had the idea for Goalfinch while reading an article here on Hacker News about economic incentives and how effective they are. It got me thinking: What if there were an easy way to set up economic incentives for the goals I have in my own life?

A few months later, after working on it off and on in my spare hours, it's ready for prime time.

With Goalfinch, you define a goal and make a contribution of cash that acts as an incentive for you to complete the goal. Your Facebook friends confirm whether or not you've accomplished it. If you succeed before your deadline, you get the cash back. If you fail, it gets donated to the charity of your choice. The combination of money on the line and your friends breathing down your neck makes for a very powerful motivator.

It's a pretty simple idea that could go in many different directions, but I wanted to share it with this community in its first, fledgling stages. Please let me know what you think!

http://goalfinch.com

Nice, this perhaps has some very interesting implications for healthcare ! ?

If I may offer three thoughts:

First, as I understand your model, you're taking 15% of the unrealized goal funds to pay for 100% of the transaction fees. This seems off in that the only way you benefit financially is by people NOT completing their goals. Hardly the point of your project. Why not take a "success fee" for playing an active role in helping people achieve their goals ?

Second, someone mentioned trust, and while this suggestion is probably not the ultimate solution, I would urge you to consider adding your personal profile(s) and picture(s). This would at least give people a human element to connect with. Similarly, the inclusion of "Gain, LLC" is slightly confusing, as well as perhaps lends to the possible interpretation that you are the only one gaining from the transaction.

Third, stickiness & ticklers... is there something you can do to gently remind people of their goals and / or get them coming back to update progress ? ?

Hope those help...

It looks neat, though I'd worry about being gypped out of my money:

1. I don't know your or your site from Adam (no offense intended, honestly) and your site hasn't been around long enough to have a rep. There aren't any "trust markers" around to help me decide whether or not to trust you with my money.

2. I'd worry about, for example, some of my facebook friends not responding in a timely fashion or forgetting to do it, and the FAQ makes it sound like one person not responding would prevent me from getting my money back.

Yeah, I totally understand. I'm actively looking for ways to increase the level of trustworthiness and to make people feel confident that I won't take the money and run.

Wouldn't you be doing the same thing if you were running a scam?

number 1 totally. if i hadn't found this site on HN i'd think it's a scam.

Clickable: http://goalfinch.com

One suggestion: goal URLs should use a salted hash key, so that they aren't so easily guessed. Alternatively, implement some kind of access control so that you can only see goals you are a party to. Otherwise, seems great, I'm trying it out!

Cf. http://www.stickk.com/

What does one do if there is an entrenched competitor? Theoretically there is room for more than one right? I haven't heard of stickk.com. It'd be interesting to see what OP does with this.

I did something like this a while back (http://1week1project.com/tagged/week-9?chrono=1). The hardest thing was trying to set a price, ie Should I pay myself $25 to schedule a dentist appointment?

It would be really cool if you were able have some better way to determine the payout for a certain goal. Perhaps you have your friends vote on it or something like that.

It's a neat idea, and I like your simple design.

I'm really not crazy about the verifying with my Facebook friends though. I would feel much better about it if you told me what your app is going to do - is it going to send them an email, a Facebook message, post on their wall now? Basically, is it going to spam them?

Probably the best thing would be a screen shot of what you are going to send them.

Good call. There's a screenshot of the notification they receive on the next page, but I just put in a disclaimer about never spamming them or posting on their walls.

Cool. Another thing I noticed is that I didn't go through and actually pick anybody for step 2, and it didn't stop me until I put in a dollar value for step 3. Maybe it should validate right after step 2?

I can think of some pretty ironic goal/charities:

Lose 10 pounds or donate 10$ to heart disease research.

Incorporate twitter login or some other OpenID provider.

cool idea. good luck!

It's so exciting to see people launching their new sites everyday!

Good Luck.

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