5 days before our YC interview we've changed our idea. Help us prove the market. | Hacker News Reader

5 days before our YC interview we've changed our idea. Help us prove the market.

dintu.com

27 pointsmisstatiana40 comments

Keeping a medical diary sucks. We're building something better: An app that periodically asks you questions about your lifestyle and symptoms, and learns to cater its questions and suggestions just for you.

We're aiming to tackle all kinds of chronic medical conditions, starting with migraines. Please register here if you are interested: http://dintu.com

personally I wouldn't use this but I think its a great idea. that being said i think allergies might be a larger market than migraines.

I really like this, too. I have a stomach problem that took years to figure out -- would have been very helpful to this kind of tool.

I think you need a bit more here then just headaches to start with. Seems like you could broaden your initial offering to include other medical maladies that require logging.

My dad needed to start tracking his blood pressure / heart rate / glucose levels at multiple times of day and having a text that acted as a reminder and a reply that acted as a log with the data would've been perfect for him.

Is the number of people that need to log this other information > or < than the number of people that want to track headache triggers. I've honestly never met someone that wanted to track headache triggers but know a lot of people that need to track other medical issues.

Maybe people with those other medical issues tend to be older than the target audience for an iPhone app?

+1 for wanting to use it for figuring out food sensitivities.

Not personally interested because I don't get migraines, but I like the "don't keep a diary, we'll just ping you occasionally" method. Very unique, and very interesting. I hate keeping logs, but I respond to texts all the time. If I got a ping a couple times a day with questions that tailored themselves to my habits over time, I could definitely see myself responding. It takes a HUGE hurdle out of the equation.

Knowing people who have had to do this because they get migraines, your process seems like a great idea!

Best of luck. I really like the model.

That's a great idea.

A few months ago, my girlfriend was having an allergic reaction to _SOMETHING_. Itching, swelling, hives, the works. We went through a huge list of trial and error: Seafood? Nope. The grass outside? Nope. Soap? Nope. Shampoo? On and on through foods, chemicals, common allergens, etc.

It became pretty cumbersome and we'd forgotten what we had tried and not tried, etc.

We eventually figured it out but something like what you suggested would have been a great tool to have at our disposal.

http://www.paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html #3

Absolutely not a marginal niche. If you could predict with reasonable accuracy when someone would get a migraine, all the migraine sufferers I've known would HAPPILY pay for that knowledge. When you're dealing with side effects like loss of memory, loss of vision, vomiting, etc., people would like to know when's a good time to stay home!

Just because it's useful to some people doesn't mean it's not a marginal niche. Consider what percentage of the people you know are migraine sufferers, how many of them seek treatment and then of those how many would regularly use a service to monitor their triggers?

And if they are successful, the model could likely be extended to other conditions as well. Gout, various sorts of allergies, etc., etc.

No, it is not a mistake. http://neurology.jwatch.org/cgi/content/full/2007/410/3

All the best misstatiana.

Yes, there are only so many "chronic migraine sufferers." (That said, I know one myself, and I will send this to her the minute you launch - to those people, it is SO important to feel like someone or something is listening and helping them sort through their pain.)

But I, like most people, "sometimes" get migraines. Only in stressful situations...I think...but honestly, I'm not sure what causes me to get migraines a few times a year. Maybe I'd be less likely to pay, but I'd still love to have a place to write notes about those "occasional" migraines in hopes of figuring out what my triggers are. I feel like migraines are very misunderstood and undertreated medically by all but the most chronic of sufferers.

I suffer from migraines and it's very unlikely I'd use any type of digital medical journal. I say that from the experience of setting one up for myself. Due to light sensitivity trying to look at a monitor just makes things much worse for me. Trying to look at a cell phone is torture. Between the brightness of the screen and the small focal area it's just not worth it. Migraine sufferers often report sensitivity to light so I doubt it would be just me finding it impractical.

I don't know how you intend to do your data analysis, but...

I have had an idea for a smartphone app on my Big List for years. This app would implement lag-sequential analysis (see for example http://www2.gsu.edu/~psyrab/references.pdf). I haven't actually used it (which is part of why I have procrastinated this one), but my understanding is that LSA is basically a chi-squared analysis with a time function. Chi-squared compares expected vs. actual incidence of something. So LSA would look at expected vs. actual incidence of X happening following Y. The prototypical test would be to prove/disprove that chocolate milk makes kindergarten kids more violent. But you could (as I envisioned it) generalize it to sniff out all kinds of factors that might systematically precede migraines or whatever.

You'll also need to explain to people that a negative result might not be a reliable one unless you get a lot of data and record all variables reliably.

I'm not sure how much my app idea overlaps with yours, but I will cheer you on in any case.

A migraine is the only thing in my life that brought me to the point of wanting to end it. Oddly, I don't get them anymore now that I work from home, but for 20 years they plagued me like a demon.

As a lifelong sufferer of migraines (I literally fear them on a daily basis and they impact my travel, and work plans regularly).. I'd certainly love to see something like this work.

I'm a bit of a rare case in that I've never been able to identify my triggers and none of the migraine medications work for me.

I'm also a lifelong sufferer who has found no trigger or treatment that works. I've seen more doctors than I can keep track of and none had indicated that it was uncommon, of course that could be because I'm primarily seeing specialists.

Uncommon? Yes.. The newish beta-blocker meds are reported to work for a pretty large percentage of sufferers (85% or so, I think). If you look at the percentages across the different types of meds, I think you and I are in a relatively significant minority of people that can't find relief without narcotics.

I hadn't heard of the beta blockers having such a large success rate. I'll have to look more into that. I tried Propranolol with no luck.

I think it's a great idea but it's not a big business and likely uninteresting to YC or other investors. Wikipedia tells me that 10% of the world's population has had a migrane (https://www.thieme-connect.de/DOI/DOI?10.1055/s-0030-1249220) but how many of those have them regularly? How many seek help? How many would use a tool to manage their triggers?

I think you would be better off canceling the interview, explaining why you are abandoning you last idea and trying again next cycle.

I think this would be viable if you interviewed doctors and asked what questions they would ask patients if they had access to them 24/7, and then showed a significant increase in success in treating these patients. Also, I think there's a big connection between what you eat and your health (especially chronic illness), and a lot of people keep food diaries. Mixing a food diary with a symptom log could be excellent.

I've gotten migraine headaches for the last 8-10 years, and I still do not keep a diary.

My initial reaction is that different migraine sufferers would need to be asked different questions at different intervals. I would recommend:

- Have the user access the app/site when they notice they are having a migraine. At that point ask a battery of questions to see if the "triggers" can be narrowed down. I personally have three triggers.

- Once the user has confirmed a migraine, THEN you should ping the user to see how bad it is, what the current symptoms are, and if is ongoing. I generally have migraines lasting for 3-5 hours with varying symptoms depending on what "stage" I'm in. I have 4 distinct "symptom stages".

I'm beginning to understand what PG means now when he says YC looks for teams more than ideas. Please do not take that as a knock against this idea - I do not mean in that way. I would be confident in my team and be honest about it's limitations and potential. As someone in the Healthcare IT line of work, there is a TON of space open to an intelligent young team.

Best of luck.

My phone beeping and buzzing at me mid migraine would result in the phone being launched into the nearest wall. These guy's might have more luck with something other than headaches since many migraine sufferers find the pain can be debilitating. If they stick with migraines I hope they take that into account.

When I kept a medical diary for mine the only thing that really worked was pencil and paper because I could actually tolerate writing on a yellow legal pad.

I have no idea if changing your business plan five days before your interview is a good idea or not.

I can say, however, that I know someone who would find something like this very interesting. I've passed your link along. He's a life long migraine sufferer so maybe this will help him track things down.

What kind of 'subject matter expertise' do you have on-board?

I will definitely use this if you can generalize it. I don't normally get migraines, but it would be great to correlate things like sore throats, stomach aches, fingernail ridges, skin breakouts, etc. to external factors like food, weather, and pollution.

Out of curiosity: What was your original idea?

I have migraines on occasion, but I hate doing diaries. I think if it had some FitFu like appeal and made me want to use it, I might be down.

Bill / Tatiana... good luck!

I am hoping at least one of you is a "domain expert" on migranes ... else this app is just gonna be using "trending" logic which might not really work.

I don't have a migraine problem, but I tweeted and shared on FB. Have you analysed any twitter data to predict past headaches for people?

Take a look at Mappiness: http://www.mappiness.org.uk/ It's a UK university research project to measure happiness across different settings. It would ping you with some quick questions a few times a day.

Functionality is similar; it it may offer learnings.

Forwarded to my wife, who gets far too many headaches. Interesting concept, good luck.

ditto - sent to my girlfriend.

Keep track of what I eat and drink then when I get certain symptoms you can tell me what recently changed in my diet that may be the cause.

Seen patientslikeme.com?

1a. Come up with strawman idea. 1b. Come up with real idea. 2. Publicly "pivot"* on HN. 3. Funding?

A least there's a step two...

* Could we please declare "pivot" an exhausted concept and move on to the next start-up buzzword?

That a term is overused does not mean the underlying concept is exhausted.

Maybe I'm too Buddhist or something but "pivot" has come to mean, "observing and adapting to what the universe is saying," which is another word for not being obstinate. It's a linguistic gang sign the insecure flash to show their starters group membership.

It irritates me because listening to MBAs speak is an exercise in suicide preparation, and starters are accumulating their own distinct but equivalent lexicon of fancy words that refer to simple, everyday concepts.

Could we please declare "pivot" an exhausted concept and move on to the next start-up buzzword?

Interesting... why do you say so? I mean, yeah, the word is used a lot... but is that necessarily a bad thing? If people are taking the "lean" approach to heart, iterating and pivoting, and being more market focused, isn't that a positive?

Strangely enough, I love to rail against buzzwords myself (esp. "Web 2.0", "Web 3.0", etc.) but I never thought of "pivot" as a buzzword before... maybe it's a regional thing? Perhaps people who are in the Bay Area (or $WHEREVER) hear it more often?

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