Kyle
Sure everyone sets a New Years resolution and typically within a few weeks (if not shorter) the resolution is all but thrown out the window. You’re intentions may be great but the drive, and motivation isn’t there. The same can hold true when you set a goal, like losing weight to fit into a swim suit or quitting smoking.
Well a very cool startup in Boston called DailyFeats is here to help you stay on track, and motivate yourself to achieve your goals and it’s working.
DailyFeats is a reward based habit tracker. It takes your big goals like, quitting smoking and helps reduce them into smaller, more achievable goals, like baby steps. Maybe you need to decrease your cigarette intake or, cut back on the bars you go to where you tend to smoke more. Perhaps you need to eliminate a small stress trigger that signals you to smoke a cigarette. If you can achieve these smaller goals, you can ultimately conquer your bigger goals.
DailyFeats offers a two-fold reward system. The user can request what they’d like to receive for achieving their goal or they can earn points which can be converted to actual dollars and then donated to charity, essentially paying it forward.
DailyFeats was co-founder by two brothers Veer Gidwaney and Vinay Gidwaney along with their science advisor Meghan Searl.
We got a chance to talk with DailyFeats about the startup and how they can help people achieve their goals for health and well being.
Check out the interview, after the break
What is DailyFeats?
DailyFeats helps people reach their goals through small, positive steps. Available free at dailyfeats.com for web and iPhone, DailyFeats celebrates small but significant actions, or “feats,” that contribute to people’s goals for health and well-being. DailyFeats members earn points for those actions, share them with friends, and redeem their points for rewards or donations. DailyFeats’ purpose is to make positive action part of daily life, motivating people to realize the potential of every day.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Veer Gidwaney, our CEO and co-founder, spoke at TEDx Edmonton about the possibilities of life if everyone does good, and isa recent inductee of Startup Health’s first class of Healthcare Transformers. In April, he was featured on Mashable’s Venture Studio video series.
His co-founder and brother, Vinay, is the Chief Product Officer of DailyFeats and a 2002 winner of the prestigious MIT Technology Review Top 100 Innovators Under 35 award. He previously spoke at TEDx Huntsville about “The Good Economy” – how quantifying good will go on to revolutionize the way we think about living our lives.
Veer and Vinay co-founded Control-F1, which was an industry leader in Support Automation. Control-F1 had over 100 customers worldwide, 50 employees and raised ~$13M in venture capital. Veer started Control-F1 in the midst of completing his degree in business at the University of Western Ontario. In December of 2005, Control-F1 was acquired by CA, one of the world’s largest software companies with over $4B in sales.
Meghan Searl, a co-founder and our science advisor, is a board-certified clinical neuropsychologist; she received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from Boston University and completed her postdoctoral training at Massachusetts General, Brigham & Women’s, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospitals. She is on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, is a neuropsychologist in the Division of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and is a consulting psychologist at the Partners Center for Connected Health.
Her approach to DailyFeats’ science strives to help us create useful and innovative products and services by combining top-down (e.g., quantitative, data-driven) and bottom-up (e.g.,qualitative, user-centered) approaches to research and development.
You said that you were in change/habit formation space, what are the other players in the space?
Some others include Lift, Everest, SuperBetter, and Mightybell.
Are you bootstrapping it? If not who’s on board?
We’re a bit past the bootstrapping phase. We haven’t actually raised any venture capital – we were self-funded with some angel investments. We are generating revenue in our second full year of operation.
Tell us about the reward portion and the donations?
Users set goals, achieve goals and then earn points to donate real money to charity? Rewards work as an extra incentive or treat for our members after they’ve been plugging away at accomplishing their feats every day. Members are able to shop in our rewards catalog to wishlist rewards ahead of time, and once a week, we release a set amount of rewards. Some of them are merchant-funded, such as rewards from MTV, Gaiam, and Ebay, while others are funded by DailyFeats. We also have a set of always- available rewards at a lower point value, many of which are co-spends, such as HappyBaby, Walgreens, and Peeled Snacks. Our favorite points redemptions are our donation rewards, though, which are funded by our healthcare partner, Cigna. These rewards are also always available, and members can donate one dollar for every fifty points they accrue.
How did your founders come up with the idea?
Our founders have always been interested in the possibilities inherent in technology to affectbehavior change on a large scale. They came up with the concept of “feats” to represent the smallest unit of action on the site, and “check-ins” as the way you interact with those feats. They previously experimented with the idea of media and online content being used to shift mood, and that evolved into DailyFeats.
Tell us one you lesson you learned building dailyfeats?
Testing and member feedback is incredibly important to the process. We can have a dozen members of our team brainstorm in a room for two hours, come to a conclusion, and build based on that conclusion, but it won’t matter if our members don’t find it useful or fun. We constantly test features and strip away what we find isn’t working, as well as interface daily with our members, who are our most valuable resources for knowing where we should go next.
Tell us a couple really great goals you’ve seen your users create?
Our members’ goals aren’t currently public or shareable – the shareable content is the checkin, so we have feeds where you can see what people are checking in, along with pictures or explanations. It’s really wonderful to see members reaching their health goals by using Dailyfeats to stay mindful about exercise and eating right, as well as members who use the site as a way to keep their lives in order at home. It’s a powerful tool for celebrating the “small wins” that each day can bring.
Here’s the part where you tell the nice people how to try it and why and where to go.
Log on to www.dailyfeats.com or download the DailyFeats iPhone app to start logging your daily feats and helping to contribute toward a better world.
Fun Question: What do your parents think you do?
My mom is a huge DailyFeats advocate and knows intricately what I do (which is awesome!) but my dad doesn’t have a computer with internet at home, so it’s safe to say he’s just taking my word for it that I have a job “on the Internet”.
Fun Question 2: This interview is being conducted while my Baltimore Orioles are in first place…scared?
Go Red Sox!
Linkage:
Got a goal you want to achieve? Try DailyFeats out now, here
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