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Launch HN: Inflow (YC S21) – Self-help app for people with ADHD

Hey! We’re Seb, Levi, and George, co-founders of Inflow. We have built a self-help app for adults and adolescents to better manage ADHD. Accessing treatment for ADHD is expensive, slow, and can be difficult for ADHD people to organize due to struggles with executive functioning. Inflow makes accessing many of the benefits of in-person ADHD therapy significantly more accessible and affordable. Based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy, our app enables people to better understand ADHD and how it impacts them. It also gives people practical tools and helps them to develop the skills needed to better manage ADHD. This is combined with a welcoming community to share experiences and learnings. Half of our team is neurodiverse and our co-founder Dr George Sachs, as well as having ADHD, has over 10 years of experience treating people with ADHD through CBT. Consequently, we are aware of the impact of ADHD on day-to-day life and how underserved the ADHD community has been in terms of accessible and affordable support. Levi also previously worked for Babylon Health to develop products for chronic condition management and saw how technology could enable access to care. The core of the app is a CBT-based program that provides short, daily exercises as well as tools to develop helpful habits and skills. The program is broken down into different modules each focusing on specific areas ADHDers may find challenging such as time management, organization and impulsivity. Our community lets people connect with and learn from a range of other diverse individuals with ADHD in a safe and stigma-free environment. We offer daily live events with specialist ADHD psychologists and coaches including topic deep dives, Q&A, coworking sessions and group meditations. Other features include prioritization tools, which let you set daily goals to prioritize your most important tasks, and guided journaling—prompts and triggers to help you better understand yourself and your behaviors. We’re just getting started and have a range of exciting new features in the works including routine building tools, accountability check-ins with a real coach, progress tracking, group-based challenges, and more. The average cost of an in-person ADHD CBT session in the US is $200-300 ($10k-$16k/year). This is compared to Inflow’s cost of $95.99/year. Of course, no app is a direct replacement for in-person therapy but it offers a far more accessible and cost effective solution which allows many more people to get the help that they need. You can download our app here: https://inflow.app.link/0FXmBEAWjkb https://inflow.app.link/0FXmBEAWjkb. We offer a one-week free trial followed by a monthly or yearly subscription. If you’ve been trying to or previously had difficulty accessing treatment for ADHD we’d love to learn about your experiences. If you do try the app, please let us know any improvements or additional features you’d like to have. Thank you!

dumbfoundded 5y ago
Please shut this down or pivot. This isn't a mindfulness or meditation app. It's a serious medical issue to which you're presenting an untested solution. If I created a new pill and said it helps ADHD, I would be shutdown. You're doing this with an app. You hope it will work but really you don't know. I started and sold a CBD business and the entire time, we made sure to never claim that it cures or helps any medical condition despite it having FDA approval for some specific medical conditions & 100,000s of customers saying it did. We refused to work with any company that did and cheered when the FDA sent them letters. You on the other hand, have a top nav page labeled: "Science" & you're laundering the reputation of a single doctor and some "advisors" to bypass the actual process. As you read the other criticisms about your predatory business model, you should understand that this isn't just some pricing thing you can change, it's the fundamental misalignment between you and your customers. For example, you claim that the average cost of ADHD CBT is $200-$300. WebMD (1) & Consumer Reports (2), and every other result on the first page of google says it's more like $100 to $200. In your marketing, you're now spreading likely false information to make your app seem like a better solution, potentially turning people away from therapy by exaggerating the costs. Look at your app marketing vs Charlotte's Web (3). Notice the difference? Charlotte's Web doesn't push BS science to sell their products. They don't feature doctors on their page or have a "Science" page in the top nav. They actually started to help a single little girl specifically and once it did, they fought to make their solution available to give people the chance to try it. You on the other hand, took a treatment clinic and thought, "Hey, if I turn this into an app, I could make a lot of money". Because you position yourself as a medical treatment, your team won't care if it actually works, only if they can sell it. You will continue to spread false information that puts your app in the most favorable light. You will continue to creatively cheat your customers out of money with subscriptions and add-ons they don't need. This path you have set yourselves on inevitably pits you against your customers the same way Purdue pharma did with Oxy. You could pivot to a "Focus" app or something that doesn't position itself as a snake oil treatment to ADHD. Honestly, I think you will probably continue on your path and just label me a hater. 3 years from now, maybe you've made a lot of money or not. I don't know. Lots of snake oil salesmen make it. But you certainly won't help people in any significant way. If you actually care about that, you should really reconsider. (1) https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/costs-of-adhd https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/costs-of-adhd (2) https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2013/01/how-much-does-it-cost-to-test-for-adhd/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2013/01/how-much-does-it... (3) https://www.charlottesweb.com/ https://www.charlottesweb.com/

dumbfoundded 5y ago

Please shut this down or pivot. This isn't a mindfulness or meditation app. It's a serious medical issue to which you're presenting an untested solution. If I created a new pill and said it helps ADHD, I would be shutdown. You're doing this with an app. You hope it will work but really you don't know. I started and sold a CBD business and the entire time, we made sure to never claim that it cures or helps any medical condition despite it having FDA approval for some specific medical conditions & 100,000s of customers saying it did. We refused to work with any company that did and cheered when the FDA sent them letters. You on the other hand, have a top nav page labeled: "Science" & you're laundering the reputation of a single doctor and some "advisors" to bypass the actual process. As you read the other criticisms about your predatory business model, you should understand that this isn't just some pricing thing you can change, it's the fundamental misalignment between you and your customers. For example, you claim that the average cost of ADHD CBT is $200-$300. WebMD (1) & Consumer Reports (2), and every other result on the first page of google says it's more like $100 to $200. In your marketing, you're now spreading likely false information to make your app seem like a better solution, potentially turning people away from therapy by exaggerating the costs. Look at your app marketing vs Charlotte's Web (3). Notice the difference? Charlotte's Web doesn't push BS science to sell their products. They don't feature doctors on their page or have a "Science" page in the top nav. They actually started to help a single little girl specifically and once it did, they fought to make their solution available to give people the chance to try it. You on the other hand, took a treatment clinic and thought, "Hey, if I turn this into an app, I could make a lot of money". Because you position yourself as a medical treatment, your team won't care if it actually works, only if they can sell it. You will continue to spread false information that puts your app in the most favorable light. You will continue to creatively cheat your customers out of money with subscriptions and add-ons they don't need. This path you have set yourselves on inevitably pits you against your customers the same way Purdue pharma did with Oxy. You could pivot to a "Focus" app or something that doesn't position itself as a snake oil treatment to ADHD. Honestly, I think you will probably continue on your path and just label me a hater. 3 years from now, maybe you've made a lot of money or not. I don't know. Lots of snake oil salesmen make it. But you certainly won't help people in any significant way. If you actually care about that, you should really reconsider. (1) https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/costs-of-adhd https://www.webmd.com/add-adhd/costs-of-adhd (2) https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2013/01/how-much-does-it-cost-to-test-for-adhd/index.htm https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2013/01/how-much-does-it... (3) https://www.charlottesweb.com/ https://www.charlottesweb.com/