

I Move You (YC S10) Is An Evite For Healthy Activities - jakek
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/10/i-move-you-is-an-evite-for-healthy-activities/

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rjett
I don't mean to belittle I Move You in making this comment, but would
companies like this exist (as companies, not side projects) if they didn't
have programs like ycombinator to catapult them into the spotlight? It seems
to me that without the adrenaline shot that is ycombinator + techcrunch, one
would have an incredibly difficult time successfully bootstrapping an idea
like this that depends so much on the network effect.

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drlisp
Obviously not. These are just a couple MIT/Ivy/Stanford kids who PG liked and
decided to give 20k to spend time at summer camp. No one could bootstrap this.
The technology inst hard to copy, so if it could be bootstrapped we see a lot
of them. Also, it over relies peoples use of Facebook, Twitter.

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mahmud
Can you not be dismissive of others' efforts and accomplishments in this
manner?

They have _just_ launched. They haven't had any news, good or bad yet. PR and
20k is nothing. You could get that streaking a football game on national TV
and selling some of your stuff. If you think media attention is worth
something, you don't know anybody who has been famous and broke.

Let these people perform on their own merit before you write them off so
callously.

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drlisp
Youre right. I wish them well. Hope they make millions. I just think these
talented individuals would have done better for themselves had they not
focused on a trendy/hipster social network site (do we need another?) and more
on "bootstrappable" software businesses.

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shazow
Is it really that trendy? We're trying to move online behaviour to real life.
This is something that hasn't been done much, short of Groupon. But definitely
hasn't been done much in the name of healthy actions.

Our next step is to build in sensors like Nike+ and do verified activities,
which should be pretty cool but hardly trendy/hipster.

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drlisp
You should have a points system, where people earn points when the partner
verifies the activity was accomplished. Win prizes, etc.

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contagionhealth
Interesting, and this is a suggestion we've heard before. Thanks drlisp.

We're working on a method to get rewards after a verified challenge has been
completed - that will launch later this fall.

If you have a specific activity/prize you'd like to see, please let us know.
I'll do my best to close a deal for you :).

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mattmaroon
Interesting concept. I think we're going to see gaming mechanics applied to a
lot of social activities in the near future. This is a lot more appealing to
me than checking in or something. Or at least it would be if I could do 50
situps and survive it.

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contagionhealth
mattmaroon - how about starting with 10 situps? :)

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mattmaroon
Done! I was thinking of pullups anyway. Situps are easy.

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tsmith
This is such a great idea - I find that it's very easy to rationalize myself
out of the goals I set, but as soon as another person is involved it makes it
10x harder to back out... it's sort of like the inverse of the Milgram
experiment.

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jaybol
You might also like dailyburn.com - you can pick a challenge and see how other
people are moving along to the same goal

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harscoat
Why I think they are onto sthg: think of it as "behavior programming" (like
Mydunktank we had put a short post on this
[http://blog.quantter.com/post/874726318/getupanmove-me-
mydun...](http://blog.quantter.com/post/874726318/getupanmove-me-mydunktank-
com)) It seems simple and stupid and may be overlooked as such but this what
great ideas are made of. As pg said <http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html>:
"if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In
fact, that's a good sign."

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rjett
It's interesting that you say "behavior programming" because that is exactly
how some would define marketing. This startup, in its current state, is
basically just an outsourced marketing campaign for Cabot (that might be a bit
reductive of the concept, but in terms of where the revenue is coming from,
that's what this boils down to). It will be interesting to see if other
companies sign on to the concept and adopt the same type of campaign. It will
also be interesting to see how they deal with reinventing themselves when
companies tire of issuing the "I Move You" challenge.

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shazow
You're right. I compare the Cabot campaign to a glorified Facebook fan page
with the added engagement of people doing things in real life around the Cabot
brand. Lots more to move on from there.

As I mention in another thread, we're working on building in Nike+ and other
sensors so you can actually verify you did something. That's our next big
step.

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harscoat
... to become "paypal for verified healthy actions" rather than '"evite" for
healthy activities' [http://blog.imoveyou.com/announcing-our-new-name-
getupandmov...](http://blog.imoveyou.com/announcing-our-new-name-
getupandmoveme-is-now)

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d0m
Looks pretty nice. Small bug that I found while wanting to show the website to
a friend: when you want to send a challenge by email and it asks you to
login.. I get a 404 after email/password creation.

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sethwartak
same here.

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shazow
Should be fixed now, give it a try?

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dwynings
Interesting name change from Getupandmove

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dsantos
are you planing to go mobile ? i mean, a mobile fit app ? ;)

