Hey everyone, I'm Ray, one of the founders of Weilos. We just got started, but early signals are promising with active users making significant progress on the site. Very excited about this opportunity to help a lot of people! Would love to hear what everyone thinks.
Interesting approach, and congrats on the coverage. I just signed up as a coach - I've found informal mentoring (in both directions) very helpful on other sites, e.g. Nerd Fitness.
1) (asked elsewhere) Do you guys have particular domain experience in nutrition and weight loss? I know one of you is an MD at Cornell, what about specifics?
2) How will you keep people on the site? Weight loss trends and diets are very fickle investments because people kind of jump from one to another inconsistently. You'll need to constantly get new users.
3) What's the revenue source? How are you monetizing this?
1)I spent a year doing diabetes lab research at the University of Michigan and a couple projects focused on obesity at Cornell, but admittedly the bulk of my knowledge comes from reading a lot of peer reviewed journal articles, talking to a lot of successful people (people who have lost weight themselves as well as numerous obesity specialist MDs).
2) Right on with your observations. What we're trying to do is provide the necessary ingredients (social combined with technology) to make weight loss something people feel good about. We give people a leader, which provides trust/inspiration that they are on the right path, and a peer group for support. Early signals have been good that this keeps people engaged. That said, getting new users will always be important.
One additional thought is that people who are successful as members could potentially transition to the coach role after some sustained success. This could lead to very long term engagement, but it is too early to tell.
3) Honestly, we are focused 100% on making something that actually works. Current options for weight are not great by any judging criteria, and we are confident the business model will work itself out if we are able to provide real value in the form of good outcomes.
I'm looking to get back to race weight, so weilos looks appealing. However, I'm wary of getting someone who doesn't know what they're doing. Is there a way to search background or do some more advanced filtering?
The general advice for losing weight when someone is overweight or grossly overweight is fairly standardized and generally works well. However, I think my situation is a bit different - I'm 6 feet fall and currently at 160 lbs, but my race weight is 135lbs.
Personalized guidance will be a huge component of any service that hopes to make people live healthier and more active lives. We are certainly pushing in this direction at RunKeeper.
An aside - this model feels a lot like an AA sponsor. AA works (I've heard, not a friend of bill myself), and I'm surprised we haven't seen a semi-anon online accountability model like this in similar domains.
The diets dont look really applicable if you don't cook for yourself. Are there coaches that work with zero-cooking lifestyles, or is that just out of scope for Weilos?
This is the weirdest comment I have seen in awhile. "Zero-cooking lifestyles"? What? What do you eat then? I'm trying to avoid a "mom's basement" comment but I don't even get it otherwise.
It means someone else provides your meals because you work 10-12 hour workdays at your start up job. You get food at restaurants or it's provided for you by your work.
For example, my work provides all my weekday meals, and I'm only home occasionally on weekends, so I can't rely on having fresh food in my fridge. Therefore I eat out on weekends.
You can also live in small places, travel a bunch, share a unreliable kitchen with room-mates, etc. If you want a personal cook to cook meals to weight loss specifications, it costs something like $1500 per month total.
We've come across so many amazing people from the reddit community! Really love what they have going on there - we're just trying to give a bit more structure to the people who need it.
