Comment by mabcat
2 years ago
Agree. Shimmer is currently in the "assume good faith" category and it would help everyone if commenters gave feedback and asked questions from this perspective.
From what I've seen of Shimmer, the rapid-fire negativity in this discussion is not warranted. I have run a mental health startup. Criticism is constant and highly energised, and it really wears you down after a while. I expect they're also copping it from established practitioners, their industry bodies, and various regulators.
I currently use Shimmer, I have used BetterHelp and TalkSpace. These last two are... not in the "assume good faith" category. Perhaps they could show up to HN for some "robust discussion".
The thing I would like from Shimmer is a policy and mechanism where if you stop accessing the app and showing up to coaching, they stop billing you. Of course this would be startup poison, businesses are built on subscription revenue from non-users. But only billing for care you provide is the strongest show of ethics and consumer-centering I can imagine. Especially when your client base is ADHDers! Shimmer, if you currently do this, put it on the front page in bold.
In my opinion all of these mental wellness apps start out in the good faith category but will transition to borderline scam. Same as most VC startups. Mental health service providers are expensive, and trying to get equivalent services at rock-bottom AppStore prices isn’t going to work. They’ll build up some reputation using VC money, and then when the time is right they’ll sneakily reword their site and introduce some “AI” component. Mark my words.
We hope to stay in this good faith category, and unfortunately are not able to offer "rock bottom app store prices". We believe in the power of human connection (with others, with coach) so we will not be replacing humans with AI. However, I will say, we already have AI components (on the back end to help with coach efficiency—e.g. helping coaches summarize notes, helping them schedule sessions, prioritize their messages, etc.) so hopefully it's not a surprise when we say AI!
Erm, a lot of grifts don't charge low prices. That's why they're so lucrative!
So far it's not looking good with this line: "All of our Shimmer ADHD Coaches are licensed or certified mental health professionals *OR* have extensive experience with ADHD & undergo our Shimmer Coach Training program" (emphasis mine). That should be a PR disaster with a blog post correcting it already in the works.
There's typically no human connection between you and unskilled sharing economy labor. "Experience with ADHD"? Please! Most entry-level workers have experience with something but it's still entry-level. Higher paying jobs are based on supply and demand. See the difference between DoorDash and jobs requiring a Commercial Drivers License. It isn't the number of miles driven, it's licensing and certification, which that *OR* sneakily gets you out of. It's like The Santa Clause, it's a cartoonishly misleading sentence.
Thanks for having us in the "assume good faith" category—we are committed to staying there! And I appreciate your sentiment. We have already made changes to the website, communication, flows, and processes based on this megathread, so I'm very grateful (even if emotionally hard)!
And re: auto-cancel, we've also debated this internally at length. We believe that the worst "startup poison" is not adhering to your customers, so we definitely don't mind shutting off subscriptions and have done it numerous times.
Currently I will admit it's not automated fully yet but my co-founder & CTO tracks whether members have been inactive 40 days (since some users might be paused for a month) and then he goes through this every week or so and double check their meeting with their coach (and if needed, check if there's a pre-agreed situation with their coach) and then will unsubscribe them. We are already in the processes of solidifying the protocol here to make it fully automated. A bit of context on why we don't cancel right away: holding the member's spot with their coach and ensuring the coach has the time/capacity to serve them is important, and sometimes members just don't show up for 1-2 weeks and when they come back, their coaches work with them to either catch up or sort something else out. If we were to just take their spot away, it can be really jarring (especially in harder times for our members) to not have their spot with their coach anymore (e.g. recurring time in calendar held) or support with that coach all together (e.g. coach capacity). Thinking more about it, one of the options we threw around was to have members be able to set this up early on: e.g. "If I don't do X for 30 days, please pause my account, I acknowledge I may not be able to access the same coach after", something along those lines. Very open to ideas.