Tag Archive

Exquisitely Fair Pre-Pay Discounts

Monday, May 13th, 2013
Exquisitely Fair Pre-Pay Discounts

You know how a lot of services offer things like one month free if you pay yearly? We were nerding out over the math of that and thought, why not generalize to compute the perfectly fair discount for paying at any frequency you like, including every infinity years, i.e., paying once for a lifetime subscription? Just pick... »

Auto-Canceling Subscriptions

Friday, May 3rd, 2013
Auto-Canceling Subscriptions

“Well I’ve already paid for Netflix this month, so I might as well watch another episode of ‘Say Yes To The Dress’. I’ll get around to canceling later. You know, when I’m less busy.” — A slightly caricatured version of me. When you sign up for some subscription services they make... »

Hammers and Chisels

Wednesday, June 20th, 2012
Hammers and Chisels

We have a new competitor about to launch: Lift! Their (meta) goal is the same as ours. They want to “eliminate willpower as a factor in achieving goals”. Our approaches, however, are quite opposite. Or at least they have opposite sign. Lift emphasizes in their pre-announcement blog post today that they believe firmly in... »

Birds and the Bees: Chirpify and Beeminder Shack Up

Sunday, June 3rd, 2012
Birds and the Bees: Chirpify and Beeminder Shack Up

We’re often advised that Beeminder should be more social. As a couple of computer nerds we don’t consider that our core competency, but we’ve just taken a step in that direction thanks to Chirpify. You can now add public shame to your derailments! First we should explain what Chirpify is all... »

Aiding and Abetting

Saturday, January 14th, 2012
Aiding and Abetting

I just blackmailed myself with a silly photo thanks to our competitor Aherk.com, who publishes “compromising” photos of you to Facebook if you... »

Dog Food Renewed

Sunday, November 13th, 2011
Dog Food Renewed

Half a year ago, with Beeminder in its infancy, we committed to averaging one User-Visible Improvement (UVI) to Beeminder every day for at least the next six months. That contract has been insanely valuable to us. “Losing momentum is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a startup.” Lately it’s been a no-brainer (though still... »