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Comment by smallerfish | Hacker News Reader

From a pricing perspective, I think your incentives are misaligned with your users', which is a problem.

On a monthly model, you want users to keep renewing. However, users want their insomnia to be cured quickly.

What about flat pricing instead? 7 days free to get over the pricing friction, $150 to purchase a license to the customized program, possibly with a fairly weak warranty (minimum 10% improvement in sleep time in the first 6 months or your money back.)

Now your incentives are the same - get them "fixed" as quickly as possible and off the platform (and obviously upselling them on affiliate/related stuff if happy.)

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Thank you for sharing your perspective on our pricing model. I genuinely appreciate that feedback.

We actually started our beta launch with a one-off pricing model. We only moved to the monthly model because we discovered through feedback from our beta users that chronic insomnia is fundamentally different from occasional sleep problems or light sleeping issues. Instead, chronic insomnia often comes from deep-rooted psychological factors, like unresolved anxiety, chronic stress, or burnout. These underlying issues can't typically be addressed with short-term solutions or quick fixes.

That's precisely why we believe a one-off program might not provide the continuous support and adaptability required to address such nuanced/varied problems. Our monthly model actually creates a strong incentive for us to provide a highly effective product. After all, no one is going to keep paying us if our product doesn't continue to help them. As a result, we continuously invest a ton of resources into developing new, top-notch clinical content, make it incredibly engaging via animated videos, and are always refining our offerings based on user feedback and the latest research.

(Disclaimer: I joined the Stellar Sleep team after they got into YC, partly because I also had insomnia for many years and went through a full $1000+ in-person CTB-I treatment regimen which helped quite a bit)

To add to George's point, people w/ chronic insomnia (like myself) had gotten this stage of consistent poor sleep after many month or years of negative behavioral/psychological conditioning. To see permanent improvement, it'll also take many months of positive conditioning. And there will be occasional relapses (due to new triggers, etc). And this is the case even if you go through a very good in-person CTB-I program that costs thousands of dollars.

Our pricing model (quarterly, and in the future, monthly) is tailored toward the changing needs of our users. The goal is to equip our patients with an arsenal of tools to manage their sleep problems depending on the root cause, and help them recover from relapses more quickly when they need it, with similar efficacy as seeing an in-person specialist at a fraction of the cost.

cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I)

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