37 points by soelost 2 days ago
I built HumanAlarm because I'm a heavy sleeper who's missed important things despite multiple phone alarms.
It's exactly what it sounds like - you book a wake-up time, we send someone to knock on your door for 2 minutes. If you don't answer, they wait 3-5 minutes and knock again. Simple as that.
We're live in select cities.
Would love feedback on the concept and execution!
What's the logic behind this? You are such a heavy sleeper that you miss an alarm from a clock or phone, but somehow you don't miss a door knock? Maybe you can change your alarm tone to a door knock or door bell if that's what gets you up in the morning.
Fair question! For me, phone alarms blend into dreams or I unconsciously turn them off. But a real person knocking? That's an external force I can't dismiss subconsciously. Plus someone is literally waiting for me to get up. But if changing your alarm tone to a door knock works for you, then by all means!
It’s a fun, niche solution, but I’d posit when you start looking into the minimum financial requirements to operate this business in a way that “guarantees” everyone’s safety and insures against worst case scenarios, this is not a viable business even at the smallest scale.
I’m not sure how things are in America, but in Australia you can be made personally liable (both small and large businesses) for things that go wrong in your company, especially when someone gets injured e.g. https://www.ohsrep.org.au/prosecutions_sn_699_connect
Yeah - absolutely - every business has risks, but the point here that I’m trying to make is if those risks aren’t fully assessed, and you aren’t willing to risk going to jail based on the “hope” that humans behave exactly as expected and agreed then this is likely a business probably not worth pursuing - of course everyone has different risk tolerances - but there’s risk tolerance assessment and lack of experience in assessing risk - I don’t know the founder here but I believe it can only be helpful if different perspectives are presented.
To go a bit deeper, what you have here is a business where a somewhat unknown person is hired to any address that you type into a website and pay a marginal fee for - I’m struggling to see how you could keep people safe with this concept (not only the contractor, but also the customer).
How are you preventing the service being used to terrorize people by impersonating them and ordering knocks at 5am?
The old Uncle Milton attack: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_... .
Wait, normal people dont immediately think "I could have live ants shipped to anyone/pick up anyone's car under this system"?
Can’t be that much crazier than delivering food right?
Unless I’ve missed something.
It is the fact that it is happening early in the morning that worries me. People aren't fully cognizant when they are woken up in general, and also aren't expecting anyone to be ringing the doorbell at that hour. I think fearful and violent people will be more likely to overreact in that situation.
All the cases of shooting food delivery workers for ringing the wrong doorbell that I've read have occurred late at night, and I think early in the morning will be even worse.
We don't answer calls anymore, and a "fake" pizza delivery, doesn't that mean the person get's a free pizza?
Here, you're disrupting someone's most vital health function for a low fee.
No joke, I won the World Sleep Championships a few years back, and received two deliveroo knocks on my door that night. I was modestly suspicious that it was intentional interference to throw me off (of course, there was no money on the line, and I am pretty sure other competitors didn't know where I lived).
https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/neurohacking-the-world-...
This is definitely a problem to solve. I could even see harassment being the most likely initial use case, until you manage to reach people with the problem seeking a solution. (People are more likely to want to eat pizza themselves than to harass with it. But people who just heard of this door-knocking service, without seeking it out, are more likely to want to harass someone than to want to be woken up themselves.)
A lot of tech businesses try to ToS away liability, but you can't do that in this case, since the harmed party isn't the customer/user. (You can try to ToS away the liability of your door-knocker flaking on you, or the customer thinking they did, and missing an important meeting. But not the harassment of a non-customer/user.)
I don't think zero-knowledge proofs of residence are ready.
If you could find a way to do it in a smooth-UX way, such as by signin-with-Google (or confirmed email) and match that up with physical address using a creepy data-broker service, that might work well. But I'd guess would be a big percentage of your engineering effort, and you'd have ongoing costs, and possibly some upfront commitment to the broker to bother with you at a viable cost rate.
Other ideas that come to mind seem like they'd have significant numbers of rejected legitimate, and accepted illegitimate.
Random idea: One of the times people most want wakeup help is when they're traveling (with disrupted schedules, unfamiliar settings, risk of phone alarm accidentally in DND/mute or out of battery, etc.). Hotels have it covered. Maybe you could integrate with AirBnb, in a way that lets you sufficiently authenticate that the person at the address at that time wants to be woken then. And you can give AirBnb a big cut, for the integration and for advertising your service. Or maybe AirBnb wants to build and own the UI and billing, and you're only a middleperson who supplies and pays the contractor door-knockers (and provides a brand, and lets AirBnb keep a bit arms-length on that and the contractors). (Or "hosts" could provide an unusually good alarm clock on the nightstand. Or there could be an unusually good alarm clock that the people who want it can buy.)
The Airbnb integration idea is brilliant! Travelers definitely have disrupted sleep schedules and unfamiliar settings. Hotels offer wake-up calls but Airbnbs don't. That solves both the verification problem (host vouches for guest) and creates a clear use case. Thanks for the insight!
Interesting concept! Reminds me of the “knocker upper” of old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up
Sounds great until they show up 30 minutes late and barely tap on your door. Breakfast delivery also assumes you're awake to receive it and that restaurants are open before your wake-up time! We show up on time and knock persistently - plus not all wake-ups are in the morning.
How do you verify that a doorway in a photo belongs to a given address?
You could have the person doing the knocking compare it when they arrive at the location.
The more practical solution (excluding just using a normal alarm) would probably just sending a OTP to the address that needs to be entered before the first order.
Alternatively (not sure if this is available in the US, just basing this on the German ID cards), you could use the person's eID to verify their address. This is probably a bit too complex for a fun project like this one though.
I got this service for free once from my boss at the plastic factory and it convinced me to be more responsible about waking up for work.
I might suggest adding a list of cities you're live in. Right now I think you just have to intuit which cities work based on the address autocomplete.
Cute idea though! I'd be curious to see what your user-facing application looks like when you have an alarm set. Do you provide some sort of proof that the "alarm went off"? Package services usually take a photo of the door/porch as proof, might be a good idea in case anyone tries to dispute a charge for "not being woken up" heh.
Like another sibling comment mentioned, yeah, abuse potential is there. Could consider a snail-mail-letter-with-a-code verification method for addresses, though that's obviously rather slow.
Avoid stand your ground states...
Also funny comment in the nano banana thread that this used to be a job before the alarm clock... Serendipity
I've been thinking about something like this, except it was scheduled phonecalls. That'd probably scale easier too right? I'd use it for sure.
Starting from $19? And I assume those are American dollars? Wouldn't it be more cost effective to buy a loud alarm clock and place it across the room? If I buy two and set their alarm time 3 minutes apart, aren't I effectively doing the same thing cheaper and with no risks?
I'm not trying to shit on your idea, but I don't understand the consumer value proposition.
Fair question on price! But if loud alarm clocks across the room worked for heavy sleepers, this wouldn't exist. I've tried every alarm hack - the human element and social pressure is what makes the difference. Plus $19 occasionally vs missing important meetings/flights is worth it.
The first question I have with a site like this is "in what regions does this operate" and I'm always surprised if a site doesn't immediately answer it.