great idea!

Apologies for not being MIA the last few days. I actually sent myself a Badger last night for this morning to remind myself to respond to this thread. Very meta? lol

Btw we added a Badger yourself button because a large percentage of our users were hacking badger with their own phone number to remind themselves of things also.

I was doing that, but mainly to test the thing we have built. It's an unintended, wonderful consequence of what we built that we didn't think would happen. There are many other ways to remind yourself to do things.

A big misconception in the world I believe is that people think a given idea is more "original" than other ideas. It appears to be more "original" if you didn't already know of those connections. Whereas if you are aware of the connections, it doesn't seem as "original." I'm not sure if I'm articulating it well. All that matters is are you creating value for people with this new product that you have created.

Some gains are more monumental than others though. Everyone has the ability to make different connections and the idea of reminding someone else isn't anything new, but the idea of using the current technological platforms of smartphones and the prevalence of texting has enabled an opportunity to create an application to do that thing.

Thanks for the well wishes and I'll keep you and the forum on the latest happenings

I think Apple are a great example of this. When they have tried to be radically innovative they have failed (e.g. Newton, Apple Watch). I think they came out with the Watch a few years too early. It's a great feat of engineering, it's just not something we all need to have. There isn't a single application that we go to our friends and say "this is why you have to buy the Apple Watch"

Apple have been more successful when they have jumped into a market people have accepted the market exists and they come up with the ultimate version of something (e.g. iPod)

This is just my opinion, I could be wildly off base... I'm sure many will disagree with me on this.

Great suggestion.

Right now we have "Once" "Daily" "Weekly" "Monthly."

We will add other variations in the future such as "yearly" and "Daily -Monday through Friday only"

There is demand for the latter due to businesses using it. I'm not sure whether it'll make it into the free version (The M-F only Badger). We may put this into a pro version.

We're open to suggestions on how to navigate this. We're always tweaking.

Apple does not allow us to send Badger's from your phone number. So they always come from a Badger phone number. However, the message reads something like this:

"From Adam Jones - +17774442222:

Make pdf video"

Now if you respond to Adam's message you get this automatic response:

"If you want to reply to the person who sent you the Badger, you'll need to text their number directly.
If you have questions please email: tom@badger-app.com"

We plan on creating a confirmation button. Thanks for the thought. I personally would like a quick button to give confirmation I've done something. Right now, it's early for us so we are trying to keep things at a minimum.

We're working on an Android version. I'll PM you once it is out.

Haha I feel like my post has been wildly misinterpreted which means I probably wrote it poorly.

OP I totally agree with you and cwar. If it seems that I didn't then I have obviously miscommunicated badly.


To have one more crack at clarification because it will frustrate me otherwise:

I'm not saying 'your idea is unoriginal and therefore it is bad'.

I'm saying 'the core/backend of your idea, automatic messaging, will be perceived as unoriginal by the market, which means that the originality and differentiation comes from the new use of that core (ie for friends/family, rather than social groups/businesses). therefore in order to standout with an idea like that it's important to focus on a very simple and easy to understand message and have a disciplined, targeted strategy early on. this covers everything from where you advertise, to how you present the product, to the layout and aesthetics of the app itself.'

Please PM me as well when the Android version is ready. I use Google Calendars but I find it too time consuming for super simple reminders. Sounds like your app may be easy enough to use in place of.

+whatever to adding yearly reminders. Birthdays would be one of my primary uses for an app like this.

It was me who must have miscommunicated badly, because I understood what you wrote initially lol.

The reaction of a some of our biggest users at first was surprising. At first they said to me "Tom, I don't get it" and then they would come back to me a few weeks later and tell me that they came across of a scenario where they could use Badger. They downloaded it and have stopped since, which is nice to see happen.

Onwards

I will PM you when it is out. Your reasoning is the same process I went through with Google Calendar that led me to wanting to create Badger

Thoughts on the new Google reminder feature?

OP - there might be some opportunities to integrate the emerging chat bot trend into your reminder app. Seems like a way you could differentiate yourself. The person who sets the reminder could also set some bot responses/processes that could give more information or automate some related task.

Reminder: dentist appt 1pm - reply [address, phone, cancel] - and replying those functions could give you a message back and/or kick off a process to cancel your appt automatically.

Thoughts?

Apologies, I haven't been on here. I presume you are talking about this?

https://gmail.googleblog.com/2016/04...n-the-web.html

Thanks for the thoughts.

In the long run, those kinds of integrations are possible, however, we are a small team and super focused on one thing. It's about bandwidth. I think many startups go wrong when they try to do too much. They want to create linkedin + ebay + snapchat + Facebook using AI, chatbots and whatever the latest trend is.

Fwiw, I think that actually exists. The place I get my haircut uses some kind of service where it reminds me of the appointment and then asks me to write a "C" to confirm.

For us, reminders are more oriented around tasks such as "taking your medicine" rather than events. That being said, I setup a bunch of Badgers for my father to remind him the times our local soccer team is on television.

Interestingly enough, the most used example badger so far is the one reminding people to take their medicine daily. I would have not predicted that at the beginning.

I had a chat with a nurse where she told me that she was using the app to remind patients in her ward to do certain things such as "brush your teeth." I thought that was rather interesting.

We should be able to out execute everyone if we laser focus on one thing, if we try to do too much we'll bloat the product.

Thoughts?

Btw I used to enjoy your videos on Deucescracked. What are you up to these days?

Yeah that's it. It's been quite solid for me so far for work reminders that I know I need to think about in say a month but don't have time for now (and also won't necessarily do the day I get reminded).

Their reminders centers around reminding yourself to do things. There are many ways to do this (Siri for one). You can actually do this with Badger, but it's in no way our intentional market.

We set out to create an app to remind other people to do things as we felt it was useful and that no one had made this happen at scale yet.

The other core value we have is Badger is meant to be stupidly simple so that anyone can use it. It is intended for the average person, not a Silicon Valley engineering whiz to be able to hack their way through it.

Engineers overvalue what engineers want. Engineers can handle complex interfaces and love features.

For some, they cannot see how difficult it is to use because to them it is simple to them, and this hurts lots of Silicon Valley companies in my opinion because you create the most value when you create something that anyone can figure out to use.

I may have mentioned this higher up in the thread, but Shazam is my favorite example of this. You literally open up the app and hit a button and then we find out the song that is playing in the background.

What do you think of Google Reminders?

That's a great explanation, I appreciate you responding. You're right, there's no reminder for other people.

As the SV engineering whiz type I really like the Google reminders but probably because it's perfect for my needs (schedule a reminder a ways out that persists until done) and integrates into my current calendar workflow.

Thanks for the thoughts. Do you live out here? Are you a software engineer?

Does anyone here have any experience buying Facebook or Twitter ads for mobile installs? We aren't going to do it anytime soon, I'd just like to know if people have had major success with it. Thanks