[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) - On-demand child develo...
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Launch HN: Trustle (YC W20) - On-demand child development experts
for parents
Hi HN! We're Elizabeth, Tom and Catalin - the founders of Trustle
(https://www.trustle.com). We give parents of young children access
to a dedicated expert in child development. When your kid stops
sleeping through the night, starts having meltdowns, or is
struggling in preschool, instead of frantically Googling things, we
give you personal access to someone with expertise, who you can
know and trust. As parents, we know how hard it can be. One of us,
Elizabeth, has a 5-year-old and is pregnant while going through YC.
(She's amazing! And at the same time it's a heavy load.) We know it
can feel that work takes up so much energy that there's none left
over for your kids, and paradoxically at the same time it can feel
that all your energy is taken up by your kids and there's none left
for work. We're all trying to create the best environment for our
child, but the day to day reality of that can feel really hard.
And our support systems have changed dramatically; we've often
moved away from the close-knit communities and extended families
that used to be the norm. And when we go online we see an
overwhelming amount of advice that's often contradictory and just
doesn't feel applicable to our specific situation. As well as
being parents, we have a background in child development. Elizabeth
is a clinical child psychologist, Tom has worked extensively in
EdTech, and Catalin has applied ML to child behavioral health out
of Stanford. We came together because of a shared appreciation for
how crucial the home environment is for a child's development, and
a shared confusion as to why support for parents is so impersonal.
We can't think of another field that is as complex as child
development where outside support and access to expertise isn't the
norm. So we created Trustle! We want to bridge the gap between
parents and expertise. Whether it's to solve a specific problem
like sleep or behavioral challenges, or it's to proactively prepare
the right environment, Trustle gives parents a dedicated coach.
When a parent signs up we ask a few questions and match them with a
suitable expert who is then available through video chat, phone,
and in-app messaging whenever the parent needs them. All our
experts have a least a decade of experience working with families
and young children, a minimum of a master's in early childhood
development, and go through a fairly rigorous selection process.
We deeply appreciate how personal the parenting journey is. Our
role is not to push our own beliefs. Instead, our coaches get to
know families, and then use this relationship, paired with
knowledge about child development and learning, to come up with
solutions that work for their children, their goals, and their
beliefs. On the experts' side, we use technology to amplify their
ability to work with parents. First, technology can make them more
efficient. We can create an automated 'assistant' for the coach
that can surface the right information at the right time, and
support the coach by preparing repetitive and unambiguous tasks.
Second, we'll keep them up to date on the latest in child
development research, as well as using the power of the network by
giving coaches access to each other's learning and experience.
There's no one-sized fits all 'solution' in raising children, which
is why there is so much impersonal, contradictory information
online that leads to parents feeling confused. We want to help
parents cut through that, and figure out what works for them. We
know there are many parents on HN, including those with young
children right now - we'd love to hear about your experiences and
needs around this. And of course feedback and ideas!
Author : eba7keb
Score : 68 points
Date : 2020-03-05 18:03 UTC (4 hours ago)
| jbob2000 wrote:
| How do I sign up? Where are the prices? Your landing page sent me
| in loops when I clicked Get Started.
|
| I'm curious who you're targeting with this product. Wealthier
| families tend to have nannies, who will match expertise with
| implementation. Middle class send their kids to daycare or after-
| school programs, who also match expertise and implementation.
| Since this service is _just_ expertise, who are the families that
| a) can afford this and b) have the time /energy/money to do the
| implementation?
| eba7keb wrote:
| Thanks for your comment! It seems some companies have a spam
| filter on our site that blocks our sign-up and payment
| sections. Perhaps try on your phone (off a work network). There
| should be a sign-up flow right away (try this, which might get
| you all the way to coach match, if it stops, then it's the
| filter): https://www.trustle.com/challenges/general-support
|
| We support a range of families on Trustle: While lots of
| parents feel incredibly supported by their wonderful nannies,
| not all do. And while nannies certainly have expertise in lots
| of areas, we find that they don't in all domains (this is why
| lots of people have nannies and talk to their child's teachers
| or another behavioral health provider). I have even done
| sessions with parents AND nannies together.
|
| Several of our coaches are educators. And I can strongly say
| that they are some of the strongest advocates for Trustle and
| our service. Our educators tell us that in their experience,
| parents are constantly asking for support during drop-off or
| parent teacher conferences that relates to challenges at home
| (rather than school). While the teachers feel they can help
| somewhat, they don't feel that they have the time and space to
| fully give the parents the support they need (we hear often
| from teachers that parents want a 5-minute drop off consult for
| a challenge that really requires more time).
|
| We are far more affordable than most behavioral health (we are
| $50 dollars a month for membership which includes call time and
| unlimited text) and our accessibility by phone and the ability
| to text your coach makes implementation possible. We support
| parents to give them back some energy by helping them with
| accessible and affordable advice to make some changes and
| tackles challenges.
|
| One thing that has been really exciting is how happy our
| families are on the service.
| jbob2000 wrote:
| Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I am working at my office
| and your assumption that the sign up flow is blocked is
| probably true. You may want to fix that though, because my
| company has 75,000+ employees, who would probably sign up or
| investigate this service while at work.
| mattrp wrote:
| As a privacy-conscious parent with five children, all of whom are
| gifted in numerous ways, we do often speak with a psychologist
| about how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative behavior
| into good behavior, etc. I couldn't imagine not having such a
| guide at our side in addition to all the books and content we
| consume as inspiration in our quest to nurture our family.
| However, I would also caution you - and pardon me for being
| presumptive about what this service will do, but please don't run
| ML on my kids. I really don't need their lives contributing to
| mass collection of psycho-data and analysis.
| brianglick wrote:
| > _in addition to all the books and content we consume as
| inspiration in our quest to nurture our family_
|
| A bit off-topic, but would love pointers to your top books /
| content on how to keep them challenged, how to steer negative
| behavior into something more positive, etc.
| mattrp wrote:
| The kids love anything by Susan Wise Bauer. The Story of the
| World audiobooks narrated by her father are in constant
| rotation in the car and these provide a jumping off point to
| go deeper into topics. There are a few used booksellers on
| eBay that sell just about any title for $3.99, so when I see
| something that is related to a recent topic, I just get it.
| Magic Treehouse is great too - we found someone selling their
| entire collection on Craigslist.. occasionally I introduce
| challenges like how to calculate the orbit of a satellite (we
| all failed to find the Starlink train but we learned our
| mistake). We also take lots of field trips. Wildlife is an
| endless topic of interest... we introduced iPads and
| raspberry pi's early on but this was an absolute disaster so
| right now it's old school: books, paper, experiences and lots
| of talking.
| brianglick wrote:
| Thank you!
| JSeymourATL wrote:
| Upvote for any parent with 5+ Kiddos!
| czbond wrote:
| This. I can barely survive 2. 5 means glutton for punishment
| or kids are their hobby too lol
| mattrp wrote:
| Thank you!
| nickswan wrote:
| What books would you recommend? Parent to 3 young kids and
| haven't read any books on parenting or raising kids yet. As
| much worries about making a bad choice as well as a good one
| (in book choice that is!) that would lead to teaching the wrong
| stuff and habits
| mattrp wrote:
| The first thing I would say is to resist typing your kids as
| xyz. I think everyone is genuinely afraid / hyper vigilant of
| kids who are "on the spectrum." (As an example)... don't give
| your kid a label. Second advice would be don't evaluate your
| kids without evaluating yourself. Your kids are a reflection
| of you. As for books, I can't say there's a complete book
| that I can recommend. At best you find snippets here and
| there that provide ideas. The best thing we've done is
| connect with a psychologist. The kids don't see her, actually
| don't even know she exists.
| gowld wrote:
| How do psychologists learn what's good for children without
| studying the population at scale?
| tomsayer wrote:
| This is probably going to be unsatisfactory as it will be a
| bit vague but I'm going to try ... :)
|
| I think part of the challenge we're trying to help with is
| that lots of places (blogs, websites) say 'this is good for
| children.' Which could be true (if backed by the research)
| but that takes an averages approach (I love the book End of
| Average by Todd Rose.) It sounds a little millenial, but
| there is no average child and so an approach the uses
| averages often doesn't work.
|
| Our experts get to know the specific family, philosophies and
| kids, and then bring their expertise (which includes the
| population scale research) to support them in a way that
| makes sense for them.
|
| It's a bit like where we do population-level research on
| health, but we don't then expect that everyone take the same
| approach based on a few inputs. We still get them to talk to
| a doctor.
| tomsayer wrote:
| Tom here (Elizabeth's cofounder.) Completely valid worries in
| today's world! But rest assured we have no intention of doing
| that.
|
| We want to use technology to make this service accessible and
| affordable to as many people as possible - for example being
| able to video chat rather than go to a physical location. But
| that's as far as we want to go.
| mattrp wrote:
| Very good to hear that. How do you intend to use ML (I read
| one of the founders has an ML background)? Also what makes
| the service different from healthgrades other than
| facilitating the video call? How do you intend to ensure your
| providers follow hippa and/or aren't charlatans? I'm
| genuinely intrigued... so above aren't intended to shoot down
| your business.
| tomsayer wrote:
| :) We're new so these questions are great as they help us
| learn!
|
| Healthgrades is for finding a clinical service; we are not
| a health service. We often use the term coach (which isn't
| a perfect term but the best we have right now.) We hope it
| is an ongoing relationship and not just used when
| somethings 'going wrong.' Another way we sometimes talk
| about it is that it's like a really good friend who happens
| to have an incredible background in child development. With
| that in mind, we don't fall under hippa as we don't discuss
| medical issues, although we aim to be at hippa level
| regardless.
|
| Yup - Catalin has a background in ML. We're not working on
| any ML stuff right now - he's just an incredible
| technologist! The closest I can see right now is us being
| able to maintain a body of knowledge similar to how most
| doctors use Up To Date. We could then use ML to surface the
| information to the coach / expert so they always have the
| most up to date knowledge at their finger tips.
|
| We want to be as efficient as possible so we can support as
| many parents as possible, and as effective as possible so
| we provide the best support. But we never want to replace
| the direct human connection, nor to use data in any way
| that parents wouldn't want - we know if we lose any trust
| we've got nothing!
| mattrp wrote:
| It seems like you're being thoughtful about your
| approach. Another question that comes to mind - how will
| you curate your providers? I think that's been a
| challenge for similar models in other areas - they end up
| with a ton of providers ... too many initially to serve
| the customers they have...
| tomsayer wrote:
| This is a harder Q! I don't 100% know but two things give
| me hope.
|
| First, there are so many incredible experts in early
| childhood right now that - IMO - are undervalued. We have
| so many that want to have a home to use their skills in
| support of parents alongside whatever they currently do.
|
| Second, we're investing heavily in the selection and then
| ongoing support and / professional development of our
| coaches.
|
| Over time we will need to increase the support and
| development even further but for the foreseeable future
| we're just happy how many incredible people are out
| there.
| chupa-chups wrote:
| Remove this.
| avip wrote:
| This is indeed pretty depressing.
|
| The ongoing disintegration of the normative human society, loss
| of extended family structures, and escalating segmentation of
| what used to be a community to different age and class groups
| well separated in spacetime is a world-wide disaster with far-
| reaching ripples.
|
| One of the obvious consequences is for-profit organizations
| entering the vacuum left by communities. Of course Elizabeth et.
| al. are not to blame, they cannot fix reality and nor can I.
|
| And yet... this is just depressing.
| tomsayer wrote:
| (I'm Tom, Elizabeth's cofounder) - I agree with the societal
| reflection. Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam really speaks to
| this so well.
|
| While one of the changes we think about is that, the more
| positive one is that we now know SO much about how the young
| brain develops. We want parents to have access to that in a
| meaningful way. I often use the healthcare analogy; when
| someone wants support with their health (whether proactive
| wellness or reactive treatment) they'll often go to a doctor
| which is great (and why it's so bad when people don't have
| healthcare). Raising a child is of course different in many
| ways, but the internet is awash with generic, impersonal advice
| whereas we hope to bring back the human connection. We're
| excited to be able to bring this growing field of expertize to
| parents in a way that is deeply human at it's heart.
|
| But yes... changes in communities are still depressing.
| avip wrote:
| just to make the obvious explicit - I wish your product and
| yourself success and by no means suggest you're doing
| anything wrong or not well-intended.
|
| btw, normative countries provide plenty of help and support,
| for free, to young first-time parents. This is probably the
| best investment a society could do, even in terms of purely
| financial ROI!
| tomsayer wrote:
| Didn't take it that way but thank you for saying that :)
|
| And agree! The organization Zero to Three does a great job
| advocating for this in the US but we're still way behind.
|
| It's not very long term, but kraamverzorgsters in the
| Netherlands are a great example!
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes, my reaction was pretty much 'Ugh, they'll probably be very
| successful and make a tonne of money from the 'there's an app
| for that' generation, but ugh.'
| meristem wrote:
| Question for the founders: what are your experts' certifications?
| How are you managing state-by-state laws regarding counseling, be
| that MFTs or PsyDs?
| DanBC wrote:
| What's your safeguarding policy? When do you refer families to
| child protection social services? Do you know the process for
| doing that in all the places you operate in?
| cjamesd wrote:
| I have had basically the same idea, after feeling the problem
| myself as a parent of young kids. There is so much garbage on
| Google. Social science is always going to lack the consensus of a
| hard science, but we can do better than content farms that have
| assembled articles from freelancers who probably don't have
| children and are mustering up advice that's barely common sense.
| I hope for your success!
| eba7keb wrote:
| Yes! We absolutely agree! Did you pursue the idea at all or
| have any thoughts about doing so? I would love for you to check
| us out and let us know what you think!
| cjamesd wrote:
| I didn't pursue the idea in any meaningful way. My idea was
| basically expert advice codified into a flow/tree, available
| on demand through a mobile app. E.g., my kid is behaving
| badly, so I can go to the app, it asks me the questions my
| expert would ask me, I easily relay information back to it
| and receive helpful suggestions (how to control my own
| temper, how to interpret kids behavior, etc). Bite-sized
| stuff that you can use in the highly urgent/desperate moments
| parents find themselves in from time to time.
|
| I bet your company, if successful, would be well positioned
| to make that at some point in the future. There are some
| tricky questions there, both in terms of effectiveness and
| ethics, about using an AI-powered chatbot instead of an
| actual expert. The experts are still needed but whether we're
| close to approximating human expert delivery of this type of
| advice with technology is an interesting question! Again,
| best of luck and I'll check you guys out.
| pnathan wrote:
| > And our support systems have changed dramatically; we've often
| moved away from the close-knit communities and extended families
| that used to be the norm. And when we go online we see an
| overwhelming amount of advice that's often contradictory and just
| doesn't feel applicable to our specific situation.
|
| Definitely that is a thing. My kid is 3 - this is something we've
| wrestled with ourselves. A niche business idea, but I think it
| has validity. Checking Trustle out!
| eba7keb wrote:
| Yes - the contradicting advice is very real and overwhelming
| for parents. It is myth that there is "one way" to tackle most
| parenting things - there are too many factors at play (child
| temperament, parenting values, etc). Combining evidence-based
| advised with individualized support can actually help - but a
| blog/passive content can't do that. Thanks for checking us out!
| Would love to hear what you think!
| pnathan wrote:
| There's evidence based works out there, but it's crazy hard
| to find them. Too much bloviation. As a resource bundle for
| members, you could offer book packages of known good texts.
| Possibly also a blacklist of "ideas/works demonstrated to
| generally be harmful".
|
| I dig the elephant motif, I just like elephants, and it's
| cute.
|
| Let's see. Working through signup flow.
|
| Picking the Coach - I don't know these people. I'd suggest
| that the initial assignment be done on Trustle-side. It seems
| that the essential differentiator of the three options I am
| initially presented with are the times they are available.
| Which is _unfair_ to these highly educated professionals IMO.
| I would like to understand the key differences between one
| coach and another beyond the statements - despite reading a
| certain amount of child development works, I don't per se
| understand clearly the specialist jargon.
|
| The other thing that gives me pause is the cost - I don't
| have a way to do an evaluation besides dropping $70. Which
| isn't that much in the grand scheme of things, but it's more
| than, e.g., a typical dinner for two. I can imagine that
| there are a wide variety of effective general philosophies
| and, like talk therapists, some therapists are more effective
| for some people than others. This feeds back to the prior
| paragraph - it's easier to be confident in payment if you
| understand the approach of the coach, that it will work for
| your family.
| tomsayer wrote:
| This is great feedback - thank you. We've tried giving
| parents the choice, and us doing the matching (if you want
| us to match just text 1650 398 4285 and we'll get you set
| up!) IF we stick with parents' picking, I think finding a
| way to help the decision making process is really important
| and we can definitely do a better job of that. Thanks so
| much for nudging us on this.
|
| On the evaluation - we offer a 30-day no questions asked
| money-back guarantee. Do you think a 'free intro call' or
| similar would feel better?
| pnathan wrote:
| > we offer a 30-day no questions asked money-back
| guarantee.
|
| So my perspective on that is "I'll forget", because the
| cancellation is something on my shoulders. I'd rather
| have a free intake/lightweight coach session, where we
| feel each other out, and move forward from there, where
| we get charged if we continue, or not charged if not.
| That's a model I've seen for talk counseling.
|
| I don't know what's the best for you as a company,
| though. Pricing is ticklish for consumer services, and
| I'm sure its even worse for health oriented services.
| tomsayer wrote:
| This is helpful feedback. Thank you. We had the counter
| feedback off a free call making the service seem low
| value. Ideally we get the best of both worlds. Easier
| said than done of course!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Obligatory surveillance capitalism subthread incoming.
|
| 1) uBlock Origin blocked 30 things within a minute of loading
| your main page. I understand you're a startup and want to measure
| things, but given the extremely sensitive nature of your subject
| domain, this is _not_ a reassuring welcome.
|
| 2) Privacy Policy - it looks like you've made some headway
| towards being compliant with EU regulations, but stopped halfway
| short. That's understandable (you want to focus on a smaller
| market first). However, there are some mentions about passing
| data to marketing[0], like:
|
| "We may share the information we collect about you (...) With
| vendors, consultants, marketing partners, and other service
| providers who need access to such information to carry out work
| on our behalf;", or:
|
| "To our third-party vendors and service providers so that they
| may provide support for our internal and business operations,
| including for the processing of payments, handling of data
| processing, data verification, data storage, surveys, research,
| internal marketing, delivery of promotional, marketing and
| transaction materials, and our Services maintenance and security.
| These companies are authorized to use Your Information only as
| necessary to provide these services to us and are contractually
| obligated to keep Your Information confidential;"
|
| I hope that in the future you'll go into details about with whom
| exactly you share what information, and what for (as will be
| required if you'll ever want to do business with EU customers),
| and also on how exactly you anonymize and de-identify data.
| Again, you're dealing with pretty sensitive information here; as
| a parent, I need to feel confident that I won't be feeding my kid
| to the advertising machine.
|
| On a positive note, I do like the idea of your service, and would
| happily use something like this, as long as I can feel safe about
| the information I disclose.
|
| --
|
| [0] - Despite the summary saying, "We would only ever share it
| with a third part if it was clear that this was a part of the
| service you were signing up for." (also, there's a typo there).
| tomsayer wrote:
| This is really good feedback! I HOPE that most of the work we
| have to do is in communicating what we do rather than actually
| what we do. But without trust we've got nothing )given this is
| about a parents kids) and so it's a really important thing to
| get right either way.
|
| I realize this doesn't change your first impression, but the
| website is our 'business frontpage.' None of the service (which
| does definitely include sensitive information) takes place
| through the site.
|
| Our PP is a bit boiler plate and I think the main thing is to
| make it clearer about the things you've mentioned and separate
| the service from use of the website. So for example we do track
| who clicks on what on the website using things like Segment,
| but we don't do that in the tech product you use to communicate
| with the expert.
|
| I'd love to chat more about learning if it's in the
| communication or if it's what we're doing? If you're willing,
| could you email tom@trustle.com? (And of course no expectation
| to do so! You've been so helpful with what you've shared so
| far.)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Thank you for responding. I'll elaborate more in an e-mail,
| but it seems that it's more about communication. For
| instance, the difference in amount of data collection and
| sharing you do through the "business frontpage" vs. actual
| service is critical, and I think it should be communicated
| directly - with a working adblocker, your analytics on the
| frontpage don't impact me much, but your data collection and
| sharing policies for the service itself are critical for me
| as a potential customer.
|
| I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this way, so perhaps
| consider describing the privacy aspects of the service itself
| somewhere on the front page.
|
| EDIT:
|
| I had a productive e-mail conversation with 'tomsayer which
| alleviated my concerns about the data processing surrounding
| the service itself. I look forward to the improvements on the
| site!
| jamiequint wrote:
| They load Google Tag Manager, Google Retargeting Pixel,
| Segment, Facebook Connect, and SmartLook (which looks like some
| kind of analytics package).
|
| This should not be controversial as this would be found on
| pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user
| analytics, it's not really something to get all worked up over.
|
| Also, I would probably recommend that small startups not put
| much effort into complying with EU regulations because:
|
| 1. EU regulators have limited time and are very unlikely to go
| after small startups.
|
| 2. As a result, the benefits of (costly) compliance aren't
| worth the costs.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _This should not be controversial as this would be found on
| pretty much any website that runs advertising and does user
| analytics, it 's not really something to get all worked up
| over._
|
| The fact that this is found on so many websites _is_ a
| controversial thing already.
|
| FWIW, all I'm doing here is providing a (however small)
| market signal. They're free to ignore it; no hard feelings. I
| am in the target market - a parent of a small child,
| interested in using the service and with enough spare income
| to afford it. But I don't like the aspects I mentioned.
| jamiequint wrote:
| > The fact that this is found on so many websites is a
| controversial thing already.
|
| It's controversial to you, it's not controversial to the
| vast majority of people. Given that, the downsides of e.g.
| not being able to retarget advertising, not being able to
| understand effectively how users are using the website
| (with minimal effort), etc aren't worth the costs.
|
| Say they were to just have those trackers pre-login and
| post-login there is nothing, they probably lose more
| business trying to emphasize this arcane fact that only
| extreme privacy-nerds care about on their homepage versus
| simply just ignoring them.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Given that, the downsides of e.g. not being able to
| retarget advertising, not being able to understand
| effectively how users are using the website (with minimal
| effort), etc aren 't worth the costs._
|
| Downsides _to the company_. All upsides to me (you can
| understand effectively how users are using the website
| without doing extensive telemetry; in fact, this reduces
| your chances of A /B-testing yourself into full-blown
| user-hostility, as is common these days; see also:
| overfitting, Goodhart's law).
|
| Not to mention: if you need detailed analytics, there are
| couple of self-hosted solutions available. Not at all
| that more complex to use, and at least they don't leak
| visitors' data to various shady third parties. Note that
| this particular product targets parents of small children
| and is bordering on "medical information" territory, so
| an analytics script from some random third party[0] which
| can track what FAQ options piqued your interests is
| especially worrisome in this context.
|
| --
|
| [0] - I noticed from your profile that you have
| experience in the marketing industry, and you seem to not
| recognize Smartlook.
| carterehsmith wrote:
| >> They load Google Tag Manager, Google Retargeting Pixel,
| Segment, Facebook Connect, and SmartLook (which looks like
| some kind of analytics package). >> This should not be
| controversial
|
| This is tricky, as handling a person asking for a medical
| advice is a rather special thing, compared to a person asking
| to buy a vacuum cleaner.
|
| The thing is, all of your medical info will go to all of the
| above trackers, and surely they will sell it to whoever wants
| to pay for that. Insurance companies included.
| trustle wrote:
| Catalin (CTO) here. I very much understand the privacy
| concern.
|
| To clarify, none of the communication with your coach
| happens via the Trustle website.
|
| The part that is full of the standard instrumentation and
| analytics, as you point out, is our onboarding flow. The
| info you enter here is - who you are, - when you can talk,
| - and what parenting challenges you face at the broadest
| level.
|
| Those are the questions required to match you with your
| coach. The data in those initial three questions flows into
| Segment and from there into our analytics tools (Amplitude,
| Google Analytics, conversion tracking for ads, etc.). And
| while it's all encrypted, etc., you're right to say that it
| goes to a lot of places internally. We will not ever sell
| that info, but analyzing it using modern tools internally
| helps us understand what our users want and how we can do
| better.
|
| What comes afterwards is end-to-end encrypted conversation
| with your coach.
|
| Oh, and Trustle is not a health service provider. However,
| we strive to treat your data with the same level of rigor
| that a medical service provider would apply; as opposed to
| the person selling you a vacuum...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _and what parenting challenges you face at the broadest
| level_
|
| > _The data in those initial three questions flows into
| Segment and from there into our analytics tools_
|
| This is the worrying part. The fact that you're a parent
| and the particular broad challenges you face are already
| somewhat sensitive and useful for advertisers. It's fine
| if this info stays with you internally. It's not fine if
| your service providers start using it for their own
| cross-site marketing purposes.
|
| Between individuals, trust works transitively - you trust
| them, I trust you, therefore I somewhat trust them too,
| within the scope of our relationship. Between individuals
| and companies, in the realities of Internet and modern
| advertising, it unfortunately does not work that way.
|
| (I don't really expect you do anything about third-party
| analytics on the frongpage; I just want to voice the
| concerns.)
|
| > _we strive to treat your data with the same level of
| rigor that a medical service provider would apply_
|
| Aim higher. I have a doctor in my family, and you
| wouldn't believe some of the privacy horror stories I
| hear happen in hospitals.
| switchstance wrote:
| Any plans to include children with disabilities? This seems like
| the perfect service for parents of children with Autism.
|
| My wife is a special education teacher, and she is like an Autism
| whisperer. She is amazing. It's incredible to see her understand
| and communicate with nonverbal children. What often appears to be
| a temper tantrum to most, can actually be a communication effort.
|
| It is a lot of fun to watch her work her magic.
| tomsayer wrote:
| :) That's the magic we hope to recreate.
|
| We support all families! If there is an additional factor (such
| as autism) we take care to make sure parents see us as a
| support for them, and not a replacement for whatever supports
| they have in place for their child. But lots of parents
| appreciate having a partner in their support system. Lots of
| our coaches have extensive experience with specific diagnoses.
| codingninjas wrote:
| Hey.
|
| As a father of 2 I know, it's very frustrating to trust any
| books, coaches in child development and especially content
| online.
|
| We are in the Jewish community, most of the friends had many
| kids, and we could turn for advice. If I didn't have this, I
| don't know what I would do.
|
| The hardest thing for me would be to trust you to connect me with
| an expert.
|
| Good luck. It's a hard problem and if it works, you will save a
| lot of lives and parent's health :)
| tomsayer wrote:
| Thanks for the kind message!
|
| Trust takes time to build definitely - and honestly, we don't
| do it - we wish we could! The trust-building really starts to
| happen in the first call when each side gets to know each other
| (and beyond just the expert's credentials and bio.)
| newfeatureok wrote:
| It seems that the underlying assumption here is that people who
| are highly educated and work in "clinical child development or
| similar" are superior at giving advice. Is this actually true?
| I'm also skeptical of the idea that support is best given as
| advice as opposed to something tangible.
|
| If you indeed have a way to give superior advice to parents and
| result in presumably superior outcomes for parents and their
| children compared to the default, which is a parent who uses
| their own resources wouldn't it be more profitable to just open
| up a daycare?
|
| In any case, I wish the Trustle team good luck, but I'm _very_
| skeptical that this is superior to just talking to people who
| have kids already. Kids are unique, but what constitutes a good
| environment isn 't as broad as the landing page and marketing
| make it sound. Furthermore, if one does believe kids are unique
| that is with odds with the technology aspect of this business.
| Either kids are so unique that technology can't really be used to
| make things more efficient, or kids can be roughly grouped into
| categories, in which case - surely said information about
| children is already out there?
|
| Finally - if blogs and content out of the web cannot be trusted,
| why should your experts' advice be? There are very smart people
| out there who have written books and blog posts. What's the value
| add beyond that? Since you're only paired with a single person,
| what if there is contradictory advice between your experts? Would
| you not simply be back at square one then?
| eba7keb wrote:
| I think friends can be an excellent resource for support - and
| they often are! I think the key thing that is missing at times
| is that friends speak from their own experience, not from a
| background of child development. This can mean that the advice
| is skewed. Having experience being a parent is great, but what
| works for one parent doesn't always work for another. This is
| where Trustle (or a trusted expert) can come in.
|
| Take sleep for example (a really common challenge we support
| parents with) - a lot of people have STRONG philosophical
| beliefs about sleep. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
| that - but research doesn't support that ONE approach to sleep
| is better than another (for example, sleep training vs. co-
| sleeping). However, the science of sleep can inform supporting
| a parent to make a plan that aligns with their philosophy
| (rather than their friends) AND is informed by science. We can
| help parents understand sleep patterns, the importance of
| timing of sleep (night and naps), pros and cons or various
| sleep training, shaping, or supporting approaches (etc, etc),
| and how to do it safely.
|
| I think this is the main difference.
|
| We can support parents in thinking though challenges and
| decisions as a partner - they bring their experience and
| expertise on their family and child - we bring the expertise on
| child development to inform choices.
|
| I appreciate you sharing your thoughts!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I too have my reservations (though I want to try this out),
| but:
|
| > _if blogs and content out of the web cannot be trusted, why
| should your experts ' advice be? There are very smart people
| out there who have written books and blog posts._
|
| The problem is, there are orders of magnitude more articles
| written by _content marketers_ - between papers, lifestyle
| magazines, presell pages, social media groups, infographics,
| YouTube videos, etc. there 's _tons_ of it, and it has much
| better SEO than legit sources. I 've worked next to some
| content marketers and seen how this is created - mostly, by
| mindless copy-pasting from other content marketers, and
| occasionally rephrasing things to avoid accusations of
| plagiarism.
|
| The hard part of finding sources on-line is filtering out low-
| quality sources and misinformation. If Trustle can help with
| that - if they can develop and maintain a trustworthy
| reputation, this will be a service worth paying for.
| tomsayer wrote:
| I think there are two challenges with content on the web.
| First, there's all the marketing stuff you mentioned that
| could be low quality.
|
| Second, even for the high-quality stuff (and there is some
| really great stuff out there), it isn't necessarily right for
| a specific family. There's no way for a blog to understand a
| families specific goals or philosophy, or to take into
| account the unique situation of the child or parents.
| Families are complex, and we hope our coaches can help a
| family sort through that complexity and get the info that's
| right for them.
| blue_eyes1978 wrote:
| I hope you guys are recording the mentoring sessions. Developing
| a bespoke roadmap for a child will show the efficacy of the
| development plan when compared to metrics and complication rates
| over an entire cohort. (background: parent and physician
| scientist)
| eba7keb wrote:
| We think there is a great opportunity to learn about efficacy
| in child development and parenting practices here, and are very
| excited by the potential that brings!
| blue_eyes1978 wrote:
| would your team be willing to allow anonymized data to be
| used for analysis/research papers? Or do you have that in
| place for in-house researchers to publish?
| tomsayer wrote:
| I think we're waayy to early for that but I hope we get to
| the stage where this is a question :)
|
| My first reaction is that our goal is to support parents
| and we'd want to be very careful before doing anything with
| their data. BUT if we can support the field at the same
| time as being 100% transparent with our families it would
| be great (e.g. they'd have to explicitly opt-in.)
|
| But again, a great problem for the future :)
| yarone wrote:
| Congrats, really interesting!
| tomsayer wrote:
| Thanks :)
| throwaway13000 wrote:
| Neat idea. I would definitely use it, if you promise that that
| experts would NOT be from low cost countries like India, Romania
| etc (why? Because as a person from these countries, I want to
| learn parenting methods from advanced countries.)
| eba7keb wrote:
| All of our experts are in the United States partially because I
| have a firm understanding of the various licenses and
| credentialing they hold, which isn't consistent across
| countries. Our team of experts is truly amazing! I would love
| for you to check us out and let me know what you think.
| giarc wrote:
| I like this idea as it seems a quicker way to get help. I live in
| Canada so I have access to good quality care. My wife and I are
| currently dealing with a 5 year old that has regressed in her
| potty training for some reason (and it's causing a lot of stress
| in our household). When I think about getting help, I suspect we
| will have to make an appointment with our family physician, who
| will then refer us to a child psychologist who will likely be
| booking a few weeks (months?) out. Getting on a chat with a
| trained expert would be a nice way to start and evalute the
| problem.
|
| EDIT - I first get a warning about site security given http vs
| https. I then get an internal work network warning about the site
| --> Site name: www.trustle.com/ Category: Spam URLs
| eba7keb wrote:
| One of the reasons I started Trustle was because I had a TON of
| parents seeking out my support for everyday parenting challenge
| that would not normally want to make an appointment. In some
| cases potty training regressions are a great fit for therapy,
| but in other cases, therapy seems too intense. And, you are
| right, there is often a LONG wait for care (and in the US, it
| is quite expensive). The convenience of being able to access
| your dedicated expert whenever you want also helps to make
| progress on the challenge more quickly.
|
| Thanks for the info on the site - are you accessing it over
| https or http when you get the error message? Any chance you
| can send you a screenshot at elizabeth@trustle.com. (our web
| flow should default to https)
| myth_drannon wrote:
| clicked on the link you posted and Chrome gave me a warning.
| NET::ERR_CERT_AUTHORITY_INVALID
| tomsayer wrote:
| So sorry you're experiencing this error. We use Webflow so
| everything is taken care of by them, and it's only
| happening with a very small subset of users; we're trying
| to figure out why! Our certificates are testing correctly
| from a 3rd party tester.
|
| If you're willing, can you email tom@trustle.com with your
| browser, location and URL that you're going to?
| jawns wrote:
| I'm an author of child-development books and spend a lot of time
| keeping abreast of research-backed parenting advice, so this is
| really interesting to me.
|
| It seems like you need to position this service very carefully,
| since there is likely not a bright line between some of the
| issues parents might come to you for, versus seeing a
| pediatrician, behavioral health provider, or other health care
| provider.
|
| And indeed, traditionally that's where parents would go with some
| of these issues (sleep issues, tantrums, etc.).
|
| But your FAQs emphasize that you're not a health care service --
| yet I wouldn't be surprised if parents rely on you to at least
| bring up when a health care provider should be brought into the
| loop.
|
| Just out of curiosity, what would you say this service is
| intended to replace? Are your prospective subscribers people who
| would otherwise be reading books, poring through Internet advice,
| consulting friends and pediatricians, etc., and this service just
| saves them time versus the DIY alternative? Or are you courting
| people who have no idea how to do that stuff and their
| alternative is just suffering through it as best they can?
| eba7keb wrote:
| Lots of great thoughts here, thank you for sharing them. The
| line between parent support and parent coaching and behavioral
| health requires great care in navigation - I agree with you.
| Before I started Trustle, I worked both as a child psychologist
| in a traditional capacity, and provided video-based parent
| coaching. There are a LOT of parent support organizations that
| don't use credentialed providers because of the nuances here -
| and many parent coaches don't have any credentials in the
| space. I think instead that the licensed providers should be in
| the space of provided remote support, for many reasons, but
| also because they know when a referral for more intensive
| support is needed. Having licensed professionals helps to
| ensure that we refer when we need to. And, we often work with
| parents who have in-person therapists as an additional support.
|
| I think the service replaces parents who turn to google
| searches, facebook groups, and blogs for advice. This advice
| isn't always evidence-based, and it can't be tailored to the
| family. Zero to three reported from their national survey that
| 84% turn to articles specifically aimed at helping parents, but
| only 49% find them helpful.Parents do want guidance from child
| development professionals. 54% of parents say they would like
| information from a "special web site or blog from child
| development experts." Additionally, 63% of parents overall say
| "I am skeptical of people who give parenting advice and
| recommendations if they don't know my child and my situation
| specifically." And this instinct is right. Trustle aims to fill
| this need.
|
| Also, as a child psychologist, I spent SO much time speaking to
| friends and family who wanted support (and to know which advice
| was evidence-based), but the challenge didn't call for a
| professional (potty training, typical tantrums, etc).
|
| I would love to hear more about what you think!
| zoomablemind wrote:
| Would your experts 'diagnoze' a child based solely on
| parent's presentation of issue the child/family is
| experiencing? In simple cases this may be reasonable, but
| such common issue as tantrums may be deep and multifaceted.
|
| This brings another aspect of the responsiblity of your
| experts for giving any corrective advice to the parent. What
| is the ethical balance between giving a wrong advice vs.
| right advice that didn't work?
| tomsayer wrote:
| Great questions!
|
| On the first, we're very cautious; we do not do diagnosis.
| What we do do is support parents in seeking out a diagnosis
| if that was the appropriate path. Our experts have all
| either done diagnosis or facilitated them in the past so
| they're good and knowing when to suggest that. The balance
| is in making sure we don't give parents a false confidence,
| but we find that the pairing of an expert with the family
| is much more effective than a parent wondering on their
| own.
|
| On the second point, let me know if I misunderstood, but
| our goal is to give the right advice. We know that it won't
| always work and often that will be due to the unique nature
| of the specific family. Sometimes we will just get it
| wrong; we have a very rigorous selection process for the
| coaches and strong QA and ongoing support so we hopefully
| don't get it wrong very often. But we know we won't be
| perfect.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| A wrong advice may be furnished on insufficient detail of
| the presented issue, or a biased assessment as could be
| the case with parent only observation. Yet the effect of
| such advice will be directed at the child.
|
| > ...we have a very rigorous selection process for the
| coaches and strong QA...
|
| What is your QA approach? How do you tell a right expert
| advice from an insufficiently right?
| tomsayer wrote:
| We do lots of things, but one of the most important steps
| is an in-depth role-play where we go through numerous
| scenarios. We're not just looking for the knowledge
| (which given their qualifications and experience they
| should have) but also for their ability to use that
| knowledge in the context of a parent's own goals and
| philosophy. If someone brought their own philosophy or
| values, and not just their experience and expertize, then
| we wouldn't bring them on.
| talolard wrote:
| This is great! We have a toddler and it's great to know something
| like this exists.
|
| As a suggestion, I'd rather buy a 5 or 10 pack rather than a
| monthly subscription. We don't need this every month but expect
| to use it more than once
| nihakue wrote:
| Hi, looks interesting. I'm still figuring out if it's a good idea
| for us, but I noticed a typo in the FAQs you probably care about:
| "By helping you to think proactively about your goals and the
| environment you want to create __to __your family "
| tomsayer wrote:
| Thank you! Changed. I also see I said three ways in that FAQ
| and only have two.
|
| Would love for you to try us! We offer a full 30-day money back
| guarantee as we know this is something parents want to be
| confident in.
| lchengify wrote:
| I've worked in healthcare in the past (Drug Discovery) and have
| two parents in healthcare (Autism Clinical Psychologist and a
| Non-trauma ER Doctor).
|
| This is really interesting and honestly, rings a bit true to me
| given what I've observed from their interactions. Here are some
| anecdotes I've observed from parenting information asymmetry:
|
| 1. A lot of young parents (think: less than 20 years old) show up
| at the ER with healthy crying babies and little or no
| information. When I was pre-med track and shadowed my father in
| the ER, I would see 3 or 4 of these parents in a 12 hour shift.
| Watching my father "bootstrap" each of these parents into what
| normal clinical baby behavior is prior to any health diagnosis
| was interesting: It was essentially a 30 minute 101 session about
| babies that are super important but also non-obvious. It was also
| obvious that the lessons really sunk in when it came from a third
| party clinician. It also wasn't uncommon to see the baby parents
| and the parent's parents in the ER, all taking notes.
|
| 2. For my mother (the clinical psychologist), I've observed that
| even highly-educated, well-resourced parents still struggle with
| everything necessary to learn when having an autistic child.
| These sessions would often range from immediate clinical needs,
| to year-by-year details of specific education needs for the rest
| of childhood, to the region and state-specific financial
| resources and saving accounts available for lifetime planning. My
| mother works with schools and publishes papers on this stuff, but
| the parents always came back because ability to have a very
| direct Q-and-A session about specific issues was incredibly
| valuable.
|
| Anyway, my father is retiring soon but I'll tell my mother about
| your service. She can't travel as much but if it works via video
| chat, she may be up for taking sessions on it.
| tomsayer wrote:
| Thanks for sharing with your mom :)
|
| Both your mom and dad come at this in different ways but point
| to what we're trying to do. Kids get a pediatrician to help
| with their child's health, but then not much for everything
| else and so they rely on the health system when it's not
| needed.
|
| Of course we have to be very careful not to go the other way -
| we can't have a single parent use us when they should be going
| to the health system. We make sure all our experts are on top
| of that - in fact, we hope that having close contact with a
| child development professional will help early diagnosis.
| SpecieCo wrote:
| I feel like this is a solution for something that a very specific
| demographic would actually use. How many parents are involved
| enough to download an app/pay to solve problems with their kids?
| Is the advise that much better than what can be found on google?
|
| I believe this limits your use case and the products viability.
|
| - Also, this product would only be needed/used for a specific
| amount of time in a kids life ( think a 1 year term limit for
| actually getting paid from your customer during the terrible 2's)
| awillen wrote:
| This is kind of a baffling response to me... how many parents
| are involved enough to download an app or pay for problems with
| their kids? Really? People download apps for everything, but
| you think they'd be too lazy to do it for their children? And
| spending money - you think parents wouldn't pay to help their
| kids behave better or to solve problems? They already do this -
| they pay for all kinds of toys/books/devices to keep their kids
| occupied and out of trouble, they pay for pediatrician visits,
| they pay for babysitting, and the list goes on.
|
| As for how much better the advice is than what's on Google...
| getting specific advice on your specific child from someone who
| is professionally trained and with whom your have a
| relationship is obviously going to be infinitely better with
| Google. I can't even understand why that question would be
| asked.
|
| Love the idea, and I think it's really valuable.
| SpecieCo wrote:
| Most parents downloading an app to help solve an issue with
| their children are parents from a specific demographic,
| educated, with gainful employment - this limits the
| demographic that will use this product.
| tomsayer wrote:
| We don't really think of ourselves as an app (although we
| use an app to facilitate the service right now.) It's
| direct, personal support that provides the value; the app
| is the access mechanism.
|
| We have plans to offer different access mechanisms in
| future to make this accessible to more people.
|
| Our hope (and belief) is that all types of parents will
| appreciate having access to someone with expertise - how
| they access them can differ.
|
| (That felt like a very odd way of responding but I hope it
| makes sense!)
| camcaine wrote:
| Parent of 3 under 5 here. My personal view - This would only add
| more pressure to children and parents. Whatever happened to
| trusting your own instincts? Perhaps as children all grow and
| develop in such different ways and rates in the early years the
| best solution is not to try and 'fix' children via experts.
|
| Many parents might be crying out for this kind of service, but I
| certainly would not be one of them. Hope that helps.
| eba7keb wrote:
| I absolutely appreciate this perspective! And, in fact, I agree
| with you. The aim isn't to diagnose kids or "fix" anything. And
| we certainly don't want parents to feel like this ads pressure.
| We want to take the pressure off. A survey from Zero to three
| shows that nearly half (48%) of parents nationwide report the
| they do not have the support they need. This is a serious
| challenge, and also an opportunity. We absolutely want parents
| to trust their instincts - which is why we don't tell them what
| to do, we work WITH with them to provide them access to support
| to tackle challenges that often arise for parents. We recognize
| not all parents need more support of have any challenges, and
| that is great too!
| camcaine wrote:
| Always be challenges.
| eba7keb wrote:
| I think that's generally true for most parents :). And
| while some have a great support network, unfortunately, not
| all do.
| zoomablemind wrote:
| I wonder too, whether this is a service to help parents to stay
| sane or is it to help children overcome development hurdles?
|
| Both of these ends are somewhat irrational, with no one right
| solution. Especially so when it's a health issue, or living
| environment problem. Health calls for pediatrician attention.
|
| There're already well established meeting point web sites for
| parents, like whattoexpect.com and similar. Which pretty much
| sooth parent's worries and give a variety of community-advices.
| As often as "it's a stage to grow over". And, in personal
| experience, we parents grow over it together with the kids.
|
| Personally, I see benefit in a variety of resources vs. one
| central, no matter how expert, point. But I could understand
| busy parents' desire to source this from a single "curated" and
| customized place.
| pnathan wrote:
| > Whatever happened to trusting your own instincts?
|
| n.b., these instincts are absent in humans in general. what you
| refer to as instincts are what you were inculcated with through
| your prior life. Not everything you were inculcated with is de
| facto healthy. Case in point: one elderly gentleman I spoke
| with said that his instinct for proper child training is to
| take a stick and hit a child when they disobey, until the child
| obeys. He regrets the current society disallowing it.
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