This is what my phone looked like during all of this research. rehabmaxxing. I downloaded all of the top-ranked addiction/sobriety apps to figure out what our lane should be. Even looked at porn addiction apps - every corner has something to offer. Altho now my retargeting ads are getting weird….

JOKES, mom!

I originally built Benchd on the premise of gamified self-improvement. I thought this side of the brain addicted to sports gambling would respond to “earning” badges/streaks/etc. That still might work! Buttt a therapist might have my head if they read that - so I’m doing more research to determine the best path.

There are a few things I looked at when analyzing:

Here is what I found (p.s. this is what you use AI for):

My favorite by a mile was Sunflower Sober. It covers all sorts of addiction but you can truly feel the time and effort that was put into it. It has a whole education section dedicated to expert articles and classes to not just help your addiction, but to learn about it. I’d be curious to know how a younger generation responds to written content that doesn’t have an attached subway surfer vid, but it’s really cool to feel the time and effort they put into this app. Bravo.

This has probably been the craziest part of the first few weeks. I’ll leave out any private names or information - but I had an individual reach out asking me to take over their AI sports gambling addiction company. They are a multi-decade c-suite in the gambling/casino space that overcame their own addiction and on a mission to help - but is running into the classic time + marketing dilemma.

And I gotta be honest, it’s really enticing. Obviously, my last post was about human vs ai and I’m still headed that direction. This company focuses on letting users engage with AI and have found that the younger generation is more willing to seek help this way. They even passed along peer-reviewed studies for their chatbot. I’m building this app with humans in mind - but I can’t ignore the societal trends of the younger gambling addicts. I even talked in Week 1 about having tech that is faster than your impulse.

Let’s be real - I don’t have the money to buy this anyway. Yet they have made it clear it’s not about the money. They’ve been approached by gambling companies and prediction markets themselves to buy it (ohh look at us we’re not the bad guys, we have a chatbot!) but have turned them down in pursuit of putting it in the right hands. I’m already considering how to raise money and get grants for Benchd so there are other avenues to funding.

Idk - it’s a long shot. But I promised to be transparent in this process and this is certainly a fun curveball in my LinkedIn DM’s.

I’m going to nail down the screens and flow of the app anddd we’re approaching the fun part - design! I will use my trusted design team full of experts - Pinterest 🙂

Actually tho, you can just endlessly scroll UI mockups on Pinterest and find gold. Some other classics are Dribbble and Mobbin.

I have a baby shower this weekend for our first kid! So fitting in design time will be tight, but that’s the fun of it right? ….right?? 😅

Catch ya next week!