[suanmeiguo]

I had the exact same idea years ago. Eventually I found there are some shortage about it so I ditched the idea:

- How to verify people achieved their goal (this website introduces "supervisor" but I'm not sure that's gonna work well)

- You gain nothing from achieving goals, v.s. you lose money if you didn't

- The gain (goal achieved, which can be done without losing money) is much less than lose (lose real money), so no incentive for people to use this service.

This website will face the same challenge.

I'm happy to see there are someone out there having the exact same idea, I hope they can do well sincerely.

[onion2k]

You gain nothing from achieving goals, v.s. you lose money if you didn't

One solution to that would be having the app share the money from the losers between all the winners (less a fee for running the app if you wanted to monetize it).

[cableshaft]

Then every customer would have a financial incentive to always lie and say they completed their goals.

It's already iffy with the 'lose money if you don't meet them' approach, but if you could actually get a piece of all the users moneys, yeah, you might as well say you're a winner (or only create goals where you can easily win) and game the system.

[onion2k]

That's the hard part of the problem, and the bit that makes it worth solving.

[dreeves]

You know how the customers who pay the least are the most work? Well this idea creates customers who literally pay a negative amount. My sense from the erstwhile GymPact -- https://blog.beeminder.com/gympact/ -- is that those "customers" tended to be a nightmare.

Hence Beeminder rationalizing just keeping all the money! :)

[supermdguy]

I had the same idea too!