Business idea targeting parents/couples: Please RIP it apart

[LemonKangroo]

Context: I feel there are too many apps/services to get into a relationship, but I haven't seen anything to keep marriages together.

Target market: Millennial career mothers with young kids (Because this is by far one of the busiest period of our lives, and we end up playing the default parent role usually).

Some common struggles for the target market (assumptions/generalising):

1. Guilt (Not enough time with kids - we are choosing to be at work and not home - a wicked choice, or the shame for self-care and leaving kids with babysitters/grandparents).
2. Burnout (Balancing Work-Parenting-Household-Relationship-Others) - Only if there was more time - I'd likely sleep/recharge.
3. Lack of support/mental load - Dealing with in-laws, planning dates, money problems, or having to constantly tell our partner to pull their weight (not always of course)
4. Other - Intimacy, lack of control, commitment, or presence in the marriage, etc.

*Apologies if this is harsh/very gender biased - I know not every relationship or partner is like this.

Solution (All-in-one subscription per month):

1. Easy way to share the house and family admin work (chores, reminders, appointments, bill payments, etc.). I know of existing solutions, but I wanted to implement the card system from the Fair Play book & gamify it.
2. Bonding/Me-time (concierge to plan and do logistics - you or a couple just turns up). Hyper-personalised date night/revisit your past.
3. Support (Connection to vetted businesses to solve legal, financial, couple conflicts, career, etc., issues) - There are issues around recognising we need help then selecting a good service on budget is tougher.

Give me every reason why this won't work, why am I wasting my time on this? E.g. the problems are way off, solutions are too weak/generic, etc.

Completely understand!

Out of curiosity - How do you solve it now? Do you have an existing solution or all the things you need to do are managed mentally - E.g. Chores, bills, meal prep/planning, appointments, key dates, etc.

Relationships don’t split up because the wife isn’t making enough effort.

I would turn it round and make it an app for men. Don’t call it how to stay together but “Happy wife happy life” or “How not to get nagged” or something.

Daily reminders of chores - have you hung up your towel? Does a load of laundry need to go on? Dishwasher need emptying? What’s for dinner? Any school admin?

Daily reminder to give your wife a cuddle and ask how her day was. Offer a cup of tea.

Weekly reminder - plan a date night for next weekend, here’s some ideas and some links to babysitting apps. Why not invite some friends round, here’s a dinner menu and shopping list.

Annual reminders well in advance - birthdays, anniversary, parents’ birthdays, kids’ birthdays. Ideas for gifts/what to do.

Basically if you can invent an app that puts the mental load stuff onto men - in a way that’s easy for them and means they may actually do it - that will solve a lot of marital disagreements.

I think you’d better capture a market looking to a pre-marriage/pre-cohabiting/pre-parenting piece when people are keen and eager to make it work. Get the fairness of chores etc in then while they’re motivated, will save arguments later, or make your app & associated services the first place they go when troubles later emerge.

That makes perfect sense and thanks for clarifying.

The honest reason i haven't been able to give a firm HOW is because I have been focused on the What/Why. For me, if these aren't crystallised and big enough problems to solve (for some in this thread, it isn't) then it wouldn't matter how i solve it.

On the positive, it seems the problems are resonating with most here but the solution isn't providing value, there is a better solution, or its not innovate enough.

As next steps, I am going to have to detail and dive into the solutions. I'll share them here later on.

This was super helpful!

Ha, no it’s not, but mostly because I’m an organiser by nature, and I’m very good at it even if I do say so myself! My husband on the other hand isn’t, he has his strengths but organisational skills isn’t one of them, and he leaves everything until the last minute which I absolutely couldn’t do. I knew this when I married him!

I worry about how much money you will spend and have nothing to show for it, this will cost you so much money. Your current budget will get you a figma design and maybe the start of a fairly crappy upwork developer, and someone will need to unpick that situation later.
the small core product of sharing the household tasks already exists in several forms the most popular is Sweepy, but there are many others, it would be hard to compete with them. The all singing all dancing, ai, Uber eats, gamification and everything else is too much, it’s too wide an idea and you’d be burning your money and have nothing to show for it.

I hope this is what my initial post came across as? If anything, I was meaning to say we do so much that it needs to shared equally! When that doesn't work, e.g lack of commitment from DH then it creates the problem (so opposite).

A few have made the same observation about switching the ownership to blokes instead.

My counter to this is that have lower motivation, incentives and would not be searching for a solution so from a business point of view it would be extremely challenging to market to them - Reading between the lines "you aren't doing enough, here is more work". They should be, but if it is coming from the wife, yes this is another task for her, but if she can get him on board to the app then we can achieve the goal.

What are your thoughts?

I think the key issue is that most of the issues you’ve mentioned come down to one thing - one partner carrying the mental load / being default parent and family organiser. And unfortunately an app can’t actually solve their partner being fundamentally disengaged / lazy / not taking initiative etc. An app, created by women for an issue faced mainly by women, cannot realistically ease the mental load because the sad truth is that the status quo works just fine for men ‘like that’. I know that’s depressing but I really think it’s true.

If the husband is completely useless who is telling the app what needs to be done? Who is setting up the list of tasks, birthdays, date nights etc.
The wife. Another task for her.
If a man is so useless he can't hear his wife say "the bins need putting out" - why would he listen to an app reminding him to so it.
If a relationship is that bad.... I'm sorry but a novelty app won't make a scrap of difference.

Why not invite some friends round, here’s a dinner menu and shopping list.

And if you do invite some friends round, you tidy the house, you buy the food, you cook it, and you tidy up afterwards.

Thanks for raising your concerns and I also don't want to be in a situation 5 years wasted with XXk dollars out of pocket. I really appreciate your care and that was my motivation to start the thread.

I want to re-iterate that I shared an example (on the cuff and it wasn't thought through).

• I am not planning to incorporate UberEats into the app
• The household chores is a competitive market - Mental load plays a big role in burnout so it needs a solution, best way I can think of now are share or outsource. Given budget constraints for most families, share is the likely option - As other users have mentioned, I'd have to think of something innovative or not worth it

Are you in product management/UX/UI design? I am asking since, development/feasiblity is still far away. I am assuming you have or know of someone who has the stated problems but from solution pov, due to lack of clarity, its seems quite far fetched?

I used to be a developer (career changed recently) I’ve seen so so so so many people start an app, burn through the budget and have literally nothing to show for it or keep shovelling in cash because of scope creep, existing solutions that already exist with better funding, an ill thought out idea of what the app is.

yours is a combination of it already existing and then massive massive scope creep in later posts. With a very small budget

I think it would have been amazing 5 years ago. Now AI can do all of that from a free shared account.

I am tending towards agreeing with this. I am leaving it to the user to incentivise the husband but if that was already a challenge, then this won't work.

Then the question becomes:

• Is the market large enough where there are men who may/are incentivised enough
• OR Create the app towards men before this issue begins (largely after the birth of first child)

I'll need to think about this and either continue or pivot!

its usually the husbands who cause a lot of the stress. How would an app require them to participate?

if they don’t this is just another thing for a woman to worry about.

Agreed!
But this an unstated assumption I made - By picking the wife (knowing they are faced with more struggles especially when the kids are young) the husband has the maturity and motivation to alleviate her issues.

Its a legitimate que to then ask why need an app? why not just communicate?

• The mental load is massive
• Both sexes are wired differently (Refer For Men Only, For Women Only)
• We have competing priorities and we forget
• I am sure there are other reasons

An app in this instance would codify and manage, hopefully in a fun manner instead of having the same conversation many times.

I did think about this but the main challenge would be the household & life admin.
There is plenty of time to deepen your connection (time for dating, intimacy, etc.)
Also not a big need for experts (counseling, financial management, in-laws, etc.) - Can argue either way but I felt the value proposition is not as strong OR atleast the problems are not big enough that they are looking for a solution.

There are quite a few apps like this around already. Me and my partner use one.

But if man is so useless he can't be bothered to put the bin out - why is he going to bother to look at a message pinged to his phone from this app.
Phone pings. He glances...."oh it's that app".....and ignores it.

I've worked in developing apps for the last 8 years, particularly from the dev side. We've built and sold apps for significant sums and been through every challenge imaginable.

Sorry but being brutal this idea is about 3 years out of date. You've missed the boat.

As others have pointed out, AI has overtaken this sort of idea and is now gaining traction in learning what it's user wants and adapting responses accordingly with personalised responses to make the user feel a more emotional connection. I think you're underestimating how embedded apps like copilot and chat GPT have become in people's lives. They are only the early stage versions with exponential development in the pipeline which would be impossible to compete with.

Your projected dev costs wouldn't get you past the first week. You would need a significant budget to produce a MVP, with front end and back end dev costs, hosting costs (where will you host and how will you control consumption expenditure) operational support costs and ongoing bugs/patches. You would need a team to develop and launch such an app. And I'm not convinced from your plan you'd make it out of 'the development Valley of Death' with a viable marketable product the other side. In other words, serious cash burn on the significant risk of failure.

Have you got an investor lined up for the initial outlay? To break even using the monthly subscription model would require hyper scale, which would require a significant marketing budget. Do you have access to funds? In the meantime you'd be in cash burn mode providing all the support and services you've listed.

It's also a very woolly idea that would be difficult to market (not a clear USP) with a potential stigma attached to it (would using it signal a red flag that the relationship is in trouble? would people want to pay for that? if the marriage is in trouble are both parties actually going to use it?). There could be a negative connotation attached that would be a difficult sell.

Honestly, I really don't think this is a viable plan. Maybe 5-7 years ago but the use of apps has moved on significantly.

I don't think there is an easy answer for this aka this is where innovation can happen (but its probably fighting evolution so maybe not)

• First hurdle is even downloading the app - That has to come from the wife because only she can advocate for it. Blokes themselves won't do it and here is to hoping they listen to us somewhat
• Second daily engagement - Proactive reminders, points earned for completion (e.g. they get added towards a night out with buddies), contribute towards relationship checkup score (let's say weekly).

If they aren't then its a real worry, then you can use the support system to engage a therapist.

I think some of the thinking here is old fashioned and would put women off too, tbh.

My partner doing jobs he’s usually reluctant or refusing to do, just to get points so he can ‘earn’ time away from me and the kids with his friends as a reward feels pretty bleak 😔

But maybe if someone is married to a bit of a dick it could work I suppose and the poor woman married to him might go for it!

So the wife has to advocate/motivate/persuade the useless husband to download the app (probably after she’s signed up to it for him). So he’s probably not fully on board in the first place. Then she has to upload the chores, dates, information that feed the reminders/push notifications. For him to ignore the notifications. Or for him to ‘earn’ a night out with his buddies.

it does sound like this is all just more mental load and work for the woman.

i get what you’re trying to do and can’t comment on the technical or business aspects but I’m not sure this is a solution for useless husbands/partners. It can’t actually make them do any of the stuff it’s prompting them to do.

DH would absolutely not use it. I do like the goals you set out. And I’m a millennial career mum. I’d love an app that has all our calendars integrated and I can forward school emails, dentist reminders etc to it without having to ‘think’ about them. Also one that could book my appointments based on availability and frequency would be great! No idea if that already exists but I’d pay £20 a year or whatever for that! In terms of connecting as a couple though, I wouldn’t want it booking dates, I don’t order takeaways… maybe if it just highlighted areas in our joint Calendar we could spend together (perhaps giving suggestions of something at the theatre etc) that would be good. But I wouldn’t pay for that!

Apples next big update includes AI doing some tasks for you - things like answering the phone to unknown numbers and asking who they are before your phone rings, and it being able to book tables at restaurants.

Your curry prompt example doesn’t really hold because people wouldn’t just write; “I want a curry”, they’d ask for recommendations for a lightly spice curry in Bolton or wherever. There’s a lot of studies into how people interact with AI and I think reading them could be useful.

But my biggest concerns would be:
People concerned about AI won’t want to input their data into yours either; and people who aren’t will happily just use Siri/ChatGPT etc. and if your app is going to “sense” issues they might have; like financial stress or needing a date night, I presume it’ll be processing their messages and searches? That will put off a lot of people. Basically anyone who is data or privacy sensitive.
and perhaps more importantly, that you’ve laid out some issues that some marriages have, but the core issue is that the workload isn’t even… and you don’t have solution to that. You want it to be your app, but it’s not a clear fit. A man who won’t take the bins out every Tuesday evening isn’t going to want to download an app. They’ll ignore the notifications anyway. And I’d agree that there’s no way I’d be incentivising my husband doing his chores, he’s not 13.

I’m not your target market because I made sure the man I married pulled his weight, I’m in my mid 30s and grew up with a combo of girl power and seeing the effect of useless lazy men on older women. My husband does his share. We don’t really have allocated jobs - he usually does the bins, I do all the breastfeeding, anything else gets done by whoever is best placed to do it - so we wouldn’t divide up chores like that. Time to talk is lessened by toddlers and babies but we make it work even if it’s having a random WhatsApp chat across a day on bad days.

I am comfortable giving apps access to my data, and with AI, so from a tech point of view we’re spot on, but not from a problems point of view. It’s anecdotal but I wonder if you’ll find a mismatch between those things, and people who would be most likely to try and app and use it well won’t have the issues you’re describing as much.

Also I’ve just seen your budget and I don’t even think you’ve get a functioning front end for that; to do preliminary testing on. What AI interface are you planning to use? You’ll also need marketing budget for however long you think it’ll take you to attract the customers you need to break even -