Insomnia has been a personal struggle for both of us. George’s insomnia led to him quantifying his sleep for the last 7 years and making questionable life choices like wearing orange (blue-light blocking) goggles to evening social events.
I (Ed) suffered from chronic insomnia for over a year and tried everything from cutting coffee, blocking blue light, to taking melatonin and antihistamine, but couldn’t find anything that worked. It took an immense amount of energy for me to perform even the most mundane of tasks, such as doing my laundry or ordering groceries. At night, I felt overwhelming loneliness and resentment as I lay in bed wide awake, mindlessly scrolling through reddit and browsing HN in the middle of the night. I even bought a $500 research-grade EEG device to track my sleep, which was honestly kind of depressing because it showed that I was sleeping less than 4 hours per night for weeks straight.
When I finally decided to see a sleep specialist, I was put on a 3-month long waiting list. Eventually, I was able to get my insomnia treated. That finally helped. But it also made me realize that the same therapy that I received could be delivered online—there is no reason why anyone should have to wait 3 months to get treatment. George and I both have experience in digital health, so we decided to partner with sleep experts to create Stellar Sleep.
People with chronic insomnia often receive inadequate care advice. They’re told to try cutting back on coffee, meditate more, or make their bedroom darker, when chronic insomnia is often rooted in deeper, psychological issues (e.g., financial anxiety, workplace stress…etc.). In fact, “present research [now] supports the view that sleep is causally related to mental health difficulties” (Sleep Medicine Reviews, Dec 2021, doi: 10.1016/j.smrv.2021.101556). This matches up with what we observe—over 50% of our users reported that they have been diagnosed with depression, anxiety or other mental health conditions. Stellar Sleep uses psychology to help chronic insomniacs get their lives back.
We start by understanding a person’s immediate sleep-related challenges and providing them with practical strategies for dealing with them. Then, we drill down on the underlying psychological drivers of a person’s chronic insomnia and create a program to resolve those drivers one by one. Participants spend 5-10 minutes per day completing modules in the Stellar Sleep app.
We launched last August, and have already helped over 10,000 patients improve their sleep permanently. Here’s how one of our customers, Victoria, describes her experience:
“I’ve had insomnia for about 5 years. I was at the point of desperation, willing to try anything. Insomnia feels very lonely. It’s 2am and your spouse is asleep. You’re very alone with your anxious thoughts. About the mortgage rates changing. About all the things you have to do tomorrow without any sleep. It feels like you’re trapped and alone.
After starting Stellar Sleep I’ve now started sleeping better for the first time in 5 years. I’ve gotten hope back that I can be normal. Most people who sleep well don’t worry about sleep. A good night’s sleep should just be normal.
”We have strong clinical data showing that we're just as effective as in-person treatment and have a year-long clinical study running with Harvard Medical School / Brigham & Women’s Hospital paid for by the State of Massachusetts and the US Department of Commerce. On average, our users sleep 74 minutes longer than before and spend 52% less time awake in the middle of the night.
If you have trouble with sleep, try our app and let us know what you think! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and we will be happy to answer them. We look forward to hearing your comments and experiences!
P.S. Here's our FAQ page (https://stellarsleep.com/faqs) since so many of you asked about pricing
These things are an insult to your users.
I don't care if some marketer from noom wrote a pdf about how it "increased conversion".
Just stop it. It's a horrible dark pattern.
Hey there! Wanted to chime in and let you know that we hear your concerns! I expressed the same sentiment about long surveys to George and Ed when I was considering joining their team. We're committed to making pricing, user onboarding, etc more transparent and easier for our users.
Yes, we do use onboarding survey responses to personalize our program. The programs on the payment page might look the same "regardless of your answers", but behind the scenes, we really are building customized modules based on your responses. For example, if a user mentions in the quiz that they have racing thoughts, we're working to surface relevant content earlier in the program and partnering with our professional sleep psychologists to create more modules that tailor to such needs.
Everyone on our team is constantly learning, and we do appreciate your feedback and patience! To get the app off the ground, we needed to make quick decisions in the beginning and just go with what made sense to us, but as we build out our team and incorporate more of your feedback, we're committed to doing better. I wouldn't work here if I didn't believe this was part of our mission.
The customer wants to see what your product is, what it does, how it does it specifically and succinctly, and how much it costs, front and center.
These "onboarding surveys" is a recently hyped dark pattern that uses a huge number of questions along with fake spinners, and random interstitials to trick the user into entering an email at the end, due to the cost sunk into the onboarding experience.
In marketing/sales speak, you're actually generating yourself a huge number of dud leads this way, making your true conversion numbers actually worse than what they could have been if you only signed up "serious" customers.
If you insist on using an onboarding survey, place it after the signup email, and restrict only to questions, answers to which you actually use to generate the program for the user.
Your business needs paying customers.
That being said...the parent comment does make a valid point about this potentially being a dark pattern. I think a reasonable disclosure (small txt on bottom "free trial for 14 days" or something like that) is probably a reasonable way to inform users.
You're effectively holding users (and especially their data) hostage by exploiting sunk cost fallacy, rather than letting the value of your product stand on its own weight.
Here is a recent thread on this exact topic with much more discussion about how user-hostile this is, and how it makes many assume that your primary goal is to collect data to sell rather than to help any individual with any benevolent task.
Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36962502
There's also a "loading" screen that doesn't do anything except spin.
You also throw in random interstitials all over the place making it even slower to onboard.
You use savvyy nocode builder and this "onboarding" looks eerily similar to their "sleep app" template: https://trysavvy.com/example/sleep-reset-assessment.
I see this playbook far too often. I'm sorry, but it sucks.
Be honest with your users. Just provide them with clear info about what your service does and how it does it, and how much it costs, off the get go.
* They start with a questionnaire about your sleep. But that seems to be like those deceptive political ads that look like a questionnaire but are just fundraising clickbait, because…
* After paying I had to fill out a nearly identical questionnaire. Hey, fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you fucking pricks. You just charged me money to waste my fucking life energy. Hey, did I mention I have sleep problems?
* The app provides some version of cognitive behavioral therapy via insulting cartoons. The main therapist or narrator or whatever is the most goddamn condescending talking cartoon owl I can imagine.
My sleep problems are no joke and being talked down to by an owl animated by a $75 Fiverr gig does not make me feel like a valued customer.
I’m desperate enough to go through with this but it’s not an auspicious start.
Also, as a side note, cognitive behavioral therapy may feel like it is infantlizing you because it is digging up stuff that an adult should be able to understand and process more or less effortlessly on their own. But that's kind of the point of that therapy.
Except they will charge you a lot more money, have you come to the office and have you fill out the same form 3 times a row (online, then at the office, then verbally while talking to doctor) in typical doctor’s office fashion
Can your app help me? Or is it made to help some other kind of insomnia?
But yes, not waking up at all at 4am would be great.
Sleep With Me
https://www.youtube.com/@Sleepwithmepodcast
Jason Stephenson's Sleep Meditations
I believe it's stress related for me. Meditation and sleep hygiene works, but nothing else so far. YMMV, good luck.
Also, do you plan to offer a version of this for teenagers? I noticed the youngest age range is 20.
The way it works is everyday, you will spend 5 - 10 minutes completing modules related to sleep/ psychology. These modules can be video or text based and is based on cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), which is the first-line treatment recommended by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
You also record your sleep on the app, so we can further personalize your program and also apply an algorithm to analyze your sleep patterns and adjust your bedtime automatically to improve your overall sleep quality.
You can learn more on https://stellarsleep.com/science.
Our app is recommended for 18yo and above. Hope this answers your question!
- send them a daily quiz and youtube video
- suggest a bedtime
Is that an accurate summary?
Wish I were kidding.
I'd totally pay for this if it's something that might work, but honestly am skeptical about it working for my particular sort of sleep pattern. Congrats on the launch!
[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/insomnia/in-d...
[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6796223/
There's also more information on https://stellarsleep.com/science.
If you don't think you have insomnia (you fall asleep fast and you stay asleep long enough), then you probably don't have chronic insomnia, which is what our app is designed for. That said, if you find yourself feeling groggy or not refreshed despite getting sufficient sleep, I would recommend that you talk to your physician. You might still find our app helpful (so give it a try and cancel if it doesn't work - we also have a 30-day moneyback guarantee), but just want to point out that our target audience is people with chronic insomnia.
Much of the content is (and ought to be) freely available information anyway, at least for boilerplate CBT-i (see e.g. https://insomniasos.net/). Obfuscating what is the size of a buzzfeed article behind payments and apps to make a buck is absurd.
Seeing a professional is one option, but ymmv. GPs don't seem to know much about this and reflexively prescribe pills because that's what people want and expect of them. Sleep specialists can be good, but the source material behind their approach can be limited and dated (like CBT-i itself). What I did is read a pile of research articles (maniacally at first), and books. It's not for everyone, but you'll find more useful information than in glorified advertisements in google searches.
That said, we do offer more than just information. We allow users to track their sleep on our app so we can customize our program. Each user goes through a personalized track based on their sleep habits. We also automatically calculate your sleep restriction window for you. We also have relaxation content that you can listen to right before you go to bed, a worry/ gratitude journal and a routine tracker.
Books by (relatively) renowned/trustworthy experts are also a thing and they all cost less than your monthly subscription.
+ A lot of people don't have the time or patience to invest several hours into reading a book. They'd prefer things broken down into actionable steps. In fact, we've done a lot of product testing to figure out how to improve program efficacy and we found out that the shorter and more "bite-sized" we made our modules, the more willing our users were to follow them, and the better their result.
+ The big "open secret" in the sleep research community is that yes, CBT for insomnia is a great starting point, but it needs to be followed up with further psychology-based care. Stellar Sleep delivers CBT for insomnia-based programming initially, then transitions into continued psychology-based programming which sustains the results of the initial CBT for insomnia work.
Given the dark pattern around email, I immediately assumed your monetization was going to be via selling ads or personal data - I see that might not be the case, however I think that not making this very clear from the start is consumer unfriendly, particularly when your customer base is a self-described sleep-deprived individual who probably has mental health issues (which describes me, FWIW).
On a monthly model, you want users to keep renewing. However, users want their insomnia to be cured quickly.
What about flat pricing instead? 7 days free to get over the pricing friction, $150 to purchase a license to the customized program, possibly with a fairly weak warranty (minimum 10% improvement in sleep time in the first 6 months or your money back.)
Now your incentives are the same - get them "fixed" as quickly as possible and off the platform (and obviously upselling them on affiliate/related stuff if happy.)
We actually started our beta launch with a one-off pricing model. We only moved to the monthly model because we discovered through feedback from our beta users that chronic insomnia is fundamentally different from occasional sleep problems or light sleeping issues. Instead, chronic insomnia often comes from deep-rooted psychological factors, like unresolved anxiety, chronic stress, or burnout. These underlying issues can't typically be addressed with short-term solutions or quick fixes.
That's precisely why we believe a one-off program might not provide the continuous support and adaptability required to address such nuanced/varied problems. Our monthly model actually creates a strong incentive for us to provide a highly effective product. After all, no one is going to keep paying us if our product doesn't continue to help them. As a result, we continuously invest a ton of resources into developing new, top-notch clinical content, make it incredibly engaging via animated videos, and are always refining our offerings based on user feedback and the latest research.
To add to George's point, people w/ chronic insomnia (like myself) had gotten this stage of consistent poor sleep after many month or years of negative behavioral/psychological conditioning. To see permanent improvement, it'll also take many months of positive conditioning. And there will be occasional relapses (due to new triggers, etc). And this is the case even if you go through a very good in-person CTB-I program that costs thousands of dollars.
Our pricing model (quarterly, and in the future, monthly) is tailored toward the changing needs of our users. The goal is to equip our patients with an arsenal of tools to manage their sleep problems depending on the root cause, and help them recover from relapses more quickly when they need it, with similar efficacy as seeing an in-person specialist at a fraction of the cost.
Given all the feedback, we're thinking it might be useful for us to create a separate page just for pricing as well.
Does Stellar Sleep delve into sleep hygiene? Are "edge cases" considered e.g. some people report no difference with cutting caffeine (as mentioned) but others cut caffeine and instantly their insomnia is cured and their lives change.
Both Stellar Sleep and Sleepio are based on behavioral psychology. Sleepio is a weekly program (I believe you spend an hour each week). From our experience and also through user interviews, we found that it's easier for patients to follow a daily program (we offer daily bite-sized modules so you don't have to spend more than 5 - 10 minutes a day).
Also good point! We do delve into sleep hygiene - that being said, our target audience is people with chronic insomnia (insomnia 3+ nights per week for 3 months or longer). While common advice such as “avoid caffeine after 4pm”, “limit alcohol in the evening to no more than 2 drinks before 7pm” or “minimize the use of blue-light emitting devices an hour before sleep” are helpful, there is little evidence that sleep hygiene alone is sufficient to treat chronic insomnia.
We start by understanding a person’s immediate sleep-related challenges and providing them with practical strategies for dealing with them. Then, we drill down on the underlying psychological drivers of a person’s chronic insomnia and create a personalized program to resolve those drivers one by one.
Every day, you will go through a set of modules (5 - 10 minutes each day) that teaches you the psychology skills you need to get better sleep. The modules presented will be based on what we think will be most effective for you, given your sleep patterns.
Our modules are often video based (short animated videos featuring our mascot - Merlin the owl) and audio based, and we have interactive modules, text based modules etc. Topics in the first phase of the program include how to deal with a racing mind, cognitive restructuring, techniques for general relaxation, stimulus control and sleep restriction therapy.
You'll also be recording your sleep each day, and this will help us:
+ Further personalize your program
+ Recommend a sleep restriction window for the following week.
Hope this answer your question!
What time of day are you recommended to use the module?
For a while, I just accepted the fact that insomnia is something I've to live with (it's easy to feel that way especially if it has lasted for so long), but that's just not true. There are ways to better cope with your insomnia even if you're not able to resolve it entirely. Give our app a try and let me know if you have any questions.
What parts of the learn more sections or pages didn’t make sense to you?
People making app for serious medical issues and telling people. they be cured. They just need to believe in the founders. believe in the app and then they shall be healed Hallelujah.
It is the app version of snake oil, and tv healing. Keep your arm on the tv right now.
How about we make a surgery app? For a monthly fee it will tell you how to perform safe surgery on your friends and neighbors. Have a side hustle. Avoid huge hospital bills.
Oh we can't do that because it would be dangerous and unethical?
Well the brain is an unknown number of magnitudes more complicated than our physical structure.
The industry producing apps to "fix your brain" in 6 easy installments.
There is a good reason people go to med school and spend a lot of time specializing. There is a good reason for psychologists going to school and specializing. and even then, they have a hard time knowing what to do, because the science is not there yet.
Had you actually been able to to solve the complex collections of disorders and issues that may cause insomnia would you be looking at a Nobel prize.
Not $10 every month on the app store. (or however much it is)
$63 per month with a minimum 3 month subscription... so yeah...
However, if we're being fair "treating" insomnia is not exactly surgery there are clearly "self-help" style approaches and general lifestyle changes which would be helpful for many/most people suffering from it.
I mean that fact that you can't "cure" it 100% for everyone is not a good reason not to try. I don't think the all or nothing approach is very constructive. Helping some people to some extent is still better than nothing (no clue if the app is worth it or not, although given the pricing and the way it's presented, I'm also leaning towards snake oil)
They are also usually the first recommendations that your primary care physician will offer you.
Paying $189 for them seems excessive. But ok, yeah, the app can present it and help you keep up a new routine.
The main reason for my comment was the way it was presented. As "a cure" for people with chronic insomnia. George had it for 7 years.
By that point most people will be far past such initial recommendations. They are also far past what your primary care physician can help you with. The person then needs to see a sleep disorder specialist.
Relevant quotes from the post: "Insomnia has been a personal struggle for both of us. "George’s insomnia led to him quantifying his sleep for the last 7 years" "I (Ed) suffered from chronic insomnia for over a year and tried everything from cutting coffee, blocking blue light, to taking melatonin and antihistamine, but couldn’t find anything that worked"
Also, that fake loading bar while "building your personalized program" is cringe.
You had an opportunity to make your part in making the web a nice place again, yet you failed.
wonderful personal story, but doesn't look like it is translating 100% into empathy.
Just out of curiosity, what kind of information will be helpful for you? We thought of including a flow chart showing what you'll be doing each week (e.g. dealing with a racing mind, cognitive restructuring, stimulus control, sleep restriction etc.) on the program, and also some of the information in https://stellarsleep.com/science. Do you think that will be helpful?
You can see our pricing information here: https://stellarsleep.com/faqs
- Go to bed very late at a time when you can barely keep your eyes open, for me it was 2am. Do normal sleep hygiene things until this time so stay away from screens and stressful stuff. Do this for the same time every night.
- Do not use bed for anything except sleep. We are rewiring our brains so that bed = sleep and that's it. No reading, no screens, nothing except sleep happens in the bed.
- Wake up after ~5 hours with an alarm. This sucks and I hated it but I stuck with it for 2-3 weeks and it shifted my entire existence. My sleep window was 2am-7am.
- The first days will be hard and you may not sleep through that entire window. The important part is to wake up at the prescribed wake up time or whenever you wake naturally (very hard) consistently for a period of several weeks
- Over time, you should be able to sleep through that window. For me, the process of being able to consistently sleep for a scheduled window was enough to prove that there was nothing "wrong" with me as I had told myself for 20+ years.
- Over a longer time, you bring the bedtime up so you get more and more sleep, generally 15-minutes each time.
After 20 years of insomnia, the past year has been the best sleep of my life. I only get ~6-7 hours or so per night but it is deep, restful sleep that is generally uninterrupted if I stick to this regiment. The beginning is not fun but over time I have adjusted to the hours and, most importantly, have outgrown the story and habits that drove my insomnia. For me, I knew how to sleep but I had decades of sleep anxiety and surrounding stress to get past. Being so tired you can do nothing except sleep helps you rewire your association with your bed away from "sleep is stressful" towards "sleep is easy".
I paid for the Sleep Reset app to walk me through everything. Because I paid money for it, I probably had a higher degree of success than if I just Googled stuff and half-assedly tried to incorporate it. For ~$200, the app certainly has high margins and made money off of me but it was the best $200 I ever spent.
At a glance it seems quite similar, so I'd love to understand how the app is better than e.g. downloading a cheaper "wellness" app (with meditations, calming music, relaxation techniques, etc) + going through the exercises in the book [0]?
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Say-Good-Night-Insomnia-Drug-Free/dp/...
I wouldn't claim that our app is better than any of the resources you mentioned. The best remedy is what works for you. For some people, it might be reading a book on insomnia, or practicing mindfulness. A lot of this is also influenced by personal preference too (do you prefer reading, or watching a video, or listening to an audio to consume content etc).
Our app resonates with users who prefer shorter and more "bite-sized" content (especially video or audio based) that can be consumed by spending 5-10 minutes a day, but there are also people who prefer receiving more information upfront. Go with what works best for you!
Will definitely give this a shot, thank you for the great work
Another important consideration is patient adherence (i.e. how likely someone is going to stay for the program), which is something that many digital health apps (and even in-person therapy) struggle with. A lot of this is influenced by personal preference too (do you prefer reading, or watching a video, or listening to an audio to consume content etc). So you can tell from the first 7 days if our approach resonates with you.
We also have a 30-day moneyback guarantee, so if the program doesn't work for you, we'll be happy to issue a refund.
I imagine like 90% of HN'ers suffer from insomnia.
This company is hilarious.
- No caffeine after 12pm. I stopped drinking coffee a few months ago, but I was fine as long as I didn’t have it after 12.
- Exercise with some portion being vigorous HIIT or lifting. Running also helps. It should tire your nervous system out.
- Have a consistent sleep schedule. Don’t oversleep on weekends. I’m up at 6:30am every day, give myself 30 min to wake up. Get some sunlight to flush out the adenosine in your system (do this before you drink coffee to avoid the afternoon crash).
- AC goes to 67’f at night.
- Don’t work or study in bed.
- I bought a nice bed (Purple Premier 4 King).
- Blue light-blocking glasses about 2 hours before bedtime.
- Not being a founder helps a lot, but figuring out stress relievers otherwise.
- No alcohol. I’ve mostly stopped drinking, but this alone was the worst thing for my sleep. If I do drink, earlier is better, and only a few drinks.
- Mouthguard that prevents me from snoring at night. I don’t snore as much when I have a healthy BMI, but when overweight, I snore more.
- Stop working 2 hours before bedtime. Same for gaming. These things are too mentally stimulating.
- The things that stress you out, figure those out and make sure you’re feeling good about progress each day. For founders, this sometimes just won’t go away.
- I’ve tried prescribed sleeping medications, but the one I took didn’t actually improve quality sleep. It just made me feel tired and removed the stress. Some of these drugs are just sledgehammers on the pre-frontal cortex.
- Use a sleep tracker and figure out why you’re not sleeping well. Usually can be tracked to alcohol, large meals close to bedtime, or caffeine.
- I take melatonin at bedtime. I had fatigue that I believed was because of poor sleep since moving to Austin, but realized from a doctor that it was actually just allergies. I take Singulair, made a huge difference in my energy during the day.
How about instead of letting me choose how much I want to pay for the 7 day trial, you let me choose from the outset whether I want to auto-renew.
Is this classed as a medical device / SaMD? Does it require FDA / MHRA approval or CE marking? Why is there information on your website about Fatal Familial Insomnia when it is vanishingly rare and has only been reported a few dozen times worldwide? Are those self-reported improvements in sleep and can you measure more objectively with polysomnography?
In the UK there's an app called Sleepio which is NICE-approved and prescribed to patients - is your app similar? One last question - how did you come up with the pricing ($63 per month)?
10B ppl, we can make it!
I would prefer give me something of value - one tip to try tonight. If it works, I’ll be back tomorrow with my credit card.
My personal experience is that I have found 50mg Trazadone as needed to be pretty helpful (rarely need at this point, just knowing I have it as backup is nice or if I have one bad night it doesn't become a pattern), some of the Huberman sleep stuff like NSDR, and the usual sleep hygiene stuff (regular bedtime, blue light glasses, cooling the room a bit more).
Suggestion from a friend: 1/4 to 1/3 of a liberty cap before going to bed.
From another friend: "the sleep cycle normalized after 2 weeks sleeping in Maui with open window and swimming in the ocean every day. Now I don't need to take melatonin and magnesium"
I would just echo what others have said about the long onboarding survey and paywall.
Hope you can continue iterating and you listen to the feedback, both good and bad! Good luck!
Note, at SoundMind, we are not an insomnia device.
I think back to my conversation with a sleep doctor after a night at a sleep lab when I was 8 years old. I've literally never been a sleeper.
Their recommendations were just the basic sleep hygiene stuff the conversation went like this... 1) Go to bed at the same time each night - "Yeah - I'm 8, it's called bedtime". 2) Don't drink coffee after 3pm - "I'm 8 years old, I don't drink coffee" 3) Limit alcohol(?) - "Yeah, I'm 8"
I am deeply saddened and have some indignation that CBT-I is still the "gold standard", but unfortunately, that's where we are.
If I knew of something better, I'd be building that, instead of what we are building at SoundMind, which increases the efficiency of deep sleep.
CBT-I has notoriously low adherence rates.
My biggest issue with CBT-I is the sleep restriction stuff.
My take.
Have someone who shows up who is experiencing insomnia. Most non-chronic episodes will resolve within a 5 week period.
So a person is put on sleep restriction, at the end of sleep restriction where they are limited in the number of hours they can sleep, and that is slowly increased over a 6 week period. At the end, their insomnia is magically gone.
So, I ask, at what time did your insomnia disappear?
It's as if somebody had a cold and you said "eat chocolate every day for 6 weeks, and then we'll see if your cold is gone", and low and behold, as if magic, chocolate cures the common cold.
Don't get me wrong, sleep hygiene is important, just like brushing your teeth. Do it!
If you have anxiety which is causing you trouble sleeping, then recognize that and deal with the anxiety, but don't call it insomnia.
Sorry Ed, but you can't make a claim that you've helped 10,000 patients improve their sleep "PERMANENTLY".
I wish you guys all the best, but mostly, I hope that you figure out something better than CBT-I and have a larger aim.
