Goal-setting site with a twist

a startup idea shared by Ryan Pattinson on 04/12/2013

A goal setting site. The idea is simple. A user deposits money on our site in escrow to motivate themselves to accomplish a goal, with a deadline. If they succeed, we pay them back. If them fail or time runs out, we donate the money to a charity of their choice. Someone signs up and is given a form asking what their goal is, how they will measure it, when they will accomplish it by, how much money they are going to deposit and what their charity of choice is. "Accomplishing" a goal would be based on the honor system, as it is for most goal tracking websites now. The website self-selects for people who WANT to go through this process and it is impossible for a user to gain any money, so if they want to lie and reclaim their money so be it. Many people will not cheat as they would be stealing from charity plus we can make money from ads or even from taking a cut of the donation money. Not sure yet. To add some resistance, in order to "accomplish" a goal, users would need to at the very least answer some questions about how they did it, the time it took, how difficult it was, etc etc. Once they've done that, they get the option to reclaim their money.

goal self-help donate