 In all of life, there should be meaning and intention to your actions. And I think our relationship with technology has really missed that mark. Totally. So we are really trying to introduce that into people's worlds. And for young people who've never known what that is, I think we are really helping change their behavior by just adding an ounce of intention into what they're doing. Boom, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Simulation. I'm your host, Alan Sakyan. We are still at the Transformative Technology Conference. We have moved locations to a different location on site still, which is cool. It's cool. It's nice to switch up the ambiance every once in a while. We have Alana Harvey joining us now on the show. Thank you very much for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And from Flipped. And did you co-found that? Okay, cool. So co-founder of Flipped and helping the next generation with the relationship with technology, which I'm really excited to talk to you about. And maybe before we get to there, just give us the quick bit on who you are and how do you even get into this space? Yeah, so I am the co-founder and CMO of Flipped. And it all started a few years ago when my co-founder, who's actually my partner and we've been together for eight years. But a few years ago, he gave his youngest brother his first smartphone and just noticed how quickly his relationship, their relationship, actually was impacted by technology in his life. And so Christian thought, is there a way that instead of technology enabling these bad behaviors, could we shape behavior in a positive way with technology? And at the same time, I was finishing up my degree in school, marketing and communications, a business degree at Ryerson University in Toronto. And meanwhile, I was actually serving at a restaurant. And over that same time period, this was around 2014. So it was when Snapchat and Instagram and all of those things were really becoming a lot more mainstream and it was still fairly early days. But just noticing how that was impacting people in a public space. And I had been working at that place for about four years. So to me, also the behavior had shifted so dramatically in a really short amount of time. People just not interacting face to face anymore, not interacting with me as their server. And so we had those two pivotal moments in our own lives and decided how about we build technology that helps solve this problem. And that's what we've been doing. Nice. That is a very cool story. Because I think we don't think too much about those moments in society where technology is introduced and societal dynamics shift on a global scale. And the example of Christian, your partner, having his younger brother get a smartphone, that is insane because as soon as you pass it over, it just takes over. And then the behavior and the family changes and you were seeing as well when people go out and are not engaging with each other, engaging more with their devices. There's a lot of nuance to it because there are times that maybe the subject that is being talked about like somebody is saying something that maybe you've heard before or you're not interested in that specific conversation that maybe you want to browse the internet to learn something else. There's a lot of nuance to it. It's tough to unpack in binary conversation. Now that was 2014 when Flip became online or when did it come online? That was like early days for ideation that we launched in 2016. And what we initially thought we were building was actually a parental control application which would help parents manage their kids' screen time, which funny enough has now become a bit more on trend. We weren't really attracting a lot of parents to the platform but what we did notice is that there were a lot of young people gravitating towards it for self-regulation. So we thought, hey, this is interesting. It's not a control experience. It's a self-regulated and a self-motivated experience. And so that's where we shifted and moved towards and we've actually now gone into schools trying to help students who are otherwise unaware of their attention deficiency and inability to maintain their attention and focus and helping them with Flip. Tell me about the self-regulation aspect to things. So give me the high level or view. Is this available on Android and iOS? Is that the idea? Yeah, so Flip is available Android and iOS and has been since 2016. How it works is that it adds like a layer of friction when you're using your device. So it's kind of like a screensaver for those of us that remember what those are that stays on your phone and it prevents you from leaving or it adds a level of friction and makes you think twice about leaving that experience and then it tracks those moments. So if you haven't spent time on your phone and you've been tracking it with Flip, it's like a productivity and a focus tracker that you can measure progress over time. So we've gamified that experience. We have day streaks, we have leaderboards so people bring their own friends and create little communities where they're enjoying time well spent together. And then they also can tag these moments. So if you're using it to study one day or you're using it to read or spend time with family, then you can see a graph of all of the ways you've been spending your time away from technology. All right, we got a little demo for everyone. We're going to show you the demo on here. So as you open up Flip, you're shown don't just be there, be present. And then you go begin. And then you log in. So I'm going to log in with Facebook. It's quite easy to get through things. All they get is your name, profile picture and email address. See they're not asking you for everything. Only asking for what they need. Hello, Alan. My personal stats. Okay, welcome to Flip. That's a message from me. Oh, it is a message from you. There she is at the top. I'm in two places at once, everybody. Tech life balance is important, which is why we're here to help you achieve it with flipped. You'll be more present, engaged and focused on a matters most. Right. A short blog post explaining all you need to know about getting started. We wrote one. Tap the image below to check it out. Science behind flipped. Cool. So then, so then here I see, you know, here's the home screen. Hello, Alan. My personal stats total sessions minutes. Today, day streak. So mindful moments. My day, study, sleep, work. Interesting. So if I click work for four hours, what happens? So it'll be, it'll begin a time session. Yep. It just started. That is four hours long. Mm-hmm. If you want to end it early, then it will, it will mark you as whatever you were successful up to that point. So if you used it for 10 minutes, you would still achieve 10 minutes. So this is not allowing any notifications to show up? No, you still get notifications. It's just tracking your productivity, whether or not you were using that, your phone. So if you leave that screen, then the session ends. Oh, interesting. Okay. So you basically, you can close your screen and set your phone aside. Oh, you're giving up. Exiting the screen will end your flipped session early. Interesting. Aw, shoot. You only completed 37. You'll do better next time. Interesting. Mm-hmm. Interesting. And there's a streak counter. How many minutes today? What are the minutes about? How long I did what for? How many minutes I did these at mindful moments for? Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. And you'll see the 180 number there. Yeah, yeah. So like Fitbit made 10,000 steps, a benchmark for people to hit a daily goal. We looked into our users and recognized that some of our most active daily habitual users were achieving three hours a day. So we wanted to drive more people to hit that. And we thought, well, three hours kind of sounds like a really big number. And 180 is a bit easier. It also rolls off the tongue. There's also the idea of a 180, like you're giving yourself a bit of a transformation. So we launched that as a marketing campaign a couple of months ago, and it's been really successful. Nice. Nice flip off for a bit today, unlocked. Okay, so then full lock mode, hide my apps and turn off notifications. Yeah. Okay, so if I click select for five minutes. That one you have to go through and add on. You're about to be fully locked out. Okay, there's an add on. Yeah, there's an additional thing you have to install too. Usage data, usage access to, got it. So then you would select those things as like not allowed, right? Or you would select as allowed. Interesting. And then so as I keep going down, there's sounds, happy sound. Oh, premium required. Okay, so that's where you get... The first one, you should be able to listen to campfire. Okay, let me go to campfire. Campfire. Okay. Yeah, so this is what campfire sounds like. Nice, that's relaxing. That's cool. And that's to help facilitate a lot of our users who are students that are using it for focus work time. Yeah. Nice. Okay, cool. That's good to get a little insight into what flipped is like right there. Awesome. Nice. It's good to see mindful tech be developed like that. That's good stuff. Now, interestingly enough, we're using technology to get away from technology. It's kind of funny. I look at it as using technology to help with a habit. Okay. And so we've managed to do that with a lot of things like the way fitness trackers have helped motivate certain behaviors, step counters and things like that. And I see it in the same light as we're trying to encourage people to spend more minutes away from their tech. So that's the unit that we really care about is minutes. Minutes. That's right. So we've helped our user base achieve over a billion minutes spent away from their phones. And we are always trying to increase the number of minutes that they're spending doing things mindfully away from their tech. This is so interestingly nuanced. So it is because I just came back from my fourth, 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. And when I was there, it was amazing to be away from that device for 10 days. Sure it was. Yeah. At the same time, it's cool because when I come back to the device, it's cool to socialize and connect and in real time be able to talk to people through that thing that are across the world and learn the world's information at my fingertips, looking things up. Yeah. It's more complex and nuanced. And we don't have a golden key for how to solve the appendage of technology yet. But I think you're on your way to being one of the many players that's doing research around the ethics, research around mindfulness, research around the time that we're actually spending on those devices versus not. So I like how I can just click through and set a habit, set an intention which is for an hour, two or three, four hours, do something and then just put that away and then not touch the device. So there was an option for like a 60 second break too. So I can always take a break. So you could, yeah, you select the 60 second break and then you can leave it and it wouldn't end the session but then you have to come back after the 60 seconds is done. Yeah. Yeah. So again, we do this in relation to like fitness trackers is when you stop, when you're going for a run, you stop at a stoplight and you have to stop your watch if you remember to turn it back on. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's no stoplights on the hills and the nature. I'm from the city. The city running. I know. I've done both. Okay. And then how many people you said are two years now you've been building this how many people are using it? So we have about 75,000 monthly active users. 75,000. That's a lot. That's incredible. Good work. Good work. And then how many of those are premium users? Premium subscribers are about 6% of our users. Yeah. And they get access to more customized features. So they can, for example, you can set flipped for a specific amount of time like an hour and 45 minutes if you want to have a focus session that's outside of the default moments that we've created. There's also more sounds and there's more statistics. So you didn't check out the stats screen, but there's more comprehensive statistics if you pay for it. Cool. So you can see like all of your stats for months past in a really nice graphic. Nice. Yeah. Okay. And so what is the top, what's the top feature that is being used? What's the top session that's being enabled? Study and self. Study is an hour. Yeah. And self is actually a tag you can just set. Yeah. So our users are actually setting self sessions to track just moments for themselves. For themselves. Oh, so a self session means you're working on something about yourself. Yeah. But oh, okay. Rather than something that's like a paper or a project. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's all self-reported. So we're able to track if people change their tag and set it as something. And the most common ones right now are study and self. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And what's the most popular, so then I guess, well I guess if 6% are premium then, what is the cost? It's $24 a year. Oh. Or $6 a month. Yeah. It's really affordable. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like two bucks a month. Yeah. It's affordable. Yeah. Interesting. And then how big is the team right now and where are you based? We're six people. We're based in Toronto. In Toronto. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Nice. And what's the future of flipped? Our vision really is to be a digital wellness hub that has all of your needs across what it is that is wellness for you. So right now I think that it's a little bit too fragmented in that you either have to meditate or you have to listen to sound that is helping you fall asleep, for example, or journaling. All of these things seem to be very independent of one another. And for us is that people sort of enter flipped as it's a very low friction starting point where you enter flipped and you're not actually really intending to have a wellness experience. But that first intention of I want to spend less time on technology is that entry point into wellness. Yeah. We want to have more resources, which we're actually creating partnerships instead of creating our own content. We're creating partnerships with content providers who will feature it within flipped. So soon that's going to be Aura, which is working with them. Yeah. We like them a lot. Not the ring. Not the ring. No. Interesting. Which Aura? Meditation. Yeah. Meditation and coaching. So we're going to be featuring some of their content in flipped. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. Particularly around helping with anxiety and stress for students and young professionals. Interesting. So then you'll have video content. It's audio. It's audio content. Yeah. And I'd like to enhance the audio therapy side as well. So we have sounds already, but I'd like to improve that on that offering. I think there's a lot that can be done in the audio therapy space. And then also connecting people to opportunities and events and things that are happening around them that are in the wellness market. Yeah. So just being sort of a one-stop place where you can get everything that you need. Mindfulness-related. Yeah. And then, what are some of the statistics that you've been learning about the youth using technology? I mean, you probably know at least some stats about how the youth is using tech because of your experience. Yeah. Is that what you're here? Yeah. Well, they're pretty addicted to their technology. Yeah. Usage has increased over the last couple of years, so it's gone from a couple of hours a day to about five to six hours a day on your phone alone. But what's really, really interesting and exciting for us is that this year, Deloitte did a global survey and discovered that over half of 18 to 24-year-olds are actually looking for ways to disconnect from technology and that they're very aware of this behavior. That's great. And even just in personal conversations. Yeah, this is a nice piano. In just one-on-ones, we do interviews with young people. Their awareness is very high. That's good. Yeah. That's good. So it's almost as though young people, even though sometimes we think that they're not aware of them being manipulated, it seems as though a lot of them are very aware of their use of technology. Yeah. This is a bit of an insight that we have, because a lot of our users, they come to us knowing that they have an issue that they want to solve or they want to improve upon a behavior or achieve goals that they've been unable to because of their relationship with tech. Totally. That's great. And so when we get surveys, like I did a 2000-user survey recently, and the last question is like, anything else you want to share? And just all of the personal stories that we were getting from users about how Flip just helped them in a variety of ways is really, really interesting to hear. Yeah. What were some of those? We would have some people who say that they have ADHD. And it's not something that is clinically recommended in any capacity, and that's very inspiring to hear that these people who have suffer with ADD and attention disorders that they come to Flip and they find a solution in that. That is great, yeah. Yeah. Also, people saying things like it helped them get through their thesis or they wouldn't be able to sleep without it. I think that's really interesting that we've created something that's versatile for a number of different needs. Totally. As simple as just getting off your phone. Yeah. Yeah. That's great that it's being used for so many different people across different use cases for them. That's awesome. And then it also seems as though I can't, I guess I can't tell yet, and even like medically it seems as though this needs to be more of an option for potentially a physician that's diagnosed someone with ADHD to prescribe. It's like, yo, try flipped. Our friends over at SIEMPO, who we've had on the show as well, Andrew. Yeah, Andrew. Yeah. Yeah, like prescribe these, see what happens. Yeah. There's also neuroscientists that have made video games that help with focus and retaining focus for people with ADHD, so you can, and they're going through clinical trials even to be able to actually have that be a prescription. I love to do that. This is all very good that these things coming together. There was one other thought that I had that I wanted to share with you, which was out of the 18 to 24 year olds, 50% of them want a better relationship with their technology. I want to know what percentage of them will actually do something though and how easy it has to be for them to do something. How do they mean a better relationship with their technology? What does that actually mean? Because it can mean so many different things. I think perhaps it's my feeling about it is that most people who are now 18 have grown up with nothing else and they're feeling like that's not right. Interesting. They're sensing that there's something missing in that experience. Interesting, yeah. If someone were in 2018, they, by six years old, there was Facebook, right? So that's that generation. They've grown up with nothing else. They know nothing else. Their parents have been using technology and I think it's impacted relationships in a way that they can recognize is wrong. Things like eye contact and really important human behaviors are being kind of messed with and manipulated and they're recognizing that this is a problem. Whether or not they can do anything about it is a really good question and I think we've tapped into the types of people who are going out of their way to find solutions, which is why we have like a community aspect where we're trying to get our champions and our really power users to create little micro communities where they bring their friends and they're all using flip together and so I think it's a matter of changing that social norm that, hey, this is okay. This is how it is. This is what everyone does to, wait a second. This isn't good for me. I know deep within my being that we need to find a connection in deeper, more meaningful ways and that's just a great human nature to tap into and I think that's why there's that survey result and I think that over the years we're going to see more people gravitating towards offline experiences and low-tech experiences. I'm already seeing it in a lot of young people. You know, Christian's younger brother, my co-founder's younger brother, he was 13 when he got his first smartphone. He's 17 now and he's like an old soul. So it's really, really interesting. I think that there will be sort of this resurgence of low-tech experiences. To think about the youth being so, being born without the opportunity to know what it's like to live without technology is kind of weird. It's definitely a strange change. Yeah, they're the first generation to not know what it's like. Anyone born after the year 2000 basically. Or even just a bit earlier too. Yeah, yeah. And it's a big evolutionary experiment that we're going under. Everything is, but especially now with technology just seems to... I frequently have conversations with people about the nuance of things, especially of smartphones and social media. You can tell that I'm not... Like there are reasons why when I got into a group of four people and that if we're all like, okay, let's all use flipped right now and we turn it off for four hours so we can actually hang out without that. It's great. I can see how that would be fantastic. You know, I can also see the potential of a missing a really important conversation when someone was trying to call you or being... You shouldn't hang out with people that you could get bored with, but if you do get bored for a period of time, you know, being able to go in and do something, you know, either go sit in the grass since you're outside with your friends or pick up your phone and do something on your phone. So it's very strange. Anyway, we could talk about this for hours. I'm sure you guys do talk about this for long periods of time. Well, in either of those cases, you could still use your phone even if you are using flipped. So it would just mark you as unsuccessful. Yeah, that's right. Just stop it and just stop it and start it again. Yeah, it's like a practice for your mind if you think about it. And I always go back to a fitness tracking type experience and comparing it to the way that we address our physical health is that if someone told you to go for a run and you're like, okay, I'm going to go for a run, you could stop at any point, you could choose to end it, you don't have to just keep running. But if you were like, I'm going to go for an hour long run and you gave up halfway through, that's that. There's nothing wrong with it. But you didn't meet your goal, maybe. And I think there's a lot of that type of thing happening in meditation and wellness as it's trying to turn these behaviors into more habitual, more habitual behaviors. Your app is really well designed. Thank you. It's a well-designed app. It's very friendly design. Thank you. I like it a lot. Yeah, user experience is signed well. And then I like how you said that. It's about changing the habits. It's about moving in the direction of being more aware of our use of technology rather than being unaware of our use of it. So at least the flipped is getting people to become more aware of their use of technology. That can overall be said as being a good thing, whether you are being bored in that conversation or missing that call or whatever. Well, and think about it. Imagine you and a group of friends decide, OK, we're going to try to use flipped and just engage with each other for the next two hours. So you all flip off your devices. And then you're midway through your conversation and someone says something that you want to Google. Sure. You're going to reach for your phone and flipped is going to be there that moment of friction that makes you go, oh, yes, I'm flipped off right now. Maybe I shouldn't be Googling this. And let's keep talking. That's right. And that's the experience that we managed to get into classrooms because it forces students to think twice about using their phones when they are there engaged in a class. So that's part of the trajectory is to get into classrooms. We're in over 100 schools right now already in the US. And then does that mean the kids all have to have flipped or what does that mean? We're in actually mostly university classes. And it's up to the educator how they introduce it. But usually, they tie some sort of engagement credit for if you use flipped for 100% of your course. Well, that's cool. Yeah. So you can gain some points if you do 100% of course or 90%, 90% or 80%. They get to choose how to introduce it. Actually, most of them, it's like if you've used flipped for 80% of class time so that they're giving them a buffer. Yeah, exactly. That's cool stuff. 100 classrooms around the US? Oh, more than 100. We're at 100 different schools. 100 schools. More than 100 classes. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. So that hits, like, what, 10,000 students alone? Yeah, we've had over 15,000 students subscribe. And 13,000 just regular consumers on just any day subscribers. Yeah. Wow. This is awesome. Yeah, thank you for introducing me to this. Yeah. Alana, thank you for coming under the show. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Did we miss anything that you wanted to touch on? Do you think it was pretty good? Yeah. I think what's an important takeaway is that in all of life there should be meaning and intention to your actions. And I think our relationship with technology has really missed that mark. Totally. So we are really trying to introduce that into people's worlds. And for young people who've never known what that is, I think we are really helping change their behavior by just adding an ounce of intention into what they're doing. I really like the way of putting that. It's just adding that ounce of intention into relationships with technology. Yeah, that's really good, becoming more aware of the habits we're forming with the technologies. Yeah. Yeah, that I think everyone can get behind. I'm always looking for things like that, that everyone can get behind, something like that. Because then we're not doing the binary device bad or device good, but more like just have a little bit more awareness and intention when we reuse it. We definitely don't think that it's bad. And we want to use technology to enable that understanding and teach people to have a better relationship with it through it being used. Yeah. Everyone, check out the link in the bio for Flipped. Definitely give them a go. Give it a shot. See how you like it. Huge thank you for tuning in. Thanks for coming on the show. Appreciate it. And give us a comment below. We'd love to hear your thoughts about how it's going, using the service or what your thoughts are about thinking more towards our habits with our devices and technology. And go and build the future. Go manifest your dreams into the world. Much love, everyone, and we will see you soon. Peace.