Show HN: I created an app for you to be a more unpredictable romantic partner (lovefuel.app)
Love Fuel aims to make you a romantic partner that is full of surprises. A partner that is unpredictable, in a fun and exciting way. The app does this, by giving you +450 surprise-ideas and by being a tool to plan actions.
As a happily married man, I didn't understand why there was no apps for already happy couples. Love Fuel focuses on excitement; not therapy; not emotional topics; not reconnecting.
One key feature is the reminders. As a technical solo-entrepreneur and married man, I understand we all get distracted sometimes, but that shouldn’t cause problems. Love Fuel has a hidden reminder system to nudge you to surprise your partner and shift your focus to what matters.
Please also feel free to check out PAS 1.0, our custom Personality Assessment AI-System. Its goal is simple, analyses you and your partner, and then provide personalized suggestions based on personality psychology. Together with a small group of psychologists here in Scandinavia we have used 2 years developing this new approach to Rec-Psych Systems. Many more features will be coming soon!
The app should be out in the US + EU on Apple Appstore now, and Google Play tomorrow.
I would love to get some feedback and any advice on my Love Fuel journey!
EDIT: A clarification. We do not sell or ever intend to sell data, no matter how lucrative it is, i would rather abandon the project than do that.
200 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 225 ms ] thread> People just like that you think about them.
Indeed. The trouble here is that this rather seems like a _substitute_ for thinking about them.
Doing little surprises for someone, texting them to wish them a good day, etc, is a form of signalling. People like it because they know that you are thinking about them randomly, and that you care how they're doing. If you're simply using an app reminder to do stuff in order to grind relationship points, it has a completely different meaning.
When I’m staring down a long, busy day and she looks run down, I schedule an email a few hours later to say “Hope your day is going well, you’re awesome and I’m grateful to have you.”
When my wife gets the emails, I’m almost certainly not thinking about her. I’m usually at work focused on work.
Am I doing romance wrong?
If it works for you then maybe not.
Personally, I think that if there's time to schedule an email, then might as well just send a quick text message. That's more personal and allows for an instant response. I'd also never send an email for personal communication like that, but maybe that's just me.
Double thoughtful.
Quick landing page feedback: Could you update it so that the first two screen captures are not the same content? And then pick a different second example that isn't also about leaving a note? More variation in the landing page examples would give me a better intro.
Is it possible to just call them "researchers at xyz institute" and link to their lab rather than "Scandinavian researchers"?
But mentioning Scandinavian seems savvy. If they hadn't said they were Scandinavian, I would've assumed the startup was totally full of poo, because many of the signs thus far look like stereotypical US techbro sociopathy. If I had that reaction as a US techbro myself, then presumably some Europeans they might be speaking to (as prospective investors, hires, or users) would also have that reaction.
I’d honestly rather pay a small one off fee for this same app, without the need for an account.
If they didn't think of getting you flowers themself (and had to use an app), is that real?
I did confess to my girlfriend once that I'd never thought of getting her flowers, and that every time I had bought her flowers in the past was actually just the output of a Chinese room. [1]
She said it was fine, and she liked the flowers either way.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
Being spontaneous requires energy. A lot of people lack energy but still loves their partner.
Following the prompt isn’t mandatory, just take it as a source of inspiration for when you want to be kind but have no idea.
The point is that you have a limited amount of energy, but you chose to dedicate some of it to something your partner would like.
Optimising by reducing the amount of energy you use to do that defeats the purpose.
Try having a couple kids and then apply this kind of reasoning. There simply isn’t enough time or energy to do everything you want for your family.
If you can leverage technology and good ideas to enhance your experiences and relationships, do it.
(But not this one because I’m pretty suspicious about this mandatory account creation and the fact that they didn’t release in France because of data laws - which are not stronger than GDPR)
As long as your app is not providing an encryption algorithm, you are fine ignoring this.
It’s also fine if you do use encryption with the Apple provided libraries since in this case you are not providing encryption code but just using it.
In fact, nobody cares about this in France, it looks like Apple is the only one being so bureaucratic about this stupid declaration. It’s pretty specific, absolutely not verified by anyone (our current government is obsessed with public expenses reduction so you can easily imagine that nobody cares about the version of RSA a random foreign app uses).
This declaration is only useful for apps that have encryption in their core business (password managers, encryption of files …).
IIRC, this declaration is only a mean for the national cybersecurity agency to know if a given application can become a threat for national security if it happens to use outdated or flawed encryption. It’s not to give them access to anything (you just declare algorithms, not the keys).
It’s a frequent thing that happens to frighten foreign developers and we regularly have unavailable apps for this reason because it’s true it’s unclear.
Some people wake up naturally in the morning. Some people need an alarm. They can both care deeply about the reason they’re waking up (a job, an appointment, whatever) but for some people, they need the extra help.
For some, setting the reminder is the effort and energy that shows you care. It’s worth saying though that the most important thing is doing the things that show your partner that you care.
For some other things that we might try to do, the point is to make an effort.
People are all different. The idea of getting flowers for your partner, or leave cheesy notes for them, might come natural to some and not to others. Another comment pointed out how having ADHD makes it hard to remember to do the sort of stuff this app might suggest, so it can be a great help.
Besides, is this different from scrolling through social media and seeing couples activities and deciding to try them? Is this different from seeing a florist ad while walking and deciding to buy flowers? If anything, going out of your way to install an app shows more care and effort than these "spontaneous" activities.
At any rate, spontaneity is overrated, especially in relationships (maybe because of Hollywood relationships?). Constance, effort, care, are more important... you still need to keep things fresh tho
This app doesn't suggest that you do longer term things to support your partner and make their life easier. It proposes that you fake being in a honeymoon stage by eg leaving cute little notes.
Well, yes. And you know what ? Faking being in a honeymoon is enjoyable for both you and your partner. As you said, available time is limited, which is also true with your lifetime. Not doing something both you or your partner would enjoy because you feel like it’s not spontaneous is in fact wasting joyful moments.
It seems fine to extend this rationale out further.
If someone defers their decision making process to an app and blindly gets flowers when it tells them to, I wouldn’t like that.
If someone uses an app like this as an inspiration or a reminder, then I could see this working well.
And then again there is the gray area where things get mixed.
I guess I understand your desire to be creative and original in expressing affection. But, in the real world, ideas are cheap and execution is the hard part!
In receiving flowers, the value the recipient gets is not so much the flowers themselves, but by what the gift betrays about your mind state. This authentic information about your mind state is what makes the act “real”.
So it is reasonable to consider the act less real or even a bit deceptive if the mind state that you’d first expect the act to imply (they care about me and thought to get flowers) does not reflect your true mind state (they cared about me enough at some point in the past to set up this app).
But then why use an app at all then, you could get them a used bottlecap and "it's the thought that counts"
I do think it's a little off that they're posting from a new account, whereas ideally they'd already be involved. Maybe they didn't want to associate this with their actual account for some reason?
Of course, the fact that it wants to create an account rather undermines that.
UK.
Doubtless if you use this you're training a model that understands what kind of interactions romantic partners find meaningful and sentimental.
Getting random "prank" tickets sounds like torture :/
United States on Android?