Subscribe
Sign in
Birdhouse for Autism — Easily coordinate your child's care & discover insights
14
Replies
Best
@eriktorenberg Thanks Erik, congrats to you as well! Great to hear from you.
The rising numbers is a pretty lively debate. Improved diagnosis, awareness, and wider diagnostic criteria are certainly factors, but experts in the field will tell you that those are only partly responsible for increasing numbers.
Leading scientists mostly agree that it's a combination of certain genetic predispositions to certain environmental triggers, the specifics of both being largely unknown. We have TONS to learn. We (at Birdhouse) try to steer clear of controversy and opinion and simply focus on providing really amazing support to families living with Autism.
We held off on raising for as long as we could, through 2012 and all of 2013, though we secured 2 grants in that time-- one via Start Garden (www.startgarden.com) which later turned into a larger investment, and one via Enterprising Health (enterprising health.org), a health technology accelerator in Detroit.
We began raising angel funds when we started generating revenue at the end of summer 2013, and closed on funding in the spring of 2014 from family, friends, and Start Garden. It was the first time any of us raised investment capital, so it was quite a learning process.
Although the nature of Birdhouse would lead many to suggest we should go after more grants or even operate as a non-profit, the reality is that private, for-impact investment enables us to grow faster and more efficiently, and be more nimble and responsive to a really rapidly growing market.
I met @benchutz last week. He's really passionate about Autism and his team is doing great work on the app. It's an awesome note-taking app that helps you understand your child's behaviors, activities... and then organize treatment.
@erictwillis Thanks Eric! Really great meeting you. So many families out there (similar to mine) need extra support & we appreciate your help in letting them know about Birdhouse.
@benchutz Are you seeing some success with families converting from the free to the premium version?
@erictwillis So far we've seen 1 in 3 active users upgrade to Birdhouse Premium. We modeled it similarly to Spotify actually (sans ads), where a free membership provides you one core mobile feature-- the ability to post new activities from phone to your Birdhouse-- and Premium brings nearly all the web features into the phone app. But as we build new features, more and more Premium stuff makes its way to the free version.
Would love to answer any questions! We thought up Birdhouse to solve a need in our own home-- that of organizing important health info like meds and symptoms, discovering behavioral insights, & coordinating it amongst a team of therapists, teachers, etc for our daughter, who has Autism-- and built it to help families around the world. Autism affects 1 in 68 people (a rapidly rising number) and it is unfortunately very poorly understood. Families like mine need all the support we can get.
@benchutz This is a smart, wonderful idea. Will pass on to my family member who has a child with autism.
Birdhouse cofounder here. If you know someone who has a child with Autism, or is in any way affected by Autism in their family or network, please share Birdhouse with them. There are so many families who are simply living without any support whatsoever and struggling to get through the day-- they'll appreciate that you took the time to care!
@erictwillis Thank you. It's a work in progress and something we do give a lot of thought to. Thanks for taking the time to step through it.
Backchannel