@imcatnoone Congratulations! What's been the biggest challenge in building Iris? Any plans for 🇮🇪 support?

@imcatnoone Congrats! Where did the original idea for the product come from?

@imcatnoone really smart. Localisation for language will be amazing. Especially if English isn't your first language or vice versa if traveling abroad. Best of luck!

@eamonncarey Eamon, thank you!! Great question. And one that I'm honestly relieved to tell because it was I who could've very easily ended up in the situation where I needed Iris. It was the result of a question I posed for Benedikt Lehnert as we were driving back to Berlin from his parent’s home in Southwest Germany. We were driving and I questioned what would happen if we got into a car accident, were unconscious, and taken to the hospitaI. I turned to him and said: "You do realize if we get into a car accident and we're both unconscious, I'm fucked, right?" LOL. #iscursingallowedhere #beinghonest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I was a foreigner in a country where no one could identify me as American beyond my passport, and that I probably speak English and could more than likely assume I’m relatively healthy–all of this on a critical timeframe. And who makes medical decisions for me when I can’t? Who could tell the doctors that I’m actually allergic to a specific medication they’re considering giving to me? Goodness, who tells my family that I may not live long enough for them to get there before I’m gone? From there I knew and felt in my bones that something like this needed to exist. Once I did my research and spoke with not only people around the world, but medical professionals who begged me to create the product along with people that looked at us in disbelief about why we'd 'spend our time creating something like this', I knew we were onto something.

@nickclement Absolutely. Travelers / X-Pats are one of the groups we want to target at one point. So this is key!

@abrahamnavas we're using Geofences to trigger those notifications, so you won't have to worry about battery life too much!

@abrahamnavas Thank you, Abraham! Our lovely engineers could probably give you a much more slick technical answer but I'll do my best ;) So Iris actually doesn't continually track every location/step you take. We only take notice to your location when there's a cell tower change. This allows us to scan the area for hospitals and log it, enabling us to accurately detect you there in the event of an emergency. And then reach out to initially ask if you're okay (this starts the funnel). Privacy and battery were big ones for us. As someone who never has battery by default (ask @bentossel) I couldn't afford to lose any more :) What's more, privacy is big for us—from the way we built the product to the information we have on our servers. We're not just working with info like your favorite movies and what not. We're cognizant of the data we have and we as a team are working hard to be as transparent as possible so it's clear your privacy is top priority for us. Let me know if that answers the question for you or not. Happy to further explain! And thank you again.

@abrahamnavas Perfect! :) No thanks needed!

@alexmuench Hey Alex! Thanks so much. We're starting to compile a list of topics worth discussing about what you just mentioned. Anything in particular you want to know about? What city are you in? :)

@alexmuench Thank you sooo much Alex, indeed we're planning to write about our design/ engineering process/ some of the challenges that we had to overcome.

@imcatnoone I'm in Nuremberg, Germany. I'd love to know more about things like typography, layout choices, how you think you achieved to design an app for such a big and diverse target group. Did you do any particular testing regarding onboarding etc. Thanks :)

@fredrivett <3 Fred thank you tons, friend. I appreciate that and honestly, we received a TON of requests for London.

@nandoodles Nandini, thank you!

@edwinwee What city are you in!?

@edwinwee Thank you Edwin 😍

@designernaut Thank you so much! <3

@designernaut Thank you Michael

@ihecci Thank you! <3

@nel_kamai Thank you, Nelly!

@nel_kamai Thank you so much Nelly :)

@jma245 Thank you tons, Jennifer! All of us appreciate that big time <3

@theleovogel Hey Leo, I can understand that. However, it's hard for us to inform you that we've launched in your city if we don't have your information :) Signing up gives us your email and also let's you request your city. Are you in one particular city or a nomad? Asking because you stated that you'll reconsider if it becomes available in *ALL* cities.

@imcatnoone I'm not a nomad but having to think about if a location-based emergency feature on my phone is going to work depending on my location cancels out the usefulness. If anything it's adding something I need to remember rather than taking away something I need to remember. I'm not going to give a company my email address until either they offer me some incentive or I trust them. Right now I have no reason to believe you will offer Iris globally and you haven't earned my trust at all. I think companies in general need to spend more time thinking through their sign up process before just expecting users to give over their private data; especially in the healthcare industry.

@theleovogel Completely agree! :) We're aware of that regarding your info, which is why we actually don't ask you for anything other than your basic info though [name, email/pass to create account and phone number]. So we can create the account for ya and notify you when we scale to your city. No health info goes in until you're truly signing up for the service. Alright though, thanks a bunch for feedback!

@imcatnoone I love the idea of notifying my contacts if my phone sees that I'm at a hospital but if it doesn't work globally, at every hospital, then it's useless to me personally. I believe technology should work for the user; not the other way around. If you can make it work globally, I'd love to sign up :)

@theleovogel 100%. We wouldn't be in the emergency health business if we weren't looking to help the users. It's also a free app. We're not looking for much ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Scaling globally isn't as easy as 1,2,3. We're working hard to scale to other cities and starting next week plan to do so at a rapid rate. However, we also need to ensure the geolocation technology and infrastructures around the world are sound enough to actually work there otherwise we're actually tarnishing the trust with our users. Sounds great though! Look forward to having you as a user and knowing you'll be covered in the event of a critical moment. Though I hope you never need it!

@automateiq That is solid research. After talking to a lot of folks and medical staff in ERs about this, they shared how useful this is because they always search for an individuals phone and ID so they can get in contact with a loved one. Iris is definitely a set-and-forget product. Much like your Nest Carbon Monoxide detector, we're there in the event that critical moment happens. We like to think of Iris as a good friend—there in those critical moments when you need it and sharing the most relevant and important information with you. At the same time, we understand that in order for individuals to build trust with Iris and learn to depend on the product, communication needs to happen. Which is why in the coming weeks and months you'll see more from us that enables you to interact with Iris on a daily basis if you fall into the category of folks who would need to. In the event that a person is out of space on their phone and are willing to delete a product that plays a large role in aiding you and your family in a critical emergency, the odds are likely the product isn't for that person any way. You know? Which is okay too. There's a reason we have set target groups and we found that it simply isn't of interest for folks between a certain age because of the "Fearless" mentality. I really appreciate your compliment on the product and so grateful for your feedback! I agree, solid research to conduct further. :)

@johnschenk Hah! Thanks so much, John!

@johnschenk Thank you John 🙌

@benjudah Thanks, Ben!

@kanhemaphoto Oh yes. Give us 1-2 weeks ;) Have you signed up? If not, please do so in order for us to let you know when we launch in different cities, including SF.