It’s a fun, niche solution, but I’d posit when you start looking into the minimum financial requirements to operate this business in a way that “guarantees” everyone’s safety and insures against worst case scenarios, this is not a viable business even at the smallest scale.
I’m not sure how things are in America, but in Australia you can be made personally liable (both small and large businesses) for things that go wrong in your company, especially when someone gets injured e.g. https://www.ohsrep.org.au/prosecutions_sn_699_connect
The first question I have with a site like this is "in what regions does this operate" and I'm always surprised if a site doesn't immediately answer it.
What's the logic behind this? You are such a heavy sleeper that you miss an alarm from a clock or phone, but somehow you don't miss a door knock? Maybe you can change your alarm tone to a door knock or door bell if that's what gets you up in the morning.
And given how trigger happy some people are these days, I wouldn't even think about working this job if there wasn't a fairly robust form of address verification.
It is the fact that it is happening early in the morning that worries me. People aren't fully cognizant when they are woken up in general, and also aren't expecting anyone to be ringing the doorbell at that hour. I think fearful and violent people will be more likely to overreact in that situation.
All the cases of shooting food delivery workers for ringing the wrong doorbell that I've read have occurred late at night, and I think early in the morning will be even worse.
We don't answer calls anymore, and a "fake" pizza delivery, doesn't that mean the person get's a free pizza?
Here, you're disrupting someone's most vital health function for a low fee.
No joke, I won the World Sleep Championships a few years back, and received two deliveroo knocks on my door that night. I was modestly suspicious that it was intentional interference to throw me off (of course, there was no money on the line, and I am pretty sure other competitors didn't know where I lived).
That's wild! I thought that would have disappeared with Doordash, etc.
Can you pay a doordasher when the food arrives? I assume that's all through CCs.
I'm sure DoorDash doesn't allow it. But a lot of older people call for pizza the way they've always done for decades, so it's common enough that the pizza places (at least in my low-crime suburban area) have decided to keep allowing it.
They usually have some sort of system where your address is connected with your phone number after your first order, so they must be able to see that you've called X times and paid reliably in the past.
This is definitely a problem to solve. I could even see harassment being the most likely initial use case, until you manage to reach people with the problem seeking a solution. (People are more likely to want to eat pizza themselves than to harass with it. But people who just heard of this door-knocking service, without seeking it out, are more likely to want to harass someone than to want to be woken up themselves.)
A lot of tech businesses try to ToS away liability, but you can't do that in this case, since the harmed party isn't the customer/user. (You can try to ToS away the liability of your door-knocker flaking on you, or the customer thinking they did, and missing an important meeting. But not the harassment of a non-customer/user.)
I don't think zero-knowledge proofs of residence are ready.
If you could find a way to do it in a smooth-UX way, such as by signin-with-Google (or confirmed email) and match that up with physical address using a creepy data-broker service, that might work well. But I'd guess would be a big percentage of your engineering effort, and you'd have ongoing costs, and possibly some upfront commitment to the broker to bother with you at a viable cost rate.
Other ideas that come to mind seem like they'd have significant numbers of rejected legitimate, and accepted illegitimate.
Random idea: One of the times people most want wakeup help is when they're traveling (with disrupted schedules, unfamiliar settings, risk of phone alarm accidentally in DND/mute or out of battery, etc.). Hotels have it covered. Maybe you could integrate with AirBnb, in a way that lets you sufficiently authenticate that the person at the address at that time wants to be woken then. And you can give AirBnb a big cut, for the integration and for advertising your service. Or maybe AirBnb wants to build and own the UI and billing, and you're only a middleperson who supplies and pays the contractor door-knockers (and provides a brand, and lets AirBnb keep a bit arms-length on that and the contractors). (Or "hosts" could provide an unusually good alarm clock on the nightstand. Or there could be an unusually good alarm clock that the people who want it can buy.)
You could add some kind of recourse mechanism and make customers post bond. Like if the wrong person is woken up they can visit a URL that causes the originator to be fined / lose a deposit.
You could have the person doing the knocking compare it when they arrive at the location.
The more practical solution (excluding just using a normal alarm) would probably just sending a OTP to the address that needs to be entered before the first order.
Alternatively (not sure if this is available in the US, just basing this on the German ID cards), you could use the person's eID to verify their address. This is probably a bit too complex for a fun project like this one though.
Could be easy to spoof with AI image gen and a telephoto of the front door of Shooty McTriggerhappy, the neighbourhood crank whom Badfaith Faux-Customer would like to see knocked up.
I might suggest adding a list of cities you're live in. Right now I think you just have to intuit which cities work based on the address autocomplete.
Cute idea though! I'd be curious to see what your user-facing application looks like when you have an alarm set. Do you provide some sort of proof that the "alarm went off"? Package services usually take a photo of the door/porch as proof, might be a good idea in case anyone tries to dispute a charge for "not being woken up" heh.
Like another sibling comment mentioned, yeah, abuse potential is there. Could consider a snail-mail-letter-with-a-code verification method for addresses, though that's obviously rather slow.
You can always put automation for your google home to blast music at full volume at right time. And if you don't wake up from sound of music yourself, your neighbour will knock on your door for sure!
Starting from $19? And I assume those are American dollars? Wouldn't it be more cost effective to buy a loud alarm clock and place it across the room? If I buy two and set their alarm time 3 minutes apart, aren't I effectively doing the same thing cheaper and with no risks?
I'm not trying to shit on your idea, but I don't understand the consumer value proposition.
I’m not sure how things are in America, but in Australia you can be made personally liable (both small and large businesses) for things that go wrong in your company, especially when someone gets injured e.g. https://www.ohsrep.org.au/prosecutions_sn_699_connect
The employees should know what they are getting into and hopefully the business is providing resources to help keep them reasonably safe.
Unless I’ve missed something.
All the cases of shooting food delivery workers for ringing the wrong doorbell that I've read have occurred late at night, and I think early in the morning will be even worse.
Do you have any suggestions?
Here, you're disrupting someone's most vital health function for a low fee.
No joke, I won the World Sleep Championships a few years back, and received two deliveroo knocks on my door that night. I was modestly suspicious that it was intentional interference to throw me off (of course, there was no money on the line, and I am pretty sure other competitors didn't know where I lived).
https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/neurohacking-the-world-...
In America, at least, it's still possible to place an order by phone call and pay the delivery person when it arrives.
They usually have some sort of system where your address is connected with your phone number after your first order, so they must be able to see that you've called X times and paid reliably in the past.
A lot of tech businesses try to ToS away liability, but you can't do that in this case, since the harmed party isn't the customer/user. (You can try to ToS away the liability of your door-knocker flaking on you, or the customer thinking they did, and missing an important meeting. But not the harassment of a non-customer/user.)
I don't think zero-knowledge proofs of residence are ready.
If you could find a way to do it in a smooth-UX way, such as by signin-with-Google (or confirmed email) and match that up with physical address using a creepy data-broker service, that might work well. But I'd guess would be a big percentage of your engineering effort, and you'd have ongoing costs, and possibly some upfront commitment to the broker to bother with you at a viable cost rate.
Other ideas that come to mind seem like they'd have significant numbers of rejected legitimate, and accepted illegitimate.
Random idea: One of the times people most want wakeup help is when they're traveling (with disrupted schedules, unfamiliar settings, risk of phone alarm accidentally in DND/mute or out of battery, etc.). Hotels have it covered. Maybe you could integrate with AirBnb, in a way that lets you sufficiently authenticate that the person at the address at that time wants to be woken then. And you can give AirBnb a big cut, for the integration and for advertising your service. Or maybe AirBnb wants to build and own the UI and billing, and you're only a middleperson who supplies and pays the contractor door-knockers (and provides a brand, and lets AirBnb keep a bit arms-length on that and the contractors). (Or "hosts" could provide an unusually good alarm clock on the nightstand. Or there could be an unusually good alarm clock that the people who want it can buy.)
The more practical solution (excluding just using a normal alarm) would probably just sending a OTP to the address that needs to be entered before the first order.
Alternatively (not sure if this is available in the US, just basing this on the German ID cards), you could use the person's eID to verify their address. This is probably a bit too complex for a fun project like this one though.
Cute idea though! I'd be curious to see what your user-facing application looks like when you have an alarm set. Do you provide some sort of proof that the "alarm went off"? Package services usually take a photo of the door/porch as proof, might be a good idea in case anyone tries to dispute a charge for "not being woken up" heh.
Like another sibling comment mentioned, yeah, abuse potential is there. Could consider a snail-mail-letter-with-a-code verification method for addresses, though that's obviously rather slow.
I'm not trying to shit on your idea, but I don't understand the consumer value proposition.