Pillow is a couples mindfulness app designed to guide you both through intimacy building practices and exercises, that ultimately support you to have a richer, deeper and more loving relationship.
Hey Product Hunters! It’s cool to be back.
So Pillow is like Headspace, but instead of in meditation (where you listen alone), with Pillow you listen with your partner. We nurture both physical and emotional intimacy whilst you follow-along to the audio directions… ;)
With the rise of dating apps, it’s becoming forever easier to jump from relationship to relationship. Because of this we’re having shorter, shallower relationships and we’ve forgotten how to go deep.
I believe our society is crying out for products to help couples be better, together. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Tech doesn’t always have to get in the way…
We are exploring the beautiful diversity of human sexuality by offering a variety of episodes that take you and your partner on a range of intimate journeys. In the future, there’s all that cool tech stuff we could do like using the Apple watch to personalise suggestions in real-time based on heart rate.. etc...
It’s been a long (and fun-fuelled) 18-month exploration of the #SexTech space (previous prototypes were the Pillow Talk digest and Blindfold.club) - and we’ve been listening and learning from many of you PH’ers along the way. I'm so happy to have Pillow live in the App Store!
Would love to hear what you think.. :)
@darrenux I'd love to hear stories about your prototype strategy (or lack thereof) and learnings. What you were surprised to learn? Was measuring CTR in the digest intended to guide your content production focus in the app?
@joshbenjamin love this question :) I'm planning on writing a blog post about the learnings soon, too.
The Pillow Talk digest started as a way of giving me rhythm. Start small, but keep executing. I also used this an opportunity to learn as much as I could about sex, relationships, intimacy etc. whilst building an audience who received value from the Friday afternoon emails. The "sex positions" link was by far the most popular (partly because it was the first link in the email, but it also related to the majority of the readers). Other links, less relevant to everyone.
The digest was never the end goal, and I used this audience to get feedback about potential product ideas using Typeform. I also used the project as a genuine conversation starter to talk about intimate relationships with everyone that I could... and learn as much as I could. I'm UX guy, I over did the research ;)
Over the course of the first 6 months, it became apparent there was a gaping hole in the way we learn about Sex, Intimacy, and Relationships. In other parts of life we take classes, lessons and have guided instruction - we learn in real-time, as opposed to reading THEN putting it into practice. We don't with sex. I also started seeing similar "follow-along" apps in the fields of meditation, workouts and yoga...
This led to the release of Blindfold.club this time last year. I bootstrapped this from Chiang Mai in Thailand using audio talent I found on Fiverr, and sold the mp3 adventures on Gumroad. Proper MVP style. I gained a little traction, proved that people would buy it, and received tons of positive feedback about the episodes. I learned that getting the voice, tone, pace, and language 'right' is exceptionally important, and very difficult.
Our users found Blindfold to be like Marmite - they either LOVED it, or HATED it. Digging in, we found those that hated it were already very sexually explorative couples and were expecting something - given the name "Blindfold" - much kinkier than what we offered. Blindfold has many associations with Fifty Shades Of Grey... and that isn't what were trying to do. Those that loved it were couples who were open enough to try something new, but not already into (or expecting) kink. It was a branding problem.
So I went back to London, found the youngest sex therapist in the UK (the long overdue expertise I needed), a small amount of investment, a developer, female co-founder w/ biz bg, and here we are... an iOS app named Pillow with our focus on helping couples be better together by providing a way to more easily try new things in the bedroom, and improve intimate communication. We all want to feel closer to our partner, right?.. :)
Just in time for Valentine's Day! (If you need that kind of excuse to get creative in bed... 😁) I'm traveling so I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I like the premise if the implementation is handled well... kind of like Detour, but for the bedroom!
@bramk@mdekuijper It certainly was :) ...but we were previously using MailChimp but they banned us because, well, sex. Old school rules. Things are changing, but slowly. We want to accelerate this cultural change in attitudes towards sex and intimacy..
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