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.
Fair question! For me, phone alarms blend into dreams or I unconsciously turn them off. But a real person knocking? That's an external force I can't dismiss subconsciously. Plus someone is literally waiting for me to get up. But if changing your alarm tone to a door knock works for you, then by all means!
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
Yeah - absolutely - every business has risks, but the point here that I’m trying to make is if those risks aren’t fully assessed, and you aren’t willing to risk going to jail based on the “hope” that humans behave exactly as expected and agreed then this is likely a business probably not worth pursuing - of course everyone has different risk tolerances - but there’s risk tolerance assessment and lack of experience in assessing risk - I don’t know the founder here but I believe it can only be helpful if different perspectives are presented.
To go a bit deeper, what you have here is a business where a somewhat unknown person is hired to any address that you type into a website and pay a marginal fee for - I’m struggling to see how you could keep people safe with this concept (not only the contractor, but also the customer).
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.)
The Airbnb integration idea is brilliant! Travelers definitely have disrupted sleep schedules and unfamiliar settings. Hotels offer wake-up calls but Airbnbs don't. That solves both the verification problem (host vouches for guest) and creates a clear use case. Thanks for the insight!
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.
Sounds great until they show up 30 minutes late and barely tap on your door. Breakfast delivery also assumes you're awake to receive it and that restaurants are open before your wake-up time! We show up on time and knock persistently - plus not all wake-ups are in the morning.
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.
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.
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.
Thanks for the suggestions! Just added service areas back to the site. For proof of service, I like the photo idea - definitely considering that for when we scale beyond just me doing the knocking.
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.
Fair question on price! But if loud alarm clocks across the room worked for heavy sleepers, this wouldn't exist. I've tried every alarm hack - the human element and social pressure is what makes the difference. Plus $19 occasionally vs missing important meetings/flights is worth it.
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.
You're absolutely right - just added service areas back to the top of the site. Currently serving Silicon Valley and expanding based on demand.
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.
Fair question! For me, phone alarms blend into dreams or I unconsciously turn them off. But a real person knocking? That's an external force I can't dismiss subconsciously. Plus someone is literally waiting for me to get up. But if changing your alarm tone to a door knock works for you, then by all means!
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
That seems like a thought terminating concept? Every business has risks.
The employees should know what they are getting into and hopefully the business is providing resources to help keep them reasonably safe.
Yeah - absolutely - every business has risks, but the point here that I’m trying to make is if those risks aren’t fully assessed, and you aren’t willing to risk going to jail based on the “hope” that humans behave exactly as expected and agreed then this is likely a business probably not worth pursuing - of course everyone has different risk tolerances - but there’s risk tolerance assessment and lack of experience in assessing risk - I don’t know the founder here but I believe it can only be helpful if different perspectives are presented.
To go a bit deeper, what you have here is a business where a somewhat unknown person is hired to any address that you type into a website and pay a marginal fee for - I’m struggling to see how you could keep people safe with this concept (not only the contractor, but also the customer).
How are you preventing the service being used to terrorize people by impersonating them and ordering knocks at 5am?
The old Uncle Milton attack: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_... .
Wait, normal people dont immediately think "I could have live ants shipped to anyone/pick up anyone's car under this system"?
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.
Can’t be that much crazier than delivering food right?
Unless I’ve missed something.
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.
Honestly, we can't prevent this any more than we can prevent prank phone calls or fake pizza deliveries. Hopefully, the price is the main deterrent.
Do you have any suggestions?
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).
https://www.affectablesleep.com/blog/neurohacking-the-world-...
> We don't answer calls anymore, and a "fake" pizza delivery, doesn't that mean the person get's a free pizza?
In America, at least, it's still possible to place an order by phone call and pay the delivery person when it arrives.
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.
Address verification has some well-established methods, like sending a OTP through the mail.
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.)
The Airbnb integration idea is brilliant! Travelers definitely have disrupted sleep schedules and unfamiliar settings. Hotels offer wake-up calls but Airbnbs don't. That solves both the verification problem (host vouches for guest) and creates a clear use case. Thanks for the insight!
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.
Interesting concept! Reminds me of the “knocker upper” of old. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knocker-up
It's literally exactly what. Amazing to see it come back.
Exactly! Same concept, just updated for 2025. Amazing how some solutions are timeless.
Wouldn't a timed breakfast delivery be about the same price for the same effect -- and also bring me breakfast?
Sounds great until they show up 30 minutes late and barely tap on your door. Breakfast delivery also assumes you're awake to receive it and that restaurants are open before your wake-up time! We show up on time and knock persistently - plus not all wake-ups are in the morning.
How will the HumanAlarm knockers wake up for their bookings? Will they book other HumanAlarms?
Haha! Every knocker will be assigned a personal knocker. ;)
Railroad workers had that as a union-negotiated right until at least the 1970s.
Interesting! Makes sense for shift workers who couldn't rely on family to wake them. Same core need.
I was curious, but your FAQ and Contact links do not work for me (Firefox & Chromium on desktop Linux).
Contact link was broken because I moved it to its own page but it should work now. FAQ isnt ready yet. Thanks for calling it out.
How do you ensure that the address I enter is actually mine and not the one of someone I want to wake up?
Interesting question, could be fairly easy to provide proof in the form of a photo of you inside the open doorway.
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.
How do you verify that a doorway in a photo belongs to a given address?
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.
I got this service for free once from my boss at the plastic factory and it convinced me to be more responsible about waking up for work.
Exactly! Nothing like real accountability to make you take responsibility. Your boss was onto something.
Where and when was this?
A small 10,000 person town in 2005.
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.
Thanks for the suggestions! Just added service areas back to the site. For proof of service, I like the photo idea - definitely considering that for when we scale beyond just me doing the knocking.
Avoid stand your ground states...
Also funny comment in the nano banana thread that this used to be a job before the alarm clock... Serendipity
I've been thinking about something like this, except it was scheduled phonecalls. That'd probably scale easier too right? I'd use it for sure.
Definitely easier to scale since you can automate the whole process, but there are at least 4 apps in the phonecall space.
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!
This sounds a bit like a Tim and Eric Cinco product.
My feelings have been hurt!
This is what I need. Waiting for plan in Japan.
Japan would be amazing! Maybe we'll be there on your next trip
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.
Fair question on price! But if loud alarm clocks across the room worked for heavy sleepers, this wouldn't exist. I've tried every alarm hack - the human element and social pressure is what makes the difference. Plus $19 occasionally vs missing important meetings/flights is worth it.