The future of Flow.
Announcing a few changes to our flagship product.
In November of 2016, we release a revised version of our flagship cognitive enhancement product, Flow, after months of R&D and customer feedback.
Our goal was to improve the efficacy of Flow, while overhauling the formulation so that it followed a stricter evidence based protocol, which meant excluding a significant number of potential ingredients that did not meet certain clinical standards (specifically a strict long-term safety criteria), that as a by-product made us favour safety over efficacy, which we believe is the responsible thing to do when selling consumer products.
The reasoning for this was to ensure our product is extremely safe to consume on a regular basis, and thoroughly backed by clinical data that supports the cognitive enhancing benefits we were aiming for at the nominated dosages, such as increased concentration and alertness, sustained energy levels throughout the day, improved memory and flexible thinking, reduced stress and general cognition.
It’s a very lengthy and methodical process that our two researchers Adam & Jack embarked on. A process that we decided to make public on our science page, to truly pioneer embodying a transparent nutraceutical company.
It’s been just over 3 months since the latest revision was released, and as a customer-centered company we have recently conduced another round of customer feedback to see what people think about the new Flow!
As a result of this feedback and several other factors that we will walk through in this post, we’re going to be tweaking Flow in a few ways.
1. We’re slightly changing the effects of Flow.
At Hapi we use what’s called the JTBD (Jobs To Be Done) framework, which is a customer-centred methodology to understand what ‘jobs’ people are hiring our product for.
An example is that people are hiring Flow to improve their concentration at work, so that they can get more work done overall. Therefore, people are hiring Flow so that they can be more productive.
This is fundamental to understand, as it’s what we design our formulation around. Our product needs to positively influence specific neurological systems that are responsible for the desired outcome(s).
As it turns out, people would like Flow to provide more concentration, attention and memory enhancement effects.
Thankfully these effects are what we originally designed Flow around. However, we initially emphasised the anti cognitive-fatigue and ‘smooth focus / energy’ effects, as opposed to heavily emphasising the concentration and memory aspects.
In subsequent questions we asked people to rate each characteristic of Flow (seen in the graph above), and concentration / attention was slightly favourable over memory enhancement.
In addition (seen below in point #2), people voted for Flow being a slightly stronger product.
As such, we have decided to focus on improving the concentration / attention aspects of Flow, as opposed to the memory effects (though they will remain the same).
People will not only noticeably feel stronger concentration effects, they will be able to get more tangible real-world outcomes, such as improving productivity. Whereas if we doubled down on memory-enhancement, it would be very hard to gauge, as it’s a subtle, long-term benefit, which is potentially intangible in terms of measuring it in a non-clinical environment.
Therefore, overall, we will be tweaking the Flow formulation to provide more pronounced concentration and attention effects, as it’s the most in demand benefit from our existing users.
2. We’re slightly increasing the strength of Flow.
In our survey, existing Flow customers rated the strength of Flow at 4.54, which is about 0.5 points below “just right”.
Many more people indicated that Flow was below the ideal strength, as opposed to being over stimulatory, which is what we assumed as we’ve formulated Flow to be a subtle product for daily usage.
It’s quite obvious that people want Flow to be slightly more stimulating, but the practical implementation is a little more sophisticated… so we asked a few follow up questions.
1. Would you be interested in a product separate to Flow, which has much more noticeable and acute effects, for when you really need a mental boost on demand?
2. If you are interested in a stronger product separate from Flow for one-off usage, would you prefer the strength of Flow to stay about the same as it is, and take the other product on the days you need the extra boost?
3. Would you be bothered by taking more capsules of Flow per day if it meant the product was substantially improved?
This was super interesting data for us!
85% of customers would like a complimentary and stronger version of Flow for one-off usage, with 69% of people voting that if said product existed, they would be fine with the current strength of Flow to remain the same.
In addition, it was about a 50/50 split between people who would mind if we increased the serving size of Flow (from say 2 > 3 capsules per day), and people who would be fine with it so long as they would receive additional benefits from the product.
As such, we don’t think it’s appropriate to increase the strength of Flow via increasing the overall dosage, as the user-experience would be impacted due to the fact people would need to remember to take multiple capsules at intervals throughout the day, which is not convenient.
Overall, the two above changes will mean Flow is more noticeable overall, with pronounced concentration and attention effects.
3. A complimentary Flow product.
Originally, we had the idea of releasing a complimentary Flow product called Dash, which would be a substantially stronger product with only 10 servings per bottle, for infrequent usage up to a maximum of 10 times per month.
However, after giving it some thought, we don’t believe that’s the right approach.
Why?
- A stronger product means more dopaminergic effects much of the time. As many may know, dopamine is the ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter that regulates your reward system, amongst many other things. Smashing your dopamine receptions regularly tells your brain that this behaviour is that of a rewarding one, which you should repeat. As you may have guessed by now, this increases the probability of addiction, and that’s not what we want to do, and what we’ve tried so hard to avoid with Flow.
- A subsequent result of addiction is abuse. Specifically, dosage abuse. If someone becomes dependant on the feeling they get from a product, they will want more of it. And as some products that are heavily dopaminergic (amongst other things) can down-regulate said receptors (meaning your body will produce less naturally as it thinks it’s getting enough from external sources), the person will be required to increase the dosage for the same effects, and make up for deficit that your body is no longer producing.
- Finally, this can lead to adverse effects. As the strength of such a product is quite substantial, and if the above two precursor habits occur, it increases the risk of overstimulation.
As you can tell it’s a risky path to go down, and more a journey for companies selling prescription medication that have a highly regulated supply and medical supervision, as opposed to a nutraceutical company like Hapi.
Thankfully, the solution was in front of us this whole time! We had originally planned to release our Cuppa product, which will be a caffeinated mix in daily sachets.
As caffeine is already a widely used compound that is quite stimulatory, to us it makes a lot more sense to pair a caffeine based product with Flow, given many customers do this already and love it! And given Flow has many compounds that are synergistic with caffeine.
I thought this was worth mentioning and being transparent about, so that people can understand our thought process.
4. Finally, we’re moving to a proprietary formulation.
This is something I personally NEVER thought we would do at Hapi, and since day one I have been against proprietary blends, as it seemingly goes against our transparent values.
However, after much discussion within our team, we’ve decided that Flow and all future products will have proprietary blends, meaning the dosage for individual ingredients will be omitted.
Why?
The answer is very simple: We’ve invested SO much time and capital into the R&D of Flow, and we don’t want other companies stealing our formulation, or utilising the research that we’ve done for their own benefit, without paying the price.
We will continue to be a transparent company as we go forward—even more so than we currently are—so please don’t see this as a sign of things to come! We’re not going to privatise everything, fear not!
We will keep our entire scientific process open to the public, and continue to add to our dedicated transparency page over time.
We’re also going to stay true to our promise of publishing all of our clinical trial data online (not just the final report), so that the public knows we didn’t do any statistic manipulation to make the results seem better.
Closing thoughts.
As you can see we’re continuing to listen to YOU, our customers, and improve our product(s) based on your feedback.
We’re deciding to play it safe and remain a responsible cognitive enhancement company, unlike many others in the industry who don’t give a damn about evidence, safety or the wellbeing of their customers, only the profits they’re able to accumulate.
This is what makes Hapi different, we give a fuck.
We genuinely listen. We learn. And we constantly evolve.
I am very excited for these changes, and hope you are too!
We will be rolling them out over the coming weeks and months in stages, as much R&D, testing and tweaking needs to take place.
Thanks to all of our customers for being awesome and giving us such valuable feedback! It helps us help you, and I’m all for win-win situations!
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Be happy and stay healthy peeps 😀
— John, CEO at Hapi.
