Waking up is the first though challenge we all face in the morning – that should be smoother.

The zombie status that you find yourself in when you wake up in the morning is called ‘sleep inertia’ and turned out that a very powerful way to stop it quickly (and effectively) is to get an adrenaline rush. Your brain does not really switch on with passive actions (like listening to TV, eating the standard meal, looking at Instagram feeds,…) but it really does when you require an active task… like thinking and talking!

WakeApp is a community of people waking up each other through phone calls at the desired time. Being forced to talk, especially with a stranger, provides you with enough adrenaline to completely avoid the sleep inertia, kicking off the day straight away.

The idea came from my exchange semester in Australia, where I was asking my friends in Italy to call me at the end of their day to wake me up – exploiting the 8-hour time difference, then it expanded.  Marta and I designed a range of wake up experiences like ‘Business’ to have someone waking you up discussing the daily news, ‘Language’ to be called by someone in another language and ‘Mindfulness’ to be guided through a short session of meditation.

We have tested the solution with a pay-per-use and a monthly subscription business model – and that didn’t work out. Now stepping back to test the pure concept offering a completely free plan

Lessons learned

• You first need to test the concept (do people need what you offer them?) and then your business model
• Unconscious, life-long habits (like waking up) -whether you like or hate them- are really hard to change