MidReal Story
A company developed a time bank app , where people
Scenario: A company developed a 'time bank' app, where people could trade hours of their life with others for money.
Create my version of this story
I stood on the tech conference stage, facing a sea of faces.
This was it.
I was about to pitch my idea for a time bank app, in which people could trade hours of their lives with others for money—a concept that was so revolutionary, so controversial, that the conference organizers had banned it from future events.
But not before they’d let me have my say.
I took a deep breath and launched into my presentation, laying out the details of my idea and explaining how it would work.
I wrapped up with a slide that read: “Introducing TimeSwap—the first app to let you trade time for money.”
The crowd erupted into applause, and I knew I’d done it.
I’d made my case, and I’d done it well.
I left the stage with my head held high, and I was soon approached by several venture capitalists who wanted to invest in my app.
The video of my pitch went viral, and I received job offers from several startups that wanted to turn my idea into a reality.
I accepted one of them and spent the next two years working as the lead developer on what would soon become TimeSwap.
When we finally launched, it was an instant hit.
People all over the world were downloading the app, creating profiles, and trading hours of their lives with others for money.
TimeSwap changed everything.
It allowed people to work less and enjoy more by trading their time with others, which meant they could spend more time with their families or doing the things they loved.
Soon, everyone was using it—and I mean everyone.
As one of the most sought-after app developers in Silicon Valley at the time, I was in high demand, but I wasn’t alone.
My best friend Mark Thompson had come up with a brilliant marketing campaign that made TimeSwap a global success almost overnight.
We were all over the news, and everyone wanted a piece of us—including Mark’s ex-girlfriend Sarah Jennings.
She’d heard about our success and was eager to see TimeSwap in action for herself.
We were happy to oblige her, since we were old friends after all.
Sarah Jennings stepped onto the stage with three other women whom she introduced as her friends before she began her presentation.
As she spoke about her app, I leaned in closer to get a better look at her face—her red hair, her bright green eyes, her freckled skin…
She was just as beautiful as I remembered her being back when we were dating in college.
She was also as passionate and outspoken as ever as she explained how her app worked and how it could help people in need.
When she finished her presentation, there were tears streaming down her cheeks, and she looked out at the audience with fire in her eyes as she said: “This is what TimeSwap does to people.”
Mark Thompson was at her side in an instant as he slipped an arm around her waist and pulled her close.
He looked down at her with concern etched on his face as he said: “It’s all right, babe.
It was in the faces of parents who finally had time to play catch with their kids or sit down for a meal together.
It was in the smiles of friends who’d finally found time to take that road trip they’d been talking about for years, or go to that concert they’d been dying to see.
It was everywhere, and we had TimeSwap to thank for that.
Before TimeSwap, people had spent most of their lives working, taking only a few days off each year.
Even then, they’d usually spend their vacations checking their work emails or working on projects at home.
But now, thanks to TimeSwap, everyone was working less.
They were taking more days off, spending more time with their families, and pursuing their passions.
And they couldn’t have done it without us.
I was still thinking about TimeSwap as I exited the building, slipped on my sunglasses, and stepped out into the bright California sun.
I was surrounded by a bustling crowd of people, all of whom were busy living their lives—and some of whom were doing so because of TimeSwap.
I weaved my way through the crowd as I headed toward my next meeting, my mind still filled with thoughts of TimeSwap.
I hadn’t been sure if my idea would work when I first pitched it at that tech conference two years ago.
But now, as I looked around me at all the people whose lives we’d changed for the better, I realized just how wrong I’d been.
TimeSwap had become a global sensation.
It was everywhere, and everyone was using it—even me.
I pulled out my phone and opened the app to check my profile as I walked down the street.
I had over five hundred hours to trade now—more than enough to take some time off from work and go on a vacation or spend some time with my family.
I knew my parents would love that—and so would my sister.
They’d been spending a lot more time together lately, thanks to TimeSwap, and they were closer than ever because of it.
My friends were also using TimeSwap to spend more time together, even though most of them lived in different cities now.
Some of them would trade hours so they could watch movies together online.
Others would trade hours in order to visit each other in person.
Sure, they could have done that before TimeSwap.
But now, thanks to TimeSwap, they didn’t have to spend money on plane tickets or hotel rooms.
All they had to do was trade some hours and they were good to go.
I still couldn’t believe how fast TimeSwap had taken off.
We’d only been live for a few weeks and we already had a hundred million users worldwide.
We were making millions of dollars every week.
And best of all, we were helping people live better lives.
I’d never been prouder of what we’d accomplished.
“Emily!” someone called out as I walked down the street.
I turned around and saw Mark Thompson waving at me from across the street.
He was tall and lean with dark hair and an infectious smile that could light up a room.
He’d always been one of the most popular guys on campus back when we were in college.
He’d been a star athlete and a member of several prestigious fraternities.
He’d also dated some of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen—though never for very long.
Most women usually found him too arrogant or too full of himself to be around for long periods of time.
I watched the traffic light turn yellow as I waited for it to change so I could cross the street.
I was about to cross when I heard someone calling my name again.
This time I turned around and saw Mark running towards me.
He stopped in front of me just as the light changed to red.
“Hey,” he said with a smile.
I smiled back at him as I took in his tall figure.
“Mark.” I said his name as if it were the answer to all of my problems.
“It’s so good to see you.”
“You too,” he said as he pulled me into a tight hug.
His arms felt warm against my body as he held me close to him.
I closed my eyes and breathed in his scent as I rested my head against his chest.
He still smelled the same after all these years—like soap and sandalwood.
He was just as tall and lean and muscular as he’d always been.
But he seemed more mature now.
His face was more chiseled and more defined than it had been back in college.
He also had a little bit of stubble on his chin that made him look even more attractive than he already was.
I was surprised by how attracted I still was to him after all this time.
He was the first guy I’d ever loved—and the last one too.
“Hey,” Mark said as he pulled away from me.
He looked just as surprised by how long our hug had lasted as I was.
I smiled back at him as I watched him run a hand through his dark hair to fix it back into place.
“I was just on my way home from work,” I told him as I looked around for any cars that might be trying to run us over.
I finally saw a break in the traffic and took Mark’s hand so we could cross the street together.
“I was thinking about taking some time off and going on vacation.”
“That sounds nice.” Mark said as he looked down at my hand still holding his, then up at my face, which was only inches away from his own.
“I’m sure you deserve it.”
“Why don’t you come with me?”
I suggested as I looked up into his eyes.
“You mean it?”
I nodded my head just as we reached the other side of the street and let go of his hand.
“Can I think about it?”
he asked me as we walked side by side down the street together.
“We can talk about it over dinner,” I suggested as I looked up at him and smiled.
The smile that had always gotten him to do whatever I wanted him to do.
“Sounds good,” he said as we made our way through the crowded streets of Silicon Valley together.
We walked for a few more minutes until we reached my apartment building, where we walked inside together and took the elevator up to the tenth floor.
“You go ahead,” I told him once we reached my front door.
“I’ll be right there.”
Mark nodded his head and walked down the hall while I unlocked the door to my apartment and walked inside.
I had only just stepped into my apartment when I heard someone pounding on my front door.
I watched Sarah’s face turn red with anger in her video, which now had over a million views in less than a day, and listened to her scream about how TimeSwap was going to exploit people and ruin their lives just for money, until she finally stopped talking and took a deep breath.
She looked into the camera with pleading eyes and said, “If you’re watching this, please don’t use this app!”
I sat on my couch, stunned by her words, while Mark stood behind me, leaning over my shoulder so he could watch Sarah’s video on my phone with me.
“That’s not good.” Mark said with a grimace on his face once he’d watched Sarah’s video in its entirety.
He knew as well as I did that this was going to cause a lot of problems for us and our app.
I nodded my head in agreement and tried to keep my voice steady despite the emotions her video evoked inside me.
“I never should have told her about TimeSwap,” I said with a sigh.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Mark told me reassuringly as he put his hand on my shoulder and gave me a comforting squeeze.
“It was only a matter of time before someone found out about it anyway.”
I turned off my phone and set it aside on the coffee table in front of us so we could watch another video that was showing up on my news feed instead.
I clicked on the video and watched as it showed a group of TimeSwap users telling the world how the app had changed their lives for the better and how much money they were making from it every day.
I watched the video until it was over, then looked up at Mark, who seemed unaffected by what he’d just seen and heard.
“We can’t let one little hiccup like this ruin everything for us,” he told me with a smile on his face as he gave me a wink.
“We just have to figure out how we can use this to our advantage instead.”
“I don’t know,” I said with a frown on my face as I thought about what he was saying.
“This could be really bad for us, Mark.”
“And it could be really good for us too,” he countered as he sat down beside me on the couch and put his arm around my shoulder so he could pull me close to him while we talked about what we were going to do next.
“We just have to think of a way we can turn this around and make it work for us instead of against us.”
“How do you suggest we do that?”
I rested my head on his shoulder and inhaled his scent until I felt the tension between us start to ease.
“By doing some damage control, of course,” he told me with a smile on his face as he pulled away from me and sat up straight.
“It’s not like she’s the first ethical critic to attack us, after all.
We just need to find a way to make sure she’s the last one too.”
I nodded my head in agreement and tried to keep my voice steady as I said, “you’re probably right, Mark,” even though I knew he was wrong.
We both knew she wasn’t the only one who was going to come after us for what we were doing.
There were always going to be people who were against the idea of TimeSwap and everything it stood for, no matter what.
We would just have to be prepared for it when it happened, that’s all.
“You ready to go?”
Mark asked as he got up off the couch and headed toward the door so he could put on his coat and shoes.
“Are you sure you still want to go ahead with our plans for dinner tonight?”
I asked him with a frown on my face as I got up off the couch and headed over to join him.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
he asked with a smile on his face as he slipped his shoes onto his feet and headed toward the door.
“We have a lot to celebrate tonight, don’t we?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sigh as I headed toward the door.
“We do.”
“Then let’s go celebrate,” he said with a smile on his face as he opened the door and headed out into the hallway.
I followed close behind him until we reached the elevator, where we stopped to wait for it to arrive.
The tension between us was so thick I could cut it with a knife and I shifted uncomfortably on my feet as I tried to figure out how I was going to make things right between us again.
“You really think we can turn this around?”
I asked Mark as I stared at the floor and waited for the elevator to arrive.
“You can turn anything around if you want it badly enough,” he told me with a smile on his face as he turned to look at me and gave me a wink.
“Everyone knows that.”
“I guess you’re right,” I said as I looked up at him again.
“How do you suggest we do that?”
“We can start by diversifying our user base,” he answered with a smile on his face.
“If we want to attract more clients like the ones Sarah was talking about in her video, then we just have to make sure they know about us and how much money they can make using our app too.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
I asked as the elevator door slid open.
“We keep our current model for low-income users that she was talking about in her video but come up with something else for high-income users instead?”
“I don’t see why not,” he said with a laugh as he stepped inside the elevator and pressed the button for the parking garage so we could leave.
“All we have to do is come up with new ideas for making money off them while still keeping our current model too.”
“That won’t be easy,” I said with a frown on my face as I stepped inside the elevator beside him and waited for the doors to close.
It’s called TimeSwap for a reason, you know.
“As in, swapping time for money,” I said as I looked up at Mark and waited for his reaction.
“If we start giving high-income users money for their time, then we’re not really swapping time, are we?
We’re just paying them to use our app to make money then.
And if we’re doing that, then why wouldn’t they just use another app that would pay them more money instead?”
“Don’t worry, Emily,” he said with a smile as he reached for my hand and gave it a quick squeeze.
“I’ll leave it up to you to come up with a good way of making money off them then, okay?”
I smiled at him and nodded my head in satisfaction as I realized that he had no idea what he was talking about and was simply being his usual charming self.
It made me wonder if he had any idea how charming he really was or if he just did it naturally without even thinking.
The elevator door slid open again before I could ask him the question, however, and the two of us headed to our cars in silence so we could drive back to the office and attend the crisis meeting that our CEO had asked us to come in for.
I wasn’t sure what we were going there to talk about, but I suspected that it had something to do with Sarah’s viral video and how much trouble it was causing us.
I didn’t know what she had said in her video, but I knew that it couldn’t be good for our company if it was causing us this much trouble already.
I parked my car in the company garage a few minutes later and followed Mark inside the building and up the elevator so we could go to the conference room and attend the meeting that our CEO had called for us.
It felt like there was something tying a knot in my stomach as I waited for the elevator doors to open again, however, and I realized with a start that it might not be too long before we would be forced to leave the company for good if this crisis kept up.
Part of me felt relieved at the idea, but another part of me felt sad about it as well because it meant that I would have to leave behind all the hard work I had done on TimeSwap so far.
It made me feel upset to think about it, but it also made me feel better, knowing that I wouldn’t have to deal with Sarah anymore either.
“I don’t know about you,” Mark said as the two of us stepped onto the elevator and waited for it to rise, “but I have better things to do with my time than attend a crisis meeting about the future of this company.
“I mean, we helped her get her job here, and she seemed to like working with us at first.
“So why is she suddenly making all these videos saying that we’re exploiting people by making them work for us doing things like data entry or inventory management?I mean, haven’t we always been upfront about our terms of service?”
“I thought so,” I said quietly, “but now I’m not so sure.”
He gave me an odd look but didn’t say anything more as we walked out of the elevator on our floor and headed toward the conference room.
I followed him inside, but then I stopped when I saw who else was already there: our CFO and head of legal affairs, along with our CEO, who looked exhausted behind his desk but still glared at us as soon as we entered his office.
“Thank you for coming in,” he said tersely as soon as Mark and I entered the room.
“There has been a crisis situation at our office, and it is causing us some big problems right now.”
“What kind of problems?”
Mark asked calmly, his hands folded behind his back as he stood by my side.
“As soon as Sarah’s video went viral, our app downloads dropped by 60 percent,” our CEO replied coldly.
“If something doesn’t change soon, it will be impossible for us to continue with our current business model.
Now I need the two of you to come up with a plan right away or else I won’t have any other choice but to fire both of you and hire new people in your place.
I don’t care how long it takes or what the solution is; I just need it done quickly so we can move on from this and get back to work again.
Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, sir,” Mark and I said at the same time.
He nodded coolly and leaned back in his chair as he folded his hands in front of him again.
“Good,” he said finally.
“Now you’d both better get started on that plan right away.
This is not something that can wait.”
Mark gave the two of us a brief nod before he turned on his heel and left the room.
The rest of us watched him go in silence before our CEO turned his attention back to me and gave me a probing look.
“What do you think?”
I swallowed hard and tried not to let him see how scared I was as I stared at him, unsure of what to say next or what he wanted me to do.
I had a feeling that it would be impossible for TimeSwap to recover from this, no matter what Mark did, but I had no idea how I could explain that to our boss just yet.
I shook my head and tried to think of something else to say, but before I could say anything, the door opened again, and Mark walked back inside the room with a brief nod at the two of us as he pulled out his phone and started typing something on the screen.
“Okay,” he said as soon as he was finished typing, “I’ve come up with a plan that should help us recover from the damage that has been done by Sarah’s video.
It’s a little unorthodox, but I think it will get the job done if it is handled correctly.”
He sounded confident now, but I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t quite sure if what he was saying was the truth or not.
Losing TimeSwap: Before the Meeting
There had been a time when the name Sarah Jennings had meant something to me, but that time had passed a long time ago, and now the only thing that it meant was that TimeSwap had lost any chance it had at being a successful app for me or for anyone else who used it anymore.
I’d always thought that maybe Sarah had been right about some of the things she’d said, but I had never dreamed that she would go so far as to make a video about it and post it online for the entire world to see, as if she were trying to shame me or the two men who had made the app for our own selfish purposes like I’d always known she thought we had done.
It took me a while before I could bring myself to watch the video, even though I knew that I wouldn’t be able to avoid it forever.
It had already gone viral by the time I came home from work that day, and I knew that there would be no way for me to avoid watching it if I wanted to know what everyone else was thinking about the app that I had poured so much of my life into creating.
I almost wished that I hadn’t watched it when I finally finished doing so; it felt like someone had punched me in the gut and then just left me there, gasping for air as I tried not to cry or throw up or both at once.
Sarah had made some good points in her video, but she had also made some bad ones, too.
As much as I didn’t want to admit it, there were more than a few things about the app that were exploitative, no matter how much money it made or how many people used it or how much it had improved the lives of the people who could now afford to buy things they couldn’t have before.
It wasn’t even the things she’d said about the people who used the app; it was the things she’d said about me and how she thought that I had lost sight of what it was we were all supposed to be doing in the first place.
How could she know something like that if she’d never even met me?
She didn’t know me at all anymore, and she never really had in the first place.
The only thing she knew now was what she saw on the screen while she watched the video, every single time she hit play again to make sure she hadn’t missed anything important.
She didn’t know what I’d wanted to do with the app in the first place, and she didn’t know how hard I’d worked to make it everything that she’d wanted it to be, too.
“I know that we all wanted this app to be about self-improvement and education,” I said, feeling like it came out sounding stronger than I meant for it to but not stopping myself from continuing anyway.
“But no one ever said that we couldn’t make money off of it at the same time.
We’ve all worked so hard to make this thing a success.
We’re not going to be able to get there if we don’t start making some compromises somewhere along the way.”
The only thing I could hear in my head as I spoke was Sarah’s voice from her video, calling out the team for exploiting the users who needed this app so badly.
I knew that she wasn’t right about everything–she couldn’t be–but I also knew that she wasn’t wrong about everything, either.
She wasn’t wrong about the fact that we’d changed so much from what we’d first started out to be, or about how we knew that we needed to do so if we wanted any chance at all of surviving in the tech world.
We weren’t going to be able to make it if we didn’t find some way to stand out from all of the other apps out there, and no one had ever really liked the idea of paying for an app in order to use it.
Most of all, though, she wasn’t wrong about how important it was for us to make sure that we were doing everything we could to make sure that this app was being used by people who needed us most, instead of by people who could take advantage of anyone they wanted because they could afford to pay for anyone’s time.
“We’re not going to be able to keep growing at the rate we’re growing now if we don’t make some changes,” I continued.
“Three million users are already using the app now, and if we don’t do something soon then there’s not going to be any way for us to keep track of how many more are going to want in on this thing.
The only way we’re going to be able to do that is by making some compromises and working with the users who are already here in order to figure out what they need in order to make the app better than what they’ve already got.”
The only thing I was really thinking about at that point was all of the things that we could do now that would help make the app better so that the people who used it were getting what they needed instead of just whatever scraps of time the other users didn’t want.
The only thing that was really on my mind was how much work we’d gone through in order to get this thing off the ground and how little of that work had actually gone into making sure that the app was doing everything we’d originally wanted it to do.
“Okay,” Mark said once I’d finally finished my little speech and everyone else had stopped talking long enough for him to think his own thoughts on the subject.
“I think we all know where everyone stands on this issue, so let’s just move on from there.
I want Emily and Sarah both to start thinking about ways that we can increase user engagement over time.
Emily, you can start working on some changes in order to make the app more functional.
We’ll get back together once you’ve both got some ideas on paper, and then we can figure out where to go from there.”
So that was it; he was going to let me do whatever I wanted so long as it brought more people into our fold who could then go on to use their own time in order to pay their way through anything else they wanted done.
I wasn’t so sure that was such a good idea, but I didn’t have any other options than saying yes or quitting.
My hand was forced by the situation we were in and the need that we all had in order to figure out how better than how best we could make everything work.
“We need to do something about this or we’re not going to be able to keep this thing alive for much longer.
I wasn’t really sure why he was saying anything at that point; it wasn’t as though he was actually going to be able to do anything about it now that everything was out in the open with everyone who cared to watch the video that Sarah had posted online.
At last count, it had over a million views, and it’d only been two days since she’d posted it for everyone to see.
There were also about ten thousand or so comments on it as well, almost all of which were calling for us to be arrested for exploiting people or worse.
And while we were getting a lot of attention from it, we weren’t getting much of anything else, as there had been a drop of 17% in downloads on the day that it had gone live, and a jump of 21% in one star reviews on the App Store by people who hadn’t even used it.
The most damning of all was that there were a lot of people who’d been using it who had gone ahead and deleted their accounts altogether, which meant that they weren’t going to be using it again anytime soon.
The only reason that we hadn’t gone out of business just yet was because there were a hell of a lot more people who were using it now than there were before, but that wasn’t going to last long, not if we didn’t do something about those negative reviews and all of those angry comments.
It was also possible that we might not have to do anything at all, as most of the people who were angry about what we were doing were also poor people who needed to get paid in order to get things done, and there was nothing that they could do about it.
But Mark was worried that we might have to do something in order to keep our users happy, even if they were only there because we were paying them to be there.
And if he was worried about what we might have to do in order to keep our users happy, then I was worried about what I was going to have to do in order to keep everyone else happy.
“This is not good,” Mark said after he’d finished telling us all about how bad things were.
“We’re losing users every day now and our marketing budget is already maxed out.
I don’t know how we can increase those budgets without taking money away from something else, and I also don’t know how we can get anyone to use this thing now that all of this is out in the open and everyone thinks that I’m exploiting them for money.”
I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t exploiting anyone, because we were paying them for their time and they were getting money in return, but I knew that wouldn’t do either one of us any good at that point.
It was true that we weren’t taking advantage of anyone and that we were making sure that they were getting paid for their time no matter what they wanted done, but it was also true that we were only paying them enough so they could stay alive and keep using the app.
It was also true that they were stuck working for us until they found a way to make some money on their own, and that was something that most people just weren’t willing to accept.
