StickK was founded by three Yale economists (two professors and a graduate student) and basically allows you to accomplish a goal by setting up a contract against yourself, whether it’s about losing weight, stop biting your nails, writing a novel or whatever else you feel you need to achieve in life. The site takes credit card information up front and charges it on a weekly basis should you fail to meet your self-submitted goal(s). You can designate someone to be your referee — a friend, co-worker or spouse, for example — but in the end, if they fail to do their jobs, StickK.com will take your word for it. The concept is similar to what HealthyWage recently presented on stage at the TechCrunch50 conference.

StickK has been busy raising more funding for the development of the web service. After the founders put in $150,000 of their own cash to get started, the New York-based company went on to raise two rounds totaling an amount north of $2 million from a pool of investors. That brings the total investment in the company to about $2.2 million to date.

User numbers are trending upwards too, fortunately for the upstart (I’m sure it was one of their own goals). When the company launched in February 2008, it grew to 4,000 users by the end of the month and now counts 42,000 registered members. Users so far have entered into 28,000 contracts, and put almost $3 million on the line for their commitments. StickK claims the system is working, too: users are said to be 80% successful when financial stakes, a Referee, and Anti-Charity are utilized.

StickK is now thinking of ways to monetize the service with a B2B offering. The freshly launched stickK.com Corporate Portal offers companies, schools, gyms, health insurance agencies etc. a chance to set up a co-branded version of stickK where customized goals can be designed to achieve wellness and corporate performance-related initiatives. The idea is that corporations could use the platform to drive down healthcare costs while at the same time increasing worker productivity.

As I said, the concept reminds me a lot of HealthyWage, which was one of the startups I was most impressed with at TechCrunch50. I really think it’s a model that works – I like the idea of financial incentives for achievements that have a positive effect on people’s lifestyle and ultimately, society – and I’m very curious to see how much growth these and other companies in this space have in them.

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stickK

stickK was developed by Yale University economists Dean Karlan and Ian Ayres who tested the effectiveness of Commitment Contracts through extensive field research. Economic and behavioral research before Karlan and Ayres considered the effectiveness of the model, and their own testing found that people who put stakes (money or reputation) on the table are far more likely to achieve any goal they set for themselves.

Taking out a commitment contract though doesn’t mean a thing unless there is a penalty for breaking the contract, and stickK covers that as well. Users can set up a contract to include payments to charities if they fail to meet their contracts, and friends can be used to make the final call on the result as well, reducing the chance that users will lie about the result of a contract.

Steven D Levitt of Freakonomics fame wrote about stickK in January (Ayres is an occasional Freakonomics Blog guest blogger) and approved of the concept, a strong endorsement for the site.

stickK has raised $1.2 million in angel funding and had over 1,000 commitment contracts as of early February.

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