Spriteli Wants to Change the Way You Wake Up in the Morning

The new app provides video wakeup calls to put users in a positive mindset.

Spriteli

The Spriteli app. Image provided to bostonmagazine.com

It’s time to get up in the morning, and your alarm clock is blaring. You turn it off, and within seconds, the smiling face of a stranger pops up on your phone screen to wish you good morning.

Sound like your worst nightmare? It’s the whole premise behind a new Boston-based app called Spriteli.

“The goal of the app is to enable people to start their day in the best way possible,” explains CEO and cofounder Chris Hilger. “There’s a lot of research that shows how you start your day actually impacts how the rest of your day goes—so focusing on the right things instead of diving right into email or hitting the snooze on your alarm.”

Each Spriteli wakeup call involves a guided two-minute activity from one of the app’s hand-picked “concierges,” people from 10 different countries chosen for their warm, empathetic personalities. Example activities, which Hilger says “help elevate their mood and their productivity, not only for those two minutes, but also through the rest of the day,” include things such as stretching, guided breathing, visualizing a perfect vacation, or affirming good personality traits.

And while Hilger acknowledges that many people are initially less than enthused about talking to a stranger first thing in the morning, he says users can turn off the video function on their end if they feel uncomfortable. “A lot of the users are surprised at how fun it is to interact with them,” Hilger says. “While, yes, they are strangers, their warm personality really is inviting.”

Spriteli is still in a beta testing phase right now, but Hilger says its official roll out will likely be in about a month. Pricing isn’t solidified yet, but will probably be between $10 and $20 per month. While that’s a lot more than your iPhone alarm clock, Hilger says the mental health benefits of Spriteli make it worth it.

“We really value the importance of meaningful human-to-human interaction,” Hilger says. “A lot of apps will try to cut that out and try to do everything with software, but we really see the value in talking to another person.”