We're Looking for 25 Families to Help Build TAP

I'm going to be honest about where we are.

TAP is an app that helps families negotiate screen time rules together — both parents and teens — then sign a digital pact and check in daily. It has built-in renegotiation so the agreement changes when life does. The dashboard is transparent. Both sides see the same data. No surveillance. No secret monitoring.

It's real. It works. And it's not finished.

No app is, at launch. But I'm not going to pretend otherwise. There will be rough edges. Features we haven't built yet. Things that don't work the way they should. That's the honest truth about any product on day one.

So here's what I'm doing instead of pretending.

The Founding Family Program

I'm looking for 25 families to help build TAP.

Not 25 customers. Not 25 beta testers. Twenty-five families who believe that the way we handle screen time with teenagers is broken — and that the answer isn't better surveillance, but better agreements.

Families who've fought the nightly phone battle. Who've installed the parental controls and watched their kid find the workaround. Who've read the AAP guidelines saying families should make media decisions together and thought: "OK, but how?"

Those families. The ones who already know the problem. The ones willing to try a different answer before it's polished.

What You Get

TAP Premium for $14.99 per year. That's $1.25 per month. Locked at that price for as long as you're a member. It will never go up, regardless of what we charge later.

For context: retail will be $9.99/month or $59.99/year. Bark charges $14/month to spy on your kid. Single paper screen time contract templates on Etsy run $3-7 each.

At $14.99/year, we're not making money on founding families. That's the point. This isn't a sale. You're funding the development of an app that should have existed years ago.

What premium includes:

Unlimited pacts (gaming night, school night, weekend, summer — different agreements for different situations)
Unlimited family members (blended families, multiple kids, grandparents)
Pre-built pact templates so you're not starting from scratch
Full renegotiation history (see how your family's agreements have evolved)
Advanced reporting and trends
Custom rewards
Priority support (John reads every message)
A founding family badge — visible in-app recognition that your family helped build this

What We Ask in Return

This is a partnership. The price compensates your patience and participation.

We ask founding families to:

Use the app with your family. Actually sit down together, build a pact, and try to keep it. We need families going through the real experience — the awkward first conversation, the renegotiation after two weeks, the teen who tests the boundaries.
Tell us what's broken. We'll make it easy — a feedback button in settings, a direct line to me. When something doesn't work, when a screen is confusing, when the flow doesn't match how your family actually operates, we need to hear it.
Tell us what's missing. The features that matter most are the ones families discover through use, not the ones developers imagine in advance. If your 13-year-old says "I wish I could do X," that's the best product input we can get.
Be patient with rough edges. Version 1.0 won't be perfect. We're building fast and we're building with intention, but there will be bugs, missing features, and things that need polish. Founding families know this going in.

This isn't a checkbox commitment. You don't owe us a certain number of feedback reports or hours of usage. But we're choosing families who actually care about solving the screen time problem — not people looking for a deal on software they'll never open.

Why 25?

Two reasons.

The feedback has to be manageable. I'm a solo founder. If 500 families send feedback in Week 1, none of it gets the attention it deserves. Twenty-five families means I can read every message, respond personally, and actually incorporate what we learn into the next version.

The urgency has to be real. We're doing this in waves. Wave 1: 25 families at $14.99/yr. When those spots fill, the price goes up.

| Wave | Spots | Annual Price | |------|-------|-------------| | 1 | 25 | $14.99/yr | | 2 | 25 | $19.99/yr | | 3 | 50 | $24.99/yr | | 4 | 50 | $29.99/yr | | 5 | 100 | $39.99/yr | | 6 | 100 | $49.99/yr |

350 founding families total. After that, everyone pays retail ($59.99/yr or $9.99/mo).

Each wave is annual-only. Each price is locked for life. And the earlier you join, the deeper the partnership and the deeper the price.

Why This App Needs to Exist

Every screen time app on the market treats your teen as a threat. Block their apps. Monitor their messages. Set limits they can't see or change. Spy on them and hope they don't notice.

Teens notice. A teenager on Trustpilot described Bark as "pure and unadulterated spyware and a tool of helicopter parents." Another said the app caused "a big decline on my mental health." A Qustodio parent wrote: "12 yo hacked it in less than a day."

The enforcement model doesn't work. The AAP said so in January 2026 when they dropped specific screen time limits and recommended collaborative family media plans instead. Meta's own internal research found that parental controls had "little association" with whether teens could actually regulate their screen time. Oxford confirmed it.

The research is clear: teens who help write the rules follow them at significantly higher rates. Collaborative agreements produce 40% higher compliance than imposed limits. Renegotiation prevents the build-up of resentment that makes enforcement explode.

TAP is the first app that implements what the experts actually recommend. Families sit down together, negotiate rules, sign a pact, and check in daily. Both sides see the same data. Anyone can renegotiate. No surveillance. No blocking. No secret monitoring.

This product doesn't exist yet in the market. Paper templates exist. Expert recommendations exist. But no app turns the family agreement into a living, daily, renegotiable practice.

That's what we're building. And we want the families who need it most to help us get it right.

What Happens Next

If you join the Founding Family program:

You'll be first to download TAP when it hits the App Store.
You'll set up a pact with your family — the app walks you through the conversation together.
You'll check in daily and experience what it's like when both sides are accountable.
You'll tell us what works and what doesn't — and we'll build your feedback into the next version.
Your price stays at $14.99/yr forever. Even when we add features, raise prices, and grow. You were there first. That means something.

Wave 1 has 25 spots. When they're gone, the price goes to $19.99/yr for the next 25 families.

If you believe your family deserves something better than surveillance — something built on trust, transparency, and the radical idea that your teenager is a person worth negotiating with — join the Founding Family program.

TAP is built by Tree City Design, a small app studio in the Midwest. This is John Carter — solo founder, parent, and someone who's lived the screen time fight and decided to build something different. Questions? Reply to any email or reach out at [support link]. I read everything.