A track record of successful and scaleable behavioral interventions.

Nickels is built by a team with a history of designing and delivering software that improves the world at scale.

The opower, WHOOP, ideas42, Everyday Labs, and Vergil logos organized around a large light blue circle. A center blue circle has lines pointing to each logo. Each line has a small blue dot at the end.

We have great guidance, to ensure that you do too.

Meet our advisors:

  • Chip Heath

    Professor of Organizational Behavior,
    Stanford University
  • Katy Davis

    Managing Director,
    ideas42
  • Marc Laitin

    Studio Lead,
    ideas42 Ventures
  • Esther Dyson

    Executive Founder,
    Wellville
  • Himi Khan

    Head of Business Development,
    Clinc
  • Corey Stone

    Senior Advisor,
    Financial Health Network

How it all started.

You may already be familiar with our work. If you've every received a Home Energy Report from your utility company, you've seen the work of Nickels founder Joseph Gracia and his advisor, Marc Laitin.

A photo of a Home Energy Report with the kWh* usage bar chart focused and zoomed larger to show detail.
A Home Energy Report.

At Opower, Joseph ran the Behavioral Marketing and Design team, responsible for designing and conducting large-scale, behaviorally-informed marketing tests to enhance the effectiveness of communications sent to millions of utility customers.

And the impact was huge. Thanks to Joseph, Marc, and the entire Opower team, utility companies saved enough energy to take all the homes in a city like Boston off the grid for 10 years.

Photos of Joseph Gracia and Marc Laitin with the Opower logo and various dots as design flourishment.
Joseph Gracia and Marc Laitin.

Meet ideas42: Driving positive change at scale.

Marc left Opower to join ideas42, a nonprofit behavioral design lab founded by Harvard academics in 2010. Marc created their Venture Studio, an incubator for innovative companies using the power of behavioral science to design scalable solutions to some of society’s most difficult problems.

A photo illustration of the ideas42 logomark and headshots of ideas42 team members.

In 2018, Joseph joined Marc as an entrepreneur in residence to address a $1.6T problem: the pitfalls of federal student loan repayment.

The Nickels Dog logomark