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Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

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Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#61

Ok, got it working on desktop. But now I'm seeing something else that concerns me a bit. I used my @gmail account to sign up and now I'm seeing 2 companies listed as groups I can join. I assume that's because these people also used @gmail accounts to create those team accounts. Either way, even with the email verification it seems like you wouldn't want to list all the companies that match the domain.

Super sorry for the experience this has been now fixed (it's actually a relicate, the issue can't happen on new teams)

Great! And great job fielding these questions/comments.

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#62
post #50

Does this do anything that Quip doesn't?

Hey!

We clearly have a lot in common with Quip. The main difference as of now is organization : Quip is organized exactly like a google Drive, with nested folders while Slite uses channels. It makes the content accessible, permissions easy to manage and actually shows your team important changes of the content.

The other thing really different that we're building is integrations: Quip focuses on in-editor integrations (which are great, we're working on those as well). But for the rest, unlike quip we keep a simple markdown-compliant (& thus universal) format, which let us fetch and push content to all your toolchain.

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#63
post #59

Another note app? I get that this is a massive problem space but with dropbox, notion, google and loads of other companies working on the exact same thing.... I have a hard time understanding why Y Combinator accepts companies like these. Either way, excited to try it out; sounds like you've put a lot of BS&T into this.

> Another note app? [...snip...] dropbox, notion, google . . . Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, none of these (or any existing note-taking app that I've tried) hits the sweet spot for me. I've commented on several note-taking apps in the past -- quite enthusiastically -- and I'd really like to see more. For some background, I live and die by my notes. Mainly due to spending about a decade developing against an…

Confluence actually has first class Markdown support now. You might need you admin to enable it.

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#64
This looks exactly like Confluence (no doubt it is better designed in various ways). Here is a Quora question asking for Confluence alternatives (Slite listed). [1]

Right now I am really impressed with how coda.io creates documents with structured data, which is a different paradigm that overlaps with some note taking applications.

[1] https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-modern-confluence-altern...

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, why would investors throw money at another note app? Data, is my guess. Existing note apps perhaps don't collect, package, and act on (sell) that data as well as they could. I would not be surprised if that's a major component of any new company that just looks to be re-hashing existing companies. Their "new" approach is an improved UI, and massive data collection.

I was one of the YC partners that decided to fund Slite. While I understand your concern, I can say from first hand experience, our decision didn't have anything to do with data. We funded Slite because "another note app" might be a billion dollar company. "Another search engine" was Google, "another social network" was Facebook, and "another file storage service" was Dropbox. Slite's plan is to charge users directly…

Fair enough. I can appreciate that business model. Heck, I'm doing it myself. And I often tell my friends exactly what you've said - don't try and find something new just find something you can do much better (and then I point them to google, facebook, etc.).

My main reason for posting was because while I did understand why you'd start a business that did X better, I didn't necessarily think that would be enough to convince investors. I was wrong!

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#66

A Knowledge/Note based system is very useful for teams. On my own personal project where I have a team of 8 I tried Gitbook but when I lost a bunch of stuff do with git pull that override my local changes I really disliked Gitbook. I convinced my work to get on Confluence so we at least have a knowledge base. I find Confluence like all Atlassian products clunky, slow and cumbersome to navigate. I really liked Backpac…

Have you considered building it based on BoostNote?

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#67

A Knowledge/Note based system is very useful for teams. On my own personal project where I have a team of 8 I tried Gitbook but when I lost a bunch of stuff do with git pull that override my local changes I really disliked Gitbook. I convinced my work to get on Confluence so we at least have a knowledge base. I find Confluence like all Atlassian products clunky, slow and cumbersome to navigate. I really liked Backpac…

Come and help us add other authentication options to Outline ;) I can promise you it'll be easier than "whipping up your own"

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No worry it's a perfectly fair point. In our experience, Notion is a great tool and can work within small teams adapted of product and technical people. But the complexity of their structure makes it really hard for non technical people to apprehend. Channels make Slite easy to use for anyone in your team. The second thing is that Notion is built like google docs or paper with a loose notion of team : it's an open to…

Do you have any info on what makes the teams concept better than those in Notion / Google Docs / Paper? I also have the vague feeling that those tools have hard to understand team permissions, but I'm unclear on how Slite solves this in a better way. Either way, sounds interesting. Congrats on the launch!

Well the 'team' is actually defined in Slite, while google docs, paper or notion have rights granted on each folder / page / doc for a loose set of people.

The easy way to see that is by checking a Google Drive structure : you have "My Drive", then some folders, some shared, some not, and in parallel "Shared with me" gathering documents that can come from outside your team, and that you can also put in "my drive"... It's centered around individuals and weirdly works for them, but is absolutely not suited to organize and retrieve content as a team.

Slite actually creates a well defined private space for your team, which makes it possible to share by default. When I update our roadmap or our hiring process, I know all the relevant people can see the channel highlighted, and can get updated. In another tool, the authors would have to push a link by email or irc to get their team updated. And this mereley because they knew that else nobody would see it had changed and nobody could retrieve it in a shared folder structure.

Completely side but awesome job on Slate! We have spent a lot of time working on editors, and might switch to it at some point, so keep up the good work!

Re: Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, why would investors throw money at another note app? Data, is my guess. Existing note apps perhaps don't collect, package, and act on (sell) that data as well as they could. I would not be surprised if that's a major component of any new company that just looks to be re-hashing existing companies. Their "new" approach is an improved UI, and massive data collection.

I was one of the YC partners that decided to fund Slite. While I understand your concern, I can say from first hand experience, our decision didn't have anything to do with data. We funded Slite because "another note app" might be a billion dollar company. "Another search engine" was Google, "another social network" was Facebook, and "another file storage service" was Dropbox. Slite's plan is to charge users directly…

Google, Facebook, and Dropbox were all quite different from their competitors from very early on.

I agree their business model could a the key to success, but from a user’s point of view, what is the reason that would make me want to pay for this new service? At a glance, it is quite similar to other note apps

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