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Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

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Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#31

Post by brunovegreville »

jmisavage wrote: post #30

You're entering a pretty crowded market. Have you taken a look at Fellow? https://fellow.app/ Just trying to figure out what makes this product better than the hundreds out there.

Yes, Fellow is one of the first company to build a meeting-centric solution! Few significant differences: - Hera is very single-player, our product is built around making YOU more productive with your meetings - There is a strong focus on automation. Let's say you use a template for one occurence of a weekly meeting, Hera will suggest you to create a rule to do that automatically for all the future occurrences. - A other point, that might seem trivial but is definitely not: Hera is FAST, and entirely usable with the keyboard. We believe it's actually key to be able to use such product DURING a meeting, when your mental bandwidth is dedicated to the ongoing discussion

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#32

Post by kareemm »

ushakov wrote: post #22
brunovegreville wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make sure the value prop of Hera is clear (given the alternative itsycal): Joining your meeting in one-click is a small fraction of our value proposition. The core of what users do in Hera is around efficiently preparing and taking actionable notes in meetings. Feel free to check the Loom demo done by Louise and don't hesitate if you have any questions!

checked out, now i understand that you're a WYSIWYG editor for editing calendar events and a menubar app to join meetings correct?

The main value prop is note taking and the workflow around it:

1. Creating and choosing a template for a meeting. e.g. my 1 on 1 vs new customer onboarding vs. customer research meetings all have different formats. I have a template in a text file today that a duplicate before every meeting. It's annoying.

2. Being able to mark and export todos from your notes to the place where I keep todos.

3. Being able to share your notes.

4. Being able to export notes to Slack/Notion/Google Docs for my teammates who don't use or need to use Hera

Seeing my next meeting in the menubar and joining is the least interesting part of Hera.

No horse in the race here. But if you're going to comment you may want to do the work to comment fairly. The sum total of the work I did was watch the 2 minute Loom video - so it's not even a lot of work to do.

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#33

Post by ushakov »

brunovegreville wrote: post #25
ushakov wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

checked out, now i understand that you're a WYSIWYG editor for editing calendar events and a menubar app to join meetings correct?

No, it's not: You can see Hera as a note-taking app entirely dedicated to meetings. It's easy to take notes in meetings, capture highlights or next actions that you can then either export to other tools or easily access in your future meetings.

thanks for explanation! and sorry for me being hostile

should say, the automation feature is pretty neat though :)

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#34

Post by Hamuko »

ushakov wrote: post #7

sorry to undermine your efforts but someone has to say this: as a Mac user, i won't be paying $100/year for electron app will stick to itsycal, a freeware, "real" macOS app, i've paid $10 for not affiliated, but feel free to check out: https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/

I can't really understand the reasoning behind making a macOS-exclusive Electron app. You don't get any of the benefits of making an application specifically made for one operating system, and you don't get any of the benefits of a cross-platform framework.

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#35

Post by JustFinishedBSG »

corry wrote: post #24

Really like this, congrats on the launch! To the people moaning about Electron apps... you're not the market. To the people moaning about $100 price... you're not the market. To the people moaning about Mac-only... you're not the market. To the people who missed the value-prop COMPLETELY and think some free taskbar widget is the whole idea... you're not the market. IMO if you're managing 10+ people and have 10+ meeti…

> To the people moaning about Electron apps... you're not the market. To the people moaning about $100 price... you're not the market. To the people moaning about Mac-only... you're not the market. To the people who missed the value-prop COMPLETELY and think some free taskbar widget is the whole idea... you're not the market.

Then who's the market? Because it's obviously not us and I think the (accepts Electrons) ∩ (uses mac os) ∩ (pays for expensive apps) population is VERY restricted.

And why post it here if we are not the market?

> missed the value-prop COMPLETELY

The idea of "value proposition" is so absolutely inane. If people were always paying for a what a tool is "worth" in term of revenues then working would be useless as you would be spending as much on your tools as to what they bring.

Do you value Linux at >50K a year? Would you pay 5000$ a month to use an OS? No? Well that's weird because that seems in line with its "value proposition".

> I'd like to introduce to a little startup/email client called Superhuman. I'm sure these naysayers were posting all these negative hot takes on that too. And the naysayers were wrong then. Because they aren't the market.

Then stop advertising this type of apps here.

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#36

Post by kareemm »

Don't worry about the haters. The market of Mac users who need more efficient meetings who'd pay $10/m for that and don't care about using an Electron app (or don't know what one is) is huge.

This looks pretty useful. I like:

1. Templatized meetings. I do this already - I pull up templates/new-client.txt, duplicate it (most of the time), and then take notes. It's annoying to do. Hera's workflow is really nice.

2. Rules to pick a template based on meeting title is really useful

3. It's not clear what "Streams" are. I grokked the mental model while watching the Loom screencast UNTIL you the Rules section and you brought up the concept of a Stream. No idea what that is but it made me think that my mental model for the software was incomplete.

4. I love that you export to todo apps. Many note taking tools assume you're not using another todo app - Hera acknowledges the reality that you almost certainly are. A vote to integrate w/ Things.

5. It seems like Hera is an ephemeral place to TAKE notes, but not necessarily KEEP notes. Like a scratch pad where notes are taken and then disseminated to a todo list or Slack/Gsuite/Notion. Is that the intention? Related: a vote to export to Evernote please.

Will definitely try it out. Good work!

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#37

Post by bberenberg »

corry wrote: post #24

Really like this, congrats on the launch! To the people moaning about Electron apps... you're not the market. To the people moaning about $100 price... you're not the market. To the people moaning about Mac-only... you're not the market. To the people who missed the value-prop COMPLETELY and think some free taskbar widget is the whole idea... you're not the market. IMO if you're managing 10+ people and have 10+ meeti…

We can also be the target market giving feedback. The idea that everyone who doesn't agree with you isn't the target market would revolutionize product management if true ;)

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#38

Post by ushakov »

corry wrote: post #24

Really like this, congrats on the launch! To the people moaning about Electron apps... you're not the market. To the people moaning about $100 price... you're not the market. To the people moaning about Mac-only... you're not the market. To the people who missed the value-prop COMPLETELY and think some free taskbar widget is the whole idea... you're not the market. IMO if you're managing 10+ people and have 10+ meeti…

so, are you implying that this is tool is actually a status symbol to show off to other founders and your (less fortunate) employees?

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#39

Post by pratio »

Hu bruno, I really like the project.

There was an a comment by someone about $100 for a mac app. We pay for a many mac apps that solves a problem for us and at present meetings are an issue. I have been juggling among apps to solve this exact issue. The alternatives suggested like itsycal and meeter don't've the note taking and template support especially to look at the history of notes in previous meetings. This is a feature usually found in CRMs.

A feature request or a blocker in using this for us? The notes are stored on your server, we can't have that. Exporting to google docs isn't really helpful, if you could somehow store them locally (encrypted of course) and sync them to our google docs where we don't need to export them and are automatically available as google docs where we can search through them, it would be great.

Re: Launch HN: Hera (YC S21) – macOS app to prepare, join and take notes in meetings

#40

Post by oefrha »

JustFinishedBSG wrote: post #35
corry wrote: post #24

Really like this, congrats on the launch! To the people moaning about Electron apps... you're not the market. To the people moaning about $100 price... you're not the market. To the people moaning about Mac-only... you're not the market. To the people who missed the value-prop COMPLETELY and think some free taskbar widget is the whole idea... you're not the market. IMO if you're managing 10+ people and have 10+ meeti…

> To the people moaning about Electron apps... you're not the market. To the people moaning about $100 price... you're not the market. To the people moaning about Mac-only... you're not the market. To the people who missed the value-prop COMPLETELY and think some free taskbar widget is the whole idea... you're not the market. Then who's the market? Because it's obviously not us and I think the (accepts Electrons) ∩ (…

> (accepts Electrons) ∩ ...

Outside of a small vocal group of people mostly concentrated on HN and prone to give crappy hot takes, practically everyone in the world "accepts Electrons".

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