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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

#41

Post by pratio »

ushakov wrote: post #38
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?

What I inferred from the comment is that there are some users who attend most meetings and some who have to organize most of them. It doesn't have to be a status symbol for employees. Whoever organizes the meetings, takes notes, exports them to relevant tools would need that. I'm thinking of a product manager taking a meeting with the designers developers etc.

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

#42

Post by louisebayssat »

kareemm wrote: post #36

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. Rul…

Thank you very much for this detailed feedback :) - Your analysis of Streams is very on point -> as of now, users struggle to understand what it does. in the next few days, we're gonna automatically create streams for your recurring meetings and you'll see them in a dedicated space. It should be easier with the adoption moving forward. But basically, streams are like tags for emails. - The product as it is indeed better to take notes rather than keep and search them. We're gonna rework the search so that you can easily find what you're looking for in past meetings on Hera. But really the goal for us is that you can take actions based on your notes, be it on Hera or elsewhere afterwards.

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

#44

Post by emdowling »

This is fantastic and congrats on the launch. I'm a little bitter as I just spent an hour yesterday creating an Apple Shortcut to create a note for my next or current meeting, but Hera obviously does so much more than that.

Ignore the naysayers. Being an Electron app is not a dealbreaker for 99% of people and I see the feature list and just say "Yes, yes yes!" to all of it.

One question that is vital to me: where are the notes stored? Is it in the cloud? Are they encrypted? I ask because my company has rather strict controls on this, and does not want sensitive meeting notes being stored with third parties that have not been verified.

Looking forward to watching this tool grow and develop.

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

#45

Post by louisebayssat »

emdowling wrote: post #44

This is fantastic and congrats on the launch. I'm a little bitter as I just spent an hour yesterday creating an Apple Shortcut to create a note for my next or current meeting, but Hera obviously does so much more than that. Ignore the naysayers. Being an Electron app is not a dealbreaker for 99% of people and I see the feature list and just say "Yes, yes yes!" to all of it. One question that is vital to me: where are…

Thank you for the kind words :) Right now your meeting notes are not encrypted, but stored in a secure database on our server. We are currently considering two options to make sure your notes are safe: either end-to-end encryption on our servers or offline-based storage for your notes.

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

#46

Post by kareemm »

louisebayssat wrote: post #42
kareemm wrote: post #36

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. Rul…

Thank you very much for this detailed feedback :) - Your analysis of Streams is very on point -> as of now, users struggle to understand what it does. in the next few days, we're gonna automatically create streams for your recurring meetings and you'll see them in a dedicated space. It should be easier with the adoption moving forward. But basically, streams are like tags for emails. - The product as it is indeed bet…

I would think hard about whether keeping notes in Hera is important. I'm not sure it is. Personally I already keep other notes and meeting notes on my filesystem though I'm moving things to Evernote. But I don't want meeting notes in one place and other notes in another. And unless Hera becomes a tool for non-meeting notes, I'll use Hera to take meeting notes but keep them elsewhere.

Re: Streams - still not entirely clear to me what they are. One way to frame a new feature is to explain the scenario first, and then how the feature solves that pain, and then naming it. So it might be something like:

"If you struggle with grouping your notes from similar meetings together so you can find them easily (scenario) we solve that by using Streams in Hera (which are basically tags). So you can easily click on the 'onboarding' stream to see notes from all your onboarding meetings in one place. This is helpful when you're trying to xyz."

Also if streams == tags I'd think hard about whether to introduce a new name for an existing concept that all of your users already understand... unless it truly is a different concept.

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

#48

Post by pantulis »

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 am a Itsycal user, but I fail to see how it -or Calendar.app for that matter- solves the same problem as Hera. Can you ellaborate?

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

#49

Post by gjulianm »

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) ∩ (…

> 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.

The market is people that have a lot of meetings and invest a lot of time in preparing/documenting them.

By the way, you are talking as if the set of people who accept electron apps and pay for expensive apps is a fixed one. It's a tradeoff. It the app is good enough, people won't care that it's Electron or that it's expensive (and, for the record, few people care about Electron apps).

> The idea of "value proposition" is so absolutely inane.

The value proposition of something is not the price, but what it gives to the user.

> you would be spending as much on your tools as to what they bring.

The value you offer is the value offered by your tools plus the value you add by working with them.

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

#50

Post by louisebayssat »

trulykp wrote: post #47

Wow, the demo was awesome. A game changer in the way we all do work meetings. Love the way you can simply turn certain notes into highlights by hitting "cmnd+D" and they appear on the right panel! I'm going to use that feature a lot.

Thank you so much for your support!
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