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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

#71

Post by louisebayssat »

guico wrote: post #59
kareemm wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

To me streams are a collection of meetings of the same kind, and the notes related to those all in one place. I personally think the name of the feature could be better. Maybe "Series"?

I'm wondering if "tag" or "label" is not more common knowledge?

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

#72

Post by newman8r »

meetered wrote: post #11
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'm sure the founders of Hera know this, but just so there's clear representation here on HN: as a Mac user, I would happily pay $100/year for anything that makes my meetings better. I'd pay more than $100/year. I'd pay $100/year for every person on my team. I don't care if it's an electron app, or 10 lines of Javascript: if it makes meetings better, I'm in.

You imply that you might, but are you actually planning on buying this? I'm curious because I see lots of people saying they would use something, but it doesn't always mean they will.

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

#73

Post by dannyw »

This app sounds really cool. I am very interested in using it.

However, I have read your Privacy Policy, and I see that you collect PII like the following:

* Events on all your calendars (Understandable)

* Information about your Google Drive files (?!?)

* Title, description, default time zone, and other properties of Google calendars you have access to (So other people's data).

You say that you may use your collected data for marketing:

* to provide you with news, special offers and general information about other goods, services and events which we offer that are similar to those that you have already purchased or enquired about unless you have opted not to receive such information;

This, to me suggests that you may legally sell my Google Drive files to the highest bidder.

You also provide a broad justification for improving your services, which means you could legally look at my plaintext events and messages as part of "user research" for how people use my service:

* to gather analysis or valuable information so that we can improve our Service;

This is unacceptable in a corporate environment.

I suggest you may want to re-word your Privacy Policy, and make it clear explicitly what you do and don't do with each piece of information.

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

#74

Post by brunovegreville »

prepend wrote: post #70

I love the idea of a desktop app, but don’t understand the monthly fee. What’s the advantage to me as a user to pay $10/month for the rest of my career. Is it possible that you could figure out a one time price that lets me buy the software? I like the idea of improving my meetings, but try to minimize recurring fees. Also the price/value seems wonky as I pay $10/month for office365 with a TB of cloud storage

Great remark. The recurring fee is mainly tied to the fact that the value you get from Hera should grow over time.

The more meeting notes you write into Hera, the more connected all your meetings will be and the more context Hera will be able to provide you in each meeting.

It's not like a one-time tool that you always use to do the same thing. I am not saying that we won't test one-time price at some point, but it's not in our short-term plans.

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

#75

Post by brunovegreville »

dannyw wrote: post #73

This app sounds really cool. I am very interested in using it. However, I have read your Privacy Policy, and I see that you collect PII like the following: * Events on all your calendars (Understandable) * Information about your Google Drive files (?!?) * Title, description, default time zone, and other properties of Google calendars you have access to (So other people's data). You say that you may use your collected…

Sorry Danny, it's a big mistake on our side, the privacy policy should be crystal clear.

- On calendar's data: we only use the title, description, etc. of the calendars you have chosen to sync in Hera. - On google drive files, I will clarify this right now, but basically we have an export feature to google docs, which is entirely opt-in. If you want to use the feature, the first time of course you need to give us access to a small subset of your GDrive

- We do not and never intend to sell any of these data to anyone. I reword the privacy policy so that's crystal clear:)

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

#76

Post by lowercased »

louisebayssat wrote: post #71
guico wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me streams are a collection of meetings of the same kind, and the notes related to those all in one place. I personally think the name of the feature could be better. Maybe "Series"?

I'm wondering if "tag" or "label" is not more common knowledge?

I would also think you can 'tag' something with multiple labels/tags. Meeting X might be 'onboarding','sales','q4', findable by any of those tags. If it's in a 'stream' called 'onboarding'... that feels like something that is siloed away. Something wouldn't naturally be in 5 streams, but could naturally have 5 tags.

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

#77

Post by mgkimsal »

brunovegreville wrote: post #74
prepend wrote: post #70

I love the idea of a desktop app, but don’t understand the monthly fee. What’s the advantage to me as a user to pay $10/month for the rest of my career. Is it possible that you could figure out a one time price that lets me buy the software? I like the idea of improving my meetings, but try to minimize recurring fees. Also the price/value seems wonky as I pay $10/month for office365 with a TB of cloud storage

Great remark. The recurring fee is mainly tied to the fact that the value you get from Hera should grow over time. The more meeting notes you write into Hera, the more connected all your meetings will be and the more context Hera will be able to provide you in each meeting. It's not like a one-time tool that you always use to do the same thing. I am not saying that we won't test one-time price at some point, but it's…

You're juggling a lot of stuff right now (congrats) but might suggest something like jetbrains' structure - $x gets me lifetime access to version X.

The notion of "well you will get value from it over time" isn't, imo, a great way to frame it. Even if your feature set doesn't grow, you have connections to external services, and they will have changes over time that you'll need to keep up with (auth protocol changes, etc). That takes attention and time and money. BUT... perhaps a "standalone" version that doesn't connect with asana/google/etc. might have a 'one time price'?

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

#80

Post by specialist »

Very cool. So needed. I will absolutely try your product. Your approach to "workflow" appears spot on.

I love the template idea. I always insist on an agenda, minutes, wrap up (next steps).

When I secretary for meetings, I create a shared doc, so others can help me live edit, proofread, etc. Having just watched the 2 min tour, maybe a future feature request.

Ditto versioning. When minutes get sent out, there's always some kind of followup, errata.

My prototypical shared doc (which I just copy for each new meeting) has date, topic, participants, etc. Since I'm mistake prone, I often forget to update some info. Fields for that stuff would be terrific.

I like the highlight (annotation) feature.

In my future perfect world, meeting minutes would be sync'd somehow to the actual recording. I rarely need full transcription, but embedded timestamps (to jump into recording) would be awesome. I've done this manually and it's a lot of work.

Thanks for sharing. Hera is really compelling. Happy Hunting!

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