Since Timeful got shut down, I've been looking for a great solution for task time-blocking. This comment thread has so many great solutions for me to try, including Akiflow, thanks for working on this problem! I can't use it right now because our corporate Google Workspace accounts are locked from sharing, but looking forward to using it eventually.
Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
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Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#42This tool looks quite similar to Amie.so - which I use in conjunction with Todoist - do you have any major differentiating features? It seems like mainly there are more integrations It seems unfortunate that the free plan is really just a 7 day trial, unless I misunderstood
Hello, feel free to reach out on the chat for more free trial if you need! I didn't try Amie personally, but I agree that importing tasks automatically via integration is one of our differentiators. We put a lot of effort into creating a strong task management tool and we have a set of features to enhance planning. For example, we added rituals to plan our day, folders, labels, and sections to organize your tasks. On…
That sounds amazing - there are some similarities with Amie, but customizable views is something I'm looking forward to try out
Thank you - it's quite unfortunate that there isn't a "free plan"
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just signed up and it seems it is not possible to use this on Linux. Disappointing... Is Linux support planned?
Hi! Yes https://product.akiflow.com/features-and-improvements-reques... We are also going to release a web app soon which should help linux users
Thank you - this is a basic prerequisite for any productivity app imo
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#44congrats on launch! hope you fixed the memory issues
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#45After a while, we learned that what our users really wanted was to have everything in one place.
This is so spot on! We're having similar learnings with eesel [1] too. Work is far too scattered across apps. Thanks for sharing your journey so far and congrats on the launch!
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#46The permissions were a non-starter for me. If you're going to download my contacts and have the ability to share, edit, or delete my calendars, you need to explain why.
Even then, requiring incredibly invasive permissions for a productivity app is unreasonable. Just limit the features that "need" those things instead.
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#47What's the go to market look like for a product like this? Large enterprises have little incentive to invest in additional calendaring functionality, and the market for individuals who are this passionate about keeping a schedule cannot be very big. If it's even 'medium-sized' (for some arbitrary definition of that), the CAC must be crazy because people aren't typically seeking out products like this, and competition…
Thanks for the question! We didn't really focus on the enterprise market yet. So far our customers are individual users looking for a time blocking solution that goes beyond calendar features. The main target is busy professionals like managers and founders, the response has been very good and we really feel like we've been scraping the surface of the market. Regarding the CAC, so far the vast majority of our growth…
Super obvious you aren't focusing on Enterprise by the radio silence on asks for Teams or Microsoft TODO integration.
Since pandemic there are a ton of real companies making actual money and willing to pay for things (!!!) who are using M365. Something like 85% of companies, in fact.
I so often see products starting with e.g. Google Docs integration or dev tools integration, and feel as though, okay, you're scratching your particular itch, but please won't you pop up from SV/HN/dev bubble and let companies with money all across middle business America give it to you?
Start by adding "Sign in with Microsoft" and support the Work/School accounts not just personal. Boom, you just expanded your reach by becoming frictionless to the 85% of the market you were not previously catering to.
Also consider answering the Teams integration and Microsoft TODO object integration threads. They're sorted in your planned columns, with not a peep in over a year.
PS. Don't forget Sign In with Apple. If there is a group as apt to toss money at you for productivity as people with Gmail, it's people with iPhones and Macs.
TL;DR, your login should look like this:
https://www.xsplit.com/user/auth
PS. Yes, that example has SSO, and no, it's not that hard to add support for now that Google and Azure both have wizards, not just startups using Okta. In fact, if you get rid of the little email icon, tada, you no longer have to store people's passwords at all, and can say important-sounding things about taking people's security seriously.
PPS. Great product idea, and slick implementation so far. Countless people I know want this. They'll need you to support their IdP though.
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#48Not to be confused with Ankiflow, where you bring your repetitive tasks together with timed repetition.
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#49The permissions were a non-starter for me. If you're going to download my contacts and have the ability to share, edit, or delete my calendars, you need to explain why. Even then, requiring incredibly invasive permissions for a productivity app is unreasonable. Just limit the features that "need" those things instead.
We'll definitely try to do a better job explaining the permissions, thanks for pointing this out.
Unfortunately a fully functioning calendar is key to our product and we decided not to limit features at the moment. We'll consider a "lighter" approach in the future
Re: Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) – Bring your tasks and calendars together
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the question! We didn't really focus on the enterprise market yet. So far our customers are individual users looking for a time blocking solution that goes beyond calendar features. The main target is busy professionals like managers and founders, the response has been very good and we really feel like we've been scraping the surface of the market. Regarding the CAC, so far the vast majority of our growth…
Super obvious you aren't focusing on Enterprise by the radio silence on asks for Teams or Microsoft TODO integration. Since pandemic there are a ton of real companies making actual money and willing to pay for things (!!!) who are using M365. Something like 85% of companies, in fact. I so often see products starting with e.g. Google Docs integration or dev tools integration, and feel as though, okay, you're scratchin…
The Microsoft suite' integration is something we want to work on real soon.
We didn't do it so far because our main problem was product-market fit, and increasing the addressable market was secondary.
I agree with everything you said, and thanks for the suggestions!