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Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

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121–130 of 234 posts

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#121
This is really cool! I worked for a startup years ago that had a 1-way setup like this that allowed our two remote teammembers to pop into the office anytime, and it was great.

Bummer to see so much jeering in the comments here. No iteration of this product will be compelling to the "not interacting with people is the best part of remote work" crowd, but they aren't your market. However, I think you might be able to land on something that addresses the privacy concerns while still improving on "in the room"-like serendipity for remote teams.

I've worked on a team that used Mumble audio-chat years ago. Everyone kept it on much of the day with a global push-to-talk key, and it was mostly quiet but super helpful for spontaneous conversations. It's basically like using walkie-talkies, now that I think about it. I wonder if something like that would be compelling here (e.g. I can pop up on your screen on-demand, but I won't see you unless you acknowledge).

Anyway, congrats on the launch. Look forward to seeing where this goes!

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#122
My wife (an extrovert) would love this. Me personally (introvert) would hate this. I can already see myself flipping off co-workers and forgetting the video is on :)

What would be cool is if it could read my calendar and I could block out times when I'm busy (no video) or avail ( video).

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#123
post #121

This is really cool! I worked for a startup years ago that had a 1-way setup like this that allowed our two remote teammembers to pop into the office anytime, and it was great. Bummer to see so much jeering in the comments here. No iteration of this product will be compelling to the "not interacting with people is the best part of remote work" crowd, but they aren't your market. However, I think you might be able to…

Thanks - super interesting to hear about your past experience, and indeed there are a bunch of privacy-preserving features on our roadmap!

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#124

Seems like anything can get funding these days. I love how they say this is better than running zoom or Google meet on an iPad. Give users a mediocre android tablet with similar software and charge 25 dollars per user per month!? The founders clearly haven't thought about the asynchronous nature of remote work and even companies want an always connected environment, I don't know why they would want this product!

For 5 users, it seems like it would be a waste -- easy enough to hand-hold everyone through setting up a tablet. For 5000 people, I could see paying someone else to manage the technology and providing a 'one-click' solution.

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#125

Seems like anything can get funding these days. I love how they say this is better than running zoom or Google meet on an iPad. Give users a mediocre android tablet with similar software and charge 25 dollars per user per month!? The founders clearly haven't thought about the asynchronous nature of remote work and even companies want an always connected environment, I don't know why they would want this product!

Thanks for the feedback. We actually talked to a bunch of teams that tried the Zoom on an iPad route and it usually failed because it was really hard to get the team in the same room. Sidekick does a really good job at maximizing the chances you're not alone -- I talk about some of the features in the original post.

Totally agree it's not for everyone, especially those users that are really happy with asynchronous work.

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#126
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can dream up all of these scenarios. But if you have a healthy business then a small number of people scamming you for Galaxy Tab's doesn't kill it.

Well, of course, that's the case for big corpo; but being a small startup with _limited_ budget, I think the bill can scale up pretty quickly. Hopefully not, though, I truly like the product.

hasn't been a problem yet, but definitely something we're thinking about!

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#127

My wife (an extrovert) would love this. Me personally (introvert) would hate this. I can already see myself flipping off co-workers and forgetting the video is on :) What would be cool is if it could read my calendar and I could block out times when I'm busy (no video) or avail ( video).

Great idea! We're thinking about calendar integration so something like that could be awesome.

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#128
post #108

Congratulations on the launch. I'm a remote worker, so I was keenly interested in this. I've been using a Facebook Portal for about 1.5 years as an always-on video device. It works great, so I love the idea. There's open water in this space, so it's great to see others entering it. For now, I don't see why I would ever use this over the Portal. The Portal HW has a high-quality build with a great speaker, and the auto…

That's really cool! Have you expanded beyond your cofounders? And are you guys still using it for always-on?

Also, how do you guys handle knowing when you can talk to the other person? How do you know if the other person is in a meeting?

Re: Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams

#130
I had done this with a cheap windows tablet mounted on the wall in my old cubicle with Skype on auto-answer. So I could "pop-in" and people could come and talk to me. Somehow calling me from their own desk Skype was bigger task cognitively, but walking to the cube with my video on was easier.
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