Launch HN: Slite (YC W18) – Note App for Teams

We have absolutely no plan on doing that, even for anonymized data. The only use of this data is for the application's purposes and to be honest if we could bring the same value with End to end encryption, we would do it.

The reason for not doing it is simple : we have a much simpler business model, Slite actually provides way enough value for active teams to start paying and that's enough to focus on ;)

Curious if you talk more about your target market? This feels geared toward smaller start-up like orgs that may already have something similar/have no legacy tie-ups.

However, have you thought about teams in larger enterprises that are likely to be hooked into the use of Microsoft Word/Excel, and especially Outlook, and may use something like Skype for internal chat? Think there are numerous folks (like me) who are on top of newer/interesting tech but have to fight hard to move people away from their habits.

Further example: would you build or allow access to legacy Exchange servers?

We funded Slite because "another note app" might be a billion dollar company. "Another search engine" was Google, "another social network" was Facebook, and "another file storage service" was Dropbox.

Slite's plan is to charge users directly, similar to Slack. This has proven to be a great business model and means they won't need to resort to sneaky things like selling data.

On my own personal project where I have a team of 8 I tried Gitbook but when I lost a bunch of stuff do with git pull that override my local changes I really disliked Gitbook.

I convinced my work to get on Confluence so we at least have a knowledge base. I find Confluence like all Atlassian products clunky, slow and cumbersome to navigate.

I really liked Backpack, however its dated and structuralized for an older workflow.

I look at Slite and think, does it handle code blocks well? Is it navigation easy and feels fast? How clunky is the rich text editor?

I personally don't like the look, the open source outline looks more professional. I would have borrow design elements from Discord than Slack.

To me this is a gimmick of piggybacking on the familiarity of slack channels to take something that has already existed (collaborative note and note-like apps). An old tool for a new generation.

Since I've built my open-source HTML5 game in Electron I feel I could whip up my own note-taking app because my feeling is I'm not going to be sold on either Outline or Slite.

I went to connect with my Google Account As soon as Slite asked to view my Contacts, I stopped. Its like asking to see someone's facebook on a first date. No Thank you.

So I go and check Outline, since its open-source but you have to have a slack account and create a Slack App, No Thank you.

I guess I should build my own.