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

I immediately saw what needs this fills, that for remote work we need a kind of digital presence somewhere between zoom video conference, which demands everyone’s full attention, and is either presentational or one on one, and slack, which feels too asynchronous and formal.

Like others i’m not convinced that the answer is another screen or if it’s some other kind of in between semi passive experience.

Once it disappears it’s interesting to consider what specific qualities of just turn and talk to someone is absent in remote work and how you could bridge some of those feelings with some kind of digital experience. A projector? A robot? VR? AR?

Remote work had made me more finely attuned to how many physical non verbal cues you exchange with office mates on a daily basis and how exhausting it can feel to duplicate those digitally.

I totally understand and agree that there are a ton of awesome remote companies that were able to do it with mostly async communication. We built Sidekick for the subset of newly remote teams that actually need to be in the same room to get their jobs done (certain types of cofounders or operations teams). The product itself actively discourages any sort of "watch and listen to employees". All communication is bidirectional -- if I can see you, you can see me. We're totally in the same boat that we would never want Sidekick to be used as a monitoring tool -- it would go against the DNA of our company.

For the sake of mental health and privacy, I hope this product crashes and burns.

How is this any different than having an always-on zoom room on my iPad?

Zoom and Facebook Portal are still just trying to make meetings marginally better with a dedicated device. We're going after a different niche where teams need to actually feel like they're in the same room with an always-on call.