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Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

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Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#1
Hey HN,

I’m Jordan from Superpowered (http://superpowered.me/), here with my co-founders Nikhil, Nick, and Ibrahim. We’re building a calendar app for the Mac menu bar.

A few months ago, we were students from the University of Waterloo. We started YC as a video lecture platform for professors but realized it was a horrible idea. We needed a new problem.

We settled on one we all faced during our remote internships. Our calendars became more important, yet meetings took ten clicks to join and were easy to miss.

So, we built a Mac app to bring the platform we check the most, Google Calendar, into the menu bar. We’ve made common actions, like joining Zoom meetings and checking what’s coming up, a click away.

We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps and Chrome tabs to stay on top of everything.

We’re now looking to bring Slack and GitHub into a unified notification inbox in the menu bar. We want to better organize everything you use as we’ve done with Google Calendar.

For those who are curious, it’s built using React + Electron and designed to look as native as possible in the menu bar. Sensitive user data like calendar events don’t pass through our servers.

We’re new to the productivity space and still have a lot to learn, so we’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts.

Thanks in advance! Jordan

Note: We're still early on and are trying to figure out our pricing. We priced it towards the higher end to see if we're delivering enough value to our users.

PS - Yes, we have keyboard shortcuts.

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#2
I tried Superpowered and liked it! Congrats on building a cool product! I see the value in having calendar alerts on your menu bar. I am real bad at remembering meetings and find the default alerts to be annoying or forgettable - I recently got an Apple Watch that has helped a lot with this though. I was a little surprised there was no free version with premium features - in my mind, the main benefit of alerts in my menu bar isn’t enough to pay. I may not be the right user (maybe businesses?). Could you share thoughts around the pricing? Are there other features I may be missing?

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#5
post #2

I tried Superpowered and liked it! Congrats on building a cool product! I see the value in having calendar alerts on your menu bar. I am real bad at remembering meetings and find the default alerts to be annoying or forgettable - I recently got an Apple Watch that has helped a lot with this though. I was a little surprised there was no free version with premium features - in my mind, the main benefit of alerts in my…

I feel similarly.

Great looking product, I'd love to have a free version to glance at in my menu bar...

but for the most part Apple Watch covers my needs.

Re: Launch HN: Superpowered (YC W21) – Calendar in your menu bar

#6
This is neat and will certainly be useful for folks that have loads of meetings everyday.

About your expansion into other areas - The reason the menu bar works is because it is tailor made for one thing now, which is finding the next meeting to join. If you add more options, would that not move the clutter from the browser tabs / apps into the menu bar? Something to think about.

Good luck with the product. I wish you the best.

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