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Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

onin.co

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Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#1
Hey HN!

Ryan here (co-founder of YC-backed Muzz). I’m now building Onin, an end-to-end encrypted calendar and chat app that makes organising your personal and social life simple and secure.

I’ve been building technology businesses for 10+ years and have witnessed the reoccurring problem that digital calendars were built for companies, not people. They feel cold, transactional, and anti-social — not the thing of dreams for planning your personal life. They also lack the security we now come to expect from consumer products.

Onin is the first calendar to be fully E2EE, protecting not just your events, but your messages and even your profile. Unlike existing E2EE calendars, you cannot share Onin events to others without the protection of E2EE. When you consider how much personal information your calendar stores about you and your loved ones’ lives, we think this is essential.

With such a focus on security and privacy, it’s only fitting that we host our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service on GitHub to be as transparent as possible with our users.

But beyond security, how is Onin so different?

Our research found that 84% of events are planned entirely in chats. But our calendars are disconnected from these conversations, leaving our schedules constantly out of sync.

To fix this, we’ve collapsed and combined calendar and chat into one secure app, eliminating the fragmentation between events and the conversations that form them.

Some of our unique features include:

- Calendar keyboard: Access your calendar from within the chat

- Event chats: Creating a new event generates a dedicated chat

- Just phone numbers: No more searching for your friend’s email

- End-to-end encryption: All our events and chats are E2EE, even your profile too

Onin is proudly the world’s most private calendar by default:

- End-to-end encrypted events, profiles, and messages

- Two-Factor Authentication required

- Chat without revealing your phone number

- (Coming soon) Your unique link to invite people, no need to share your number

We’re exactly 4 weeks away from launching the public beta to our waitlist community. You can check out all the features we have coming here and join too at the link above.

I’d love to hear your feedback and answer any questions!

Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app
onin.co

Re: Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#2
> With such a focus on security and privacy, it’s only fitting that we host our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service on GitHub to be as transparent as possible with our users.

I would value if you are just as transparent on how you will make money.

Re: Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#4
post #2

> With such a focus on security and privacy, it’s only fitting that we host our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service on GitHub to be as transparent as possible with our users. I would value if you are just as transparent on how you will make money.

Also I don't get why GitHub is fitting as a hoster? Because of git and the commit history? Definitely not because of their strong believes in privacy as a company owned by microsoft...

Re: Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#5
post #2

> With such a focus on security and privacy, it’s only fitting that we host our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service on GitHub to be as transparent as possible with our users. I would value if you are just as transparent on how you will make money.

Important question, thank you for asking! We will never monetise through means that jeopardise the privacy of our users. We want to monetise from % fees on payments and event ticket sales (pay-to-join events) in our B2B2C use case.

Re: Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#6
post #2

> With such a focus on security and privacy, it’s only fitting that we host our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service on GitHub to be as transparent as possible with our users. I would value if you are just as transparent on how you will make money.

Also I don't get why GitHub is fitting as a hoster? Because of git and the commit history? Definitely not because of their strong believes in privacy as a company owned by microsoft...

Exactly for the commit history: we want to make our legal agreements, and any changes made to them, as transparent as possible, we thought GitHub was the most accessible place to do this

Re: Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#7
There's not much detail on the page, but from the screenshots I'm guessing this is mobile only? (Guessing iOS only but maybe there just aren't Android screenshots...)

Mobile app only systems are a huge pain (literally) for me as due to some wrist issues, typing on a tiny screen instead of an ergonomic keyboard is difficult.

Re: Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#9
post #7

There's not much detail on the page, but from the screenshots I'm guessing this is mobile only? (Guessing iOS only but maybe there just aren't Android screenshots...) Mobile app only systems are a huge pain (literally) for me as due to some wrist issues, typing on a tiny screen instead of an ergonomic keyboard is difficult.

I'm afraid as you guessed it, iOS-only for launch on Jan 10th but we want to get Android and web as quickly as we find product market fit (PMF). This decision is so we can iterate and improve the product based on our users feedback as quickly as possible, the more platforms we support the slower can move. We suspect though we're going to hear this a lot more and PMF for a new calendar service might only be possible with apps on all your devices!

Re: Show HN: Onin – E2EE calendar and chat app

#10
Good concept and congrats on the launch. My feedback is I don't see why I would move my conversations( and convincing all my friends) from existing apps like iMessage, Discord, Slack etc to new app just coz of a calendar feature. Who is the target customer for this service? Discord, Slack and iMessage have many apps that can be used to schedule events. I think it would make more sense if this a SaaS offering where I could use this in other platforms as an app or a bot.
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