There was just a criticism of YC earlier this week about YC spinning out SaaS products for startup founders, and then this comes along right on cue.
This reads like a solution looking for a problem.
I have a screen. I have a camera. In fact I have two screens, three cameras, and four microphones on my desk right now. The hardware isn't an issue. But what really struck about this announcement was this passage:
> We talked to many teams that tried to hack together a solution with Zoom on an iPad. From the teams we spoke to, we learned that it's really hard to consistently get the team in the room at the same time. Users are constantly leaving the room for other meetings but for everyone still in the room, it seems like nobody wants to use it because it's empty. This causes a negative feedback loop where even more people leave the room and the hacked together solution quickly becomes useless.
The problem is people are clicking "leave", if you don't leave the call, you're still there. Even Sidekick doesn't solve this problem, because you are sending a nag notification to people telling them to join a room and just hangout. The innovation is nag notification.
Even your vanity metric of "our users are in their Sidekick rooms for 6 hours a day" is kind of meaningless when the device is always on by design. That's like saying "on average, our refrigerator uses use their device 24 hours a day" -- well you don't have an off switch. The real metric is how often people are actually talking on it.
You seem to figure that this is niche product at best. I know you're trying to replicate the drop by, but it's hard to see how this is better than the "Hey, join my call when you have a chance," slack. Even if you think that it is better, this experience is worse than the physical interaction, because everyone is within very close ear shot of every conversation. That doesn't happen in the physical world. We're physically separated, and the sound is attenuated. It's not when everyone is inches away from a microphone and amplified into everyone's ears.
We should have probably flagged the number of conversations in the original post, that's good feedback. We're on average seeing 20 new conversations per day.
We've built a bunch of other features that also maximize the chances you're not alone in the call. The reason this metric is important is because being alone is the reason why nobody wants to stay in the call. An example is Meeting Mode, which I bring up in the original post - it lets your teammates know that you'll be back in 30 minutes so people don't feel like they're alone.
We actually are working on the ability to talk to one person on the call as opposed to everyone at once. But that's a good flag and it's great to know it's a problem you identify with.
This is a tool for nagging that offers nothing over what we all already have. Every criticism is met with the same copied and pasted answer. We've all experienced it - you go and ask your cohort mates and friends and family 'is this a good idea' they all say 'yes, it's amazing'. You produce a chart saying 95% of people love our idea. You go to the actual market and 95% of people hate your idea.
This reads like a solution looking for a problem.
I have a screen. I have a camera. In fact I have two screens, three cameras, and four microphones on my desk right now. The hardware isn't an issue. But what really struck about this announcement was this passage:
> We talked to many teams that tried to hack together a solution with Zoom on an iPad. From the teams we spoke to, we learned that it's really hard to consistently get the team in the room at the same time. Users are constantly leaving the room for other meetings but for everyone still in the room, it seems like nobody wants to use it because it's empty. This causes a negative feedback loop where even more people leave the room and the hacked together solution quickly becomes useless.
The problem is people are clicking "leave", if you don't leave the call, you're still there. Even Sidekick doesn't solve this problem, because you are sending a nag notification to people telling them to join a room and just hangout. The innovation is nag notification.
Even your vanity metric of "our users are in their Sidekick rooms for 6 hours a day" is kind of meaningless when the device is always on by design. That's like saying "on average, our refrigerator uses use their device 24 hours a day" -- well you don't have an off switch. The real metric is how often people are actually talking on it.
You seem to figure that this is niche product at best. I know you're trying to replicate the drop by, but it's hard to see how this is better than the "Hey, join my call when you have a chance," slack. Even if you think that it is better, this experience is worse than the physical interaction, because everyone is within very close ear shot of every conversation. That doesn't happen in the physical world. We're physically separated, and the sound is attenuated. It's not when everyone is inches away from a microphone and amplified into everyone's ears.