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Begin
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Effortlessly ship web apps & APIs on AWS
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Ryan Hoover

Begin — Create and work with tasks inside Slack

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Begin is task & project management seamlessly integrated with Slack.

Effortlessly create tasks, quickly see what your team is focused on, and be notified when progress is made.

Begin is fast, simple, and stays out of your way.

It also installs in 60 seconds with zero setup.

The happiest teams don’t do more work, they do their best work.

Replies
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Ryan Hoover
Hunter
Most task or project management tools are designed for the the web or mobile, not for conversational input (i.e. Slack). Many of the former have integrations with Slack, and they're useful, but ultimately you still need to use the web/mobile interface to manage everything. Awesome to see this ship, @ryan and team. I'm curious how the product or vision has changed over the past ~few years building.
Ryan Block
Maker
@rrhoover Thank you! It's been insanely fun and challenging getting here. I think the core vision has remained more or less the same. And that vision wasn't just on a two or three year timeline – unbundling email into democratized tools for sharing knowledge and tracking work is going to be a multi-decade effort. We set out to build a tool to help people stay focused and in flow, do their best work, and be a little less stressed out. And later, hopefully, layer in some narrow-domain AI to help alleviate some of the drudgery of planning and coordinating all this stuff. We knew from early on that some core differentiators would be being Slack-native, and emphasizing incremental progress and doing fewer things better. We really stuck with that. Of course, many of the specifics and how we brought Begin to market have changed (as they always do). And I can't overstate how influential customer feedback has been in shaping the product over the last year it's been in beta!
Veronica Belmont

I've been using Begin for a long time now, and I use it both for work and personal projects. I like that I don't have to worry about context switching from app to app, and I can just jot down tasks as they come up in conversation.

Pros:

Love that it works right in Slack, where I'm already spending 99% of my time! Easy to assign tasks to people conversationally.

Cons:

none

Brenden Mulligan
YES! Congratulations to you and the team for this launch! Been looking forward to this for a long time!
Ryan Block
Maker
@mulligan 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
Doron Vermaat
If possible I would like to know how you managed to acquire the Begin.com domain name and what were the costs involved?
Ryan Hoover
Hunter
@doronvermaat I was thinking the same thing. Great domain.
Ryan Block
Maker
@doronvermaat A dream, lots of work, a surprising amount of patience, and gobs of luck.
Stowe Boyd
Looks like the server is overwhelmed. I can't edit the description field on the website. PS Task descriptions aren't accessible in Slack?
Ryan Block
Maker
@stoweboyd everything seems to be operating nominally so far, and so far unable to reproduce the issues you're having. But please shoot me a DM on twitter.com/@begin or email me at ryan at begin and we'll figure out what's up!
Hassan Abdulhamid
Design is fine but how is this diff from other solution ? Also, considering this took like 2 years to launch, any learnings ?
Ryan Block
Maker
@uxdzen It's better! We learned a ton. We shared some of those learnings here: https://blog.begin.com/lets-begi...
Joost Schuur
Isn't tying yourself to Slack for this narrowing your user funnel a bit too much?
Ryan Block
Maker
@joostschuur Just like Amazon only sells books, right? But seriously though, early on in a product's life I feel it's important to be really good at something, rather than risk being just ok with a wider top of funnel. That said, we're definitely keeping a very close eye on how we'll integrate Begin with Microsoft Teams, Atlassian Stride, Google Hangouts Chat!
Marty Mankins
@joostschuur @Ryan I get starting with Slack and getting solid on one platform (especially one that's used by a lot). The Google Hangouts Chat and Microsoft Teams are enticing for the future.
Ryan Block
Maker
Hello hunters! Can't wait to answer your questions and hear what you think about Begin! ✨
Wiktor Sobolak
Hey do you have any explainer video?
Nicolas Magand

Switched over from Teux Deux for my personal task management — Currently working to get my team on it too

Pros:

Looks simple, functional, modern and clutter-free

Cons:

As with every new product, features WILL be added.

Chris Buttenham
Congrats on the launch, team! Love seeing the future of conversational commerce unfold :)
Ryan Block
Maker
@chrisbuttenham thanks! Stoked to hear what you think about Begin!