Arek Der-Sarkissian

Covalent — Interactive icebreakers for remote teams

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Covalent helps remote teams build better bonds through interactive, online icebreakers.
Getting started is easy:
(1) Find a friend and visit our website
(2) Press on "Start Bonding" in the top, right-hand corner
(3) Press "Host" then "Play"

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Arek Der-Sarkissian
Hi Product Hunters! I’m Arek, the project lead for Covalent. We’re a team of nine undergraduate students based at UCLA. After months of hard work, we’re very excited to launch on Product Hunt today 🚀 We’ve all experienced the struggle of awkward silences in online conversations. As students, we’ve especially felt how hard it can be to meet new people in a remote setting. That’s why we built Covalent—to ditch awkwardness and make remote team bonding experiences more meaningful. With Covalent, we’re taking your favorite in-person icebreakers and turning them into interactive, online games that can be used alongside your Zoom calls. We also have a built-in video feed integrated into our games to personalize the experience. For today’s launch, we’ve released our version of Two Truths and A Lie. Getting started is easy: (1) Find a friend (2) Visit our website @ https://covalent.app (3) Click on “Start Bonding” (4) Click “Host” then “Play” In the future, we’ll be launching an online version of “20 Questions” and will be building out native applications beyond our web-only app. This has been an incredible learning experience for our team, and we're still learning a lot. We’d love to hear your feedback! What games and features do you want to see on our platform next? Twitter: https://twitter.com/covalentapp Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/covale...
Siddharth Pandiya
This is awesome! Great stuff, Arek and team. Are there custom questions we can add to these games?
Arek Der-Sarkissian
@sid_pandiya with Two Truths and A Lie you do have to use the layout provided. That being said, be on the lookout for 20 Questions — lots of customization options will be available there :)
Daniel Nikolovski
What a fun idea :) Do you have a roadmap for future updates?
Hritik Arya
@danneniko Thanks, Daniel! Of course, we do! After all, bonding is a never ending process! Stay tuned for more exciting ice breakers and interesting ways to bond :)
Hakan Alpay
This is amazing! I enjoyed having Covalent for our ACM Design meetings, with the demonstrations lead by @muthu_pal, because it allowed us to get to know our 14 interns much better very quickly! I expect great things to come of this :)
Muthu Palaniappan
@thehakanalpay Thank you for the kind words! I had a great time bonding with you and the rest of the team :)
Tim Connors
Awesome idea, I can see this becoming a huge thing. Ice-breakers are a great idea, and I think in the virtual world it’s even more important but less common!
Arek Der-Sarkissian
@tim_connors appreciate the kind words! Hoping we can help as many people as possible bond remotely 🤝
Hirday Gupta
Looks fantastic! Congrats on shipping. Looking forward to hosting some ice breakers soon. Question: are you looking to add other games as well?
Arek Der-Sarkissian
@hirday_gupta thanks, Hirday! We're in the process of building our adaptation of 20 Questions. We value our community's feedback, so games beyond that will be determined by what people want to see :)
Andrew Zhou
Congratulations on the launch! Would love to hear, what made you choose two truths and a lie as your first released game?
Arek Der-Sarkissian
@andrewthezhou thanks Andrew! Good question: during our initial research, we ran a few user surveys asking people to list their favorite icebreakers. After sorting through, we found that most people enjoy Two Truths and A Lie!
Alex Velikanov
Ugh, the amount of awkward zoom ice breakers this could have saved if only we had it sooner! Such a good idea! @arek_der_sarkissian I'm excited to see where you take this!
Arek Der-Sarkissian
@alec2435 dialing down awkwardness makes the world a better place. Thanks Alex!
Ruban Rengaraju
This looks awesome, the Covalent team killed it! Definitely going to try this with some of my clubs to stay connected!
Arek Der-Sarkissian
@ruban_rengaraju thanks Ruban! Let our team know what your bonding experience is like, we appreciate the feedback!
Whit Anderson
This is dope! Love the vision here. Congrats to you and the team for the launch 👏
Hritik Arya
@whit_anderson Thanks, Whit! Feel free to let us know about your experience with the game! Have a great time!
Kaushal Rao
Looks great, can't wait to try it out with my teams!
Hritik Arya
@kaushal_rao Thanks Kaushal! Let us know how your bonding experience is like :)
Charles Scheuer
Really exciting to see a tool for remote team bonding! Congrats on the launch
Hritik Arya
@scheuercharles Thanks Charles! Don't hesitate to let us know about your bonding experience!
Young-Ghee Hong
Nice! Looking forward to trying this out!
Arek Der-Sarkissian
@youngghee thank you! Let our team know what your experience is like :)
Michelle Su
This looks awesome! I think this is perfect for virtual team bonding activities!
Michael Shi
@mintmojito thanks Michelle!! we definitely want to make those team bonding activities as fun and interactive as possible!
Yen Tan
This is so needed in remote work right now. Relationship building and trust are must-haves for distributed teams!
Daniel Lee
@itscorine Hi Corine! We definitely agree and hope to bring even more functionality to our application in the future :)
Parham Hajzavar
This is awesome! Great work, Arek and team!
Phoebe Yao
Congrats on the launch! @arek_der_sarkissian So excited to try this out!
Rob Chapman
This is neat!
Sachin Jain
Looks promising! Congrats to Arek and the team, can't wait to see what comes next!