Sidekick - A new hardware device to connect remote teams

Hi PH! We are Andy, Howard, Greg and Arthur, founders of Sidekick! Like many of you all, we were recently forced to start working remotely because of COVID. We quickly realized that starting a company while remote was brutal: - 🧠 No spontaneous brainstorming - All of the best features we ever built were born out of unplanned conversations at our desks. - 🗣 Increased miscommunication - Being able to quickly ask teammates clarification questions is key to making sure everything is staying on track. - 🎭 Lack of team culture - True connections are forged in random 1-off conversations, not during scheduled meetings. We use Sidekick every day because it's the closest thing to sitting in the same room. Sidekick is a video device that sits on each of your team members desks. On Sidekick, you schedule coworking sessions to simulate working side by side for a few hours a week. 🤔 Who's it for? Sidekick is great for remote cofounders and other fast-paced teams that care about building a strong team bond. We're working with 20 Y Combinator companies along with teams at Bloomberg and Spotify. We understand that Sidekick isn't for everyone! If you don't particularly want to talk to your team during the day, Sidekick probably isn't a great fit. Until August 1st new teams get a discounted price of $25/user/month (normally it's $50/user/month). The hardware comes for free with the subscription and we cover the shipping. We'd love to hear your feedback. If you have any thoughts or questions, please email me at andy@realismlabs.com.

I like this form factor. Technically I could use my iPad to achieve the same thing though.

I'm an early tester of this product -- and will be the first to admit that I was pretty skeptical, both about always-on video as well as the need for a dedicated device. I'm a believer now, here's why: - As a founder in a fully remote team, I need to stay constantly connected to my co-founder. Organic, easy information flow is a huge need in remote work. I can see if my co-founder is intensely focused and can drop in to ask questions or float new ideas if he's not. - The sensation of actually working alongside someone in peripheral vision has actually made me *more* productive - like having a study buddy. - Having touchpoints like waving to someone when you get to work, seeing what they're grabbing for lunch, etc. sound sort of ridiculous, but having that social foundation back really brings back the sense that you're working *with* someone and you're not just an isolated worker bee. I'm an advocate of every product that makes pandemic work life better. ;) Really excited to see where they go with this!

Seems like this could be the missing link in remote work for some people. Having this on a second screen vs a Zoom call makes sense, as it's out of the way. It will be interesting to see how people will use this.

We've been using sidekick for over a month now and its been essential for keeping our team of 4 feel connected despite being in 3 different countries!

We've been happy as customers after a few days... really making a difference to feeling presence with each other. The UI details work just right.

We use Sidekick for onboarding new, remote employees and love it. We have been able to shorten the learning curve and onboarding time by having instant, ad-hoc conversations vs. scheduling time to meeting. We have even displaced Slack with Sidekick for many conversations --- great product!

So essentially it's an expensive video call. I'll stick to Google Meets or WhereBy on an iPad / Tablet if I needed a work buddy, cheaper too

What an absolute nightmare. This is not the way to treat remote work.

I'm the top user and first customer according to Andy, but maybe that's what he says to everyone ;). I use it every waking hour, i take it on walks, I use it as a coaster for my coffee, and I also A/B test it against zoom on ipad every month to decide if we should keep paying the license. Here's some thoughts: - if you have the privilege of having a fairly affluent, all north america/europe team, lucky you. iPad is not plug-and-play in some parts of the world - my 2013 mbp fan can't handle my dev environment and zoom. i can't even have more than a few chrome tabs open. - i don't want to ruin my ipad or its battery keeping it on a video constantly (not sure if real concern) ...a lot more stuff too, feel free to ask me long story short: paying for licenses is about delegating problems. last thing i want to deal with (again) is shipping an ipad and getting it confiscated at customs or "lost" by an employee i'm not in the same city as. i pay to delegate all these problems to Andy (and maybe you should too)

great product! I use the sidekick for ~14 hours a day!

Just ordered for a 4-person team! Looking forward to receiving the devices. :)

Feels like kinda breaks the point of working remotely and having a more relaxed and productive day.

Just ordered recently, can't wait to try out. Deeply believe in in-person communication , but there were unwanted costs to in-person work before the pandemic (the commute, co-location in hiring, terrible music at your co-working spot). I can see how a single-purpose rigid device is best way to be more like physical space, especially the "it just works" factor

Great look!

I've been working remote with my teammates since COVID-19 starting, and we're either juggling endless zoom and hangout links just to cover basic questions, or were isolated from one another in a way that isn't what made working on our company fun in the first place. Instead, we've been experimenting with using always-on video services in the browser, but having my team hidden in a tab doesn't feel the same. I want the ability to say hi more spontaneously, and to feel like we're working together like we used to. I haven't actually tried using Sidekick yet (waiting for mine to arrive shortly!) but excited to try it out and looking forward to feeling like we're in the same room again!

I've been working remotely with my team for several months now and the biggest annoyance I've experienced is frantically trying to find the Facebook Messenger tab when a coworker calls me. I always end up having dozens of tabs. Having a dedicated device for this definitely seems like a no-brainer. What's the audio quality like? It would great if there was some kind of directional mic to block out background noise without needing a headset.

As someone working on a remote team, this really makes sense. We generally work together on our own stuff while keeping messenger or zoom on - but this slows down my computer and takes up one of my monitors. Honestly, this sounds like a great solution.

This is great! Our current devices - laptop/phone/tablet - aren't really built for always-on video calling, and much less so for the remote work environment. Separating the call to a dedicated external device, while leaving you to work and use your own screens as you please, makes a world of difference. Super smart that you guys have focused your product and UX on this experience!

My cofounder and I have been using Sidekick for the past couple weeks and we're enjoying it more and more. Being remote affects different teams in different ways but as a small team, who are in constant written (Slack) communication with each other Sidekick helps us share ideas better and solve problems faster.