Vowel (Beta) — A video conferencing tool that makes meetings better.

Hey Product Hunt! 👋 Andy here, Founder/Maker of Vowel. We are super excited to launch Vowel here on Product Hunt. In 2016, I launched Nanit here as well and could not have succeeded without the maker community’s support 🙌 Today, our team is extremely proud to see Vowel come to life. Meetings are where the important stuff happens. They’re the gold standard for decision making and brainstorming. But our everyday, garden variety meeting is a mess. It’s disorganized. It’s expensive. And time seems to do some weird things when we’re in there. It doesn’t help that we’re using video calling tools that aren’t really meeting tools. Sure, they let us see and hear each other. But a meeting should be so much more than video calling. It should be working together and building partnerships and staying focused. That’s why we built Vowel. A video conferencing platform designed to make our meetings better 🚀 So what exactly can Vowel do?🤔🧠⚡️ Vowel makes meetings more productive: Vowel automatically records and transcribes your meeting in real-time. So your attendees can participate in the discussion instead of tirelessly taking notes. Vowel creates space for collaboration: With a shared workspace on screen, Vowel enables you to create an interactive agenda, assign concrete follow-ups, and mark important notes during the conversation, which are time-stamped to be referenced later on. Vowel turns action items into simple, easy tasks: When you create action items during your meeting, Vowel automatically links the item back to a shareable and searchable record of the meeting—so you never have to guess what was said in reference to your task. Vowel integrates and simplifies your screen: Vowel lives in-browser, so it eliminates the need for downloading software. No need to run multiple tools or plug-ins concurrently in different windows, and no need for your guests to download anything. You can start a meeting from Slack or your Google Calendar and, afterward, receive meeting summaries via email. 👉Here are the details: Today, we are opening Vowel sign-ups exclusively to new users from the Product Hunt community. Vowel offers a free plan for individuals and teams, but the first 250 who sign up here will receive the Vowel Premium plan for the next three months. Vowel is available today for Chrome and we’ve got additional browser compatibility coming shortly. We’re excited to hear your feedback 🙌 -- Andy and Team Vowel P.S. Keep up to date and tell us what you think on Twitter @VowelHQ P.P.S. So excited to be Product of the Day! We'll be responding to all the emails shortly. Can't wait to hear everyone's feedback.

When I first experienced Vowel, I felt like this is exactly what Google Workspace's (aka G Suite) video meeting experience should be like. A contextual experience that combines video, audio and text to actually make meetings more productive. Really worth trying out for yourself.

That's an awesome tool you've built! I have a question about transcription - is this the English-only option or are there other languages also available?

Vowel is really, really cool! The live transcribe is next-level, it's like everyone at the meeting has a personal note-taker. For sales, or pitch calls, I love that you can quickly reference what went well or didn't go well -- to adjust your approach, but also easily share those learnings with others. It's also a great way to build a living knowledge base within the company for employees–especially as teams continue to be remote-first.

Awesome. I love the idea of searching the meetings by transcript and then listening to the audio for that part.

@hnshah another great find! Love seeing your hunts! I'm not an investor, just a fan. Crazy enough that it's 2020 and video meetings are still.....meh. 1. Love the simplicity of Vowel 2. No Fluff - It does a great job actually giving you the 20% of features a team needs that does 80% of what's needed. 3. Spot on for live collaboration. Great work @ckor @michal @ben42

My creative team has been using Vowel for weeks, and it’s made our meetings and reviews so much better. Instead of furiously taking notes, we can all be fully present and engaged in our brainstorms, and that’s being reflected in the quality of our work!

Cannot wait to try it out!

Congrats to @andrew_berman and team! I've been using Vowel for the last few months and am in love. Being able to search what was said during meetings and listen back in on that ONE GREAT IDEA THAT I JUST COULDN'T REMEMBER has been a total game changer. Because I trust Vowel to capture everything important, I can fully engage during meetings and am far less concerned about scribbling down every last detail in notes. Of all the apps that aim to make me "superhuman", I feel like this one actually does.

I've been using Vowel for the last month as part of the beta. It's as simple to use as you'd expect as meeting tool to be but it's been a game changer in seamlessly capturing ideas in discussions through its automated transcription. Amazing product, you won't see zoom in the same way again.

Have been using the beta for a few months now and it's the only video conferencing experience I look forward to using. Beyond the seamless notetaking and transcription, I love being able to use the platform as a task manager and also track progress of 1:1s with the team. Having a history of all of my meetings, with all of the notes and tasks associated, is awesome for being able to search for ideas in previous meetings but also makes me oddly feel more accomplished (like those meetings actually existed vs. being transactional/ephemeral). Vowel feels like if Zoom (vidconf) + Otter (transcription) + Dropbox (storage) + Evernote (notetaking) + Trello (task management) had a bady and was delightfully designed!

Vowel is amazing. I've been using it with the team for the past 3 weeks. Love the ability to be in-sync on our meetings. Also, amazing product design!

Vowel is so well designed. I love the simplicity. The transcription capability rocks. Well done!!!

Vowel is really cool! Have been using it for a week now with some select team members and it's been awesome to search transcripts and also listen to specific moments in the conversation at the moment a specific agenda note was typed down! Also, as a manager, it's great to see how much everyone is 'talking' during meetings, to understand engagement and tailor my agenda/points to appeal to everyone!

THIS IS DOPE.

Obsessed with Vowel -- have been following @andrew_berman, @matthew_slotkin, @paultfisher and team for much of their journey and after getting a feel for the product myself, I can't wait to bring this to our team. We're at that stage as a company where meetings seem to be scaling as a geometric function of headcount, and the variance in how helpful they are is fascinating -- not because the team isn't prepared or focused, but because it takes a ton of work to plan, structure and capture meaningful results and they have actual work to do / not infinite time for meta-work! Vowel is going to cut out 90% of that extra work. Set a clear agenda + goals, invite the right people and actually get things done :)

I'm also loving the video and your design overall!!

Sweet idea and great team! Good luck

Wow... didn't realize I've needed exactly this throughout quarantine! One of the biggest struggles I've had of working from home has been feeling like I'm not able to read interpersonal scenarios as well as I usually can. All I see these days on Zoom is people typing at their screen instead of reacting, listening and engaging as we did when we all worked in the office. I have no doubt this lack of connection is leading to a lot of my Zoom fatigue. Seems like Vowel could be a perfect solution to eradicate the multi-tasking and bring the conversation back to a human place. Count me in 👌

Awesome. Now everyone in a meeting can focus on the meeting rather than transcribing notes and try to remember/capture all the ideas or topics discussed. The search functionality and tagging features are great. Cant wait to use for my company.