Sidekick: A new hardware device to connect remote teams

Sidekick

Maker

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.

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5yr ago

Ryan Hoover

Product Hunt

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

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5yr ago

Aaron O'Leary

Product Hunt

@rrhoover I think if i was the person on the screen i would try my best to annoy you (sorry, not sorry)

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5yr ago

Andy Chen

Sidekick

Maker

@rrhoover Thanks for the feedback! From interviewing teams that tried the hacked together Zoom on an iPad solution, it's really hard to consistently get the team in the room. Users are constantly leaving the room for external meetings and it's unclear when anyone's going to come back. Very quickly, the solution becomes useless because nobody's in the room and it's unclear when anyone will join. Sidekick productizes this culture of joining and staying in the room. Unlike Zoom on a tablet, it treats "always-on" as a first-class problem to solve. Some examples of product decisions we've made are: * Push notifications to minimize being alone in the room - when someone joins as the first person in the room, we send a notification to the rest of the team. We want to get other teammates in the room ASAP because the room is only useful with more than one person. * Meeting mode - when you have a normal Zoom meeting with someone outside of your team, you can mark yourself as "in a meeting". This silences the mic and speakers on Sidekick while also setting a status informing your team that you're in a meeting. We're also releasing Google Calendar integration soon, allowing Sidekick to automatically mark itself as "in a meeting" On average our users are in their Sidekick rooms for 6 hours a day. They turn it on first thing when they sit down in the morning and leave it on throughout all their meetings during the day.

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5yr ago

Roy Bahat

The Twenty Minute VC

@rrhoover The details have made a big difference. We tried using iPads and such and it didn't stick -- hard to set up, surprisingly; wrong UI for the persistently-on use case, video consistency was hard with drops, etc. And now... this just works.

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5yr ago

Jesse Boyes

Q&A for Web Developers

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!

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5yr ago

Andy Chen

Sidekick

Maker

@jexe Thanks for the awesome feedback and being a great power user!

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5yr ago

Sidekick

A new hardware device to connect remote teams

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