Cross-functional and Management team's reliance on email and Slack has created a challenge, users receive over 100 emails, attend 5-6 meetings and are flooded with Slack messages – this creates chaos and a lack of accountability. Sparrow helps cross-functional teams communicate/collaborate with purpose, and transparency and builds a culture of accountability, Sparrow works in the concept of outcomes (Decisions, Actions, Reviews, etc) that anyone requests from anyone in the organization.
Hello Product Hunt👋 I'm Harish, We are building Sparrow from Toronto.
In my previous full-time job as a VP at a large SAAS organization, I was frustrated with the number of emails/Slack messages/ meetings I had to go through every day without any productive outcome. understanding this problem deeply led me to build Sparrow! A simple communication & collaboration tool that doesn't have the chaos of Email/Slack/Ms teams
This is our first Product Hunt launch and our product is in beta, still rough around the edges, looking for Feedback to drive it in the right direction.
Why Sparrow?
In the dynamic landscape of modern work environments, specialized tools like JIRA for engineering, Sales Force for the Sales Team, and Client Success for CS teams have become essential. However, for Cross-Functional and Management teams, the reliance on email and Slack has created a challenge, users receive over 100 emails, attend 5-6 meetings and are flooded with Slack messages – this creates information chaos with a noticeable lack of accountability and traceability. We are building Sparrow to help cross-functional teams communicate with purpose, and transparency and build a culture of accountability,
What is Sparrow?:
1. Sparrow works in the concept of outcomes (Decision, Actions, FYI, Review, Status Update) that anyone requests from anyone in an organization.
2. Once a Sparrow is created, you can have real-time chat conversations with in the Sparrow/Specific outcome. All discussions are under one context. no more chasing Slack threads or emails without context
3. Each Sparrow has a unique URL, that can be shared in Slack/teams/emails/ meeting requests etc., Share all the information on the outcome before you set up a meeting are start another Slack thread
4. completed Sparrows can be archived to create a repository of all decisions/actions/status updates etc.
5. You will receive weekly usage stats on accountability (number of overdue items, the goal is for teams to build a culture where overdue items are near zero.)
Magic happens when a team uses Sparrow to communicate and collaborate on a day-to-day basis strive to live with accountability and maintain zero overdue sparrows.
Our Alpha users, demonstrated a 6X reduction in emails/slack messages, a 3X reduction in time spent in communication tools and a 50% increase in organizational accountability after 4 weeks of usage.
This is our beta version, free to use for the next few months. We would love to get your feedback on how it helps with your team collaboration, and what features would benefit you next.
Lastly for new users signing up, a few notes:
- Sparrow Beta is currently available for Desktop Browsers, we are not optimized for mobile
- Please use work email to sign in. We place users into respective accounts based on their email domain. This makes it easier for your co-workers to join, all they have to do is log in. Generic gmail.com, outlook.com, Yahoo.com, etc accounts are not supported at the moment.
- Please use the 'Continue with Google' or 'Continue with Microsoft' option to sign in, based on which email provider your organization uses. Sparrow Beta currently is available only via single sign-on from Google or Microsoft accounts
Whats in our Roadmap for future ?
- AI to recommend/auto create new Sparrows from email/slack/MS teams conversations
- AI to nest conversations from email and Slack under each Sparrow/outcome/context
- Mobile App
- Desktop App
- Notifications on key updates & overdue items
@maya_maya6@xavier4ai Thank you Xavier for you comments on Sparrow. I will check out the linked in group shortly, didn't know one existed for PH founders, thanks for sharing.
@gaby_korablyova Hey Gaby, Thanks for supporting us. I'll dive in to this a little deep here
Problems
- Imagine cross functional working in a mid size org (1000 employees)
- I was getting over 100 internal emails , probably was in 40-50 MS teams channels/ Slack channels, and calendar full of meetings
- Challenge: Unless I process/ read through all my emails and messages, I dont know whats important & Why ?
- and once you get through them, you dont have tracability in to conversations from last week, that need to be actioned now etc.
Diving a little deep
- People communicate to accomplish something, if that was clear upfront, (The who, The What, The Why and the When) and starts with outcome, it is easily consumable
- If all the conversations regarding a particular outcome are nested inside it. I don't have to read the mall in order to priortize, cause I have visibility into the outcome at a high level
- lastly bringing together communication and task management, again because we are trying to get things done via email and slack, where there is not tracking / accountability
In the market there are a few AI driven solutions that can help with deriving tasks from this choas and prioritizing it for you. We asked a different question ? why is there so much noise and choas? the answers were
1. email/slack/teams etc are open ended communication tools, there is no portocol to communication. We changed that (in Sparrow with out specifying an outcome - The who, th what, the why, the when, you cannot initiate communication)
2. no accountability and transparency in communication tools. If I said I will update a deck, noo one know if I am actively doing it, when I will do it etc. We changed that by giving every outcomes a status and due date.
In essence, we took the best practices in corporate communication (already followed by many organizations) and packed it into an out of the box product. While change is hard for any organization to adopt a new tool for communication, the benefit is long lasting, as its changing the culture of communication and helps with creating less chaotic and stress free environment
Lastly, Sparrow is for real business outcomes.. we haven't solved for usecases like, pinging some one for a coffee break/ water cooler chat etc.
TL;DR - If you want to apply collaboration and cross-functional approach into your workplace, look no further.
I was part of the user demos for this product and been using it from the beginning. With the millennia & gen-z joining the workforce, this app solves the current problem perfectly: no more confusion about who said what or who's working on what. It cuts out unnecessary meetings or discussions and helps get the real work done faster. I'm a big fan of the logic and approach behind this tool.
@kirithiga_sundaramoorthy Thank you for the feedback and support. The approach behind Sparrow is different from most tools, we try to minimize communication overlad by helping people be purposeful, impactful when the communicate and drive clarity with organization of information based on outcomes. Hopefully, Sparrow will help transform communication culture for modern teams.
Sparrow
Sparrow
Sparrow
Sparrow
Sparrow
Sparrow
Sparrow
Sparrow