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Why is everybody in here being such an asshole to this company? Has the HN culture seriously changed this much? Is the lockdown just pickling everybody's minds?

They're trying something. If you don't like it, give constructive criticism, but this hostility is unhelpful and unwelcome.

>Why is it a Samsung device?

I worked on a startup which was a video chat project similar to this with a different target. We also used an existing hardware device. Why? Because tech support is hard, and tech supporting hundreds of different combinations of people's hardware is a project itself. We bought tablets, loaded our app onto them, and that was our hardware device. Yeah, we wanted to make our own device eventually, but we weren't at the point of sending a team to China to do it yet, and that's what it would have taken.

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Stop this. This is not HN's culture. If you want to offer constructive criticism, then fine. If you want to be a jerk to somebody about their product then go somewhere else. If you are thinking you want to make an alt account to be a jerk to somebody about their product, then go somewhere else even faster.

Agree with you that we should be gentler on people when they are just introducing ideas to the world. I disagree that this is not HN's culture. Example, read the dropbox launch thread, among many others. Usually when I come to HN I expect the top comment to be some pseudo-intellectual takedown of someone else's hard work.

The dropbox thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

I don't agree with you that people are being jerks there in the way that they are here.

But there was the "avoid gratuitous negativity" that got added to the guidelines in the years after the dropbox thread.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9317916

>We bought tablets, loaded our app onto them, and that was our hardware device. Yeah, we wanted to make our own device eventually, but we weren't at the point of sending a team to China to do it yet, and that's what it would have taken.

Well, then you worked for a software company that transitioned into hardware development.

That's my only personal gripe with this whole spiel, it feels as if it's a way to game the whole SV thing by calling yourself something you aren't.

A company that converts old tablets into more specialized devices using software to accomplish the goal is a service, not a hardware company.

DoorDash isn't a restaurant, even if they dabble in food. It'd be ridiculous for them to say that -- they don't produce food; they arrange for delivery of food.

The oversell is the issue for me. It’s essentially an video conferencing Android app, but instead of putting it on the Play store, they are making you lease the hardware. In the features, I don’t see any exceptional features that make it stand out over any other “meet” app.

I wasn’t going to say anything but I got triggered by your last paragraph.

I don’t come to HN to read glowing reviews of barely launched startups. There’s plenty of that out there if you’re looking for it and it all sounds the same anyway. Success porn crap.

I come to HN to see if other people like me think something is a piece of shit or if it’s actually decent, and why.

If everything that comes through here got two thumbs up HN would cease to be a reliable indicator of things worth my time or money.

You’re creating a false dichotomy between “two thumbs up” and “piece of shit”. There is an in between. There’s a LOT of in between. The commenter here is asking for constructive criticism, not a pandering two thumbs up. We can do better than “piece of shit”.

The key criticisms throughout the comments seem to fall into these quite legitimate categories:

1. Privacy concerns of an always on device in the home.

2. Removing the benefits of remote working such as flexibility.

3. Increased company/management control over employee actions and movement.

4. Overcharging for an existing device plus an app and calling it "new hardware".

Not sure why any of these are not valid criticisms. In fact it seems you are the one taking an extreme position simply because you don't like the criticisms.

Very subjective, but HNs comment culture went down in the last 1 or 2 years or so. (Reddit-style discussions, jokes etc. seem to be more common now)

It's true, tech support is hard. Samsung, for example, does a terrible job supporting that tablet -- I bought 3 and only one survived a year. One of the others was held in their US repair facility for months while the warranty ran out and then they claimed the problem was no longer covered.

I'm no longer buying tablets or appliances from Samsung. Their TVs and monitors appear to be OK.

The Samsung G9 Odyssey monitor rollout is not going well at all. I want to give Samsung £1200 but they haven’t convinced me their process is controlled enough yet.

One of my friends designs chips for both Apple and Samsung. He said Samsung promised to provide proper specs after the Note battery issue, but they never did. Just went back to winging it after a while.

The way I see it, being "always on" is one of the worst things about office work. Always on is a constant distraction from doing good concentrated work. I think off by default is a far better paradigm for remote communication tools.

Thanks for the feedback! Agree that for a portion of the remote work force, asynchronous communication is probably effective.

Teams that love Sidekick need to be always talking as if they're in the same room. To these teams, it's not a distraction but critical for getting their job done.

Best of luck to you guys! I understand the different point of view.

It's the worst for your personal productivity but are those interruptions an net gain for your team's productivity? Recognizing that inflection point is key to great teams.

If everyone get interrupted every now and then, how is it going to increase team productivity?

The person being interrupted presumably loses a little productivity, but the person doing the interrupting probably gains quite a lot compared to having to figure it out on their own or wait for an email response in a few hours.

Have you tried the always on? I find it very productive. The difference is, it's muted when not actively discussing, so you get the presence without the distraction.

we totally agree!

I don’t think this “echo” should be always on. Just turn it on when you fancy tuning in or otherwise off. It’s probably handy for yelling out a question without the formality of calling someone, then they rush to put their headset on, accidentally hang up and all that crap.

Worst case the pointies force everyone to have it on all day to keep an ear on things.

Agree, appalling idea

I think everyone focusing on the "always on" aspect is missing the point.

This is a standalone device which takes care of a major part of the headache in transitioning to remote work -- a second monitor and webcam, a whiteboarding device, and a "who's online for me to talk to" visibility feature.

It's like paying $25 to bring the social experience of an office to your remote work environment without worrying about technical details or availability issues.

"Someone has their camera on? Cool, I can ping them, no worries."

The only feature I'd like to see is a "camera off but still pingable" mode, but honestly, I'd probably put a piece of tape over the camera and it'd work just fine.

Sorry but we're not missing anything. Not wanting to have micro managing overlords in your own home is perfectly natural. If you have this and your boss pings you - then the power imbalance puts pressure on you to accept. Any company implementing this is basically saying - we don't trust our employees. Ok, well I won't work for you then.

All those things come with an ipad or a second monitor and you have a lot more control.

This is great feedback. We wanted to make all communication on Sidekick bi-directional -- if I can see you, you can see me. This is to prevent any abuse of the product.

The idea makes sense though, and it's something we'll definitely think about.

> The only feature I'd like to see is a "camera off but still pingable" mode

i think that's called a slack message, or maybe email.

I think the difference is that "pingable" means you are happy to have someone ping you.

My understanding is that camera on = talk to me at any time. And maybe some users would still like that openness, without worrying if someone is watching them pick their nose.

A Slack message would start with "Hey, can we connect at some point..."

depends on how you use slack. if youre using it to its highest potential, people are setting their slack statuses appropriately and you can tell who is in the zone vs not, etc. i really think a lot of this stuff is a process problem. the tools are all there

I’m working on a tool to make that super easy (holopod.com).

We think we can solve for the impromptu conversations with a specified custom status that folks can trigger when open to a conversation (Eg. Water cooler, coffee break, etc).

Would love any feedback!

"camera off but still pingable"

That's called Facetime'ing someone.

Yep or zooming them, or microsoft teaming them.

IBM released a very popular set of working from home guidelines - one of the absolute most important rules is that you never ask an employee to turn on their cameras - it's an invasion of privacy.

I’ve been working at a fully distributed company for 3 years and I can tell you with a high degree of certainty that none of my 700+ coworkers will ever use something like this. You may find some traction now with companies abruptly transitioning to remote work and not having a clue how to get work done without being in an office, but long term, I’m a sceptic.

I can tell you, however, that I would absolutely consider using this at home: my wife spends at least 3 hours a day on video calls with her family back home and it took some time to get her elderly parents accustomed to Smartphones, messenger/whatsapp, etc. they’ll start a video call on messenger and just keep it on for hours while doing their shores or whatever. An always on device, especially if you add in remote management, would be useful. Another use case is kids. Right now most schools are doing distance learning and loosing the social aspect is certainly going to hurt. This could allow them to stay connected while doing homework, craft, or even playing video games without having to start meetings.

I think this is a good idea, my only advise would be to try other growth channels besides startups.

I think the product you're looking for is facebook portal https://portal.facebook.com

Makes sense! We're also looking for other markets to expand into so that's really helpful.

I think this subscription pricepoint would be a big turnoff for 'home use', especially when you are competing with free facetime that fills the gap well enough.

This feels like bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden shift towards remote only work. Don't get me wrong, I like the premise as I've definitely felt disconnected from my team recently, but I don't think this quite solves the problem. If it did we'd just sit in a Google Hangout meeting all day. We (and I imagine a lot of others) have already tried this and it didn't work. No one can really put their finger on why, we just know something was still missing.

I think it has to do with the medium. Maybe the answer involves coming up with some sort experience that doesn't feel as dry and disconnected as video conferencing. This is where the idea of course becomes hand wavy -- but maybe it involves some use of AR, or a projector -- who knows.

If I were in your shoes I'd be thinking about a game-changer, instead of an incremental enhancement of video conferencing. Maybe that's bad advice, but I know I don't find this offering terribly compelling.

I've noticed that with my skype-to-the-office setup where I leave it on, the resource use (mostly bandwidth) bugs me in the back of my mind.

That makes the experience a little uncomfortable as an always-on thing.

I'd definitely like to know that resource use was minimal when I wasn't in a conversation or actively engaged with the system.

I think that having the system as an appliance is a plus and makes it more comfortable to just leave on - versus something running in a window on a screen from my work laptop.

We're still really early on, so we're also trying to figure out what that missing "something" is. We're totally in the same boat.

From interviews, our theory is that it's because most of the time, the Hangouts all day solution decays because people have too many experiences being alone in the room.

Again still really early, so we're also figuring it out but thanks for the data point!

Gotcha. Makes sense.

Good luck :). I'll stay dialed in and genuinely hope y'all knock it out of the park so I can reconnect with my colleagues!

> This feels like bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden shift towards remote only work.

This isn't a super new thing, though. There have been a number of companies in the past 5-10 years that offered similar functionality without the hook of having a separate device (Sqwiggle, pukkateam, sneek, etc).

This is one of the best points made. I felt the same way in HN being far too harsh. Seeing other apps along the same connectedness theme gives a good perspective.

I had only tried Pragli and it is underwhelming. Too much cpu usage even after they removed snapshots of you. The Spotify integration is te one nice feature none of the others have.

Thanks for the names of apps. Going to try the latter two.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to be harsh.

By "knee-jerk" I didn't mean new, but meant that it lacked depth. Hopefully my elaboration clarified that I think the company is on the right track, just that they need to go a bit further and extend beyond what traditional video conferencing already (kind of) offers.

They're doing that, and they're a startup -- so I know they're starting lean and that they'll learn, change and add bells and whistles as time goes. This is the right way to do things :).

Sorry I wasn’t meaning you specifically or at all for my comment. I don’t remember now who I was thinking of. But me making someone else feel bad wouldn’t make sense with being unhappy with “harshness”.

Thanks for your clarification and overall I agree with your original issue.

I have a small but growing community of people from before corona with the center piece being a 24/7 Zoom meeting room and yeah it has never felt fully right. It still works out, but it does feel as if there’s something off.

> Sidekick is a new hardware device […]

So your "new hardware device" is a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2019) with a stand, isn't it?

What's your motivation to offer hardware instead of selling the Android app separately as well, so customers could use it without the hassle of getting hardware shipped?

All of our current customers wanted to try the experience without actually having to purchase and own a new expensive device. We really wanted to lower the barrier for anyone who wanted to give us a chance.

We also handle all shipping/return costs -- we're trying to minimize any burden on the customers.

What happens when an employee has one stolen? or coffee spilled on it?

How many free tablets can I get for $25/mo? What do you do when you realize someone has spilled coffee on 3 tablets, and now their credit card isn't rebilling and they aren't responding to email?

You can dream up all of these scenarios. But if you have a healthy business then a small number of people scamming you for Galaxy Tab's doesn't kill it.

Well, of course, that's the case for big corpo; but being a small startup with _limited_ budget, I think the bill can scale up pretty quickly.

Hopefully not, though, I truly like the product.

The margins are pretty fat ($25/mo for hardware that costs $200) and unless they have a particular knack for finding petty thieves I expect that they will lose fewer than 1% of their tablets to fraud.

hasn't been a problem yet, but definitely something we're thinking about!

I guess the same reason why companies lease hardware like laptops for their employees.

Yes except the leasing cost is not $150% of the cost of the laptop per year.

I was really split on mentioning this but I picked up Camo after reading it mentioned on HN somewhere:

https://reincubate.com/camo/

It’s yearly subscription software but doing the app route you mentioned. Grabbed a little iPhone camera mount clip for like 10 bucks and it’s really something.

Thanks for the link. Isn’t this using your main computer still and the same as using a comp webcam in terms of availability?

A guess? Hardware startups mean money to investors. ;)

Do they though? I thought investors heavily favor software because of infinite scaling.

Or tiktok clones.

Haha yeah a $200 tablet for $300 a year!!! Bargain. I’d rather just use afterpay if I was that poor.

Crazy how bad at math you’d have to be to think this was a deal.

The moderation of the negative comments on this post, for once, seems a bit overkill.

I think what's missing here in the moderation is the visceral reaction that people have to such a product, (to the point where their feedback seems a bit unproductive), is as much part of the conversation here as the constructive criticism.

The people who have a complete gut reaction against this don't want to enter the conversation with criticism that can seem like a negotiation with the founders, where the founders can reply with "ok we'll work on adding more cool privacy features".

They don't want to engage with the product in the first place.

However they feel that without shouting it from the rooftops, a perceived consensus might emerge that this type of product is OK bar a little privacy refinement, and thus be forced upon them by team members who don't have the same privacy appreciations as they do.

Edit: I'd like to add that I don't attribute any malice towards the founders of this. I accept that they're trying to make the right product for them.

Yep well thought out response. It’s interesting the level of moderation in defence of of a YC company - I’ll bet they wouldn’t be deleting comments if it wasn’t one of their companies.

It's just because it's text. If we could see the faces of some people while they mouthed off on their deranged rant, we'd all politely turn back to whatever better conversation we were having, and chuckle...It's just because the genre of "text" puts everyone on the same volume and medium/timbre/character (fading doesn't really alter this).

Crazy rants that would not get a word in edge wise ordinarily, get to take full spectrum bandwidth. Probably, just like this comment will seem to some people. You don't need much empathy, social acuity and awareness yo shout at the top of your ... fingertips on a forum. But to get the attention of a room of smart people in real life....you need a lot more skill. Text reduces everyone's utterances to the same medium background......it's sad. Sad that internet is 31 years old....but we don't have a richer way for people to talk toghether.

Funnily enough, maybe THIS startup, is doing something toward that.

As the founder of a remote company this defeats the purpose for me. Benefits of remote:

- No commute

- No office politics

- No forced schedule

- Less meetings

- More writing

- Forced communication

- No "assess in seats" culture

In part, this seems to defeat at least:

- No forced schedule

- Less meetings

- No "asses in seats" culture

My hunch is that your market research consisted of only talking to companies that are just now adopting remote as a result of COVID. Obviously those companies want to recreate the draconian politics of a forced-commute workplace.

If it defeats the purpose for you, sounds like this product isn't relevant to you? My guess is something as nuanced as a workplace (of which, there are MANY types, and you're right, a lot are just moving to remote work per COVID) will require different setups for different sets of people.

I won't dispute your jab at the traditional workplace culture/politics, but I certainly wouldn't assume your personal preferences (and perhaps, the common preference of HNers) is the golden standard.

Many people work better with others "around" and enjoy the company/atmosphere, myself included. Sounds like this product addresses that exact market.

Thanks! and yes we totally agree. Sidekick isn't for everyone. For the people that do miss being around others, we want to bring back some of that joy.

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

I'd consider using a product like this and I don't give a shit about draconian politics. The issue is that remote work has downsides. One downside is dramatically less collaboration. I like collaborating with team-mates, not just drudging away by myself. If this could help create more of a spontaneous back and forth in-person feel, that could be valuable. I don't know how it would feel, I'd have to try it and see. But I think you and the other people in this thread are being way too negative and defensive. Not all of us love remote work and especially not the "remote work is better in every way for everybody and anyone who thinks otherwise is a reactionary" culture.

I keep hearing this but it makes no sense to me. If people need to collaborate, what exactly is stopping them from doing it over video? On my team we collaborate all the time remotely.

From our experience, the best collaboration doesn't happen during planned meetings. It happens during spontaneous conversations and that's what we're trying to bring back.

I kind of get that, but none of the remote collaboration I experience is done through planned meetings. It happens during conversations we have spontaneously. It's just those conversations happen over Slack and then over video call.

This isn't to say that I disbelieve your experience, but it still baffles me there are remote teams out there that fail to collaborate at a sufficient level with tools that already exist. I hope Sidekick succeeds to a level that doesn't one day turn my home office into a remote version of Office Space.

The difference is when someone starts a call or an IM, its usually about something specific and so the expectation is that the conversation lasts just as long as it takes to resolve the specific issue. Spontaneity of conversation requires a culture of interaction without a specific aim. In an environment where you want to maximize such spontaneous connections, calls or IMs can't compare to always-on.

Yep, feels like they've fallen over on the whole 'define a problem' thing. Have they got any actual clients or just a bunch of fellow cohort YC companies all clapping each other on the back.

Thanks so much! Yes, we totally understand we're not going after all remote workers but there's a large set of people like you we want to help.

I haven't had that experience, but working over IM/IRC is a mode I'm used to.

> One downside is dramatically less collaboration.

This is simply an excuse for why remote doesn't work. It's a dead horse. If you find yourself collaborating less as a result of remote work, then I question your remote setup and culture.

> If this could help create more of a spontaneous back and forth in-person feel.

I actually feel less shitty by spontaneously reaching out to my colleagues via Slack or by phone when remote than I do tapping on their shoulder in an office.

> But I think you and the other people in this thread are being way too negative and defensive.

I wouldn't say my comment was that negative. This device is a threat to the upside of remote working, so it should be met with criticism. That doesn't mean I wish them any ill will. My biggest issue with something like this is that a device is now required for remote work and you must sit at your computer from 9am to 5pm. That's why a lot of people hate working from an office, so to recreate that at home would be a nightmare.

Thanks for the feedback, we're still really early so this datapoint is really helpful.

Sidekick works really well for teams that need to be always communicating real-time. This isn't all remote teams, but the subset that needs this is underserved and we're trying to help with Sidekick.

You're being very polite to people who are being very rude. This gives me confidence in using you as a vendor and helps your brand immensely.

>> If you find yourself collaborating less as a result of remote work, then I question your remote setup and culture.

Ah yes, the old "you're doing it wrong retort". Blaming the person who doesn't conform to your ideals, or has had different results is perhaps an even older, dead horse. See also: agile zealot.

We totally agree that for a portion of the remote workforce, asynchronous communication is actually preferable. Sidekick probably isn't for them.

The teams that love Sidekick actually need to feel like they're in the same room to get the job done. They actually want to be on the call at the same time because that's how they can be effective. These are teams like cofounders or operations teams.

"I will never purchase a tampon, therefore tampons are a terrible product with no purpose."

No constant interruptions

Seems like a pretty gross security and privacy risk with extremely limited upside for the employee, all with the friction of supporting a totally separate device for a remote IT org if anyone adopts this Orwellian tool at scale.

Totally agree that there's a huge privacy risk if it were abused by employers.

The teams that use Sidekick want to feel like they're in the same room with an always-on video -- it's actually the most effective way to get their jobs done.

It would be Orwellian if imposed by employers, of course. But for teams who really would prefer to be colocated, why shouldn't they use something like this as a next-best option? It should be up to the users.

Yep - big brother.

Not to be confused with the other hardware device named Sidekick that connects remote people together. https://www.gsmarena.com/t_mobile_sidekick_4g-3874.php / https://www.t-mobile.com/brand/sidekick

Does this still exist? The page mentions being launched in 2011 and last update 2018...largely dead I think

Cynics are out of the woodwork, but as a co-founder I personally see the value in recreating that in-the-same-room feel you're chasing. After all, there is only so much slack.com, zoom.us, or tandem.chat can do.

I'm pretty sure as you continue to explore this space, the offering would veer into all kinds of interesting tangents involving AR and VR, or even Minority Report esque ubiquitous computing.

I can't wait to see the evolution for one. All the best!

Thanks! It always warms my heart to hear from other cofounders who experience this pain.

Please reach out if you have any more questions!

We've been using Sidekick for the last week or so, and I can give it two-thumbs-up. I feel more connected to my co-founders than I have since COVID started, and tbh, the interface is a piece of cake to use. The difference in feeling like we're all grinding away towards the same goals again is amazing. Props to the Sidekick team for getting us to realize the benefits of something slightly uncomfortable (always-on video) and providing us with the device to do it!

Did you try something else before? We are all sitting in a Jitsi Meet conference all day and it works fine so far. We even added a "private call" button on the video tiles in order to quickly initiate a 1-on-1. How is the "select person to talk" feature working for you?

Haven't used Jitsi Meet before, but for 1-on-1, I'm pretty sure Sidekick has that in their dev pipeline already -- tbh, having them provide the device/stand and the features to automatically handle reminding me to join/simple single-press to open the chat make the experience far simpler than using a software-only solution. For the intro $25/mo, this is a no-brainer if it improves communication, even just for one good conversation.

This doesn't make sense from a makers schedule. Any serious developer needs their time and is happy with very regimented meeting schedules. I guess that's my perspective from product / dev management. You can't expect everyone to have clear expectations, lots of psychology issues around communication and this puts additional peer pressure into the space. K-12 education has proven to be a boiler room of social pressure, at work it politics + ofc pressure to perform. People want to deliver value in a way that works fairly for both employer and employee, this seems to be employer focused. From my perspective those in my company who like to chat are always on our team speak or chatting on video anyway, no device needed, others like myself and developers prefer as I stated earlier regimented schedules of interaction. There have even been studies that video chat is stressful, and I tend to agree, due to concern over appearance, where to look, background mess, etc. It's simply not an optimal communication mode unfortunately and to make it pervasive in my opinion is undesirable. I hope you guys can find either the market or the customer you are looking for in a way that is balanced and psychologically healthy. Cheers.

For the sake of mental health and privacy, I hope this product crashes and burns.

We totally understand that this product isn't for everyone. Sidekick works best for teams that actually want to feel like they're in the same room with an always-on video. These are really fast-paced teams like cofounders or operations teams.

Sorry, but you do not understand that this product isn't for everyone. All it takes is one management loony to throw money at this and make employees own homes as their prisons.

How ever, unlike the parent comment I wish you would succeed and you will account for the visceral hatred from a lot of us to build a lot of privacy features into your product and not get tempted to turn this product into virtual peeping tom for micro managers.

For the sake of my mental health I hope it succeeds. My mental health has been in severe jeopardy just being in a room talking to coworkers just during specific topic-oriented meetings.

What stops you from talking to your coworkers casually using any other method? Half my chats are casual conversations, some of which will turn to a call if its specific topic-oriented.

I think looking for a product to solve this may not be the most efficient way to help the mental state. In fact, reaching out to more people into the company is easier than ever now, just a message away.

I don’t want to talk to them I just want to feel like someone is in the room.

Yep. Couldn't agree more. This reads like a group of co-founders and all their mates/YC cohorts saying how great a product is because they want it to be a great idea so bad.

This is really cool! I worked for a startup years ago that had a 1-way setup like this that allowed our two remote teammembers to pop into the office anytime, and it was great.

Bummer to see so much jeering in the comments here. No iteration of this product will be compelling to the "not interacting with people is the best part of remote work" crowd, but they aren't your market. However, I think you might be able to land on something that addresses the privacy concerns while still improving on "in the room"-like serendipity for remote teams.

I've worked on a team that used Mumble audio-chat years ago. Everyone kept it on much of the day with a global push-to-talk key, and it was mostly quiet but super helpful for spontaneous conversations. It's basically like using walkie-talkies, now that I think about it. I wonder if something like that would be compelling here (e.g. I can pop up on your screen on-demand, but I won't see you unless you acknowledge).

Anyway, congrats on the launch. Look forward to seeing where this goes!

Thanks - super interesting to hear about your past experience, and indeed there are a bunch of privacy-preserving features on our roadmap!

The only question I have is how well it scales.

The writeup above keeps talking about a “room” but the website features only person-to-person with the exception of the illustration of muting which shows the guitarist and hand-clapper as two ‘windows’. So two people cuts the 1080p (pretty low res) screen in half. What about 10 people, or 25?

The answer is not in your FAQ:

Q. How many Sidekicks can be connected on a team?

A. We built Sidekick to handle teams of all sizes.

You shouldn’t even have included that Q/A in the list, if you’re not going to answer it!

Microsoft, Zoom, others, all working to figure out how to show more team members at once, so presumably this isn’t trivial to do well. Nothing indicating how you solve it, what to expect with larger teams, and what’s the present design intent to set expectations.

So, real questions from a potential team, and team-of-teams (8-12 people per team, 20 teams):

What’s the maximum number of participants that display at once, and what happens beyond that number?

Regardless of design intent, what’s the actual maximum number?

That's great feedback. Honestly, we haven't set up a team larger than 5 at this point.

However, I also believe that 3-5 is roughly the amount of people who you actually work really closely with. These units are probably the right grouping for who is in one room.

There is no actual max number, but I do think the design and the use case would fall apart right now. But there's some things we're thinking about like separate channels that might help with this.

> I believe that 3-5 is roughly the amount of people...right grouping for one room

Isaac Asimov commented maximum creativity is 3-5, but a variety of firms have found the optimal team size is a “two pizza team” (6 to 10, typically 8).

Google the term, you get tons of discussion from blogs to journalism, that can lead you to papers:

http://blog.idonethis.com/two-pizza-team/

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/24/the-two-p...

In any case, what pattern does the screen divide into for 5? Of course there is a max number, arguably the number of individual pixels if you wanted each participant’s presence indicated by a single dot, but the practical limit is much lower. How many can you do? Why not test more?

Currently Teams on iPad is 9, the increase from 4 was news:

https://winbuzzer.com/2020/04/14/microsoft-teams-is-doubling...

Zoom is 42, so Teams plans 49 shortly:

https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/microsoft-teams-zoom-49-v...

A 7x7 grid on an iPad Pro works out to something like 390x292, well above the 320x240 that was a fine streaming video size back in the day.

PS. If you haven’t done more than 5, say so in the FAQ.

Stress test it!

Bringing all of the pains of an open floor plan into the privacy of your own home.

I immediately saw what needs this fills, that for remote work we need a kind of digital presence somewhere between zoom video conference, which demands everyone’s full attention, and is either presentational or one on one, and slack, which feels too asynchronous and formal.

Like others i’m not convinced that the answer is another screen or if it’s some other kind of in between semi passive experience.

Once it disappears it’s interesting to consider what specific qualities of just turn and talk to someone is absent in remote work and how you could bridge some of those feelings with some kind of digital experience. A projector? A robot? VR? AR?

Remote work had made me more finely attuned to how many physical non verbal cues you exchange with office mates on a daily basis and how exhausting it can feel to duplicate those digitally.

Thanks for the feedback and it's awesome to hear that you experience the problem we're trying to solve.

From our early users, the screen is awesome - it's the closest thing that exists to sitting in the same room.

The idea of another way to simulate "semi-passive experience" is really interesting. We'll definitely keep it in mind!

A company owned always on video and listening device in my home? How about not.

We totally agree that this would be terrible - any company listening to their employees goes against the mission of the company. We built Sidekick for the subset of teams that actually want to feel like they're in the same room. They actually want to be on camera so they can turn to their teammates and talk.

Is the data end to end encrypted and do you have any management capabilities on the device?

Terrible but you're enabling it.

Fascinating, I believe that Facebook shipped all of their employees a Portal around the start of quarantine and they're now used for meetings, happy hours, social events, etc. This seems like a fairly similar technology/application, just without being FB specific :)

Ironically, in the FB office we had a separate set of devices (manufactured by Cisco I believe) ALSO called "portals" (they looked like this: https://www.allhdd.com/networking/telephony-equipment/telepr...) that were used to link various parts of remote teams (i.e. if you had half the team in CA and half in NYC, you could set up a persistent video chat between the desk areas of the two. Most teams muted them by default, and if you needed to get the attention of someone on the other side you would wave your arms (or message them) until they unmuted you and you could have an impromptu conversation about whatever it is you needed. While there was some social use from them, they never fully delivered on the promise of "feel you're in the same place" (can't quite shout through the portal "let's get lunch"), and they always seemed better used as "hey I have a quick question that needs to be answered". Some people certainly commented that they found them distracting above all else.

What I find most interesting is that even AFTER sending all employees (FB) portals, FB doesn't seem to be targetting this use case. Instead, they seem to be targetting the "make it easy to dial into a meeting or quickly connect with any coworker" (almost a 21st century equivalent of a desk-phone). I'm curious if sidekick has / will explore a kind of mode for that :) Other than that, seems super cool - a quick feature suggestion is add a light around the camera to give frontal illumination, getting the lighting right for video calls can be a pain.

I have both a Facebook portal and a Sidekick (I work at YC) and I find there to be a huge difference between the UI of the Portal and how I use my Sidekick.

Before YC I worked at Airbnb and before that I worked at Voxer which was a pioneering company in asynchronous voice. A phone call is either on or off. Asynchronous is different and the other side and choose to participate or not. Facebook portal is to video what a phone call is to voice. Sidekick is much more what like Voxer is to voice.

Thanks for the feedback! Yes, we're going for a different use case than Facebook Portal or other dedicated hardware devices with video are. We're not just trying to make meetings easier and better, we're trying to simulate the magic of being in the same room.

We tried something like this in 2014 so our remote graphics designers would feel like they’re more in the office. It was a small team of 10 in the office plus 3 remote.

Everyone HATED it. Having a camera actively on you all the time is incredibly unsettling. We ended that experiment really quick.

Thanks for the data point! It's definitely not for everyone, but the teams that actually need to be in the same room really love Sidekick.

My wife (an extrovert) would love this. Me personally (introvert) would hate this. I can already see myself flipping off co-workers and forgetting the video is on :)

What would be cool is if it could read my calendar and I could block out times when I'm busy (no video) or avail ( video).

Great idea! We're thinking about calendar integration so something like that could be awesome.

I don't get it.

HWe use an RTC room on existing PC, with an alert and PTT mode. so we have always on listen-audio. Its like a web-based walkie-talkie (remember Nextel?) It's rigged to our Mattermost too

Ours cost like $500 to build - this would cost us over $500 every two months at discount price.

Whoa that's a super cool setup, and one I haven't seen before. I'd love to learn more if you have a writeup anywhere?

And how many teammates do you have? It seems like 10?

No write-up, I'll post one (or you can DM me).

7 core staff, 3-5 contractors and we let our clients in too. Most solutions breakdown for us because of our loose definition of "user"

please post the writeup instead of DMing!

Awesome product, and the subscription model is really really smart!

Is there support to plug in headphones and microphone? For instance, if you're in a situation where there's background noise (a partner who may be doing their own activities, or kids/pets prone to make loud noises) Sidekick would still be tremendously useful. One setup might be to keep it default-unplugged so you can hear a colleague who wants to ping you over speakers, but you'd put on a headset with a directional mic built in quickly before replying.

Yes you can plug in headphones and a mic. Just so I understand, are you worried about bothering the other people in your home?

Really appreciate that you like the idea! Let me know if you have any other questions, would be happy to chat through them.

Thanks and yes - there's an aux input, and many of users do exactly what you outlined!

This is a great idea for a product. I have worked remotely for the past ten years and not having easy interactions with team members has always been a problem.

Lately, I've had a laptop in my office's cube with Skype and VNC set up so I can connect any time I want and leave myself virtually present for hours at a time. I like it. I'm sure that a dedicated product could offer more features and efficiencies than I have with my jury-rigged setup.

Best of luck to you.

Whoa, that's an awesome setup. Do you still have this or is your office closed?

It's still set up, but the office is mostly closed so it's not very helpful.

Looks like it's still an early stage. Nice to see that it has something I wanted to implement in Jitsi Meet - "select person to talk". Other than that I don't see the appeal other than the subscription model for the hardware if you are an employer. Would be nice to see something like Facebook's Portal, so that it could be also placed in bigger rooms, where it could follow the speaker.

Following the speaker is a really cool feature, and is something we might get to at some point.

Sidekick is built to be always-on so teammates can feel like they're in the same room. Many teams we spoke to have tried doing it with Zoom or Jitsi, but they all decay because it's really hard to get people in the room, at the same time. Sidekick's features try to maximize the chances that you're not in the room alone.

I sincerely wish you luck on this. I suspect I won't be using this, but that's more of an issue of workflow, as opposed to a judgement of the device. I don't like being interrupted while I work. I don't run Slack continuously, like many do. Also I'm a hired gun. I don't have a constant gig, and 90% of my work is alone.

I think a device approach is reasonable. People like a device. They tend to not like a bunch of devices, which is why smartphones became so popular. But since this is something that would basically be a desk accessory, it might work.

One thing to be careful of, though, is that C-suite folks will often project their workflows onto their employees. What I see particularly hard-hit, is respect for "The Flow." This is that "magic productivity sauce" that comes from uninterrupted working time. Managers and executives have very little of this, but it is vital -vital- for engineers and creatives (I was a manager for a very long time, and the most valuable thing I did, was act as a buffer between sources of interruption, and my team).

Nowadays, the absolute worst thing that can happen, is I get a phone call or messaging interruption, while I'm chasing down a bug, or learning a new technique. It makes me blow my top. I tend to be rather abrupt, when answering those calls. Especially since the vast majority are robocalls, and I plonk them immediately (even that little interruption is painful).

I'd say that maybe having some published "best practices" to accompany it, might help. Maybe a blog -vlog?- that is accessible from these devices, could be nice.

Of course, it goes without saying that responsiveness (less than 500ms latency) and frictionless infrastructure is also vital for everyone, but I assume that is already there.

>People like a device. They tend to not like a bunch of devices, which is why smartphones became so popular. But since this is something that would basically be a desk accessory, it might work.

I feel differently - I feel like this wouldn't work for some that I know, not because they aren't fans of the always-on Zoom meeting, but because they don't have space on their desk for another accessory.

Yes that's really helpful. As a software engineer by trade, I totally understand wanting to maintain flow.

Someone else in the thread talked about how to find the balance between what's most productive for you and what's most productive for the team. I think that's going to be key for our users as well.

This exactly. Now I have to deal with push notifications all day long everytime someone is alone in the room. Can you imagine if everytime someone was alone in the office you got a notification.

Congratulations on the launch. I'm a remote worker, so I was keenly interested in this.

I've been using a Facebook Portal for about 1.5 years as an always-on video device. It works great, so I love the idea. There's open water in this space, so it's great to see others entering it.

For now, I don't see why I would ever use this over the Portal. The Portal HW has a high-quality build with a great speaker, and the auto-tracking video is creepy good. I purchased the large desktop Portal for $200 one time—a better deal than 25$ a month IMHO.

I wrote up my remote work experience with the Portal, too (https://medium.com/@dbal/facebook-portal-makes-for-a-better-...). Facebook has been researching business uses cases also. A research firm hired by Facebook came to our remote sites and observed how we used the Portal.

That's really cool! Have you expanded beyond your cofounders? And are you guys still using it for always-on?

Also, how do you guys handle knowing when you can talk to the other person? How do you know if the other person is in a meeting?

"Have you expanded beyond your cofounders?"

We haven't, although we do have other team members with Portals, I don't think it would be effective for our use case. Most of the conversations are semi-private, so we use the device like we were sharing an office more than having a meeting.

As a team, we use Slack for Chat, Zoom for Meetings and screen sharing, and Slack for one on one video chat. We use slack for quick conversations because its fast to deploy, and you can keep your hands on your keyboard (or mouse).

Oddly, we hop on Zoom all the time for screen sharing but continue to just use the Portal for AV.

"Also, how do you guys handle knowing when you can talk to the other person?"

That's have been easy. If I want to talk to Tom, I just look at him. If he's in a meeting, I can almost always tell. We keep each other muted unless we're going to talk. You can tell from the eyes, or headset, etc. pretty quickly.

For the shared office use case, in particular, it's excellent.

Any way you slice it, I'm glad to see more people in this space, as it can only lead to better things for remote workers. Good luck!

What kind of company do you work at?

I work at all remote internet company; I use my Portal to connect to specific people though in an always-on environment. I find it helpful for all the reasons described in the OP and more. When I went from a shared office with a co-worker to a remote office with the same co-worker, I thought we would lose something. The always-on video fills a void. I can't recommend it enough for remote workers that work closely with another person. Sometimes a look or a glance can even accomplish a goal.

Did you guys consider putting some kind of authentication on the device when unlocking it? It seems to me that the device should check that you are who you say you are before showing you your coworkers (especially if your team works on sensitive/trade secret-y stuff). Or to make sure your kids don’t come stare at your coworkers while they’re in flow ;)

Maybe it’s not a problem unless someone breaks in to your home/office, but at the very least a passcode might be nice if you lock it for x amount of minutes. It’s often a requirement for regulatory compliance as well (although if a company has to have an airtight setup I don’t know if they’d be the target market).

(If you have this feature, then that’s swell! It looks very cool, even if it reminds me a bit of the telescreen from 1984...)

That's a great point. We actually haven't run into that issue yet, but it seems like it could very easily happen. Thanks for the idea!

FYI: I am not sure if this applies to "Show HN", "Launch HN", etc, but in general text posts are downranked compared to links, so they don't stay on the front page as long. In the future you might consider submitting https://sidekick.video/ and then leave your text post as a comment (these are usually but not always upvoted, so they stay at the top). The downside is that you don't get to guarantee your post will stay on top, so you have a bit less control over the conversation (which, when I think about it that way, makes total sense why text posts are downranked).

There was just a criticism of YC earlier this week about YC spinning out SaaS products for startup founders, and then this comes along right on cue.

This reads like a solution looking for a problem.

I have a screen. I have a camera. In fact I have two screens, three cameras, and four microphones on my desk right now. The hardware isn't an issue. But what really struck about this announcement was this passage:

> We talked to many teams that tried to hack together a solution with Zoom on an iPad. From the teams we spoke to, we learned that it's really hard to consistently get the team in the room at the same time. Users are constantly leaving the room for other meetings but for everyone still in the room, it seems like nobody wants to use it because it's empty. This causes a negative feedback loop where even more people leave the room and the hacked together solution quickly becomes useless.

The problem is people are clicking "leave", if you don't leave the call, you're still there. Even Sidekick doesn't solve this problem, because you are sending a nag notification to people telling them to join a room and just hangout. The innovation is nag notification.

Even your vanity metric of "our users are in their Sidekick rooms for 6 hours a day" is kind of meaningless when the device is always on by design. That's like saying "on average, our refrigerator uses use their device 24 hours a day" -- well you don't have an off switch. The real metric is how often people are actually talking on it.

You seem to figure that this is niche product at best. I know you're trying to replicate the drop by, but it's hard to see how this is better than the "Hey, join my call when you have a chance," slack. Even if you think that it is better, this experience is worse than the physical interaction, because everyone is within very close ear shot of every conversation. That doesn't happen in the physical world. We're physically separated, and the sound is attenuated. It's not when everyone is inches away from a microphone and amplified into everyone's ears.

We should have probably flagged the number of conversations in the original post, that's good feedback. We're on average seeing 20 new conversations per day.

We've built a bunch of other features that also maximize the chances you're not alone in the call. The reason this metric is important is because being alone is the reason why nobody wants to stay in the call. An example is Meeting Mode, which I bring up in the original post - it lets your teammates know that you'll be back in 30 minutes so people don't feel like they're alone.

We actually are working on the ability to talk to one person on the call as opposed to everyone at once. But that's a good flag and it's great to know it's a problem you identify with.

This is a tool for nagging that offers nothing over what we all already have. Every criticism is met with the same copied and pasted answer. We've all experienced it - you go and ask your cohort mates and friends and family 'is this a good idea' they all say 'yes, it's amazing'. You produce a chart saying 95% of people love our idea. You go to the actual market and 95% of people hate your idea.

This is really cool!

I am working on a similar problem but been working in the complete opposite direction. Trying to figure out how to crack async video communication bit.

I am working on something called vlokit [0]. It lets you do video messaging with your team. Think of slack for your projects but with video threads.

It helps you being more authentic than writing an edited message. It helps communicate easily without taking up time in meetings. Have fewer distractions.

And above all, it feels like you're talking to real people. Because you are.

I would love to have a chat with you guys to discuss about the problem and maybe our different approaches as well.

[0] https://vlokit.com

This product fills me with a deep sense of anxiety and dread.

I don't feel like being visually "always on" is helpful for employees or employers.

I wish you luck in exploring ways of making people working from home feel more connected, but I'm afraid this aint it.

How is this any different than having an always-on zoom room on my iPad?

We spoke to many teams that tried jerry-rigging an always-on zoom on an iPad. It was really hard to get people in the room at the same time.

We built Sidekick to maximize the chances that you're not alone in the room. I talk more about some of the features in the original post!

"always on" qualms aside, I think such a tool is a valuable utility to give to users, especially the features described on the website.

However, I'm would not pay an extra $25/month (or worse, $50) on top of my Zoom and Slack (or Teams) subscriptions because of a short coming of the number of screens one has or how Zoom works by default for the "always on" use case. Based on other comments, it seems like others take issue with the cost and sell that's happening here.

Three of the cofounders are from Palantir. Privacy is not mentioned as a concern in the original post.

Are we expected to believe this is really a product to keep people connected, or is this another big data weapon for the corporate mass surveillance arsenal? And what's the probability that data may end up in China, like with Zoom?

> If you don't really want to talk to your team during the day, Sidekick probably isn't a great fit.

Wow, thunderstruck.

I have been building a device for another vertical, really old people, with a lot of similarities ( subscription base, come with a stand, used to be a samsung Galaxy tab A,webrtc video calls, etc.), its called LiNote https://linote.fr (website on french only)

Happy to talk if that might help, email me at anthony at linote dot fr.

Super cool idea! Will definitely reach out.

Finally someone built this! I HATE juggling video windows vs. application windows.

2 Questions:

- Can I still share my screen?

- Your "How it Works" section says $50/user/month but your "Get the Band Back Together" section says $25/user/month. Then the titlebar says "$25/user/month until august 1st". So.... is it $25/user/month in July and then goes up?

- Can I still share my screen? We recommend all our customers to try using https://screen.so/ It's awesome, in slack you type /screen and immediately start a multiplayer screen share. Here's a video fo how it works: https://www.loom.com/share/f7941a18a501424db3656b4603cb1179

- Regarding pricing, it's $25/user/month if you sign up before August 1st and that price is locked in for life. (The $50 is a mistake, and we're changing it right now)

Is this easy to use even if you’re in a coworking space or want to work from somewhere unconventional or is it really designed for working out of your home office? I often like to work out of coffee shops, or down by the river and not pinned to my desk.

I don’t want to give a false or bad impression that I’m not available/working just because I’m not at my home office desk.

> Initially we built Sidekick just for ourselves, but many of the founders in our YC batch wanted to try it out!

What was your original YC idea?

This is beautiful. I thrive on impromptu social interactions during the work day, and would love to have a system that facilitates and encourages it with teammates that are open to it.

I love the secondary, single-purpose device approach. It relieves the mental strain of figuring out this set up... happy to pay a premium to be connected with my team on one tap.

Thanks! Let us know if you have any questions, we'd love to set you guys up.

Did you do a trademark search yet? T-Mobile US had a Sidekick device not long ago and may not have abandoned their registration.

Don't forget Borland Sidekick :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borland_Sidekick

Thanks for the heads-up. We'll take a look.

In particular, T-Mobile's last "Sidekick" device was an Android phone. You should probably start looking for a new name now.

So basic, how does YC let these companies in.

The next step improving home office is not bringing office to home, but rather improving asynchronous communication, which is a whole different way to work.

Open offices are really bad for productivity, I don't really understand why don't people understand that nowadays. This device makes your home office an open office...

I don't know about the use-case in work environment. No one I know wants to be that close to each other at work. Small startups, maybe...

However, my wife would totally use this. She does this already, "zooming" with her girlfriends doing arts and crafts.

People who have tendencies to socialize with others will appreciate this.

I had done this with a cheap windows tablet mounted on the wall in my old cubicle with Skype on auto-answer. So I could "pop-in" and people could come and talk to me. Somehow calling me from their own desk Skype was bigger task cognitively, but walking to the cube with my video on was easier.

Wow that's quite the creative setup. And yes, something about having a dedicated device makes it a lot less frictionful.

One of the harder things with the current video conferencing stuff is screen sharing. You can't just go poke over your colleague's shoulder and look at their screen (and see their hands and a whiteboard all at once). Would be nice to see how this product might address the problem.

We actually recommend using Screen.so for this: https://screen.so/

It's way faster than setting up a Zoom. All you do is type in /screen and it starts a share!

Here's a loom we made demonstrating it: https://www.loom.com/share/f7941a18a501424db3656b4603cb1179

I feel like this could also be a tool for friends or cofounders. I'm not sure I see it as really that advantageous in a work setting (aside from cofounders who tend to chat and have that kind of social enthusiasm often), but that's just my personal opinion.

Thanks for the data point. Yeah to be honest we do really well with very tight-knit teams right now. Cofounders are generally already good friends.

Yeah and that's where work tends to be more 'fun'

Great approach. If you trigger strong reactions, you are on the right path. Remote working is about communication discipline - like in the army. Have a talk to tank-commander or someone else who relies on radio communication. I think this gives great insights.

Contrary to others in this thread, I give applause to anyone creating something.

I’ve been testing out a similar software only service (no hardware) and it’s a neat experience.

https://www.around.co/

Sounds great. Is the hardware available for international teams or just US?

Yes, we ship international! For more details, go to our website: https://sidekick.video/

this sounds like a really great tool and I'm sure that many teams will soon see what great advantages there are to being in touch, a lot like a chat room with a visible connection I guess. It sounds like great tool for sharing ideas and sharing the flow of energy in a group, less formal than a meeting, but a quick meeting can be convened at a simple call to discuss an idea, good luck with the development and progress, i can imagine a lot of similar idea spin offs coming soon too, so I hope you cover all bases for implementation,

This is a good idea! Latency can be a big pain for web conferencing. Are the video streams sent directly to the other clients, or are they relayed through a central server?

Thanks and totally agree - especially since we're trying to enable frictionless communication, we knew we had to minimize latency from the get-go.

We use the standard WebRTC model where 1:1 Sidekicks are peer-to-peer (video streams sent directly to other clients), and 3+ Sidekicks go through SFUs that we host on AWS. These SFUs deployed all around in the world (in every major AWS region), and we assign Sidekicks to the SFU nearest to everyone on their team.

Internally the metric we aim for is to keep the end-to-end latency under 200ms.

I wish you the best of luck in your new endeavours.

Thank you!

About 3 years ago we tried to roll our own version of this.

I would be a buyer for a 25 person team, but 25$/month is too steep. Maybe 3-5$?

I think zoom is already getting into similar. Also feel pricing is a bit on expensive side for what you are providing

Zoom and Facebook Portal are still just trying to make meetings marginally better with a dedicated device. We're going after a different niche where teams need to actually feel like they're in the same room with an always-on call.

So just have an always on meeting using Zoom/Portal. How is that any different?

We talked to a bunch of teams that tried this. It's really hard to get people into the call at the same time. Eventually, there are enough bad experiences of being alone that people stop using it.

Sidekick's features maximize the chances you're not alone. Some examples are outlined in the original post!

Not a fan. Seems like an invasion of privacy for companies to put an always-on security camera in your home. Didn't Orwell call them Telescreens?

Is it always on?

This is an interesting problem. How to recreate a “frosted glass” that’s introvert friendly (there’s a disorder that affects X% of the population where they can’t work if they’re being watched...the name escapes me) while reducing the friction of adhoc interactions (time, clicks, etc).

Hopefully there’s some interesting solutions soon.

One thing this solution perhaps doesn’t address is portability. Sure you can take the device with you, but will you? So it’s a “home office” solution not a “remote as in Starbucks” (if that ever exists again) solution.

Neat idea!

The frosted glass is a great idea! We'll definitely give it some thought.

Regarding portability, we were actually pleasantly surprised to learn that a lot of our users took Sidekick with them when they found different homes to shelter in place. We're thinking about adding some software companion apps to help with this as well.

edit: yes it's always-on, but you have the capability to turn it off easily with one button click.

Definitely understand the privacy concern - we know that our product won't fit every home office setup depending on the living circumstances. It depends on how close and comfortable a team feels with each other. Our teams are already close-knit and miss the feeling of being in the same room together. We're thinking of adding virtual backgrounds to help with this too.

As Joe walks in wearing underwear... (I'm serious, I code in my unders half the time, esp in the summer (no a/c)). That could get awkward.

That has nothing to do with the product. If you don't want to be on camera in your underwear, don't turn a camera on while in your underwear.

Only if it's mandated by the company.

No, did you mean 'low brow dismissal' ?

Sorry folks, google meet or facetime work for me. and the cost is almost zero for those tools.

this is obviously a good idea. I was so close to trying to hack something together such as this. the naming could be way better, you missed an opportunity on labeling the feeling you are looking for, you should use presence or something similar

Thanks, let us know if you have any questions. We'd love to help you guys out.

Isn’t the Sidekick name already taken for hardware devices?

Congrats on launching, especially with a physical device. Quick question, if I commit to the promotional pricing now, can I scale up and add more users to my plan for the same price per user after Aug 1st?

Thank you, and yes!

So, is it like Tandem with always on video ?

This is hands down the worst startup idea in the history of the world. I would flat out leave at a company who introduced this or not start there in the first place.

This is peak YC

It may sell but only if you hype it a lot. As an idea this is very low in the scale in terms of originality or functionality.

Beautiful website! Good luck :)

Super neat! Happy to see Sidekick launch!

Thanks!

You are so preoccupied with whether or not you could [found a unicorn off the back of Covid], you didn't stop to think if you should.

To further elaborate:

What is one of the only benefits to the pandemic? Remote work.

Who wants to come in and ruin it? Sidekick.

Thanks, I hate it. I truly do. I only have to imagine the god awful dashboard you'll inevitably offer (product managers gonna productize) and the dystopian KPIs you'll kindly offer (not turning on your camera is the new tardiness metric).

It's schemes like this that trigger an arms race (ostensibly to "reduce liability", "promote productivity", and "increase security") that ultimately leave workers with less agency and petty human managers with more avenues of oppression to exploit.

For the sake of a world where workers aren't slowly boiled into digital serfdom, I wish you nothing but trouble. I really do, because you are emblematic of the short-sighted thinking that's wrong with the world.

Please don't fulminate like this on HN. You're breaking the guideline against shallow dismissals, as well as this one:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

Nobody's talking about imposing this product on anyone.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

That's fair, in hindsight it's a lot harsher than it felt writing it.

For what it’s worth, I agree with your sentiment wholeheartedly in-spite of the harshness of the tone that was used. I was hoping for a reply along the lines of the one you posted because this can be an emotional topic depending on the kinds of companies you have experience working for.

I also feel that some corporate muckety-muck is going to see this and foist it upon their workforce, further subjugating them under the guise of collaboration and togetherness. Luckily, I work someplace that doesn’t do that to its employees but many are not that fortunate.

Agree wholeheartedly with this. They are acting like it's all just total freedom - you can use it only if it's useful to you. Willfully ignoring how often companies enforce technology on employees. i.e. Away forcing employees to chat on Slack and then watching over them.

Why is this necessary when there are already many examples of successful remote companies that don't need to constantly watch and listen to their employees?

I totally understand and agree that there are a ton of awesome remote companies that were able to do it with mostly async communication. We built Sidekick for the subset of newly remote teams that actually need to be in the same room to get their jobs done (certain types of cofounders or operations teams). The product itself actively discourages any sort of "watch and listen to employees". All communication is bidirectional -- if I can see you, you can see me. We're totally in the same boat that we would never want Sidekick to be used as a monitoring tool -- it would go against the DNA of our company.

Seems like anything can get funding these days. I love how they say this is better than running zoom or Google meet on an iPad. Give users a mediocre android tablet with similar software and charge 25 dollars per user per month!? The founders clearly haven't thought about the asynchronous nature of remote work and even companies want an always connected environment, I don't know why they would want this product!

Thanks for the feedback. We actually talked to a bunch of teams that tried the Zoom on an iPad route and it usually failed because it was really hard to get the team in the same room. Sidekick does a really good job at maximizing the chances you're not alone -- I talk about some of the features in the original post.

Totally agree it's not for everyone, especially those users that are really happy with asynchronous work.

For 5 users, it seems like it would be a waste -- easy enough to hand-hold everyone through setting up a tablet. For 5000 people, I could see paying someone else to manage the technology and providing a 'one-click' solution.

There are multiple services available that do this, without hardware, and with more privacy features (like being able to fuzz your camera such that people know you're there but can't actually see you picking your nose or whatever).

they don't steal desk space. they let you use the same screen for other things. they're cheaper.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY

I've tried them with my team at a past co and people were FREAKED THE EFF OUT by the idea. They DO NOT WANT. It doesn't matter that it's logically the same thing as being in an open office. they DO NOT WANT a camera pointing at them, even knowing that it's not recording.

some people are ok with this, most aren't.

this appeals to "leaders" who don't trust that their people are working if they can't see them at their desk.

DO NOT USE THIS. Society is _NOT_ ready for cameras pointed at them while they work and folks feel it's a SERIOUS invasion of privacy.

Thanks for the feedback. We're definitely thinking about adding more privacy features.

We're on the same page that Sidekick isn't for everyone. It's great for those teams that want to feel like they're sitting in the same room. For these teams, that's what makes them most effective at their jobs.

Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

"New Hardware Device"

Looks like a run of the mill tablet to me.

It’s a Samsung Galaxy 10 2019. Worth about $200.

Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams