Show HN: Minimalist, walkie-talkie for startups | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Minimalist, walkie-talkie for startups

flowy.live

41 pointstalksik70 comments

So here's what we are working on at flowy labs.

We are not trying to sell you anything as you are not our target buyers; this post is genuinely just to get fresh eyes on it as I value the insights of folks in the HN community.

I've done a few posts for a similar concept perhaps some of you will remember, but this one is radically evolved (it's a physical desk gadget now).

Happy discussion!

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I get that I'm not the target market, but I so desperately do not want it to be easier for people to send me pre-recorded voice messages at work.

Yes it's fast and easy for them to say something, but it's a terrible use of my time to try to consume their voice message.

What is the target market ?

The last thing I want is voice messages - please just send me a text.

Also as SE I have calls all day long so I definitely won’t get a device that makes it easier to call me - I want the opposite!

Founders/leaders of funded startups (<100 people) who feel like their teams are stuck and the right stuff isn't being done.

They pay thousands per employee on saas tools + remote office reimbursements + give iphones and cell plans to their employees. What flowy offers is (hopefully) priceless to them; that is, if the promise is fulfilled. They want to try it for a few teams for a couple months, and go from there.

IMHO, we underrate how much we invest in commz. Human to human commz is worth more than any computing tool. What is an organization without people collaborating? A band where everyone's playing solo. This is part of our philosophy :)

Re focus: yep I understand. I guard my own deep work time very well.

Here are concepts of the protocol that we poorly explain on the landing page: 1. You tune into you're top-of-mind folks. This set of people is different for everyone and it changes project to project. But it's generally only 5-8 people. If your device is ON and you are not in another conversation, these people (and any combination of them) can get to you instantly. 2. Other people have to send you voice messages. 3. When you press the play button, you only go through all of your top-of-mind peoples' messages. Then there is a filter called "inbox" for "others". 4. If you press the flash button on the keyboard, you are OFF. Everyone sees a "-" for you. You don't hear anything.

So in aggregate, although it doesn't seem so at first glance, I built flowy so that there is less noise. We following "less is more" principle a lot more than it seems. It's just the sound of your people: no notifications, no fake AI voice assistant sound. This being said, I realize that we do not do a good job of articulating how everything works, so we will make a full demo video at the end of the year.

Please don't offer this product without including a way to just read the transcriptions.

I don't want to have to listen to recorded voice messages coworkers send me, period.

I don't think you're hearing how clearly people are trying to tell you they don't want this. We understand the product you are building. We actively don't want it in the places where we work.

I disagree. Being able to send a quick voicemail to other people in a small, agile team with high interoperability and trust would be invaluable.

For idea leader management types, this would be great for putting their inspiration down in concrete form and sending action items to their implementers.

But for large, boring corporate teams with little to no autonomy and even a scintilla of micromanagement? This would be terrible. I would quit any company with more than 100 people in it that forced this on me on the spot.

> please just send me a text.

Besides a speaker, I see a small text screen.

When I'm pushing info, email works for some comms. But some emails require paragraphs to cover all possible understandings but only a few spoken sentences (bc tonals & instant feedback).

> & instant feedback

which doesn't work in a "record a message for someone to listen to" format.

Good point but walkie-talkie implies an instant comm ability.

I need instant comms in an emergency situation maybe but outside of oncall I don’t see it.

But I’m not a gadget guy and it took me long to adopt smartphones

That's a good point; I suppose #1 is the instant comms, and only #2 is voice messages.

Can you not hijack my scrolling? Seems very slow and I left immediately

You're right. We were trying to be too fancy. It's fixed now.

I'm afraid it's still grabbing my scrolling. I think you're landing page looks nice, but it hides what you're selling and I have to look for it. So I left for the second time

Do you mean like calls?! Anyway, I see the focus on verbal communication, which has its uses, but it’s definitely not the main one. I prefer to hold someone accountable with written records, keep them in a CYA folder for easy and quick searches, or when I send someone an email, they can refer to it without bothering me in the future. This product might work to coordinate between a bunch of sales groups at an expo or something where quick, instant communication is needed, but for design engineers?! No thanks, I don’t need any extra distractions!

> This product might work to coordinate between a bunch of sales groups at an expo or something where quick, instant communication is needed

You nailed it.

Initially I was taken in by the novelty of the idea, but when I started seeing features like Recorded Voice, Figma Integrations etc.. I quickly back tracked.

If this works, it would work for a very focussed scenario where instant communication for a short duration/event is required.

Maybe for things like "ship war rooms" for product launches, or during holiday sale event for e-commerce websites?

> Maybe for things like "ship war rooms" for product launches, or during holiday sale event for e-commerce websites?

That's interesting. If the use case is meant to be during one-off or exceptionally busy periods, do you anticipate team members having these on their desks the whole year round?

That's for the founder to figure out. I imagine that with a 'pivot' on the scenario that the product is being built for, there would be change in its form (both hardware and software).

But this comment makes me think, why this product cannot exist as a mobile walkie-talkie app?

When "war" comes, the "army" launches the app and are plugged into the dynamic war operations, using a headset. When the war is hopefully won, everyone goes back to their peace time apps - Email, Slack...

This market is pretty well covered by Zoom etc al.

Nextel used to eat well off the PTT feature of their phones. IIRC the stickiest users of that seemed to be more blue collar folks -- construction crews, tow truck drivers, etc. I assume this is because they tended to be in environments where typing was harder and hands were otherwise engaged? It was also before widespread deployment of touch screens, so it was more competing with T9 or a full phone call than a 2024-style text message.

One aspect of Slack/email is that it is searchable and async. If your team has good culture and uses channels as opposed to group DMs (a very, very big issue in Teams), it allows others who were not online at the time to catch up on what’s been discussed.

They can also decide to skip entire chunks of the conversation if it isn’t relevant anymore.

Neither is a possibility with this. How do you have a more in-depth discussion? At what point do you switch from sending voice notes to a full blown discussion. How do others catch up?

The sales groups will just call each other. Many salespeople are insanely old school; one of the most successful ones I knew used phone and SMS only. Hated Slack.

"Move at the speed of thought".

For the person doing the recording. The person doing the listening is moving at the speed of the first person's speech.

Things don’t seem right on mobile. Video doesn’t work on fire fox or chrome and the text just scrolls down in a loop and all I can really make out is “conversational ai”.

What’s even the product and what is “loom”. Things seem pretty sensationalized without even knowing what it is

I would like to see a more in-depth, discussion about the pros and cons why you arrived at this solution, like a real written debate, where you give the best version of the arguments of people who don't want walkie-talkies to replace their Slack channels, then articulate why all-things-considered, you're better.

I was excited to see something new, but I want to really know if it's truly well-thought through to actually do anything / reserve / buy, which takes a lot more depth.

I know you provide the Cal Newport expert clips, but they're too long and not specific enough (I'll have to browse through a 2 hour long video) and are just talking about the problem, not the relative merits of the different solutions

This is super helpful. Thanks @eltonlin.

Why does this need to be a hardware solution? Seems insanely hard to justify the cost/risk compared to offering a simple SaaS.

I sort of like the physicality. There’s something satisfying about using a physical device for a communicator. One issue is privacy and security. Does it just broadcast messages after someone hits play? That’s not awesome in an open space. What if someone nicks it? How do you authenticate?

The same features could probably be achieved with a smartphone, without the security issues, and good headphone support.

Philosophy: building on current platforms limits solution sets and only gives you primitives that they thought of. I built 15+ variants of software versions tangential to flowy. It always limits experience. This doesn't mean everything should be it's own hardware. I just believe that human to human commz should be put higher on the hierarchy than, say your calculator.

Practical answer: we want to do cool things like "hover over keypad and say a name" and then you can talk to them. Only possible when we build the whole stack.

Thoughts?

Seems like a huge amount of capital to invest in something most people are already perfectly fine without. If I were in this company's shoes, I would build a SaaS and sell the hardware as an add-on. The venn diagram of people who need this type of VoIP/chat service but don't have an existing SaaS solution is small, even smaller if you also limit it only to people who need hardware and are willing to pay for it.

At least if you did a dual SaaS/hardware offering you'd cast a bigger net.

There's no SaaS opportunity. It would literally be Discord

So it's like sending vocal messages over WhatsApp, but with yet another device?

The problem I see is that if you want people to move from text (something like Slack) to vocal messages, then you need everybody to agree. Otherwise it's just like sending vocals on Slack/WhatsApp.

And in my case, there is no way I ever go with this. The reason I hate WhatsApp vocal messages is that it's more convenient for the sender but it sucks for me. When it's a friend talking, it can be fine (and sometimes it's nice to hear their voice), but for interactions with colleagues? No way.

I get the idea. Sometimes you wish if you could just ship a figurative desk and call the desk, not someone's trousers pocket or an ID+password slip to tie to that pocket.

I think most of advertised features here are readily replicated with expired Cisco phones on eBay if you had spare couple engineering person-days, but those are complicated. A modern hassle-free solution is going to be a much better experience for most.

I am interested in the hardware; I'd like a reasonably priced turn-key wifi headset.

FYI, collecting emails (or $15 I guess) doesn't qualify as "Show HN".

Many things qualify as Show HN. Check the guidelines.

I mean I'm not pulling this out of thin air, even for hardware: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32507172#32511851

> there needs to be more than a signup page for it to qualify as a Show HN - dang, 2022

Here are the guidelines for Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

> Don't post landing pages or fundraisers.

In any case, every success to talksik and flowy labs. I plan to move forward with something like https://amzn.com/dp/B0B9QVWX77, bluetooth push-to-talk for a one-time $60.

For part of my on-call-IT day, I park myself at a desk in a loud (voices, tape guns, equip), voluminous warehouse. It's more desk workers than not and earbuds/headphones are the norm.

Software notifications have heavy competition; they can't grab attention. So chat is delayed at best. I handed out a few lasers (not pointers) to folks that often need me.

I could see trialing your devices in our use-case.

Whats wrong with the phone? Isn't that a reason why they were invented? So you can call people?

I like the idea. Workflows are going to be the make or break aspect of the product. It can’t be a thing that leads to distractions or additional work. I’ve had coworkers who just love to talk, and I hate it when I’m trying to get something done.

As an example, maybe requiring the talk button to be held down might naturally limit conversations to a few minutes. (Just an idea, maybe it doesn’t)

A way to sync voice with screen recordings would be killer for product development or software testing. A quick “hey, this button doesn’t work when I do this” would be so much faster than making a screen recording and attaching it to a new bug report.

Love the insight. You are correct, the "workflow" is the essence. I call this the protocol, and I've spent thousands of hours on this alone.

I have different approaches on screen + commz combo that uphold flowy's product principles of keeping it lightweight, and augmenting human conversation. Your idea around this is really interesting; I agree that this is a "killer" feature if done right.

Our bet: flowy is what loom users have been reaching for, but haven't been given.

i’m probably not the target audience as a “quick slack huddle” fits my needs.

but i dread cables, and i don’t want another usb cable on my desk. how hard would it be to make it battery powered and pair using bluetooth ?

I am with you on this. I went with this as I personally feel I don't want another battery device to maintain and charge.

I also want to make sure that those who use the keypad are 99% at their home desk because we can nail that experience better than building a mobile variant right now. I'm planning a mobile version (keyfob/earpiece) for the future that would cover a wider audience's needs.

However, perhaps eventually there will be a battery variant; from an engineering perspective, it adds complexity to make sure that it lasts and handles different environments. I thought about adding battery and giving customers a wireless charging pad so that it can just sit on it. But I told myself, for v1, let's just make it stationary just like mechanical keyboards; reliable, simple, minimal.

Huh! My co-founder and I were discussing something in this line but not an ever-present intrusive device. A small key-fob type hardware which we can send a tiny buzz, with emoticons -- something real simple. The software part can be replicated for mobile devices, but this hardware should be something that I can place at eye level in a group meeting with customers/investors.

I send him one of the few emoticons to say, "that's it, that's it -- too many info, time to shut up" without hand-waving at the call screens.

> A small key-fob type hardware which we can send a tiny buzz, with emoticons -- something real simple.

That's just a pager.

We are going full circle now.

I absolutely love the hardware. I'd use this in my polycule if it wasn't so dang expensive. ;)

EDIT: I also am suddenly reminded of the old hoot-n-holler systems. This feels like modern Hoot-n-holler hardware, and I'm absolutely here for it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoot-n-holler

I really want less speech, more text. So for people who want speech to make it easier for me to always be async. I don’t know how many times a week people (try to) call me and then say something (usually we a shitload of background noise) that they need to repeat a few times which would’ve been a lot faster via text. It has its place but I definitely don’t want more of it.

The website looks good but has two major fails.

1. Change the pic of you, the site makes it feels like premium product then there is a pic of you in your room with plastic target bag. Ruins it.

2. make the format for all the names of the apple people the same. Not some with upper case or under score or period.

Other comment would be can probably cut down on some of the text. Don't over sell. The point of flowy is instant and easy.

Hey, the target bag has all of my jumper wires for my development boards! :)

All jokes aside, I appreciate the simple and actionable feedback.

I like it!

I’ve been thinking for a while now that the beeper was a nice concept for something similar not to exist anymore

Yeah interesting things happen over time in terms of culture. Nextel got bought by Sprint and their ideology vanished.

Knowledge work, for example, found email and hung onto this. All of a sudden, we lost simplicity and are in this bubble of noisy "software interfaces" being the standard.

Perhaps it's just that newer generations don't know how things used to work, and the old people are retired or can't do much about it?

Looks like a fancy answering machine?

I've worked on a synch+asynch voice platform for financial traders called a trading turret[1] and on collaboration tools for military and education. I've seen quite a few voice systems used factories, construction, and other worksites. Voice comms are a critical cool for many jobs that predates (and will likely outlast) typing on keyboards.

However, I'm trying to imagine who would use this product. It's deskbound (until 2027 it looks like) so that rules out worksites but is far too constrained (and pretty) for traders and military use. You list "product development", "leaders", and "international teams" as potential roles, but as evidenced by the responses in this thread, many people who do product development treat synchronous voice comms as an abomination. The closest I can imagine would be call centers -- helpdesk, marketing, support, that sort of thing.

I'm very curious how much user research and long-term usability testing you've done with real teams trying to get work done. If not much, I'd suggest making that a high priority. I apologize for how harsh this sounds, but my initial gut reaction is that this is a typical Silicon Valley product that pairs wonderful industrial design and engineering with a complete ignorance of other people.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=trading+turret&iax=images&ia=image...

Landing page on iOS Safari is incorrect, some elements' font size is extremely big.

Why is the scroll tampered with (slowed down)? Please don't do this.

You're right. We were trying to be too fancy. It's fixed now.

Thank you.

While I love the hardware design and wish it could be similar to what at StreamDeck is currently for me, how is this different than using a Slack huddle?

Thanks but no thanks. Love my silent work environment. Looks like this was created by some extroverted middle manager to make remote life a living hell.

Unless you can provide some kind of transcription option for the voice messages so I don't have to listen to them, I find the idea nightmarish. Therefore I'm definitely not the target market. But hey, it looks nice?

I have a colleague who insists on sending me WhatsApp voice notes despite requests not to, and it just ends up obfuscating information eventually: it's not searchable, it requires effort to go back through, etc.

If it doesn’t have speech to text, I ain’t listening to all that

"remote work is broken"

web page scrolling is broken. please stop it.

You're right. We were trying to be too fancy. It's fixed now.

Pricing is uh, interesting. $250 ea. for devices, plus $75 mo. for ‘line’ rental

OP, please don’t keep us in suspense any longer: who is this for?

Founders of funded startups (<100) who feel like their teams are stuck and the right stuff isn't being done.

So.....it's voicemail, but worse? Maybe I'm ignorant, but I cannot think of a single real world use case for this. To me, it's just another startup project trying to reinvent the wheel for no good reason.

- restricted to an extremely expensive piece of permanent hardware, that you *must* have accessible nearby

- requires 1:1 device:employee ratio

- no way to parse transcripts, or otherwise document/search *anything*

The absolute _last_ thing I need in the workplace is one more way for people to break my concentration, let alone one that I can't search through and refer back to later.

I HAVE THE CONCH!!

shuttup piggie...

> It's pathetic - these days, 8 person teams will have 20 slack channels

God forbid anyone organises their conversations into groups these days. Also I tried to copy that text off the page and it duplicated each word and put each one on a new line. And the scrolling feels very janky.

You're right. We were trying to be too fancy. The scrolling is fixed now.

> It's pathetic -these, 8 person teams will have 20 slack channels.

Why is this pathetic? Isn't that just.. how they want to work? One of the channels will be "whole team", which they can have a huddle in if they want to work in this way.

ahaha , I like hardwares

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