[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Cafe (YC S21) - Find the best days to go ...
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Launch HN: Cafe (YC S21) - Find the best days to go to the office
Hey HN, we're Arthur and Tom, 2 brothers from France and founders
of Cafe (https://at.cafe/). Our app lets you decide where to work,
depending on who'll be at the office or working remotely. The
world is going hybrid (mixing remote and office) faster than
expected. Companies are using spreadsheets to see who's at the
offices and who's not. People want to see each other, but they
never know when and where to meet. We were employees in the same
French company during Covid lockdown. When going back to the office
(June 2020) we struggled to see our team. We were only a team of 8
people and it was a mess to coordinate everyone because we had no
visibility over each other's calendar. We were doing Slack polls
for every day in the upcoming week. We couldn't make a decision
because we had no data! We started talking to other companies (up
to 200 interviews) and everyone was struggling with spreadsheets...
We thought there was a better way and launched our MVP (a simple
mobile app) in private beta in September with 5 companies. Our
mobile and web app shows you who's at the office, how many seats
are available, and who's working from another location. You are
invited to set your status for the current week and next week (10
days of visibility) and it's done in 10 clicks. You decide where to
work from based on who's where. We're making it easy and flexible
--you can customize the whole experience (name/emoji of status),
set only half days, and specify the city you're working remotely
from. Our solution is as engaging as possible so people actually
input their plans. Most companies are using Cafe to make decisions
with data when it comes to their office (should they move out? keep
it?) and save money. Some have used it to organize events (e.g.
pick the days where there's the most people to do team building).
Some are using it to better onboard new employees in their hybrid
team. We're not a desk-booking tool. We're focused on engagement
and hybrid employee experience. Our software isn't only about
what's happening between the 4 walls of the office, that's why we
include remote folks in the experience to enable meet-ups inside
and outside the office. You can use Cafe on desktop and web mobile
or directly through mobile apps to declare where you'll be working
from. We integrate with many tools, like Slack where your status is
automatically synchronized, or with HR tools where your days off
and paid leaves are synced without having to do anything. Here are
quick demos to see how it works: 1-minute demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSOGPCXSIB8 and 3-minute demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSQu3e0LzzA To sign up
(https://app.at.cafe/), you only need to have a valid business
email. We offer a free plan for up to 50 users. Like Slack, our
Premium plan only charges based on usage (for active users),
starting at $5 / user / month. We know the Hacker News community
has a lot of remote-first people and we look forward to reading all
of your feedback. Many thanks!
Author : TomNguy
Score : 63 points
Date : 2021-07-13 16:31 UTC (6 hours ago)
| captainmisery wrote:
| 2 typos on the frontpage:
|
| - Spreadsheet should be spreadsheets
|
| - Quickly onboard your people on any devices. Should be device.
|
| I don't like the term "your people". They are not your people.
| TomNguy wrote:
| Many thanks, we're going to update that right away!
| qloo wrote:
| How does this compare to Officely?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| A few comments
|
| > Our mobile and web app shows you who's at the office, how many
| seats are available, and who's working from another location. You
| are invited to set your status for the current week and next week
| (10 days of visibility) and it's done in 10 clicks. You decide
| where to work from based on who's where.
|
| If I say I'm working from home this week but decide to go to the
| office one day, can Cafe correct my status?
|
| Also, can it auto-book conference rooms based on the number of
| participants whose location is known?
|
| Is there a way to set status as "away" or "vacation time"?
|
| Other than that, looks good!
| mrkurt wrote:
| This is super interesting and I have an immediate feature
| request. If we could use this to coordinate travel we'd be all
| over it. We're geographically disbursed and getting people
| together in the same city is valuable, but a pain.
| TomNguy wrote:
| We're actually working on a 2 dimensions Map (localization and
| time) so you can view who's going to be in which city in the
| future.
|
| That map will meet another feature (Events) where people can
| create an Event at a specific location (in or out the office)
| and specific date!
|
| Would love to send you some screenshots of how it looks to see
| if it would answer your pain
| mrkurt wrote:
| Yes feel free (kurt at fly dot io)! But low priority, we have
| to solve "how to actually get flights and things booked" too.
| neither_color wrote:
| Not OP but this has helped me a lot in choosing next
| destinations
|
| https://borderless.safetywing.com
| TomNguy wrote:
| Will do that, thanks for the feedback Kurt :)
| mettamage wrote:
| My thoughts / feedback:
|
| Maybe it's because I'm Dutch, but we use the English cally.com or
| the Dutch datumprikker.nl for these type of situations. To be
| fair, it's more a generalized version of "I want to pick a date
| with a group, but when can everyone be there?"
|
| It's not as specific as the idea presented here. So I find it
| interesting to compare. I'm immediately noticing that the UI/UX
| helps to solve this problem. What would I'd like to see is a
| quick video with the happy path of user stories, so I can see how
| it works. Though perhaps that's better, because now I feel the
| need to create an account in order to see how it works.
| TomNguy wrote:
| Here's a quick video (1min) :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSOGPCXSIB8
|
| And a longer video (3min) :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSQu3e0LzzA
| dabeeeenster wrote:
| Getting invalid client_id when connecting with Slack
| TomNguy wrote:
| Not cool. Can you ping us on our Livechat or through contact at
| at.cafe so we can help you solve this?
| ianlevesque wrote:
| Super cool! Have you considered also being able to avoid specific
| people? I don't mean this antisocially, but more for sharing a
| desk or parking.
| pimlottc wrote:
| First impressions from the landing page: it took me a while to
| realize what the product was. It's basically a real-time location
| status dashboard for hybrid and remote teams? With an admin side
| that lets you set policies for remote schedules?
|
| The initial messaging wasn't super clear and it takes a while to
| get specific:
|
| > Figure out where to work from.
|
| Okay, it's a tool to find remote working spaces? Like cafes and
| coworking spaces?
|
| > A simple and flexible tool for hybrid teams.
|
| Okay, it's a tool, but what does it do?
|
| > Essential to your hybrid workforce
|
| Puffery, still vague.
|
| > Spreadsheet aren't a suitable solution for organizations. Cafe
| was designed as a foundational tool for any hybrid team.
|
| Spreadsheets? What spreadsheets are we talking about? And more
| vague and flowery words about how great it is.
|
| > Help people decide where they work from.
|
| > [diagram of two working spaces with user avatars]
|
| Okay, again sounds like it's going to help me find working
| spaces?
|
| > Engaging & simple to use
|
| I get it, the tool is awesome and easy to use...
|
| > Set your schedule in seconds and see who's where today and in
| the future.
|
| Ahhhh, okay, so this about sharing information about where people
| are. And the way I used it is by setting my own schedule.
| avree wrote:
| Lol, thanks for this comment, I glanced at this and thought it
| was a search engine for finding remote working spaces (like
| coffee shops).
|
| The header is literally "Figure out where to work from." but
| it's really "Decide if you want to work from home", as far as I
| understand.
| handrous wrote:
| "An easy[0] way for hybrid teams to see who's going to work
| where, to better coordinate shared work and foster team
| interaction"
|
| [0] "delightful", "charming", substitute to one's taste for
| startupy-language.
|
| [edit] improved significantly.
| TomNguy wrote:
| Wow, thanks for the details in your feedback.
|
| We'll rework the wording & landing page based on all the
| feedback, it's awesome, thanks again!
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| We have a simple way of doing this for our one office of about 70
| people. A message to slack the day before asking if you'll be at
| the office the next fag and a hand up emoji if you're going to be
| there.
|
| The main problem with this is people forgetting to do it or not
| paying attention to it. There have been a few days I've gone in
| to find far more people than I'm comfortable with. How do you
| solve this problem?
| TomNguy wrote:
| Every admin can set the max office capacity (nb of seats) and
| when reaching that limit, people need to double confirm they
| want to go to the office while there's an over capacity.
|
| If there's an over capacity, we give the information to
| everyone (users & admins) and let admins resolve this conflict
| with a dataset of info (like the position in the queue or the
| teams)
|
| In your case, if people don't pay attention to the "booking
| system" then they can't complain about not getting access to
| your office though
| Raed667 wrote:
| I built an internal app for my company that is a less polished
| version of this.
|
| My most liked feature was an interactive seating map of the
| office. So you can be assured that your desk won't be surrounded.
|
| Glad to have some validation and see someone take this concept
| and make a product out of it. Best of luck!
| TomNguy wrote:
| We've also talked to someone from Sqreen (acquired by Datadog)
| who did the same, a simple app for internal purposes
|
| Would love to have your feedback & impression on the product if
| you're down for a quick call
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Monitor your hybrid policy
|
| A lot of us would rather HR have to march around and guess at
| this :)
|
| That being said, this would do a lot better job than BambooHR,
| which is the current tool we are using for this.
| TomNguy wrote:
| BambooHR is great for holidays, that's why we're integrating
| with them to get paid-leaves from people and sync them directly
| in Cafe. It's easier and it makes the data live within Slack
| benguild wrote:
| Reminds me of our Cafe Wifi project
| https://benguild.com/contents/#Caf%C3%A9%20Wifi
| Kaze404 wrote:
| That sounds like an incredibly useful platform. Why was it
| discontinued, if you don't mind sharing? Is there anything like
| it that's still active?
| dlx wrote:
| +1 on this. I would definitely use something like this if it
| was still around. I'd also love to know why you discontinued
| it as I was toying with this same idea a few months ago...
| prakhar897 wrote:
| How will you convert this to a billion dollar company. From my
| perspective you could never have a better lockin than slack.
| Because all employees use slack and when they roll out this
| product as a feature then you will have a difficult time
| convincing others that they should use a separate app for
| communicating their work location.
| TomNguy wrote:
| We only use Slack as a display channel because our value is in
| the agenda visibility.
|
| If Slack rolls out a "work location status" it'll be mostly for
| the "right now" moment (like our integration) and if they plan
| to extend this feature in an agenda, it'll be very difficult to
| make it exist within all the other features that are for "live
| communication"
| landemva wrote:
| For traditional companies, this functionality in MS Office
| calendar could be useful. Then sell subscription to 100+ person
| companies.
|
| My approach was to make my MS Office calendar fully visible to my
| boss. Communication via documentation of my calendar.
| TomNguy wrote:
| We're adding the MS Office Calendar integration this week!
| Companies we're serving are starting at 100 people, you're 100%
| right!
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Looks like a cute app, but why are you taking VC money? By my
| napkin math, for this to be a billion dollar company, you need at
| least 3 million paying MAU.
| mrkurt wrote:
| If you can get seed funding in 2021, it's almost silly not to
| take it. Especially if you're building a self service, pay per
| user business.
| f6v wrote:
| > but why are you taking VC money
|
| I heard money is cheap and abundant, so people take it. I can
| relate, it gives you confidence. And let's be honest, without a
| "big vision" and VC money this is just a $2k MRR business.
| TomNguy wrote:
| Because we want that big vison to become true where there's a
| dedicated tool for hybrid teams that's employee-first.
| Improving Social Relationships between people in a company is
| no easy thing! Hopefully and with our team's hard work it'll
| be a big thing
| TomNguy wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| We want to build the hybrid tool that's improving Culture and
| Socialization through companies, not just a quick feature like
| Slack statuses
| kkotak wrote:
| Ok.
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Are you questioning whether the total addressable market for
| this is 3 million MAU?
|
| Is that really outside of the realm of possibility if they
| become absolute leaders in this space and entrench themselves
| in a quasi-monopoly?
| handrous wrote:
| God, I'm so bad at judging business ideas. I read the post
| and was like "how is this a _product_ of any kind? " and here
| in the comments it's seen as plausibly a billion-dollar
| company.
|
| Maybe I should reconsider some of my ideas that end up at
| "oh, wait, that's just a shared calendar, and those exist for
| free with no more set-up than my idea would require, and I
| can't even be bothered to use that to solve this problem, so
| why would anyone pay for it" or "oh, but that's just a blog
| with an RSS feed, and those exist for free [et c.]", or
| "that's just a mailing list, but now you need to log in to
| something else to use it, which makes it worse than a mailing
| list", and so on.
|
| Or all the times people tell me their brilliant idea for "an
| app" to serve some particular market they have insight into
| (say, it's their job), that'll make "a ton of money" and I
| search the store and there are 20 solutions for _exactly_
| what they want, that they just haven 't bothered to even look
| for, let alone considered paying money for. Maybe those are
| still good ideas, somehow.
| pm90 wrote:
| Even if products exist that try to solve the same problem,
| the UX is unlikely to be exactly the same. Tools like this
| one are meant to be engaging; the backend is maybe not that
| unique or interesting.
| TomNguy wrote:
| UX and engagement is everything in our case.
|
| The value brought by the product is only based on the
| Visibility provided by people and Usage/Habits they have
| with it.
| TomNguy wrote:
| We've been told many times that we were just a feature.
| Didn't stopped us from building our product, get 1000+
| companies onboard and moving closer to profitability
| everyday!
|
| The market looks simple, as the solution, but the problem
| is huge. You can have 3 days of remote per day, meaning you
| can not see one of your teammate for a lifetime if you
| don't coordinate.
|
| We're going to see each other less but we don't want to
| stop seeing each other. The creativity and brainstorming
| sessions can't happen through zooms calls, most people need
| to do it in person.
|
| Can't wait to see how 2022 will look like though!
| handrous wrote:
| Oh, sorry, I _really_ didn 't mean that as a passive-
| aggressive attack on your idea. I'm so often-wrong about
| what is and isn't viable that clearly _I 'm_ the one with
| a problem, and I sincerely wish you good fortune.
| TomNguy wrote:
| No worry, didn't take it as an aggressive attack :)
|
| Thanks for all the good vibes and feedback though!
| Fraaaank wrote:
| > "Help your team, set your status"
|
| Not being able to skip this step is incredibly confusing and
| annoying
| TomNguy wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! We'll find a better way to make this
| step optional
| [deleted]
| quadcore wrote:
| _we look forward reading all your feedbacks_
|
| Let me propose my humble (and free) help for the anglish: zero
| sept sixsixsix 809 65, Ill send you my email address by sms /
| whatsapp.
| TomNguy wrote:
| Thx for the help :)
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