[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Hypercontext (YC S21) - Meeting notes, ac...
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Launch HN: Hypercontext (YC S21) - Meeting notes, actions, and OKRs
in one app
Hi HN, we're Brennan and Graham, founders of Hypercontext
(https://hypercontext.com). We make an app that helps managers run
their 1:1 and team meetings with action items, feedback, and OKRs
(goals) in one workflow. Most managers get promoted into their
role with no training. "Oh you're a good engineer? Great! Now
manage a team of engineers and stop coding". They're largely
leading with trial-and-error tactics. The good ones are reflective
and learn, and many eventually read books on best practices and
frameworks that can help them. Our insight is that it's possible to
build some of these good frameworks into a workflow so every
manager can get them by default, similarly to how a good software
framework lets you not have to hand-roll all the boilerplate code,
so you can focus on the business logic. We think it's time managers
stop winging it (worst case) or hand rolling their management
frameworks (best case) in Google Docs and Moleskin notebooks and
start importing frameworks that solve the basics for them.
Previously, Graham and I have been co-founders for 10 years
together. Our last startup grew to ~40 employees. When we became
full-time managers we were shocked at the lack of tooling that
existed for general management work. This was where the idea for
Hypercontext came from. We started building tools and systems to
help us fill the gaps (mainly in Google Sheets/Docs/Forms). We
shared them with friends and they were loved. Personally, I
stumbled through management in my first startup. I didn't talk
about goals. I didn't share candid feedback. I wasn't clear or
consistent. I thought I knew how to do other people's jobs. I
learned the hard way every single time. And so did all of my peers.
The only way to save a fellow manager from that pain was by sharing
personal tips or recommending books. We thought there must be a
better way. Hypercontext starts before the meeting: connecting to
your existing meetings and helping you and your team build a
collaborative agenda and show up prepared. During the meeting,
often overlayed on a Google Meet: we help you take notes and action
items, and email them out automatically for you. After: ML runs
over your notes and generates insights about management blindspots.
We then suggest questions/conversation starters for your next
meeting to help to resolve them. Finally, we've built a powerful
goaling tool, complete with the largest library of goal/OKR
examples on the internet (free here, broken up by role:
https://hypercontext.com/goal-examples), that helps you
collaborate, document, and discuss long-term goals every meeting
before the urgent agenda topic. Founders, CEOs, execs use our app
all week to manage their job--mainly through their 1:1 and team
meetings. We're specifically helpful for folks who are doing a lot
of context switching throughout their day and need to offload the
"remember to talk to people about this" part of their brain.
Author : brennanm
Score : 94 points
Date : 2021-07-19 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
| sgpl wrote:
| Looks pretty neat. Good luck to you guys!
| grahammc wrote:
| Thanks! We appreciate the support!
| some_thoughts wrote:
| This looks really clean, congrats!
|
| But also from my end, this leaves me pretty unmotivated. I've
| been working on an mvp to launch my own startup the past month,
| and today I find out it already exists in your product.
| volkk wrote:
| as a new manager, had the same exact idea and found a few
| companies in this space[0][1] (and now this one too)
|
| ultimately decided there's just too many competitors. my only
| gripe with all of these is that they're heavily subscription
| based/pay to use monthly, etc. i want something more personal
| that i can just purchase for like $10-20 (more like an app on
| my mac that i can just use forever)
|
| my other gripe is that i don't want to have to onboard my
| entire team onto it. i want to only use it myself as like a
| reference guide for the health gauge of my team. i dont need
| them all inputting their OKRs into these products
|
| [0] https://www.15five.com/
|
| [1] https://www.small-improvements.com/
| brennanm wrote:
| We have a small team starter plan that's $5 total for your
| first 5 users.
|
| Also, we'll only charge you for additional users if you a)
| invite them and b) they sign in and become active.
|
| So definitely can stay at $5/m and use it as a personal tool
| for as long as you want to. It's on the product to convince
| you your life can be significantly easier through inviting
| people, not me
| sweetheart wrote:
| This is, if anything, a good sign for your project. It means
| the idea is _somewhat_ validated by YCom. That's far better
| than doing something that isn't validated at all!
| brennanm wrote:
| Don't let us discourage you. There is room for multiple
| companies in any space worth building a startup in.
|
| Happy to build this space with you, together. Competition is
| good for customers and ultimately that's who I'm serving.
|
| Email me brennan at hypercontext.com and I'd be happy to
| collaborate.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Feedback on initial workflow:
|
| 1. Used sign in with Google
|
| 2. Immediately presented with calendar read/write permissions,
| declined.
|
| 3. Went back and signed up via email.
|
| 4. Was told that an org already exists but no details (did I make
| it earlier? Can't tell.)
|
| 5. Told 13 days of trial remaining (was an org created yesterday
| or does it just round down to 13 as soon as one second has
| passed?)
|
| 6. Only one active user, me.
|
| 7. Create workspace is grayed out and can't see how to actually
| create any content in the app (does it need calendars connected
| first?)
|
| It's promising in concept. Posting this in hopes it'll help, not
| just to complain. I'll ask for a trial reset in a few days,
| assuming I really was the first user to create our org so have
| that ability.
| grahammc wrote:
| Ooo.. that's a clear edge case we should have caught. Thanks
| for the detailed documentation on the failed onboarding flow.
| We'll fix it!
| brennanm wrote:
| You're doing gods works here. Thanks so much. Please do ask for
| a reset when you get the chance and/or email me directly
| brennan at hypercontext.com would love more feedback like this
| ushakov wrote:
| YC seems to have a crush on meeting-focused products this year
|
| - Hera: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27771091
|
| - Superpowered: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26425318
| brennanm wrote:
| In my head, Hera is more of a merge of something like apple
| reminders and apple notes. More of a single-player experience
| for productivity.
|
| Superpowered has a bunch of similar concepts - however their
| launch claims that meeting events won't be the focus forever.
| Moving to github and slack soon. So we'll see.
|
| There are a couple others in the batch that will be launching
| soon that are loosely competitive.
|
| I think it's part of a broader recognition that people who
| "live out of their calendars" weren't having an easy 2020.
|
| For what it's worth, we think meetings are the means to the end
| not the end, not the end itself.
| whymauri wrote:
| I mean, there was a pandemic. Seems like a good time to build
| technological solutions for management-oriented use cases.
| jasonvorhe wrote:
| Looked at the screenshots of the Android app and from the looks
| of it it's just another React native app that looks completely
| non-native and weird. Hamburger menu, three dot menu, tabs that
| look like iOS and then there's this odd checkmark in the upper
| right corner. No traces of material design, no floating action
| button, icons that would fit a quiz game. I'm not going to use
| this.
|
| Also: Why would I want another tool to keep track of tasks? I can
| assign tasks via $issuetracker, Google Docs, gtmhub and probably
| a couple of other tools my employer is using.
|
| I'll see how far a Google Doc per direct report will carry me.
| brennanm wrote:
| All good man. Enjoy google docs
| skizm wrote:
| > Most managers get promoted into their role with no training.
| "Oh you're a good engineer? Great! Now manage a team of engineers
| and stop coding"
|
| Also known as the Peter Principle.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
| brennanm wrote:
| For the folks who don't want to click-> "[Peter Principle]
| observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their
| 'maximum level of incompetence': employees are promoted based
| on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at
| which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not
| necessarily translate to another."
|
| ---
|
| I agree. However, the average new manager goes 10yrs into their
| role before they get _any_ training. So I'm not sure if they're
| at fault here or if they've been setup to fail.
|
| I'm sure most workers would be considered incompetent if they
| were put into roles where they had no experience or training.
|
| Just takes a lot of trail and error to learn.
| groby_b wrote:
| I'm torn on these apps - they are an absolute godsend for new
| managers (because the usual practice, as you note, is "sink or
| swim" with bonus sharks thrown in for free). But they can become
| an issue later on, because they are trying to mediate a human
| interaction through an app.
|
| Given that most managers are relatively new, I'm still hoping you
| have vast success :)
|
| But there's also a key bit of feedback in there - you might want
| to ensure there's a good solo experience in there, too. That will
| also help you get into entrenched IT departments at large
| companies - you might not get the sale to the whole company off
| the bat, but you can capture key internal voices (if they can run
| your app without security concerns and off the corporate network)
|
| Either way, good luck. Managers deserve all the support they can
| get, and engineers deserve better management.
| brennanm wrote:
| I 100% hear you here. Meetings are inherently pretty viral, so
| stopping the multiplayer is actually quite hard. We've had to
| manage it in app fairly deliberately as user growth can happen
| too quickly and customers can get frustrated.
|
| The main value for experienced managers is a) the ability to
| offload the mental energy of remembering to bring something up
| in a meeting, b) the sheer volume of direct reports that need
| to becared for, and for organizers c) some of the best practice
| busy work that accumulates value over time (eg: sending notes
| after the meeting). Actually have quite a few CEOs who have
| adopted
|
| My only nit is we don't want to mediate a human interaction in
| app. Instead we want to encourage human interaction by removing
| as much of the the non-human interaction as we can.
| grahammc wrote:
| HN! We're happy to answer questions in the chat
| bcjordan wrote:
| Love the goal examples library! Fun to read through. I'm curious,
| how long you both have been working on this? Impressed there's so
| much there already!
| h5amin wrote:
| Ahh thanks! To build the initial library, which sat at ~180
| goals, it took us about 2 months. A lot of the goals were
| crowd-sourced/submitted by experts and high performers within
| specific roles!
|
| Since then, we've been slowly adding to the library, from new
| roles to new goals for existing roles and it's currently
| sitting at about 230 goals. If there are any roles that you
| think we're missing, we're all ears!
| brennanm wrote:
| We launched the goals library Sept last year and it's been
| growing slowly ever since. Still more to do on it (and other
| large/free/helpful resources like our template library
| https://hypercontext.com/agenda-templates)
|
| Most of the initial goals were contributed by our network so it
| was built pretty quickly.
| nicwest wrote:
| your website appears to have a bunch of meta data on it from
| something called soapbox. If I link to your website in slack it
| comes up with a "That looks like a Soapbox link. Would you like
| to install the Soapbox app" message. I assume a recent-ish
| rebrand?
|
| What was the thought process there?
| brennanm wrote:
| Spotted - Yeah we rebranded from Soapbox about 30 days ago.
|
| https://hypercontext.com/blog/news/soapbox-rebrand-hypercont...
| h5amin wrote:
| YAY! Excited to launch on HN. Happy to answer any questions from
| the marketing side of things. :)
| bromilio wrote:
| "oh you're good at X? Bet, go manage a team Xers" This so much.
| THIS SO MUCH THIS.
| brennanm wrote:
| We've disguising a career change as a promotion since 0 BC
| tchalla wrote:
| Great app!
|
| > Most managers get promoted into their role with no training.
| "Oh you're a good engineer? Great! Now manage a team of engineers
| and stop coding".
|
| I wish this was true. Well, these days people want Engineering
| Managers to code and manage plus also on the side win a Nobel
| Prize.
| brennanm wrote:
| Job Specs: - Manage 10 people - Code fixes in between meetings
| - Learn new technical concepts after hours - Management
| books/podcasts while you sleep - Nobel prize on PTO
|
| Views on "stop coding" have been changing.
| https://randsinrepose.com/archives/technicality/
| dzonga wrote:
| Feedback: Looks like a cool product. But from a design
| standpoint, have all SV / YC companies run out of creative
| designer juice ? let's say I randomly landed on your site, and
| there's 1000s that look similar, I can't really follow the
| message you're sending. because my brain, will take a shortcut.
| since it's something it has seen countless of times.
| aleruperti wrote:
| Literally used your product this afternoon in a meeting with my
| team -- overall had a great experience!
| brennanm wrote:
| Amazing. Would love as much feedback as you can muster if you
| want to send it my way: brennan @ hypercontext.com
| bachonk wrote:
| This looks pretty great, will definitely take a deeper dive. I
| manage most of this today through a series of shared google docs
| attached to calendar invites, but this should be less clugey.
|
| Regarding shared meeting notes, I think the killer feature that
| would make gdocs obsolete is auto-suggesting canceling a 1on1 or
| other meeting if there are no items to discuss. This removes the
| awkward "Hey do you still want to chat?" conversations and makes
| it a blameless way to get time back.
| brennanm wrote:
| We've looked at that and found it's been more beneficial for
| folks to use one or two of our canned conversation starters to
| uncover something they wouldn't have otherwise talked about.
|
| Definitely something I think about though.
| khaledh wrote:
| Looks a bit similar to Fellow.app (https://fellow.app), but I'm
| glad there's more choices/competition in this space (good for
| innovation and for users). Congrats on the launch!
| brennanm wrote:
| Yup - definitely have been competitive with them for a while
| now. Great for innovation in the space for sure.
|
| They're a bit more "sell to HR" focused and we're more "biuld
| for the end user" focused - eg: They don't have goals but do
| have workplace analytics
| nduncan_hmc wrote:
| Hi Brennan, I'm the co-founder of a similar startup
| (WorkPatterns) and it's great to see another startup in this
| space pop up on HN! The idea of investing in a library of goal
| templates is really smart, there's alot of knowledge contained
| within these templates about how to do your job. One of the
| issues we've had with our own goals feature is that it takes a
| decent amount of mental energy to actually come up with the goals
| and this looks like a great solution to that.
|
| It looks like you guys have some ML in the product already so
| have you ever thought about using it to generate suggestions for
| writing goals? We've been doing this to generate suggestions for
| phrasing constructive feedback, and the suggestions are
| surprisingly good.
| brennanm wrote:
| Noah! Thanks for commenting.
|
| Re - ML on feedback: Customers/users haven't taken us there,
| yet, anyways.
|
| Would love to jam more, if you're open to it? brennan at
| hypercontext.com?
| akcreek wrote:
| Curious what the thinking is with the steep volume discounts? It
| is cheaper to have 251 users than it is to have any number
| between 41 and 250.
|
| You run into some weird pricing this way. For example, 250 users
| on the pro plan is $1,000/mo while 251 is $220.88.
| brennanm wrote:
| It's volume pricing for users above that threashold, if that
| makes sense.
|
| So, the first 100 users are $5.60/u/m or $560/m, if annual (to
| keep numbers consistent).
|
| 101 users would be $564/m as only the 101st user would be $4/m
| on the annual plan.
|
| We stole this model from jira.
| akcreek wrote:
| Gotcha, so the lower pricing applies to the incremental
| users. I didn't get that from reviewing the pricing page.
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