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Launch HN: Station (YC W18) – One place for all your web apps

107 points by jberthom 8y ago

Hi HN, We're Alex and Julien, the founders of Station (https://getstation.com/ https://getstation.com/). Our free desktop app unifies all your work applications in one neat interface. Think of it as an efficient workspace for all your web tools. We've always had a love / hate relationship with our browser: it's been our main work environment for the last 6 years but we keep struggling to stay focused and never found an efficient technique that would fix my natural impulse to open a new tab and get distracted. After trying quite a few methods (Pomodoro, White noise, Do Not Disturb, ...) & tools (Franz, Toby, Rambox, OneTab, etc.), we came to the conclusion that distraction is a core-design issue in modern browsers that can't be solved with cosmetic changes or simple hacks. If you look at the very first Chrome interface (released 10 years ago!) you'll notice that it isn't significantly different from today's v69. What has dramatically changed is the number of working hours you spend in it. That's why we built Station: it's a SaaS focused, distraction-free platform (600+ apps) that's not meant for browsing but solely for working with web apps. This translates in the first features we shipped: a "Quick-Switch" (a la Alfred) that allows you to quickly change page without losing focus, a "Smart Dock" that segments your workspace by automatically linking all pages to an app, a "Focus Mode" that kills all notifications with 1 click and an "Autosleep" (a la The Great Suspender) that intelligently unloads unused apps from your computer's memory. We realize we still have a long way to go to offer the delightful experience we aim for, but we're committed to it. There are quite a few technical challenges, the main one being pushing the Electron framework to its limits: copy/pasting is sometimes erratic, CPU load can spike, embedded Chrome is constantly obsolete, support of extensions is experimental, multi-window is a bit laggy, and I could go on and on :) We won PH's Product of the Year award last year (https://www.producthunt.com/posts/station-3 https://www.producthunt.com/posts/station-3) which led to a huge boost in active users. This comes with increased pressure to ship features and kill bugs: the community-fed roadmap (https://community.getstation.com/ https://community.getstation.com/) is completely crammed but our team of 8 is truly grateful for the user feedback we've been getting. It's been really precious, both motivation and product-wise. This is just the beginning. Our vision is to build an entire operating system for SaaS applications. We want to provide a platform so 3rd party developers can build new features on top of existing web apps, offering users a more native and integrated experience across all of their work tools. Ultimately, anyone using web apps at work would find value in using Station. We're really excited to get your insights on what we're building. On average, our users are active 5h per day in the app: we hope you find it nearly as useful! PS. You can download the app here: https://getstation.com https://getstation.com. It's available for free on Mac, Windows and Linux.

UltimateFloofy 8y ago
I know this seems petty, but I cannot see "Get Station" as the url. I continually read "gestation.com", which doesn't have quite the same connotation.
- jberthom 8y ago
  haha indeed, that's actually an inside joke in the team :) It's a provisory domain name and we should have a shorter one soon.
FreezerburnV 8y ago
I quickly scrolled through the list of supported “apps”, and one of them is Reddit. Doesn’t that kind of go against the “don’t be distracted” idea of Station if something supported as a first class citizen is a distraction site? Also is it possible to add custom sites to Station? Like if I have an internal tool at work, which can’t be supported by Station at large due to it being custom for my job. And does it support stuff only available on an internal work network? Eg: even if JIRA is supported, if my work has an on premises deployment of it I wouldn’t be able to use the JIRA app if I can’t point to that instance. EDIT: otherwise I think the idea is interesting. Considering I basically put my life into workflowy, having a nice wrapper around it sounds pretty great. Among the other sites I use.
- jberthom 8y ago
  Very good points. We discussed a lot internally before adding content websites like Reddit. There are 2 reasons why we decided to add them in the end. First some people actually use such sites for work (they look up for information they need for work). Second, we offer a "Disable Notifications" option so you can avoid receiving notifications from all or specific apps hence giving you control over what can capture your attention or not. Yes since recently you can add custom sites to Station. Simply go to the app store in the Station app and click on the "+" button on the bottom right. You will be able to request a custom app (available either just for yourself or your entire team). Look forward to your feedbacks as you test the app!
8y ago

107 points by jberthom 8y ago

UltimateFloofy 8y ago

I know this seems petty, but I cannot see "Get Station" as the url. I continually read "gestation.com", which doesn't have quite the same connotation.

jberthom 8y ago
haha indeed, that's actually an inside joke in the team :) It's a provisory domain name and we should have a shorter one soon.

FreezerburnV 8y ago

I quickly scrolled through the list of supported “apps”, and one of them is Reddit. Doesn’t that kind of go against the “don’t be distracted” idea of Station if something supported as a first class citizen is a distraction site? Also is it possible to add custom sites to Station? Like if I have an internal tool at work, which can’t be supported by Station at large due to it being custom for my job. And does it support stuff only available on an internal work network? Eg: even if JIRA is supported, if my work has an on premises deployment of it I wouldn’t be able to use the JIRA app if I can’t point to that instance. EDIT: otherwise I think the idea is interesting. Considering I basically put my life into workflowy, having a nice wrapper around it sounds pretty great. Among the other sites I use.

jberthom 8y ago
Very good points. We discussed a lot internally before adding content websites like Reddit. There are 2 reasons why we decided to add them in the end. First some people actually use such sites for work (they look up for information they need for work). Second, we offer a "Disable Notifications" option so you can avoid receiving notifications from all or specific apps hence giving you control over what can capture your attention or not. Yes since recently you can add custom sites to Station. Simply go to the app store in the Station app and click on the "+" button on the bottom right. You will be able to request a custom app (available either just for yourself or your entire team). Look forward to your feedbacks as you test the app!

8y ago