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Launch HN: Zynq (YC W20) – Book meetings instantly with your team
Zerzar & David here from Zynq - we built a calendar extension for Google Calendar to help you easily book meetings with your colleagues, even if they are spread across timezones. You can check it out here: https://zynq.io/remote https://zynq.io/remote
Both of us worked on G Suite and quit last year because we felt enterprise calendars really needed an upgrade and they weren’t a strategic priority for Google/Microsoft. As a product manager, I spent a bunch of time organizing meetings and moving them around which was probably the least valuable thing I could have been doing. David, as an engineer, would frequently get interrupted by meetings people would schedule in the middle of his day when he was trying to get work done.
We built Zynq to make scheduling intuitive: just tell us who you want to meet & how long you want your meeting to be and we’ll find the best time that works for everyone. Our algorithm looks for open slots during work hours where everyone is free in their timezone & not out for lunch. We rank these slots via a scoring algorithm which prioritizes focus time for everyone invited & picks the top slot. We then create the meeting and automatically add a Zoom/Hangouts link so you never need to set that up manually again.
We are launching this for free given the current WFH situation to help teams move faster, but we also have a separate paid product that optimizes for meeting room utilization and that’s how we make money. We don’t plan to charge for this version, but may release paid features on top in the future geared toward larger enterprises. Our goal is to build a complete end-to-end meeting solution for smart offices including meeting room tablet software, guest check-in experience, and an analytics back-end which helps plan future office space.
Our long term vision is to automate away the many boring tasks you do at work so you can focus on the creative aspects of your job. We hope this is a step in that direction - please let us know your honest feedback and how we can improve!
- rjsw 6y agoWhich HDL do you use ?
- raymondgh 6y agoLooks nice. The hardest part about scheduling meetings as a project manager in my org is when there's no timeslot available for everyone needed for a meeting. I have to check each of their schedules and weigh the importance of their attendance vs my guess of the importance/reschedulability of their conflict in order to decide who will need to reschedule/cancel/skip something. Sometimes this is simply a "do not book/focus time" block which (depressingly) works out best. It looks like Zynq currently works based on the "available" slots on calendars, which is probably convenient for many meetings, but not really a big deal for me. Do you think any tooling/features could help address the issue I've described?
- zerzar 6y agoOne way we try to solve this problem is by prioritizing more urgent meetings (marked ASAP in our tool) and dynamically moving flexible ones around if possible to free up space. This is enabled by default on our paid version. Would that be useful to you? We don't currently book on top of existing meetings and have thought about a priority system but the challenge is keeping that updated as it would require everyone to rank thr importance of their meetings
- mr_puzzled 6y agoThe company I work for uses Outlook/teams for booking meetings and it works incredibly well. The scheduling part you talked about is almost exactly like the scheduling assistant feature in outlook and teams. Sorry if this comes across as a negative question, but what exactly does zync offer over outlook and teams which have scheduling assistant? Can you also briefly talk about your traction? Eg- no of users, growth rate and at what stage you were in before YC and currently. Good luck.
- zerzar 6y agoOur algorithm doesn't just try to find an open slot, it tries to choose a time that's most productive for everyone. This means maximizing everyone's focus time (stacking meetings as close together as possible) and in the future respecting preference as well (eg if you prefer meetings in the morning instead of the afternoon). As far as I remember, scheduling assistant still requires you to pick and time and room yourself although it gives you a view to do so more easily. We came up with this idea halfway through YC and our paid version of the product has paying 2 customers and several others in the pipeline, including some big tech companies.
- athenot 6y agoWhen I schedule a meeting with more than a few people, the number of open slots within business hours quickly converges to zero. So I have to manually make the decisions as to who is most important to have in that meeting (based on the topic), and who will be conflicting. Curious how an automated algorithm can make that decision.
- zerzar 6y agoOne way we try to solve this problem in our paid product is by prioritizing more urgent meetings (marked ASAP in our tool) and dynamically moving flexible ones (marked "This Week / Next Week / etc.") around if possible to free up space. If the meeting is scheduled manually via Outlook/GCal, we assume it is high priority and don't move it. We experimented with more complicated priority systems but ultimately that required too much work from the user
- MisterTea 6y ago> please let us know your honest feedback and how we can improve! Don't name your business after a well established product? Because as soon as I saw Zynq I thought Xilinx FPGA SoC. And many people searching for Zynq will find the same. https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html https://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon-devices/soc.html
- sheepybloke 6y ago+1! As someone who works with Zynq devices, I was thinking the exact same thing. Also, your name is the same as the product of a really large company, so it's probably easier just to change it now and not have any conflict with them later on.
- smt88 6y agoBeen in software for 20 years. Never heard of Xilinx or their Zynq product. I expect most of Zynq's intended customers will be the same.
- gramakri 6y agoXilinx are the FPGA pioneers.
- ska 6y agoThis will tend to skew with how high up the stack you've spent your career. Zynq will probably be familiar to anyone who has been dealing with SOC and FPGAs at all recently.
- crtlaltdel 6y agoim well acquainted with fpga development so recognized the name from that context. regardless of that, they will have to up their seo game if they wanna outrank...
- saagarjha 6y agoI knew about it, but I happen to have a close family member who owns Zinq-emblazoned clothing so that might skew things a bit ;)
- q3k 6y agoYou might want to consider a new name - Zynq is Xilinx's flagship family of FPGA/ARM SoCs. With Xilinx being a pretty large corporation I'd be surprised if they don't immediately try to defend their trademark.
- zerzar 6y agothanks for the heads up, noted!
- user5994461 6y agoI want to add, having worked in electronics engineering before. This will be highlighted by any people (future customers) who has worked in a hardware software company. You should really consider renaming the product. Even if you don't want do, your product is going to loose the Google game, it will never popup when people will Google "Zynq", "Zynq planning", "Zynq trial", "Zynq API", etc... and if it does, Xilinx will sue you as soon as they notice. I've worked for a startup before, whose name was systematically getting auto corrected by Google (it was too close to another word and was interpreted as a typo) and it made it really hard for people to find it even when they were specifically looking for it. In retrospective, they should have changed name. Don't do the same mistake we did. Obviously that's not the feedback you were anticipating, so sorry about that. ^^
- zerzar 6y agothank you for the feedback! we are certainly not married to the name, but simply prioritizing the product/features ahead of it currently
- nikofeyn 6y agoi am curious. do people not google their product name ahead of time before the final name to get a sense of how searchable it will be?
- joshmn 6y agoIANAL but the idea of trademarks is to avoid consumer confusion. I don't think there's much consumer confusion between the name of a SoC and a startup offering to manage your calendar. They're in completely different industries. Now if you were Dell coming out with a Zynq line, that would be a different story.
- aylons 6y agoIt took me a while to realize that this has nothing to do with FPGAs (or APAC, as they are trying to rebrand). Also, given that Zynq is not a common word, Xilinx really could hurt you bad if they want to.
- myself248 6y agoSame; HN titles are already notorious for overloading existing words, and this just exacerbates it. HN is exactly the place I'd expect to find interesting FPGA news.
- kkotak 6y agoGood deal! I think this will require people to block off times on their calendar when they don't want to do a meeting. Not all available slots in my calendar are up for grab.
- zerzar 6y agoWe let you set what times in the week you want to have meetings - no need to block off your calendar!
- kkotak 6y agoThanks @zerzar. Unfortunately this changes for me, and I'd think for others, from week to week.
- zerzar 6y agoAh I see, is the use case for things like doctors appointments vs more repeated tasks like picking up kids from school?
- kkotak 6y agoBoth, I guess. For repeated tasks, there are times when I need to take over something unexpected. Are you accounting for all calendars in the view or just the logged in account?
- zerzar 6y agoWe currently look only at the logged in account, but we have been toying with the idea of looking at both your personal & work calendar -- especially during the current WFH times. Out of curiosity, how do you currently handle the case of your calendar being open, but not being free? Do your colleagues book the meeting anyway and then you let them know that they should reschedule because you're busy?
- kkotak 6y ago
- kevindong 6y agoRe: the comments on the name 'Zynq' being used for something else already: I had never heard of the SoC company before. I'd expect most of your target customers to have never heard of them before either. Isn't what you're describing already built into Google Calendar via the 'Find a Time' tab?
- zerzar 6y agoFind a Time tries to find the most recent upcoming free slots and suggests them. We try to be smarter - by automatically picking the most productive time for everyone. This means picking a time where everyone's uninterrupted focus time is maximized and their preferences are respected (eg if you're more productive in meetings in the mornings vs afternoons)
- pronouncedjerry 6y agohow is this different than https://www.getclockwise.com/ https://www.getclockwise.com/
- M13wang 6y agoScheduling is a tough problem. In my experience with Clockwise, my focus time has increased. Best of all, I don't have to constantly spend time to get the benefits.
- zerzar 6y agoClockwise allows you to move existing meetings to maximize focus time for yourself (and possibly team if everyone is using it) We're a scheduling tool that helps you create meetings and optimize for focus time for everyone invited as well as each users' preferences.
- cathyreisenwitz 6y agoClockwise is an intelligent calendar assistant that will automatically move meetings to open up the most Focus Time for everyone. It also has a scheduler which will find the best time for a meeting automatically while respecting users' preferences. The only difference I can see from the description is the meeting priority inference, which you get with a paid plan. Clockwise is currently free.
- zerzar 6y agoSorry for the confusion - our paid product does more than just meeting priority inference, it allows you optimize meeting room utilization and is targeted to companies to help them better utilize office space. We launched this free version with a subset of features since some things (like room utilization) don't make sense for an individual. We're looking to port over more features as we get adoption & based on demand. Our priority inference also works a little differently than clockwise -- there's no step of marking meetings as flexible, that happens automatically at scheduling time based on your urgency
- alex-wallish 6y agoIf this proves to be a feature that people actually want, what would stop google/microsoft from building it directly into their calendar? How do you plan to make this product defensible?
- zerzar 6y agoOur main business is improving utilization of physical meeting spaces (via the same scheduling product) - we are building out an E2E solution including meeting room tablet SW, guest check-in experiences & real estate planning analytics. The idea is that this will more than just a scheduling tool on top of calendar but rather a full suite of products to help real estate planning & utilization. This will also allow us to gather a lot more data about office space than currently exists in G Suite / Exchange giving us a moat as well
- jayp 6y agoZerzar - this looks awesome! Right now we're a small team in the same timezone, but can definitely see value as we expand our team!
- zerzar 6y agoThanks Jay!
- thisistheend123 6y agoSorry to say this, but considering that you guys have worked at Google, Microsoft, I wonder why you had to go after such a product. With your intelligence/talent/means, you could have chosen a more challenging path. Has the bar come down so low? No wonder we don't see more Musks around.
- koolba 6y agoIsn’t this a trivial feature for Google to add to all Apps accounts? I can’t imagine the logic for picking a meeting time being that complex and “next available” is likely the right answer for most people any way. Shared calendars could easily be done by them as well for the entire GSuite ecosystem with one off “approve picking a spot” on a per meeting basis.
- zerzar 6y agoGoogle/MS can certainly add this feature (for enterprise accounts) but it would not be trivial. IME "next available" means urgent, and that was not true for 80% of my meetings at work. There were many times I booked a meeting one or two days/weeks ahead, so that I could spend X hours today/tomorrow getting something important done without interruptions or waiting for some progress to be made. The paid version of our product adds another dimension to optimization by improving room availability/utilization. Our goal is to build an E2E product suite including room tablet SW, guest check-in experience & real estate utilization analytics, which would be more of a challenge for Google/MS to trivially add to their suite. By doing this, we are also able to gather more high-fidelity data about office spaces that doesn't currently sit in G Suite or Exchange.
- indigomm 6y agoLooks like a great tool and would certainly help if it can intelligently suggest changes across calendars to facilitate meetings. One question I have is all the permissions it requires. Amongst others, it's asking me for: * View and manage the provisioning of calendar resources on your domain * See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar I've no idea why it would need the first permission there? I'm assuming the second relates to seeing co-workers calendars, and perhaps it also needs to be able to move meetings. However "permanently delete all the calendars" seems a bit over the top.
- zerzar 6y agoThanks @indigomm! The first permission is needed for us to book meeting rooms (not relevant in the current WFH environment, but historically what we have been doing) The second permission is just read & write on your calendars (since we are booking meetings on your behalf). When we request "write" access, it automatically gives us delete access and there is no way for us to turn that off unfortunately.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoSo have you talked to Xilinx yet about sharing the trademark "Zynq" ?
- ska 6y ago"just tell us who you want to meet & how long you want your meeting to be and we’ll find the best time that works for everyone." FWIW, I used to have a very competent EA and would tell them basically exactly this and they would work everything out. But the amount of effort and intelligence (and phone calls) that went into that behind the scenes was, er, significant.
- zerzar 6y agoAbsolutely, especially if it required others to move meetings around to accommodate. We've spoken to a few EAs at big tech companies that spend 3+ hours on some days doing just this and they were incredibly excited to try out the product
- ska 6y agoI bet. The tricky part here is the metadata. A good EA will know importance level of various meetings, flexibility, etc. in a way that is not typically encoded in calendars.
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoThis could be cool for recruiting, too, if it handles sequential meetings.
- zerzar 6y agoWould love to learn more about the use-case for recruiting! Are you thinking in terms of scheduling when the candidates come in / hop on the phone based on interviewer availability?
- PopeDotNinja 6y agoI'm just thinking for a series consecutive interviews. Like 3 people interview candidate over 3 hours, or whatever.
- zerzar 6y agoah got it - yeah most large companies have proprietary systems to help with that since its not a simple problem at scale. do you work in recruiting? If so, I'd love to understand the problem space more deeply in that domain!
- sivakon 6y agoHow is this different from x.ai?
- zerzar 6y agox.ai focuses on scheduling meetings with people outside your company (so there is still a manual step of choosing a time) and doesn't work great for 5+ people. We're focused on internal company meetings, and so we can automatically choose a time without any party having to pick between several available times even for a 5-10 person meeting.
- ammbo 6y agoHi guys, Ammon from x.ai here! Killer app you built, looks like it has a lot of smarts. Love the native calendar extension UX. Really slick! We just updated out user experience for 5+ users if 2 or more are not connected to x.ai and it is proving successful. However, if everyone is connected to x.ai, whether they are internal to your company or external, we find a time for everyone instantly. For internal meetings, coworkers do not need to be connected to you on x.ai. If you can see their calendar, we can see their free/busy info and we book it instantly as well. Cheers!
- statictype 6y agoLooks cool. How many enterprise users are using the Google Calendar web app for booking meetings? Is it significant enough?
- zerzar 6y agoOffice has most of the market share but there are still millions of employees using G suite to book meetings so it is a significant initial target for us. We will expand to outlook in the future
- zackbloom 6y agoThe real dream for me would be something solving the satisfiability problem of conference rooms (obviously not an issue this moment anymore). If it was possible for every meeting to have a priority the computer could figure out which meetings should be when to allow as many of us to have rooms as is possible. The current system is horribly inefficient, with the first person to book getting whatever room they happen to choose.
- zerzar 6y agoThis is exactly what our paid product does: https://zynq.io https://zynq.io :)
- floatingatoll 6y agoWill this handle the scenario of “I need to schedule a new meeting with a higher priority to me than others I’ve requested, triggering a wave of automatic rescheduling?”
- zerzar 6y agoCould you explain what you mean by higher priority to me vs others? Currently each meeting has an urgency defined by the organizer (ASAP, this week, etc) and automatic rescheduling will happen based on that. We don't currently support priorities per meeting attendee
- nickgervasi 6y ago"All our team members are certified organic and non-GMO" Love it. Congrats on the launch!
- zerzar 6y agoThanks Nick!
- throwscroogld 6y agoThink this is something that fails Paul Bucheit's infamous "why won't Google just copy you?" test.