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I'm sorry for being negative, but paying $10 per month for what is essentially a calendar widget is blowing my mind. The fact that this is even in YC and not ju

I'm sorry for being negative, but paying $10 per month for what is essentially a calendar widget is blowing my mind. The fact that this is even in YC and not just a side project is taking what's left of my brain and blowing it into the stratosphere. > We’ve only solved a small part of a bigger problem. The SaaS platforms we use for work don't work well together. It shouldn’t take cycling through ten different apps and Chrome tabs to stay on top of everything. Can someone give me an example of this problem? To me this feels so "extra"... Maybe I'm missing something.

jordandearsley 6y ago
No problem at all. Definitely does, it's a broad problem and we're still figuring it out too. As a dev, I almost always miss my GitHub notifications unless I'm constantly checking the platform in my browser. We want to bring all the platforms we use for work into one native place. Does that make more sense now?
- bombcar 6y ago
  Doesn’t MacOS already have an elaborate notification implementation? Would not integrating with that work?
  - jordandearsley 6y ago
    Many people have the notification center on Do Not Disturb indefinitely. It's noisy and unactionable for a a lot of people, including myself. We want to integrate deeply into SaaS platforms to provide one-click access to features within those platforms. For example, viewing and resolving comments on a Google Doc. This just isn't possible through Mac's notification center.
    - ftio 6y ago
      How do you prevent your platform from becoming equally noisy and unactionable?
- foobarbecue 6y ago
  > As a dev, I almost always miss my GitHub notifications Maybe I'm being dense here, but can't you use email?
- jeswin 6y ago
  > As a dev, I almost always miss my GitHub notifications unless I'm constantly checking the platform in my browser. But why would anyone be constantly checking GitHub notifications? Isn't that a distraction?
- leits 6y ago
  I am currently working on a service for GitHub project reports and analytics. Would you be interested in that? If so, leave your mail here and I'll put you in beta! https://sneak-peek.io/product/ohmycode https://sneak-peek.io/product/ohmycode
- jmarcher 6y ago
  http://ptsochantaris.github.io/trailer/ http://ptsochantaris.github.io/trailer/ is wonderful to manage GitHub work and notification.
jeremyis 6y ago
> Can someone give me an example of this problem? To me this feels so "extra"... Maybe I'm missing something. The business value of missing a notification or meeting can be really high. I feel like businesses would happily pay $10 per user-month to have all their employees on time to a meeting. Or even just closer. I imagine similar logic can be applied to other notifications.
- shakow 6y ago
  > I feel like businesses would happily pay $10 per user-month to have all their employees on time to a meeting Maybe I'm being extremely naive, but isn't it already a solved problem with synchronized & shared calendars and notifications?
  - jeremyis 6y ago
    I don’t think so because the notifications in chrome get buried for me. Email alerts for lost in the deluge of work emails. The Apple Watch helps a lot actually
    - shakow 6y ago
      Then won't notifications from this utility also get buried?
      - jasode 6y ago
        >Then won't notifications from this utility also get buried? I think the idea is that the upcoming calendar/appointment notification is live and always on the menubar. See example screenshot from their web landing page: https://superpowered.me/static/media/menubar.aaa56b48.png https://superpowered.me/static/media/menubar.aaa56b48.png I'm building a similar calendar notification tool for personal use on Windows so I understand the value of this. Calendar notifications via email and "reminders" on the iPhone are not effective for my workflow and I need something that's always active on my menu bar.
austenallred 6y ago
I pay for it. It makes my life easier and saves me time. It's not really hard to make my life $10/month better, and who knows how many people that is true for? I wouldn't overthink it.
- tannedNerd 6y ago
  Genuinely curious why not pay for fantastical? It has basically the same widget, plus an iPhone and Mac app for a 1/3 of the price? Not to be mean, but this seems like it only got traction because they got accepted to YC on another idea, otherwise would have been lost in the sea of dozens of other much more full featured or free calendar solutions?
  - austenallred 6y ago
    It's been a while since I used fantastical but I didn't like it. I don't remember why to be honest.
    - andrewmin 6y ago
      Fantastical has this feature though. It would be overkill, but you could only use it for this feature and it would be half the cost!
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
- cced 6y ago
  I bought fantastical quite a few years ago for something like $10... single payment. Still works. They have offerings for 6.99 cad a month. How many QoL are you willing to buy? You’re essentially paying $10 for a netflix subscription only it’s a calendar widget in the top menu bar.
- rsweeney21 6y ago
  For context, Austen Allred is the co-founder and CEO of Lambda School, so efficiency wins are going to be pretty valuable for him. Also, as a CEO you are constantly thinking in terms of ROI. It doesn't matter how much software costs if it pays for itself several times over. This spills over into personal purchases too. (BTW, big fan of what Lambda School is doing Austen.)
joshuakelly 6y ago
The pro-sumer market is massive. It's really not that hard to deliver $10 worth of value to people whose time is very, very expensive. As far as YC goes, pivoting and working on new ideas really rapidly is downright normal. Sometimes that looks like taking weekend hacks and seeing how far you can get with them (this one being a canonical example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819)
- forgotmysn 6y ago
  ive had friends get into YC without an idea, just two guys looking to start a company
leits 6y ago
Even more absurd is that there are free and more functional alternatives: https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar
- johnstonnorth 6y ago
  Thanks for point this out - it is amazing. Superpowered has a lot of catching up to do.
fireeyed 6y ago
YC funds widgets ? What are the economics of this thing. A thousand developers can copy or open source similar alternatives.
- leits 6y ago
  You will laugh, but a year ago I made same service in open source: https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar/ https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar/
  - nbclark 6y ago
    I love Meeting Bar. Use it every day. I really like the applescript feature. A hotkey combo pauses my music, launches zoom or meet, and I'm good to go
  - fireeyed 6y ago
    Amazing, thank you. I will be using this. They were probably "inspired" :wink by your service
qiyuxuan96 6y ago
It's just a MVP... version 0.01 of their vision. The fact that they have paying users who use them daily is a very, very good signal - that's a hard thing to do! It's so much easier to add additional features to that group of users later. I see so many negative comments and can't help but think of this (first comment on DropBox's HN launch): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
- Grustaf 6y ago
  The difference is that DropBox didn't have lots of free and better competitors.
- prepend 6y ago
  The V in MVP stands for viable. Things that aren’t viable aren’t MVPs they are steps getting to an MVP. Part of the value of testing stuff is to check and see if what I think is an MVP is, actually is. When it clearly isn’t, if I call it an MVP then I’m either insane or a marketing person. Prototypes are perfectly cool as long as expectations are met. Of course, charging $10 for a prototype doesn’t frequently work
Skhalar 6y ago
I think what you're paying for is someone to sync your calenders for you. Similar to ring camera. You're just paying someone to make your cctv camera available to you over thr internet instead of you setting it up yourself. I personally hate these services but some people would pay $/month for this convince.
patentatt 6y ago
It’s the YC model. Throw money at smart upper-class kids in good schools with some ambition. Once in a while, those kids make Dropbox or Airbnb, most of the time they make calendar widgets and leverage the experience to jump the line at some FAANG and start out their careers a decade ahead of their peers. It doesn’t make sense to you and I because it doesn’t make sense. It’s a lottery ticket for the investors. YC just games the system by buying most of the lottery tickets.
- Nextgrid 6y ago
  I understand Dropbox and Airbnb, but the long-term growth potential was clear to begin with - here, I just don't see it. It's a stupid calendar widget on a subscription. I understand the potential for future expansion, but wouldn't it make sense for YC to wait until an MVP for said expansion is released before investing in it?

jordandearsley 6y ago

No problem at all. Definitely does, it's a broad problem and we're still figuring it out too. As a dev, I almost always miss my GitHub notifications unless I'm constantly checking the platform in my browser. We want to bring all the platforms we use for work into one native place. Does that make more sense now?

bombcar 6y ago
Doesn’t MacOS already have an elaborate notification implementation? Would not integrating with that work?
- jordandearsley 6y ago
  Many people have the notification center on Do Not Disturb indefinitely. It's noisy and unactionable for a a lot of people, including myself. We want to integrate deeply into SaaS platforms to provide one-click access to features within those platforms. For example, viewing and resolving comments on a Google Doc. This just isn't possible through Mac's notification center.
  - ftio 6y ago
    How do you prevent your platform from becoming equally noisy and unactionable?
foobarbecue 6y ago
> As a dev, I almost always miss my GitHub notifications Maybe I'm being dense here, but can't you use email?
jeswin 6y ago
> As a dev, I almost always miss my GitHub notifications unless I'm constantly checking the platform in my browser. But why would anyone be constantly checking GitHub notifications? Isn't that a distraction?
leits 6y ago
I am currently working on a service for GitHub project reports and analytics. Would you be interested in that? If so, leave your mail here and I'll put you in beta! https://sneak-peek.io/product/ohmycode https://sneak-peek.io/product/ohmycode
jmarcher 6y ago
http://ptsochantaris.github.io/trailer/ http://ptsochantaris.github.io/trailer/ is wonderful to manage GitHub work and notification.

jeremyis 6y ago

> Can someone give me an example of this problem? To me this feels so "extra"... Maybe I'm missing something. The business value of missing a notification or meeting can be really high. I feel like businesses would happily pay $10 per user-month to have all their employees on time to a meeting. Or even just closer. I imagine similar logic can be applied to other notifications.

shakow 6y ago
> I feel like businesses would happily pay $10 per user-month to have all their employees on time to a meeting Maybe I'm being extremely naive, but isn't it already a solved problem with synchronized & shared calendars and notifications?
- jeremyis 6y ago
  I don’t think so because the notifications in chrome get buried for me. Email alerts for lost in the deluge of work emails. The Apple Watch helps a lot actually
  - shakow 6y ago
    Then won't notifications from this utility also get buried?
    - jasode 6y ago
      >Then won't notifications from this utility also get buried? I think the idea is that the upcoming calendar/appointment notification is live and always on the menubar. See example screenshot from their web landing page: https://superpowered.me/static/media/menubar.aaa56b48.png https://superpowered.me/static/media/menubar.aaa56b48.png I'm building a similar calendar notification tool for personal use on Windows so I understand the value of this. Calendar notifications via email and "reminders" on the iPhone are not effective for my workflow and I need something that's always active on my menu bar.

austenallred 6y ago

I pay for it. It makes my life easier and saves me time. It's not really hard to make my life $10/month better, and who knows how many people that is true for? I wouldn't overthink it.

tannedNerd 6y ago
Genuinely curious why not pay for fantastical? It has basically the same widget, plus an iPhone and Mac app for a 1/3 of the price? Not to be mean, but this seems like it only got traction because they got accepted to YC on another idea, otherwise would have been lost in the sea of dozens of other much more full featured or free calendar solutions?
- austenallred 6y ago
  It's been a while since I used fantastical but I didn't like it. I don't remember why to be honest.
  - andrewmin 6y ago
    Fantastical has this feature though. It would be overkill, but you could only use it for this feature and it would be half the cost!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
cced 6y ago
I bought fantastical quite a few years ago for something like $10... single payment. Still works. They have offerings for 6.99 cad a month. How many QoL are you willing to buy? You’re essentially paying $10 for a netflix subscription only it’s a calendar widget in the top menu bar.
rsweeney21 6y ago
For context, Austen Allred is the co-founder and CEO of Lambda School, so efficiency wins are going to be pretty valuable for him. Also, as a CEO you are constantly thinking in terms of ROI. It doesn't matter how much software costs if it pays for itself several times over. This spills over into personal purchases too. (BTW, big fan of what Lambda School is doing Austen.)

joshuakelly 6y ago

The pro-sumer market is massive. It's really not that hard to deliver $10 worth of value to people whose time is very, very expensive. As far as YC goes, pivoting and working on new ideas really rapidly is downright normal. Sometimes that looks like taking weekend hacks and seeing how far you can get with them (this one being a canonical example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9087819)

forgotmysn 6y ago
ive had friends get into YC without an idea, just two guys looking to start a company

leits 6y ago

Even more absurd is that there are free and more functional alternatives: https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar

johnstonnorth 6y ago
Thanks for point this out - it is amazing. Superpowered has a lot of catching up to do.

fireeyed 6y ago

YC funds widgets ? What are the economics of this thing. A thousand developers can copy or open source similar alternatives.

leits 6y ago
You will laugh, but a year ago I made same service in open source: https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar/ https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar/
- nbclark 6y ago
  I love Meeting Bar. Use it every day. I really like the applescript feature. A hotkey combo pauses my music, launches zoom or meet, and I'm good to go
- fireeyed 6y ago
  Amazing, thank you. I will be using this. They were probably "inspired" :wink by your service

qiyuxuan96 6y ago

It's just a MVP... version 0.01 of their vision. The fact that they have paying users who use them daily is a very, very good signal - that's a hard thing to do! It's so much easier to add additional features to that group of users later. I see so many negative comments and can't help but think of this (first comment on DropBox's HN launch): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

Grustaf 6y ago
The difference is that DropBox didn't have lots of free and better competitors.
prepend 6y ago
The V in MVP stands for viable. Things that aren’t viable aren’t MVPs they are steps getting to an MVP. Part of the value of testing stuff is to check and see if what I think is an MVP is, actually is. When it clearly isn’t, if I call it an MVP then I’m either insane or a marketing person. Prototypes are perfectly cool as long as expectations are met. Of course, charging $10 for a prototype doesn’t frequently work

Skhalar 6y ago

I think what you're paying for is someone to sync your calenders for you. Similar to ring camera. You're just paying someone to make your cctv camera available to you over thr internet instead of you setting it up yourself. I personally hate these services but some people would pay $/month for this convince.

patentatt 6y ago

It’s the YC model. Throw money at smart upper-class kids in good schools with some ambition. Once in a while, those kids make Dropbox or Airbnb, most of the time they make calendar widgets and leverage the experience to jump the line at some FAANG and start out their careers a decade ahead of their peers. It doesn’t make sense to you and I because it doesn’t make sense. It’s a lottery ticket for the investors. YC just games the system by buying most of the lottery tickets.

Nextgrid 6y ago
I understand Dropbox and Airbnb, but the long-term growth potential was clear to begin with - here, I just don't see it. It's a stupid calendar widget on a subscription. I understand the potential for future expansion, but wouldn't it make sense for YC to wait until an MVP for said expansion is released before investing in it?