I’m Jakob Knutzen, co-founder of Butter. Ask me anything! 💥

@aaronoleary Thanks so much for the lovely words! One of the core problems we're solving is lack of engagement in online meetings and sessions. The fun personality was actually an experiment in the early days which people reacted super well to! Since then we've just leaned into it - and gotten the right people on board that can build it out! (We have a lot of fun around it too 😉)

@yulia_mamonova Great question! Everything comes down to focus - we're building Butter for a very specific use case: workshops and trainings. The giants are almost per definition generalist tools. That's how all Davids win against Goliaths And nope - never doubted that! Going up against giants is often easier than against a red field of startups!

@kevin_t_ Good question! It's honestly always tough - my two cofounders were both people I'd worked with before, so knew them very well (and knew how it was to work with them!). That helped a lot for myself - but can't speak in general on that :-)

@ieraj Great question! I think video conferencing as a game is changing. Being a video conferencing tool is not enough anymore - that's just a utility. You need to solve a specific use case - and deeply so. Butter is a synchronous collaboration tool - starting with solving the most complex types of sync collab: Trainings and workshops. Video is a key component of that. But who knows where that might head in the future - one cannot be tied to a medium if one is solving such a big problem!

@jakob_knutzen1 great point, thanks for the insights! Agreed, on the synchronous collaboration tool part! I've done some pieces of training online in the past in which navigating between Zoom and Miro/Mural/Lucidspark was both tedious and time-consuming (new links, new tabs, etc.), hindering the training flow and causing extra confusion for people.

@kovid_batra Haha, we'll see if we know how to! But overall two things: A) Community and B) Content A) Rally your community around the launch and make them excited B) Make awesome content (video etc.) that make the product exciting for new users

@kovid_batra Hope it's helpful! I actually recorded this 6 months ago for a PH event - might also contain some goodies! https://www.loom.com/share/53764...

@jakob_knutzen1 this helps. Also, do you have access to PH support groups like these. https://docs.google.com/spreadsh... If you would like to use this you can use this and share if you have access to any.

@paul_vanzandt Super interesting question! I think whiteboards is becoming a very crowded market, so I'd probably look at some VERY specific use case. Some part of the market that likes Miro/Mural or any of the other "generalist" whiteboards but feel frustrated that they don't do X. Haha, that's the best I can do for recommendations! Just be SUPER specific on TA and use case!

@jakob_knutzen1 Thanks for the advice, Jakob! At Fresco, we're trying to take inspiration from how you handle usability and engagement to make whiteboarding less of a slog. Good luck on the launch tomorrow!

@paul_vanzandt Appreciate it, Paul! And best of luck with Fresco - sounds exciting! Counting on your support tomorrow too 😉

@varunvarma91 Great question! As mentioned to @richard_gao2 : Social media (organic), community building - and launches (like PH) + relying heavily on word-of-mouth plus product growth loops!

@cederlund Haha thanks for the nice words - glad to hear you like Butter (and butter too?). 1. Hmm, I'd say we're seeing a consolidation for sure. The hype of the covid era is for sure gone. We're seeing two types of companies now: A) The incumbents (Zoom, Meet, Teams) B) The vertical challengers (e.g. Butter) Many of the unfocused companies in terms of use cases didn't survive. We've also seen quite a few acquisitions (e.g. mmhmm acquiring Macro, Miro acquiring Around). 2. Overseas is a broad definition :D But I'd definitely say that hiring low-cost labour to help with manual tasks make a ton of sense. Have done that in the past too! Love the questions! Jakob

@jakob_knutzen1 yes, I do like butter too ;) interesting! thanks for the answers. did not know Around was acquired by Miro. a follow-up question :) what are your plans for Butter moving forward given the consolidation you are talking about?

@jakob_knutzen1 just saw Butter 2.0 launching soon. I guess we'll know tomorrow, then?

@cederlund Make it the next big thing - we're building Butter specifically for synchronous collaborative sessions. I think video is just the first step there!

@kyle_tummonds We were doing workshops ourselves and a massively tool overload from Zoom+Miro+Mentimeter+Polls+Breakouts+A LOT OF STUFF And thought there must be a better way to do things :-) Biggest struggles would be identifying exactly which target audience gets THE MOST value from Butter

@highgroundio Great questions! And we already do have a free version :-) Again - the only way a David can win against a Goliath is by being hyper focused. Which we are with Butter on use cases like Workshops and trainings!

@jakob_knutzen1 so you're going to try go with a land and expand approach? Just a thought - is there anyway you can implement the unique parts of butter into the existing goliath tools using their extensions/apps functionality? Or are the changes too core to the product functionality to be able to achieve that? Even if it were a cutdown experience, it could bridge the gap and work in your favour.

@highgroundio Great question, Mark! Yeah - you can say that. We for sure target a beachhead market/use case. And we discussed simple integrations, but we believe the core experience is broken and just latching extra stuff on it is not going to help. So yeah, changes are too core - it's about re-doing the central experience (btw, we're launching as we speak - so any support here would be LOVELY: https://www.producthunt.com/post...)

@maria_yermolenko Great question! I don't think remote vs. in person motivation is that different: Give them a challenging and amazing mission and then freedom in how to achieve it. And then we of course do loads of social activities on Butter 😉 (which we incidentally is launching today: https://www.producthunt.com/post...)

@ajay_yadav13 We are generating revenue :-) But otherwise, we also have investors and I draw an ok (but not impressive) salary

@shoaib_iqbal3 Hah! Different questions 😉 Personally, success for me is whatever drives happiness for myself and those that I care about. In terms of which traits drive this, I'd truly say it depends! For me, it's being a hyper-optimist 😊

This is a song reference, but a better question would probably be how important do you value onboarding with a new product?

@angeli_ SO DIFFICULT! Honestly, I think this all boils down to three things: 1) Love what you do overall 2) Have a ton of self-discipline 3) Make sure to recharge outside of work

@indrakusumasp Thanks so much for following and supporting for such a long time, Indra! Ideation: Always start with the problem you're solving for the user! That's what we did to begin with and still do to this day. That's also why we do tonnes of user interviews Launch: Haha, you'll have to wait and see today - launch soooooooooooooon!