Sidekick

Hi PH! We are Andy, Howard, Greg and Arthur, founders of Sidekick! Like many of you all, we were recently forced to start working remotely because of COVID. We quickly realized that starting a company while remote was brutal: - 🧠 No spontaneous brainstorming - All of the best features we ever built were born out of unplanned conversations at our desks. - 🗣 Increased miscommunication - Being able to quickly ask teammates clarification questions is key to making sure everything is staying on track. - 🎭 Lack of team culture - True connections are forged in random 1-off conversations, not during scheduled meetings. We use Sidekick every day because it's the closest thing to sitting in the same room. Sidekick is a video device that sits on each of your team members desks. On Sidekick, you schedule coworking sessions to simulate working side by side for a few hours a week. 🤔 Who's it for? Sidekick is great for remote cofounders and other fast-paced teams that care about building a strong team bond. We're working with 20 Y Combinator companies along with teams at Bloomberg and Spotify. We understand that Sidekick isn't for everyone! If you don't particularly want to talk to your team during the day, Sidekick probably isn't a great fit. Until August 1st new teams get a discounted price of $25/user/month (normally it's $50/user/month). The hardware comes for free with the subscription and we cover the shipping. We'd love to hear your feedback. If you have any thoughts or questions, please email me at andy@realismlabs.com.

I like this form factor. Technically I could use my iPad to achieve the same thing though.

I'm an early tester of this product -- and will be the first to admit that I was pretty skeptical, both about always-on video as well as the need for a dedicated device. I'm a believer now, here's why: - As a founder in a fully remote team, I need to stay constantly connected to my co-founder. Organic, easy information flow is a huge need in remote work. I can see if my co-founder is intensely focused and can drop in to ask questions or float new ideas if he's not. - The sensation of actually working alongside someone in peripheral vision has actually made me *more* productive - like having a study buddy. - Having touchpoints like waving to someone when you get to work, seeing what they're grabbing for lunch, etc. sound sort of ridiculous, but having that social foundation back really brings back the sense that you're working *with* someone and you're not just an isolated worker bee. I'm an advocate of every product that makes pandemic work life better. ;) Really excited to see where they go with this!

We've been using sidekick for over a month now and its been essential for keeping our team of 4 feel connected despite being in 3 different countries!

Seems like this could be the missing link in remote work for some people. Having this on a second screen vs a Zoom call makes sense, as it's out of the way. It will be interesting to see how people will use this.

We've been happy as customers after a few days... really making a difference to feeling presence with each other. The UI details work just right.

So essentially it's an expensive video call. I'll stick to Google Meets or WhereBy on an iPad / Tablet if I needed a work buddy, cheaper too