

Show HN: Stairway, daddy that will enforce some online meeting culture - mihar
https://secure.stairwayapp.com

======
gyardley
When I went to your domain and read the main page, I didn't understand what it
did.

The big call to action 'learn more' button took me to a series of points that
didn't really clue me into what it was about. I thought I got it, but I wasn't
sure - certainly not sure enough by the time I got dumped off at the signup
page.

Both the 'about' and the 'features' page told me more, but I had to click
around to get to those, and I went to them only after I went through the
'learn more' flow.

Now that I think I get it, it sounds pretty cool - asynchronous text-based
meetings. But I had to click around a fair bit more than most people will to
understand it.

~~~
polyfractal
Wanted to emphasize this point - I did the exact same thing. I read through
the "Learn More" bullets and thought "hmm, this sounds interesting and
useful...but I still really have no idea what it does".

It wasn't until I read the About and Features that I actually understood the
product.

The benefits listed in the "Learn More" are really good...you just need to add
a little more concrete information about the product itself.

Anyhow, looks interesting and I'm going to recommend it to my company. We work
in three different locations (and two timezones), so it could be useful for
us.

~~~
mihar
Very valuable feedback! We are experimenting with different kinds of learn
more tours and explainers.

Glad that in the end you got it.

~~~
zaptheimpaler
I loved the "people hate"..."stairway solves" structure. Great way of putting
across the problem and the solution clearly and succinctly. Just my two cents.

------
jaredstenquist
1) What is "Daddy"?

2) You definitely need some screenshots or a video. After browsing the entire
site for a few minutes I only have a vague guess of what this application
might do.

~~~
starship
haha, the whole time I was clicking around, a non-zero part of my brain was
sitting there thinking, "ok, but where the hell did that daddy thing come
from?"

------
jaaron
What sort of pricing plan is this? The per-user expense _increases_ as you buy
more seats?

<https://secure.stairwayapp.com/plans>

~~~
StavrosK
I guess they figured their utility increases as the meeting grows. It's not
like you can segregate people into two meetings and get out of that, either.

~~~
fusiongyro
Increasing the marginal cost discourages adding users. You punish people for
having a lot of users, which creates a pain point, which creates an
exploitable opportunity for your competition.

Better to charge a flat rate per user, or follow the 37 Signals example and
not charge per user at all.

[http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/jason-fried/huge-
accounts...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/jason-fried/huge-accounts-
make-me-nervous-it-takes-a-village.html)

------
bherms
A lot of the text reads as though English isn't your first language. If this
is true, hire a copywriter and revise your websites text.

~~~
tadruj
Thx. That's true. Will do. Do you think that this is important for the minimum
viable product? We're just trying to get it out ASAP and we've been pretty
sloppy with the text this time. Sorry for that.

~~~
mr1976
Yes, I think it adds (or detracts, in the case of poor copy) from the
credibility of the product as a whole. I actually have a use for the product
right now, and I must admit the copy errors when I went through the site made
me wonder what other errors would come up.

It's a good idea - don't let crappy copy lose you signups.

------
tantadruj
I will never use this. You know why? Because my work at big big enterprise
would be too transparent and everybody would know that I don't add value to
meetings. On live meeting I just talk myself out of everything and that's it.
We don't want decisions to be made on meetings.

~~~
draggnar
looks like they've found a disruptive niche then

------
mihar
From my standpoint as an introvert, I see meetings done this was like a
godsend.

I can’t express my thoughts clearly when there are other louder individuals at
an in-person meeting. This way, I can sit down, relax, gather my thoughts and
provide a whole lot more valuable input. This way everybody wins - me and my
company.

Of course I’d have to say this doesn’t work in all circumstances, like free-
for-all brainstorming sessions, but still.

~~~
pjoter
maybe this should be you pitch.

~~~
mihar
Maybe.

------
cdcarter
This is a really minor gripe, but consider localizing date formats. It's
confusing as US user to see 18/6/12 as the date.

~~~
ScottBurson
Better yet, stick to ISO date format: 2012-6-18

Everyone can tell what that means.

------
jeremyt
Just a quick couple of thoughts about your UX and landing page:

* There's not enough information on your homepage for me to figure out what you do

* The information I need is between one and three clicks away ("learn more", and then "more" until I've read enough to get it), clicking "more" just gets in the way

* I don't really get the "you will", "we will" dichotomy. Frankly, I don't care what "I will" do, all I want to know is how this product is going to make my life easier.

* Stop using buzzwords ("message-based collaboration", "asynchronously"), and just tell me what you do in plain English

* Some of the English phrases come out awkwardly ("We will guide you to prepare quality agenda before calling the meeting.")

Having said all that, it's a neat idea, and I hope it catches on. We all need
fewer meetings.

~~~
tadruj
Thx, this is amazing feedback, exactly what we were looking for here on HN.

------
swalsh
I spent about 30 seconds clicking around, I have no idea what your app is.

I think a video, or an example of someone using it would be nice. The
philosophy alone is not enough for me to understand the app, or even make me
want to use it.

------
the_stig
Really cool&useful app, especially for long-distance teams that are
experiencing timezone difficulties.

Meetings really can suck and take too much time. This app helps me to give
feedback and move on with whatever I'm doing ...

------
jjb123
Very impressive and refreshing. For our team, this would replace google
hangouts and non-technical people needing to wade through technical
discussions on irc... And more than anything, would replace a lot of
unnecessary emails.

------
some1else
Meetings may be more efficient when strict policies are enforced, but I think
some forgiveness could be provided by allowing the user to edit/sort Agenda
items after the meeting has been created.

The common use case right now is time-shifted decision making, but this would
kick ass if it were real-time.

Good job with the design. Nice legible type, unambiguous form layout. I think
the landing page could bring forward some content from the Learn More and
Features subpages.

------
rf45
At the moment I am mostly using skype or gotomeetings and I usually have two
problems with the meetings online:

1\. hard to find the availability for all participants 2\. archiving meeting
minutes and finding them when I need them

this could be the ideal solution, especially because i can control my time and
still participate on the meeting.

do you have the same problems? how you are solving them?

------
tomazstolfa
I've been a beta tester of Stairway.

Can't emphasize enough how fast the product evolved into a must have. No more
"I didn't promise/say that.'

------
cslacasse
The learn more page needs to be a single page in the browser history. After I
clicked through 125 of them, I wanted to get back to the home page with my
back button but couldn't.

I would have liked to see 4-5 of those "people hates" and then a demo of the
product in action.

------
bantic
This is very cool. There's so much that could be done to better organize and
run meetings. It's great to see someone taking a stab at it. I wished there
was more of a demo before signup. Even just some screenshots would have
helped.

~~~
mihar
I think you missed the <https://secure.stairwayapp.com/tour> There are some
screenshots. Does this help?

------
marknutter
Daddy?

~~~
prawn
I would find a way to replace the word "daddy" ASAP in your copy. There'd have
to be better options out there.

~~~
tadruj
Done. There are. But which ones do resonate with people, that's the big
question. This one did mighty good actually, quantitatively speaking. But
qualitatively looking at this option I agree with you, the term is pretty
edgy.

------
netrus
I like it a lot, but cannot figure out how to write the concluding remark to
an agenda point. Does the meeting need to be over for this?

~~~
mihar
You are correct. You can only decide a meeting when it's due. This is because
all the participants are counting on the meeting to be available until that
date.

------
prezjordan
There's a LOT of JS running on that page.

------
CodeMage
Any plans for providing Android app too?

~~~
tadruj
We're currently waiting for the approval in the app store for iPhone. Haven't
made anything for Android yet, waiting for a few pokes on the demand side :)
like this one.

------
dr42
Like everyone else, I couldn't find what it did, but the tour
<https://secure.stairwayapp.com/tour> albeit brief, it fully explanatory. I
think the concept is great and that this has the potential to be actually very
useful.

From a product point of view, I think it should integrate with a corporate
LDAP otherwise you have the catch-22 problem of any social network like
system.

I really like the idea of decision based (rather than talk based) meeting
goals. Rather than "let's have a meeting to talk about it" it becomes "let's
have a meeting to decide X", then it becomes possible to draw time-lines of
the decision making process and those involved, which hopefully leads to
accountability and improved engagement.

My only criticism is that companies would want to host this. The security
concerns and longevity of the data would be beyond any IT depts stress
threshold. I could imagine the privacy policy causing my companies IT dept to
start having panic attacks. Then again, everything's going cloud, so maybe
other IT departments will be fine with it.

~~~
tadruj
We're thinking to make it closer to smaller teams and individuals in the
enterprise and then they'd take it bottom-up from there. Thanks for the
awesome feedback.

