
Launch HN: Tandem (YC S19) – A Virtual Office for Remote Teams - bernatfortet
Hey HN community!<p>We&#x27;re Bernat, Tim, and Rajiv, founders of Tandem (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tandem.chat" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tandem.chat</a>).<p>Tandem is a desktop app designed to give distributed teams the immediacy and flow of in-person communication. You can see who&#x27;s online this second and talk&#x2F;video&#x2F;screenshare in one click.<p>What&#x27;s unique about us is you can see what app your colleagues are working in (e.g. VS Code, Google Docs, Figma), which gives you a surprisingly clear sense of whether you can interrupt them or not. In fact, we&#x27;ve found it makes you feel like you&#x27;re sitting around a table, without being overly invasive.<p>We started building Tandem when two of us had kids and started working from home more. We tried a bunch of different tools - Zoom, Discord, Slack, Hangouts, etc. -  but hated the friction in all of them.<p>We felt slower, less collaborative, and more alone when we worked remotely. We built a one-click calling prototype, added video and screenshare, and this eventually became Tandem.<p>Some details on how instant calls work:
- You can click on someone and talk immediately, but they will be on mute until they accept.
- All calls start as voice, but can be upgraded to video and screenshare.
- Customizable rooms are a nice way to invite teammates to talk when they&#x27;re free.<p>Some details on app presence:
- Your teammates will be able to see which work app you&#x27;re currently in (only for a select set of integrated apps) - this gives everyone a sense of being together, and helps you know when a teammate is interruptible. 
- You can go into Focus Mode if you don&#x27;t want to be bothered, in which case your app will not be shown.<p>Pricing: 14 day free trial, then $10 &#x2F; active user &#x2F; month<p>We are doing a beta program where, if you can hop on a short feedback call every-other week, we extend the free trial indefinitely! This has helped us stay in touch with the people using it, and constantly improve.<p>We are constantly improving the app, so tell us what you think. With your help, we can make remote work more collaborative and social!<p>-Bernat, Rajiv, and Tim
======
bwaine
I recently read Carl Newport's "deep work". One of the points he made that
struck home the most was that a leading indicator of success for most
knowledge workers was the number of hours spent doing deep work. Ie - the
number of hours spent doing uninterrupted work that makes use of your
differentiated skills.

As a remote worker the thing I treasure most is the opportunity to organise my
schedule to spend the majority of my time doing deep work. Frequently
communicating and getting feedback on my work asychronously rather than
constantly being interrupted and dragged into synchronous interactions as in
an open plan office.

The thought of allowing anyone to contact me at any time, at the push of a
button feels like a huge step back.

There are lots of challenges around communication in a remote company, however
I don't think the solution is recreating an open office online.

~~~
itsthisjustin
That's literally the entire thought process behind
[https://yac.chat](https://yac.chat). This message is so validating for what
we are trying to accomplish. Would love further feedback if you're up for it.

~~~
alexeldeib
This is...interesting. Once i'm leaving a voicemail, why would I prefer that
over a slack message?

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323454
We use Tandem extensively: the killer feature is that during screenshares you
get to control a pointer that the other person can see on their screen, which
makes pair programming over Tandem feel basically the same as in person.

It was especially useful when onboarding a dev onto a new section of code that
they had never touched before, and also when unblocking someone who was having
trouble learning to use the IDE.

~~~
papa_bear
Is this different from what Slack and Zoom can do already? Not trying to knock
it, just curious. My office is about to get a little more remote, and I was
considering getting everyone into Discord, so I'm very interested in trying
this.

~~~
rajivayyangar
Compared with Slack and Zoom, it's way faster - just click and start talking!

Think of it as push-to-talk, 2.0, with a richer sense of presence (seeing what
work app, so you know if you're interrupting anything).

~~~
pj_mukh
Push-to-talk was the killer feature for us. We've been using it extensively.

There are no silver bullets in managing (and being) remote teams, but Tandem
helps a lot along the way!

~~~
o-__-o
So they created the tap-you-on-the-shoulder problem for remote workers?

I prefer being scheduled not someone blaring audio at me because it’s
convenient for them... but it’s what the business owners want

~~~
rajivayyangar
The maker-manager dilemma is real - which is something we try to address with
the prominent Focus mode. At the same time, a big reason we show the app
status is so that the "business owners" can hopefully take cues and minimize
their interruptiveness. For example, as a product manager, I will often decide
not to bother my co-founder Tim because I see he's in a coding editor (and
thus in deep-focus).

------
splix
Congratulations with the launch! It's what I was looking for a few years. I
mean I've been working in remote teams for years, and have thought about the
exact service with screen/voice-message sharing features, as you created.

I believe easy screen sharing is important part of remote work, thought I
think it should be in other way, i.e. I want to share a part of my screen
(static pic or video) with a comment/question. There is a need for that almost
every day.

Short walkie-talkie like conversation as you have are really great for remote
teams, it can improve work and communications. Basically I want to say "good
morning" to others, without really interrupting them, but letting them know
I'm available now.

I guess I'll be your customer with my next project :)

~~~
bernatfortet
I love the idea of sharing a part of screen, pic or video to create a
conversation around it. We were chatting about a similar thing the other day.
You've thought about this quite a bunch.How would you envision that
experience?

The good morning use case is awesome. We have some teams that have a room
called "Good Morning". You can join there if you're the first one to start the
day, and other can join you as they get connected.

~~~
splix
As a screen sharing as an MVP I see a button (menu/keyboard shortcut/etc) to
take a screenshot (or record screen for a few seconds), crop it and then
record any voice comment. It should be super simple to execute, easy to do as
instagram stories.

I see few use cases here: one part is about a code you're working now. Like
"what the heck is this?". or getting feedback on show some progress on the
work you're doing, to show colleagues when you've finished a screen, mockup,
or even slide for a deck, etc. I believe it's important for a remote team to
have such moments, it gives extra motivation for both sharer and viewer, an
improves feeling of a team work.

Also please consider making a mobile app for recording messages. Laptop is
often used for a some heavy work, may be connected to an external display w/o
any camera, so it becomes inconvenient to record messages from it. But an cell
phone can do the job.

PS I will be glad to give more feedback. As you noticed, after having almost
20 years of work in remote teams I've put a lot of thoughts in a product like
this, so will happy to give some help, you can reach me by igor@artamonov.ru

------
rkagerer
Neat! Some questions on the "WhatApp" feature:

    
    
      1) What do you mean by "a select set of integrated apps"?
      2) Can the user tailor which app names are shared vs. those they prefer to keep private?
      3) Did earlier prototypes try a generic approach for ID, e.g. capturing hWND of the focused window and querying
         it's class, title, executable name, etc?  Do Mac/Linux have analogous facilities for window identification?
      4) Was it a challenge to distinguish browser-based apps? (e.g. Chrome, vs. Docs)
      5) Is there any attempt to consolidate contexts that involve switching between multiple apps? (e.g. while I'm
         coding VS Code, I jump to a browser to search docs for an API).
      6) Is there some lag/hysteresis, so if you switch briefly to a different app and back, it doesn't generate noise?
    

I like the feedback-for-use model, it sure beats advertising. What is long-
term pricing, and can I join without having to link to a Slack or Google
account?

~~~
timfsu
Great questions!

1) You can see the list here:
[https://tandem.chat/integrations](https://tandem.chat/integrations) We add
new products by request, but we don't plan to add email and social networking
sites :)

2) Long term, we'd like to let users customize what apps and sites are shown
for their team, but we haven't built that yet. Right now, you can just turn on
app, app + url, or nothing.

3) We use system APIs for capturing window titles & executable names across
Windows, Linux, and Mac. There's actually a node package for that called
"active-win"

4) Yes! We have plans to open-source our browser reading logic. And I still
haven't figured out how to read URLs in a generic way from Linux yet.

5) Not yet, but we're thinking about how to indicate to your team that you're
in "deep work" based on how active you are (e.g. typing or mousing a lot). I
switch between terminal, VS Code, and localhost all the time, so I understand!

6) Yes, we only check your active app on an interval to reduce our performance
hit.

Long-term pricing is $10/active user/month, where active user is someone who
does at least an hour of calls. Of course, we want to make sure it's valuable
for you and your team first.

------
wjossey
Will give this a try. As a remote team, this is the sort of stuff we’re always
interested in iterating and improving upon.

I will say, the pricing feels like it will be a deal breaker. The product will
need to add a ton of value to justify that price point. I’d honestly expect
something like this to be closer to 4 or 5 dollars per month per person.

What’s the best way to share feedback with the team?

~~~
rajivayyangar
Thanks for the feedback! We have Intercom integrated, so you can ping us
founders directly from the app.

Would love to get your thoughts after you've tried it with your team.

~~~
wjossey
Will do! Best of luck to you and the team.

------
ianbicking
I was always intrigued with Sqwiggle, though I didn't have a chance to use it.
I was sad to see they weren't able to make it.

One interesting feature they had was low-fi video (grainy black and white,
very low framerate), with the same basic idea as knowing what app you are in:
a chance to see whether you were at the computer, and maybe a little hint at
your mental state, but maybe not too intrusive. But I don't know how it acted
in practice. They had complete drop-in, but I like your one-sided-talk-first.

Another interesting feature might be something like a I'd-like-to-know-when-
you-see-this-page. E.g., as a developer I might submit a PR, and I want to
know when you start reviewing it. I'd "mark" the page somehow and it would be
a little like having a watchword on Slack or IRC. It wouldn't have to be
intrusive, as it could be as simple as a popup when the other person visits
the page, telling them their coworker was interested when they started looking
at it, and OK/cancel to inform them.

~~~
rajivayyangar
Tom Moor (Sqwiggle founder) is awesome! We talked with him early on and got a
lot of inspiration. We've found that showing the app status gives a lot of the
same feeling of presence as Sqwiggle without the sense of being watched. The
always-on-video (even lo-res) was always a bit controversial.

The "google alerts" for pages idea is interesting. We'll think on it.

------
austinsharp
I'm happy to see more virtual offices being built!

My company internally built and then open-sourced Qube[1], which has a lot of
similarities, but just integrates with Slack and Zoom. A lot less ambitious,
I'd say, but we're very happy with it.

[1] [https://github.com/seeq12/qube](https://github.com/seeq12/qube)

~~~
bernatfortet
This is really cool. It reminds me of Sococo but way more integrated with the
tools out there. Any chance I could give it a try? What happens when you click
the slack button in the team list? You can send a direct message to that
teammate?

~~~
austinsharp
We used to use Sococo and got frustrated and abandoned it a couple years back,
actually.

If you hit the Slack button it opens a link to that Slack chat. If you are in
a room with a group it'll open a group DM to the other people present. (I
personally rarely use the Slack button because any given DM or channel in
Slack is only ever alt+tab and ctrl+k away, but that's just me.)

~~~
bernatfortet
That makes sense. What was frustrating with Sococo?

~~~
austinsharp
They rewrote it from a native app to a web app, and it got a lot slower.
Limits on the size / number of videos active. Status was not as flexible as we
wanted (i.e. reminders when you forget to update, time zone conversion, etc).

------
brlewis
I'm excited to see this problem being tackled. As I said previously, the
biggest obstacle to reducing greenhouse gases isn't a political party. It's
commuting.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325660](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20325660)

~~~
rajivayyangar
Yes! Commuting is also really dangerous too.

------
borisandcrispin
We have been using Tandem for some weeks and it delivers everything promised.
It's really simple and quickly replaced all the other tools for internal calls
in our company.

First time I heard about the pricing and seems a little bit high... but the
extended trial in exchange for feedback calls is genius.

------
secondstring
What stack are the user-facing applications written in? I'm assuming since
you're already multi-platform with such a small team that it's an
Electron/ReactNative/something else binary packaged for each different OS,
rather than 3 codebases?

Edit: considering there's a chrome devtools menubar option exposed in the app
I'm guessing my assumption is correct haha. After fiddling with it for ~5
minutes, it seems annoying that I'm unmuted every time I join a new room. Is
this intentional? If not, I think an option to join muted by default would be
pretty helpful.

~~~
timfsu
Yes, we're using Electron + React to be cross-platform. It's not ideal (I know
there's been plenty of discussion here), and we have some ideas for going
beyond Electron, but it's helpful to have something cross-platform so the
entire team can talk in one place.

------
bravura
So I am very curious to try this. But I'm still having trouble grokking what
the features are.

If there were a video, that would be really helpful.

I don't want just to add it to my Slack without knowing what's going to
happen.

~~~
bernatfortet
That's a great idea. We'll create a video of us using it.

Also, you could try signing up with Google and create a personal team. Then,
if you like it you can use Slack for your team.

~~~
batoure
I was also going to leave a comment about the lack of a simple demo I get the
idea but want to see it in action. Requiring login to see the tool work for
real is a big turn off.

~~~
bernatfortet
Thanks for the feedback. We'll add the video. That being said, the video
(which are actual React component + animation) in the home page are pretty
much the same as the app.

------
davidthewatson
Firefox/Linux doesn't seem to like tandem.chat:

Secure Connection Failed

An error occurred during a connection to tandem.chat. PR_CONNECT_RESET_ERROR

    
    
        The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
        Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.

~~~
bernatfortet
Oh! Yikes. We'll investigate it right now. Thanks

------
jph00
I used to be a big fan of a similar tool
[https://www.sococo.com/](https://www.sococo.com/) . However it seems to have
stopped getting much love in recent years. Seems like Tandem is cheaper and
has some nice extra features - so looking forward to trying it out!

~~~
rajivayyangar
Awesome! Yes we’ve taken a more functional, less literal approach than Sococo.
Bernat likes to draw an analogy that the first washing machine was a wheel of
hand-shaped paddles. We think we’ve found something much better and less
skeptical.

------
segmondy
This is a great idea, and I say it because I have the same exact same idea in
my list of ideas I would like to work on but it's no where near the top of the
list. I'm grateful that someone has solved for this!

~~~
bernatfortet
Thanks! We're excited to help remote teams get to the next level of
communication.

------
gexla
Just throwing in my two cents. I work with a small remote team and our first
problem was that most apps would at times lag, hang, deliver messages out of
order, etc. We found a relatively obscure app which has been solid and we have
stuck with it. All other value (features) takes a hit once these issues pop up
for us.

There's a ton of choices out there, but if other teams are like ours, then
there apparently aren't many options for this one wish-list item. If we had
one more to choose from, then we might look at other features.

------
rufugee
So stoked to see Linux support.... I've been looking for something like this
for my Linux-based team. If it works well, we'll be a customer!

------
ekc
> What's unique about us is you can see what app your colleagues are working
> in (e.g. VS Code, Google Docs, Figma), which gives you a surprisingly clear
> sense of whether you can interrupt them or not. In fact, we've found it
> makes you feel like you're sitting around a table, without being overly
> invasive.

This seems like it could be invasive. Is it opt out?

~~~
timfsu
Absolutely, you can customize what other users see quite easily.

------
gourneau
I installed the Mac app, it asked for Audio permissions but never video. So I
can't share video yet.

Also you only see the video/audio selection dialog inside of an existing call
or room. I think it would be easier if there was a top level way to configure
those from the main preferences menu.

Thanks

~~~
rajivayyangar
We ask for video permissions only when you click the video button when on a
call - ping us on Intercom if you get stuck.

Regarding the video/audio selection, all calls start as audio-only, and you
can upgrade to video / screenshare. If you want to go straight into video you
can do this via the tooltip on hover.

------
jaequery
Pretty neat but 2 problems for me: 1) wish it was free like Slack and pay to
upgrade for advanced feature 2) wish it had chat feature. not everyone will be
available to talk in which we will have to switch back and forth with Slack or
some other messaging tools.

------
hzia
Congrats on the launch guys! We tried Tandem early on and its always magic to
see cursors of team-mates floating on GitHub PRs when its under review.

We are a heavy user of Zoom for meetings, but we found it to be too heavy for
lightweight interactions.

~~~
rajivayyangar
Awesome to hear! Yes, quick collaborative reviews of PRs are a big use-case
for us internally too.

------
n42
This is exactly what I've been hoping someone would build, thank you and
congrats!

~~~
rajivayyangar
Thanks! It's not the secret to life, the universe, and everything...or is it?

~~~
n42
I would love to hear some more about your vision; "virtual office for remote
teams" leaves a lot of room for potential product growth. A teammate saw
IntelliJ on your integrations list, for example. I think he was hoping it
allowed for remote code pairing, but I think right now that just means the
application name support

------
sibeshk96
Great idea! Since you're using Electron/React, did you guys build something
in-house for the screen sharing + cursor collaboration? in my experience,
nodeJS is really bad at this kind of real-time stuff

~~~
timfsu
We're using Elixir on the backend, which is great for real time communication.
It's also a very stable backend platform in general. I agree, doing shared
message passing on Node is quite challenging.

------
Hydraulix989
Repl.it is also adding pair programming to their online IDE. I'm curious how
you will differentiate. Video chat seems like a dime a dozen these days.

~~~
rajivayyangar
We've built it with the internal/with-your-team use-case in mind, which lets
us eliminate a huge amount of friction! There are also some really useful
things we can do around presence.

------
nulagrithom
Do the chat/call/video call functions rely on Slack or Hangouts? Can it be
done standalone?

~~~
timfsu
Nope, we ship with our own voice/video/screenshare, no external dependencies.

------
wenbin
Congrats on the launch, bernat!

~~~
bernatfortet
thanks!

------
georgespencer
This is fantastic. Well done on launching. Can't wait to try it.

~~~
rajivayyangar
Thanks!

------
blodovnik
What companies are offering pair programming these days?

------
mtmail
Clickable link [https://tandem.chat](https://tandem.chat)

~~~
dang
Clickable above now. Thanks!

------
ryacko
After reading these projects, I’m curious why people can’t leave a paper note
or memo on the desk.

~~~
rajivayyangar
Interesting - can you say more?

~~~
ryacko
Yes, I can. Paper is the best form of asynchronous communication, requiring
neither electricity or complex authentication schemes. By placing a piece of
paper on the side of another person’s desk as quietly as possible, one would
ensure that the person will be alerted to a necessary matter when they have
the time to inspect their physical inbox.

It also indicates the matter is important enough for the original person to
walk up and deliver a note.

~~~
rajivayyangar
Funny - one of our teammates used to do this at a previous company. We built
in a similar function for remote workers with a Slack integration. It sends a
little message with pre-formatted responses that indicates you'd like to talk
on Tandem.

