
Launch HN: Sidekick (YC S20) – A hardware device to connect remote teams - achen187
Hi HN,<p>I&#x27;m Andy, one of the founders at Sidekick (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sidekick.video&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sidekick.video&#x2F;</a>). Sidekick is a new hardware device built to connect remote teams with an always-on video call.<p>Sidekick sits on your desk next to your computer — with Sidekick you just turn to your teammates and talk, as if you&#x27;re in the same room.<p>Like many of you all, we were recently forced to start working remotely because of COVID. After fleeing NYC to return to our childhood homes, we quickly realized that starting a company while remote was brutal. We were missing out on all the spontaneous conversations and camaraderie that occur when we&#x27;re in the same room. We knew we needed to simulate being in the same room to build our company.<p>Initially we built Sidekick just for ourselves, but many of the founders in our YC batch wanted to try it out! We realized that our founding team wasn&#x27;t an anomaly for wanting an always-on video device — we pivoted from our previous idea to start working on Sidekick to help the other founders in our batch.<p>Sidekick works best with fast-paced teams that need to be constantly communicating — founders are a great example. We&#x27;re working with 25 YC founding teams along with experimental product teams at Store No. 8 and Brex. That being said, Sidekick isn&#x27;t for everyone! If you don&#x27;t really want to talk to your team during the day, Sidekick probably isn&#x27;t a great fit.<p>We talked to many teams that tried to hack together a solution with Zoom on an iPad. From the teams we spoke to, we learned that it&#x27;s really hard to consistently get the team in the room at the same time. Users are constantly leaving the room for other meetings but for everyone still in the room, it seems like nobody wants to use it because it&#x27;s empty. This causes a negative feedback loop where even more people leave the room and the hacked together solution quickly becomes useless.<p>Sidekick is built to maximize the chances that you&#x27;re not in the room alone. Unlike other jerry-rigged solutions, it treats &quot;always-on&quot; as a first-class problem to solve. Some examples of product decisions we&#x27;ve made are:<p>- Push notifications to minimize being alone in the room - when someone joins as the first person in the room, we send a notification to the rest of the team. We want to get other teammates in the room ASAP because the room is only useful with more than one person.<p>- Meeting mode - when you have a normal Zoom meeting with someone outside of your team, you can mark yourself as &quot;in a meeting&quot;. This silences the mic and speakers on Sidekick while also setting a status informing your team that you&#x27;re in a meeting, but you&#x27;ll be back soon if someone needs you. We&#x27;re also releasing Google Calendar integration soon, allowing Sidekick to automatically mark itself as &quot;in a meeting&quot;<p>On average our users are in their Sidekick rooms for 6 hours a day. They turn it on first thing when they sit down in the morning and leave it on throughout all their meetings during the day.<p>Our customers pay for Sidekick with a subscription model and we have a special promotion until Aug 1st for $25&#x2F;user&#x2F;month. The hardware comes for free and we handle all the shipping. We went with this model because we want our customers to pay us for the experience, not the hardware. We didn&#x27;t want customers to have to think about whether they wanted to buy a pricy new device when the real question should be whether they want to try the experience.<p>We believe that working in the same room is part of the secret sauce to building an awesome company. We want all teams to be able to have access to that experience.<p>I really love this community and I&#x27;m excited to share Sidekick with all of you. We&#x27;d love to hear your feedback, particularly if you&#x27;re working on a team that misses being in the same room. Feel free to ask any questions — I&#x27;ll be around to answer anything you want to throw our way.
======
blhack
Why is everybody in here being such an asshole to this company? Has the HN
culture seriously changed this much? Is the lockdown just pickling everybody's
minds?

They're trying something. If you don't like it, give constructive criticism,
but this hostility is unhelpful and unwelcome.

>Why is it a Samsung device?

I worked on a startup which was a video chat project similar to this with a
different target. We also used an existing hardware device. Why? Because tech
support is hard, and tech supporting hundreds of different combinations of
people's hardware is a project itself. We bought tablets, loaded our app onto
them, and that was our hardware device. Yeah, we wanted to make our own device
eventually, but we weren't at the point of sending a team to China to do it
yet, and that's what it would have taken.

\--

Stop this. This is not HN's culture. If you want to offer constructive
criticism, then fine. If you want to be a jerk to somebody about their product
then go somewhere else. If you are thinking you want to make an alt account to
be a jerk to somebody about their product, then go somewhere else even faster.

~~~
frankdenbow
Agree with you that we should be gentler on people when they are just
introducing ideas to the world. I disagree that this is not HN's culture.
Example, read the dropbox launch thread, among many others. Usually when I
come to HN I expect the top comment to be some pseudo-intellectual takedown of
someone else's hard work.

~~~
blhack
The dropbox thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863)

I don't agree with you that people are being jerks there in the way that they
are here.

------
hackathonguy
The way I see it, being "always on" is one of the worst things about office
work. Always on is a constant distraction from doing good concentrated work. I
think off by default is a far better paradigm for remote communication tools.

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the feedback! Agree that for a portion of the remote work force,
asynchronous communication is probably effective.

Teams that love Sidekick need to be always talking as if they're in the same
room. To these teams, it's not a distraction but critical for getting their
job done.

~~~
hackathonguy
Best of luck to you guys! I understand the different point of view.

------
ralfhn
I’ve been working at a fully distributed company for 3 years and I can tell
you with a high degree of certainty that none of my 700+ coworkers will ever
use something like this. You may find some traction now with companies
abruptly transitioning to remote work and not having a clue how to get work
done without being in an office, but long term, I’m a sceptic.

I can tell you, however, that I would absolutely consider using this at home:
my wife spends at least 3 hours a day on video calls with her family back home
and it took some time to get her elderly parents accustomed to Smartphones,
messenger/whatsapp, etc. they’ll start a video call on messenger and just keep
it on for hours while doing their shores or whatever. An always on device,
especially if you add in remote management, would be useful. Another use case
is kids. Right now most schools are doing distance learning and loosing the
social aspect is certainly going to hurt. This could allow them to stay
connected while doing homework, craft, or even playing video games without
having to start meetings.

I think this is a good idea, my only advise would be to try other growth
channels besides startups.

~~~
achen187
Makes sense! We're also looking for other markets to expand into so that's
really helpful.

~~~
sleepybrett
I think this subscription pricepoint would be a big turnoff for 'home use',
especially when you are competing with free facetime that fills the gap well
enough.

------
ahstilde
I think everyone focusing on the "always on" aspect is missing the point.

This is a standalone device which takes care of a major part of the headache
in transitioning to remote work -- a second monitor and webcam, a
whiteboarding device, and a "who's online for me to talk to" visibility
feature.

It's like paying $25 to bring the social experience of an office to your
remote work environment without worrying about technical details or
availability issues.

"Someone has their camera on? Cool, I can ping them, no worries."

The only feature I'd like to see is a "camera off but still pingable" mode,
but honestly, I'd probably put a piece of tape over the camera and it'd work
just fine.

~~~
giarc
"camera off but still pingable"

That's called Facetime'ing someone.

~~~
senojretep356
Yep or zooming them, or microsoft teaming them.

IBM released a very popular set of working from home guidelines - one of the
absolute most important rules is that you never ask an employee to turn on
their cameras - it's an invasion of privacy.

------
codeviking
This feels like bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the sudden shift towards remote
only work. Don't get me wrong, I like the premise as I've definitely felt
disconnected from my team recently, but I don't think this quite solves the
problem. If it did we'd just sit in a Google Hangout meeting all day. We (and
I imagine a lot of others) have already tried this and it didn't work. No one
can really put their finger on why, we just know _something_ was still
missing.

I think it has to do with the medium. Maybe the answer involves coming up with
some sort experience that doesn't feel as dry and disconnected as video
conferencing. This is where the idea of course becomes hand wavy -- but maybe
it involves some use of AR, or a projector -- who knows.

If I were in your shoes I'd be thinking about a game-changer, instead of an
incremental enhancement of video conferencing. Maybe that's bad advice, but I
know I don't find this offering terribly compelling.

~~~
achen187
We're still really early on, so we're also trying to figure out what that
missing "something" is. We're totally in the same boat.

From interviews, our theory is that it's because most of the time, the
Hangouts all day solution decays because people have too many experiences
being alone in the room.

Again still really early, so we're also figuring it out but thanks for the
data point!

~~~
codeviking
Gotcha. Makes sense.

Good luck :). I'll stay dialed in and genuinely hope y'all knock it out of the
park so I can reconnect with my colleagues!

------
Dunedan
> Sidekick is a new hardware device […]

So your "new hardware device" is a Samsung Galaxy Tab A 10.1 (2019) with a
stand, isn't it?

What's your motivation to offer hardware instead of selling the Android app
separately as well, so customers could use it without the hassle of getting
hardware shipped?

~~~
agloeregrets
A guess? Hardware startups mean money to investors. ;)

~~~
mNovak
Do they though? I thought investors heavily favor software because of infinite
scaling.

------
ac2u
The moderation of the negative comments on this post, for once, seems a bit
overkill.

I think what's missing here in the moderation is the visceral reaction that
people have to such a product, (to the point where their feedback seems a bit
unproductive), is as much part of the conversation here as the constructive
criticism.

The people who have a complete gut reaction against this don't want to enter
the conversation with criticism that can seem like a negotiation with the
founders, where the founders can reply with "ok we'll work on adding more cool
privacy features".

They don't want to engage with the product in the first place.

However they feel that without shouting it from the rooftops, a perceived
consensus might emerge that this type of product is OK bar a little privacy
refinement, and thus be forced upon them by team members who don't have the
same privacy appreciations as they do.

Edit: I'd like to add that I don't attribute any malice towards the founders
of this. I accept that they're trying to make the right product for them.

~~~
shortweb3
Yep well thought out response. It’s interesting the level of moderation in
defence of of a YC company - I’ll bet they wouldn’t be deleting comments if it
wasn’t one of their companies.

------
ryanSrich
As the founder of a remote company this defeats the purpose for me. Benefits
of remote:

\- No commute

\- No office politics

\- No forced schedule

\- Less meetings

\- More writing

\- Forced communication

\- No "assess in seats" culture

In part, this seems to defeat at least:

\- No forced schedule

\- Less meetings

\- No "asses in seats" culture

My hunch is that your market research consisted of only talking to companies
that are just now adopting remote as a result of COVID. Obviously those
companies want to recreate the draconian politics of a forced-commute
workplace.

~~~
wherewillitlead
I'd consider using a product like this and I don't give a shit about draconian
politics. The issue is that remote work has downsides. One downside is
dramatically less collaboration. I like collaborating with team-mates, not
just drudging away by myself. If this could help create more of a spontaneous
back and forth in-person feel, that could be valuable. I don't know how it
would feel, I'd have to try it and see. But I think you and the other people
in this thread are being way too negative and defensive. Not all of us love
remote work and especially not the "remote work is better in every way for
everybody and anyone who thinks otherwise is a reactionary" culture.

~~~
ryanSrich
> One downside is dramatically less collaboration.

This is simply an excuse for why remote doesn't work. It's a dead horse. If
you find yourself collaborating less as a result of remote work, then I
question your remote setup and culture.

> If this could help create more of a spontaneous back and forth in-person
> feel.

I actually feel less shitty by spontaneously reaching out to my colleagues via
Slack or by phone when remote than I do tapping on their shoulder in an
office.

> But I think you and the other people in this thread are being way too
> negative and defensive.

I wouldn't say my comment was that negative. This device is a threat to the
upside of remote working, so it should be met with criticism. That doesn't
mean I wish them any ill will. My biggest issue with something like this is
that a device is now required for remote work and you must sit at your
computer from 9am to 5pm. That's why a lot of people hate working from an
office, so to recreate that at home would be a nightmare.

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the feedback, we're still really early so this datapoint is really
helpful.

Sidekick works really well for teams that need to be always communicating
real-time. This isn't all remote teams, but the subset that needs this is
underserved and we're trying to help with Sidekick.

~~~
ponker
You're being very polite to people who are being very rude. This gives me
confidence in using you as a vendor and helps your brand immensely.

------
crsv
Seems like a pretty gross security and privacy risk with extremely limited
upside for the employee, all with the friction of supporting a totally
separate device for a remote IT org if anyone adopts this Orwellian tool at
scale.

~~~
achen187
Totally agree that there's a huge privacy risk if it were abused by employers.

The teams that use Sidekick want to feel like they're in the same room with an
always-on video -- it's actually the most effective way to get their jobs
done.

------
ipsum2
Not to be confused with the other hardware device named Sidekick that connects
remote people together.
[https://www.gsmarena.com/t_mobile_sidekick_4g-3874.php](https://www.gsmarena.com/t_mobile_sidekick_4g-3874.php)
/
[https://www.t-mobile.com/brand/sidekick](https://www.t-mobile.com/brand/sidekick)

~~~
roynasser
Does this still exist? The page mentions being launched in 2011 and last
update 2018...largely dead I think

------
ignoramous
Cynics are out of the woodwork, but as a co-founder I personally see the value
in recreating that in-the-same-room feel you're chasing. After all, there is
only so much slack.com, zoom.us, or tandem.chat can do.

I'm pretty sure as you continue to explore this space, the offering would veer
into all kinds of interesting tangents involving AR and VR, or even Minority
Report esque ubiquitous computing.

I can't wait to see the evolution for one. All the best!

~~~
achen187
Thanks! It always warms my heart to hear from other cofounders who experience
this pain.

Please reach out if you have any more questions!

------
apineda
This doesn't make sense from a makers schedule. Any serious developer needs
their time and is happy with very regimented meeting schedules. I guess that's
my perspective from product / dev management. You can't expect everyone to
have clear expectations, lots of psychology issues around communication and
this puts additional peer pressure into the space. K-12 education has proven
to be a boiler room of social pressure, at work it politics + ofc pressure to
perform. People want to deliver value in a way that works fairly for both
employer and employee, this seems to be employer focused. From my perspective
those in my company who like to chat are always on our team speak or chatting
on video anyway, no device needed, others like myself and developers prefer as
I stated earlier regimented schedules of interaction. There have even been
studies that video chat is stressful, and I tend to agree, due to concern over
appearance, where to look, background mess, etc. It's simply not an optimal
communication mode unfortunately and to make it pervasive in my opinion is
undesirable. I hope you guys can find either the market or the customer you
are looking for in a way that is balanced and psychologically healthy. Cheers.

------
ricberw
We've been using Sidekick for the last week or so, and I can give it two-
thumbs-up. I feel more connected to my co-founders than I have since COVID
started, and tbh, the interface is a piece of cake to use. The difference in
feeling like we're all grinding away towards the same goals again is
_amazing_. Props to the Sidekick team for getting us to realize the benefits
of something slightly uncomfortable (always-on video) and providing us with
the device to do it!

~~~
slykar
Did you try something else before? We are all sitting in a Jitsi Meet
conference all day and it works fine so far. We even added a "private call"
button on the video tiles in order to quickly initiate a 1-on-1. How is the
"select person to talk" feature working for you?

~~~
ricberw
Haven't used Jitsi Meet before, but for 1-on-1, I'm pretty sure Sidekick has
that in their dev pipeline already -- tbh, having them provide the
device/stand and the features to automatically handle reminding me to
join/simple single-press to open the chat make the experience far simpler than
using a software-only solution. For the intro $25/mo, this is a no-brainer if
it improves communication, even just for _one_ good conversation.

------
sonicggg
For the sake of mental health and privacy, I hope this product crashes and
burns.

~~~
achen187
We totally understand that this product isn't for everyone. Sidekick works
best for teams that actually want to feel like they're in the same room with
an always-on video. These are really fast-paced teams like cofounders or
operations teams.

~~~
option_greek
Sorry, but you do not understand that this product isn't for everyone. All it
takes is one management loony to throw money at this and make employees own
homes as their prisons.

How ever, unlike the parent comment I wish you would succeed and you will
account for the visceral hatred from a lot of us to build a lot of privacy
features into your product and not get tempted to turn this product into
virtual peeping tom for micro managers.

------
awwstn
This is really cool! I worked for a startup years ago that had a 1-way setup
like this that allowed our two remote teammembers to pop into the office
anytime, and it was great.

Bummer to see so much jeering in the comments here. No iteration of this
product will be compelling to the "not interacting with people is the best
part of remote work" crowd, but they aren't your market. However, I think you
might be able to land on something that addresses the privacy concerns while
still improving on "in the room"-like serendipity for remote teams.

I've worked on a team that used Mumble audio-chat years ago. Everyone kept it
on much of the day with a global push-to-talk key, and it was mostly quiet but
super helpful for spontaneous conversations. It's basically like using walkie-
talkies, now that I think about it. I wonder if something like that would be
compelling here (e.g. I can pop up on your screen on-demand, but I won't see
you unless you acknowledge).

Anyway, congrats on the launch. Look forward to seeing where this goes!

~~~
hzuo
Thanks - super interesting to hear about your past experience, and indeed
there are a bunch of privacy-preserving features on our roadmap!

------
Terretta
The only question I have is how well it scales.

The writeup above keeps talking about a “room” but the website features only
person-to-person with the exception of the illustration of muting which shows
the guitarist and hand-clapper as two ‘windows’. So two people cuts the 1080p
(pretty low res) screen in half. What about 10 people, or 25?

The answer is not in your FAQ:

 _Q. How many Sidekicks can be connected on a team?_

 _A. We built Sidekick to handle teams of all sizes._

You shouldn’t even have included that Q/A in the list, if you’re not going to
answer it!

Microsoft, Zoom, others, all working to figure out how to show more team
members at once, so presumably this isn’t trivial to do well. Nothing
indicating how you solve it, what to expect with larger teams, and what’s the
present design intent to set expectations.

So, real questions from a potential team, and team-of-teams (8-12 people per
team, 20 teams):

What’s the maximum number of participants that display _at once_ , and what
happens _beyond_ that number?

Regardless of design intent, what’s the actual maximum number?

~~~
achen187
That's great feedback. Honestly, we haven't set up a team larger than 5 at
this point.

However, I also believe that 3-5 is roughly the amount of people who you
actually work really closely with. These units are probably the right grouping
for who is in one room.

There is no actual max number, but I do think the design and the use case
would fall apart right now. But there's some things we're thinking about like
separate channels that might help with this.

~~~
Terretta
> _I believe that 3-5 is roughly the amount of people...right grouping for one
> room_

Isaac Asimov commented maximum creativity is 3-5, but a variety of firms have
found the optimal team size is a “two pizza team” (6 to 10, typically 8).

Google the term, you get tons of discussion from blogs to journalism, that can
lead you to papers:

[http://blog.idonethis.com/two-pizza-team/](http://blog.idonethis.com/two-
pizza-team/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/24/the-
two-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/24/the-two-pizza-
rule-and-the-secret-of-amazons-success)

In any case, what pattern does the screen divide into for 5? Of course there
is a max number, arguably the number of individual pixels if you wanted each
participant’s presence indicated by a single dot, but the practical limit is
much lower. How many can you do? Why not test more?

Currently Teams on iPad is 9, the increase from 4 was news:

[https://winbuzzer.com/2020/04/14/microsoft-teams-is-
doubling...](https://winbuzzer.com/2020/04/14/microsoft-teams-is-doubling-the-
number-of-people-you-can-see-in-video-calls-xcxwbn/)

Zoom is 42, so Teams plans 49 shortly:

[https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/microsoft-teams-
zoom-49-v...](https://venturebeat.com/2020/06/15/microsoft-teams-
zoom-49-video-call-participants/)

A 7x7 grid on an iPad Pro works out to something like 390x292, well above the
320x240 that was a fine streaming video size back in the day.

PS. If you haven’t done more than 5, say so in the FAQ.

------
binaryorganic
Bringing all of the pains of an open floor plan into the privacy of your own
home.

------
awongh
I immediately saw what needs this fills, that for remote work we need a kind
of digital presence somewhere between zoom video conference, which demands
everyone’s full attention, and is either presentational or one on one, and
slack, which feels too asynchronous and formal.

Like others i’m not convinced that the answer is _another screen_ or if it’s
some other kind of in between semi passive experience.

Once it disappears it’s interesting to consider what specific qualities of
_just turn and talk to someone_ is absent in remote work and how you could
bridge some of those feelings with some kind of digital experience. A
projector? A robot? VR? AR?

Remote work had made me more finely attuned to how many physical non verbal
cues you exchange with office mates on a daily basis and how exhausting it can
feel to duplicate those digitally.

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the feedback and it's awesome to hear that you experience the
problem we're trying to solve.

From our early users, the screen is awesome - it's the closest thing that
exists to sitting in the same room.

The idea of another way to simulate "semi-passive experience" is really
interesting. We'll definitely keep it in mind!

------
deedubaya
A company owned always on video and listening device in my home? How about
not.

~~~
achen187
We totally agree that this would be terrible - any company listening to their
employees goes against the mission of the company. We built Sidekick for the
subset of teams that actually want to feel like they're in the same room. They
actually want to be on camera so they can turn to their teammates and talk.

~~~
TACIXAT
Is the data end to end encrypted and do you have any management capabilities
on the device?

------
tomasreimers
Fascinating, I believe that Facebook shipped all of their employees a Portal
around the start of quarantine and they're now used for meetings, happy hours,
social events, etc. This seems like a fairly similar technology/application,
just without being FB specific :)

Ironically, in the FB office we had a separate set of devices (manufactured by
Cisco I believe) ALSO called "portals" (they looked like this:
[https://www.allhdd.com/networking/telephony-
equipment/telepr...](https://www.allhdd.com/networking/telephony-
equipment/telepresence/cisco-cts-
ex90-k9-nbp/?src=ggl&gclid=Cj0KCQjw6uT4BRD5ARIsADwJQ1_xyQZmqiEsLCbrgjzGB85xcD7ucGI5VFVVT0GQWjiiEs3Z8jpf4kYaAjp2EALw_wcB))
that were used to link various parts of remote teams (i.e. if you had half the
team in CA and half in NYC, you could set up a persistent video chat between
the desk areas of the two. Most teams muted them by default, and if you needed
to get the attention of someone on the other side you would wave your arms (or
message them) until they unmuted you and you could have an impromptu
conversation about whatever it is you needed. While there was some social use
from them, they never fully delivered on the promise of "feel you're in the
same place" (can't quite shout through the portal "let's get lunch"), and they
always seemed better used as "hey I have a quick question that needs to be
answered". Some people certainly commented that they found them distracting
above all else.

What I find most interesting is that even AFTER sending all employees (FB)
portals, FB doesn't seem to be targetting this use case. Instead, they seem to
be targetting the "make it easy to dial into a meeting or quickly connect with
any coworker" (almost a 21st century equivalent of a desk-phone). I'm curious
if sidekick has / will explore a kind of mode for that :) Other than that,
seems super cool - a quick feature suggestion is add a light around the camera
to give frontal illumination, getting the lighting right for video calls can
be a pain.

~~~
gustaf
I have both a Facebook portal and a Sidekick (I work at YC) and I find there
to be a huge difference between the UI of the Portal and how I use my
Sidekick.

Before YC I worked at Airbnb and before that I worked at Voxer which was a
pioneering company in asynchronous voice. A phone call is either on or off.
Asynchronous is different and the other side and choose to participate or not.
Facebook portal is to video what a phone call is to voice. Sidekick is much
more what like Voxer is to voice.

------
geuis
We tried something like this in 2014 so our remote graphics designers would
feel like they’re more in the office. It was a small team of 10 in the office
plus 3 remote.

Everyone HATED it. Having a camera actively on you all the time is incredibly
unsettling. We ended that experiment really quick.

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the data point! It's definitely not for everyone, but the teams
that actually need to be in the same room really love Sidekick.

------
thecrumb
My wife (an extrovert) would love this. Me personally (introvert) would hate
this. I can already see myself flipping off co-workers and forgetting the
video is on :)

What would be cool is if it could read my calendar and I could block out times
when I'm busy (no video) or avail ( video).

~~~
achen187
Great idea! We're thinking about calendar integration so something like that
could be awesome.

------
edoceo
I don't get it.

HWe use an RTC room on existing PC, with an alert and PTT mode. so we have
always on listen-audio. Its like a web-based walkie-talkie (remember Nextel?)
It's rigged to our Mattermost too

Ours cost like $500 to build - this would cost us over $500 every two months
at discount price.

~~~
achen187
Whoa that's a super cool setup, and one I haven't seen before. I'd love to
learn more if you have a writeup anywhere?

And how many teammates do you have? It seems like 10?

~~~
edoceo
No write-up, I'll post one (or you can DM me).

7 core staff, 3-5 contractors and we let our clients in too. Most solutions
breakdown for us because of our loose definition of "user"

~~~
ponker
please post the writeup instead of DMing!

------
btown
Awesome product, and the subscription model is really really smart!

Is there support to plug in headphones and microphone? For instance, if you're
in a situation where there's background noise (a partner who may be doing
their own activities, or kids/pets prone to make loud noises) Sidekick would
still be tremendously useful. One setup might be to keep it default-unplugged
so you can hear a colleague who wants to ping you over speakers, but you'd put
on a headset with a directional mic built in quickly before replying.

~~~
achen187
Yes you can plug in headphones and a mic. Just so I understand, are you
worried about bothering the other people in your home?

Really appreciate that you like the idea! Let me know if you have any other
questions, would be happy to chat through them.

------
crusso
This is a great idea for a product. I have worked remotely for the past ten
years and not having easy interactions with team members has always been a
problem.

Lately, I've had a laptop in my office's cube with Skype and VNC set up so I
can connect any time I want and leave myself virtually present for hours at a
time. I like it. I'm sure that a dedicated product could offer more features
and efficiencies than I have with my jury-rigged setup.

Best of luck to you.

~~~
achen187
Whoa, that's an awesome setup. Do you still have this or is your office
closed?

~~~
crusso
It's still set up, but the office is mostly closed so it's not very helpful.

------
slykar
Looks like it's still an early stage. Nice to see that it has something I
wanted to implement in Jitsi Meet - "select person to talk". Other than that I
don't see the appeal other than the subscription model for the hardware if you
are an employer. Would be nice to see something like Facebook's Portal, so
that it could be also placed in bigger rooms, where it could follow the
speaker.

~~~
achen187
Following the speaker is a really cool feature, and is something we might get
to at some point.

Sidekick is built to be always-on so teammates can feel like they're in the
same room. Many teams we spoke to have tried doing it with Zoom or Jitsi, but
they all decay because it's really hard to get people in the room, at the same
time. Sidekick's features try to maximize the chances that you're not in the
room alone.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I sincerely wish you luck on this. I suspect I won't be using this, but that's
more of an issue of workflow, as opposed to a judgement of the device. I don't
like being interrupted while I work. I don't run Slack continuously, like many
do. Also I'm a hired gun. I don't have a constant gig, and 90% of my work is
alone.

I think a device approach is reasonable. People like _a_ device. They tend to
not like _a bunch of_ devices, which is why smartphones became so popular. But
since this is something that would basically be a desk accessory, it might
work.

One thing to be careful of, though, is that C-suite folks will often project
their workflows onto their employees. What I see particularly hard-hit, is
respect for "The Flow." This is that "magic productivity sauce" that comes
from uninterrupted working time. Managers and executives have very little of
this, but it is vital - _vital_ \- for engineers and creatives (I was a
manager for a very long time, and the most valuable thing I did, was act as a
buffer between sources of interruption, and my team).

Nowadays, the _absolute worst_ thing that can happen, is I get a phone call or
messaging interruption, while I'm chasing down a bug, or learning a new
technique. It makes me blow my top. I tend to be rather abrupt, when answering
those calls. Especially since the vast majority are robocalls, and I plonk
them immediately (even that little interruption is painful).

I'd say that maybe having some published "best practices" to accompany it,
might help. Maybe a blog _-vlog?-_ that is accessible from these devices,
could be nice.

Of course, it goes without saying that responsiveness (less than 500ms
latency) and frictionless infrastructure is also vital for everyone, but I
assume that is already there.

~~~
DetroitThrow
>People like a device. They tend to not like a bunch of devices, which is why
smartphones became so popular. But since this is something that would
basically be a desk accessory, it might work.

I feel differently - I feel like this wouldn't work for some that I know, not
because they aren't fans of the always-on Zoom meeting, but because they don't
have space on their desk for another accessory.

------
redm
Congratulations on the launch. I'm a remote worker, so I was keenly interested
in this.

I've been using a Facebook Portal for about 1.5 years as an always-on video
device. It works great, so I love the idea. There's open water in this space,
so it's great to see others entering it.

For now, I don't see why I would ever use this over the Portal. The Portal HW
has a high-quality build with a great speaker, and the auto-tracking video is
creepy good. I purchased the large desktop Portal for $200 one time—a better
deal than 25$ a month IMHO.

I wrote up my remote work experience with the Portal, too
([https://medium.com/@dbal/facebook-portal-makes-for-a-
better-...](https://medium.com/@dbal/facebook-portal-makes-for-a-better-
virtual-office-d2ff929763f4)). Facebook has been researching business uses
cases also. A research firm hired by Facebook came to our remote sites and
observed how we used the Portal.

~~~
achen187
That's really cool! Have you expanded beyond your cofounders? And are you guys
still using it for always-on?

Also, how do you guys handle knowing when you can talk to the other person?
How do you know if the other person is in a meeting?

~~~
redm
"Have you expanded beyond your cofounders?"

We haven't, although we do have other team members with Portals, I don't think
it would be effective for our use case. Most of the conversations are semi-
private, so we use the device like we were sharing an office more than having
a meeting.

As a team, we use Slack for Chat, Zoom for Meetings and screen sharing, and
Slack for one on one video chat. We use slack for quick conversations because
its fast to deploy, and you can keep your hands on your keyboard (or mouse).

Oddly, we hop on Zoom all the time for screen sharing but continue to just use
the Portal for AV.

"Also, how do you guys handle knowing when you can talk to the other person?"

That's have been easy. If I want to talk to Tom, I just look at him. If he's
in a meeting, I can almost always tell. We keep each other muted unless we're
going to talk. You can tell from the eyes, or headset, etc. pretty quickly.

For the shared office use case, in particular, it's excellent.

Any way you slice it, I'm glad to see more people in this space, as it can
only lead to better things for remote workers. Good luck!

------
remotelyyours
This is really cool!

I am working on a similar problem but been working in the complete opposite
direction. Trying to figure out how to crack async video communication bit.

I am working on something called vlokit [0]. It lets you do video messaging
with your team. Think of slack for your projects but with video threads.

It helps you being more authentic than writing an edited message. It helps
communicate easily without taking up time in meetings. Have fewer
distractions.

And above all, it feels like you're talking to real people. Because you are.

I would love to have a chat with you guys to discuss about the problem and
maybe our different approaches as well.

[0] [https://vlokit.com](https://vlokit.com)

------
easton
Did you guys consider putting some kind of authentication on the device when
unlocking it? It seems to me that the device should check that you are who you
say you are before showing you your coworkers (especially if your team works
on sensitive/trade secret-y stuff). Or to make sure your kids don’t come stare
at your coworkers while they’re in flow ;)

Maybe it’s not a problem unless someone breaks in to your home/office, but at
the very least a passcode might be nice if you lock it for x amount of
minutes. It’s often a requirement for regulatory compliance as well (although
if a company has to have an airtight setup I don’t know if they’d be the
target market).

(If you have this feature, then that’s swell! It looks very cool, even if it
reminds me a bit of the telescreen from _1984_...)

~~~
achen187
That's a great point. We actually haven't run into that issue yet, but it
seems like it could very easily happen. Thanks for the idea!

------
smichel17
FYI: I am not sure if this applies to "Show HN", "Launch HN", etc, but in
general text posts are downranked compared to links, so they don't stay on the
front page as long. In the future you might consider submitting
[https://sidekick.video/](https://sidekick.video/) and then leave your text
post as a comment (these are _usually_ but not always upvoted, so they stay at
the top). The downside is that you don't get to guarantee your post will stay
on top, so you have a bit less control over the conversation (which, when I
think about it that way, makes total sense why text posts are downranked).

------
jonathankoren
There was just a criticism of YC earlier this week about YC spinning out SaaS
products for startup founders, and then this comes along right on cue.

This reads like a solution looking for a problem.

I have a screen. I have a camera. In fact I have two screens, three cameras,
and four microphones on my desk right now. The hardware isn't an issue. But
what really struck about this announcement was this passage:

> We talked to many teams that tried to hack together a solution with Zoom on
> an iPad. From the teams we spoke to, we learned that it's really hard to
> consistently get the team in the room at the same time. Users are constantly
> leaving the room for other meetings but for everyone still in the room, it
> seems like nobody wants to use it because it's empty. This causes a negative
> feedback loop where even more people leave the room and the hacked together
> solution quickly becomes useless.

The problem is people are clicking "leave", if you don't leave the call,
you're still there. Even Sidekick doesn't solve this problem, because you are
sending a nag notification to people telling them to join a room and just
hangout. The innovation is nag notification.

Even your vanity metric of "our users are in their Sidekick rooms for 6 hours
a day" is kind of meaningless when the device is always on by design. That's
like saying "on average, our refrigerator uses use their device 24 hours a
day" \-- well you don't have an off switch. The real metric is how often
people are actually talking on it.

You seem to figure that this is niche product at best. I know you're trying to
replicate the drop by, but it's hard to see how this is better than the "Hey,
join my call when you have a chance," slack. Even if you think that it is
better, this experience is _worse_ than the physical interaction, because
everyone is within very close ear shot of every conversation. That doesn't
happen in the physical world. We're physically separated, and the sound is
attenuated. It's not when everyone is inches away from a microphone and
amplified into everyone's ears.

~~~
achen187
We should have probably flagged the number of conversations in the original
post, that's good feedback. We're on average seeing 20 new conversations per
day.

We've built a bunch of other features that also maximize the chances you're
not alone in the call. The reason this metric is important is because being
alone is the reason why nobody wants to stay in the call. An example is
Meeting Mode, which I bring up in the original post - it lets your teammates
know that you'll be back in 30 minutes so people don't feel like they're
alone.

We actually are working on the ability to talk to one person on the call as
opposed to everyone at once. But that's a good flag and it's great to know
it's a problem you identify with.

------
lewisflude
This product fills me with a deep sense of anxiety and dread.

I don't feel like being visually "always on" is helpful for employees or
employers.

I wish you luck in exploring ways of making people working from home feel more
connected, but I'm afraid this aint it.

------
juandazapata
How is this any different than having an always-on zoom room on my iPad?

~~~
achen187
We spoke to many teams that tried jerry-rigging an always-on zoom on an iPad.
It was really hard to get people in the room at the same time.

We built Sidekick to maximize the chances that you're not alone in the room. I
talk more about some of the features in the original post!

------
DetroitThrow
"always on" qualms aside, I think such a tool is a valuable utility to give to
users, especially the features described on the website.

However, I'm would not pay an extra $25/month (or worse, $50) on top of my
Zoom and Slack (or Teams) subscriptions because of a short coming of the
number of screens one has or how Zoom works by default for the "always on" use
case. Based on other comments, it seems like others take issue with the cost
and sell that's happening here.

------
throwaway858915
Three of the cofounders are from Palantir. Privacy is not mentioned as a
concern in the original post.

Are we expected to believe this is really a product to keep people connected,
or is this another big data weapon for the corporate mass surveillance
arsenal? And what's the probability that data may end up in China, like with
Zoom?

> If you don't really want to talk to your team during the day, Sidekick
> probably isn't a great fit.

Wow, thunderstruck.

------
trez
I have been building a device for another vertical, really old people, with a
lot of similarities ( subscription base, come with a stand, used to be a
samsung Galaxy tab A,webrtc video calls, etc.), its called LiNote
[https://linote.fr](https://linote.fr) (website on french only)

Happy to talk if that might help, email me at anthony at linote dot fr.

~~~
achen187
Super cool idea! Will definitely reach out.

------
quartz
Finally someone built this! I HATE juggling video windows vs. application
windows.

2 Questions:

\- Can I still share my screen?

\- Your "How it Works" section says $50/user/month but your "Get the Band Back
Together" section says $25/user/month. Then the titlebar says "$25/user/month
until august 1st". So.... is it $25/user/month in July and then goes up?

~~~
achen187
\- Can I still share my screen? We recommend all our customers to try using
[https://screen.so/](https://screen.so/) It's awesome, in slack you type
/screen and immediately start a multiplayer screen share. Here's a video fo
how it works:
[https://www.loom.com/share/f7941a18a501424db3656b4603cb1179](https://www.loom.com/share/f7941a18a501424db3656b4603cb1179)

\- Regarding pricing, it's $25/user/month if you sign up before August 1st and
that price is locked in for life. (The $50 is a mistake, and we're changing it
right now)

------
balabaster
Is this easy to use even if you’re in a coworking space or want to work from
somewhere unconventional or is it really designed for working out of your home
office? I often like to work out of coffee shops, or down by the river and not
pinned to my desk.

I don’t want to give a false or bad impression that I’m not available/working
just because I’m not at my home office desk.

------
koopuluri
This is beautiful. I thrive on impromptu social interactions during the work
day, and would love to have a system that facilitates and encourages it with
teammates that are open to it.

I love the secondary, single-purpose device approach. It relieves the mental
strain of figuring out this set up... happy to pay a premium to be connected
with my team on one tap.

~~~
achen187
Thanks! Let us know if you have any questions, we'd love to set you guys up.

------
bdcravens
> Initially we built Sidekick just for ourselves, but many of the founders in
> our YC batch wanted to try it out!

What was your original YC idea?

------
IdoRA
Did you do a trademark search yet? T-Mobile US had a Sidekick device not long
ago and may not have abandoned their registration.

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the heads-up. We'll take a look.

~~~
dsr_
In particular, T-Mobile's last "Sidekick" device was an Android phone. You
should probably start looking for a new name now.

------
kissgyorgy
The next step improving home office is not bringing office to home, but rather
improving asynchronous communication, which is a whole different way to work.

Open offices are really bad for productivity, I don't really understand why
don't people understand that nowadays. This device makes your home office an
open office...

------
didip
I don't know about the use-case in work environment. No one I know wants to be
that close to each other at work. Small startups, maybe...

However, my wife would totally use this. She does this already, "zooming" with
her girlfriends doing arts and crafts.

People who have tendencies to socialize with others will appreciate this.

------
satya71
I had done this with a cheap windows tablet mounted on the wall in my old
cubicle with Skype on auto-answer. So I could "pop-in" and people could come
and talk to me. Somehow calling me from their own desk Skype was bigger task
cognitively, but walking to the cube with my video on was easier.

~~~
achen187
Wow that's quite the creative setup. And yes, something about having a
dedicated device makes it a lot less frictionful.

------
choppaface
One of the harder things with the current video conferencing stuff is screen
sharing. You can't just go poke over your colleague's shoulder and look at
their screen (and see their hands and a whiteboard all at once). Would be nice
to see how this product might address the problem.

~~~
achen187
We actually recommend using Screen.so for this:
[https://screen.so/](https://screen.so/)

It's way faster than setting up a Zoom. All you do is type in /screen and it
starts a share!

Here's a loom we made demonstrating it:
[https://www.loom.com/share/f7941a18a501424db3656b4603cb1179](https://www.loom.com/share/f7941a18a501424db3656b4603cb1179)

------
davidajackson
I feel like this could also be a tool for friends or cofounders. I'm not sure
I see it as really that advantageous in a work setting (aside from cofounders
who tend to chat and have that kind of social enthusiasm often), but that's
just my personal opinion.

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the data point. Yeah to be honest we do really well with very
tight-knit teams right now. Cofounders are generally already good friends.

~~~
davidajackson
Yeah and that's where work tends to be more 'fun'

------
FHermisch
Great approach. If you trigger strong reactions, you are on the right path.
Remote working is about communication discipline - like in the army. Have a
talk to tank-commander or someone else who relies on radio communication. I
think this gives great insights.

------
tiffanyh
Contrary to others in this thread, I give applause to anyone creating
something.

I’ve been testing out a similar software only service (no hardware) and it’s a
neat experience.

[https://www.around.co/](https://www.around.co/)

------
fattybob
this sounds like a really great tool and I'm sure that many teams will soon
see what great advantages there are to being in touch, a lot like a chat room
with a visible connection I guess. It sounds like great tool for sharing ideas
and sharing the flow of energy in a group, less formal than a meeting, but a
quick meeting can be convened at a simple call to discuss an idea, good luck
with the development and progress, i can imagine a lot of similar idea spin
offs coming soon too, so I hope you cover all bases for implementation,

------
jcmontx
Sounds great. Is the hardware available for international teams or just US?

~~~
achen187
Yes, we ship international! For more details, go to our website:
[https://sidekick.video/](https://sidekick.video/)

------
TheAdamAndChe
This is a good idea! Latency can be a big pain for web conferencing. Are the
video streams sent directly to the other clients, or are they relayed through
a central server?

~~~
hzuo
Thanks and totally agree - especially since we're trying to enable
frictionless communication, we knew we had to minimize latency from the get-
go.

We use the standard WebRTC model where 1:1 Sidekicks are peer-to-peer (video
streams sent directly to other clients), and 3+ Sidekicks go through SFUs that
we host on AWS. These SFUs deployed all around in the world (in every major
AWS region), and we assign Sidekicks to the SFU nearest to everyone on their
team.

Internally the metric we aim for is to keep the end-to-end latency under
200ms.

------
juliand
I wish you the best of luck in your new endeavours.

~~~
achen187
Thank you!

------
moeadham
About 3 years ago we tried to roll our own version of this.

I would be a buyer for a 25 person team, but 25$/month is too steep. Maybe
3-5$?

------
rajeshamara
I think zoom is already getting into similar. Also feel pricing is a bit on
expensive side for what you are providing

~~~
achen187
Zoom and Facebook Portal are still just trying to make meetings marginally
better with a dedicated device. We're going after a different niche where
teams need to actually feel like they're in the same room with an always-on
call.

~~~
ipsum2
So just have an always on meeting using Zoom/Portal. How is that any
different?

~~~
achen187
We talked to a bunch of teams that tried this. It's really hard to get people
into the call at the same time. Eventually, there are enough bad experiences
of being alone that people stop using it.

Sidekick's features maximize the chances you're not alone. Some examples are
outlined in the original post!

------
philip1209
Not a fan. Seems like an invasion of privacy for companies to put an always-on
security camera in your home. Didn't Orwell call them Telescreens?

~~~
texasbigdata
Is it always on?

This is an interesting problem. How to recreate a “frosted glass” that’s
introvert friendly (there’s a disorder that affects X% of the population where
they can’t work if they’re being watched...the name escapes me) while reducing
the friction of adhoc interactions (time, clicks, etc).

Hopefully there’s some interesting solutions soon.

One thing this solution perhaps doesn’t address is portability. Sure you can
take the device with you, but will you? So it’s a “home office” solution not a
“remote as in Starbucks” (if that ever exists again) solution.

Neat idea!

~~~
achen187
The frosted glass is a great idea! We'll definitely give it some thought.

Regarding portability, we were actually pleasantly surprised to learn that a
lot of our users took Sidekick with them when they found different homes to
shelter in place. We're thinking about adding some software companion apps to
help with this as well.

edit: yes it's always-on, but you have the capability to turn it off easily
with one button click.

------
justinzollars
Sorry folks, google meet or facetime work for me. and the cost is almost zero
for those tools.

------
thomastraum
this is obviously a good idea. I was so close to trying to hack something
together such as this. the naming could be way better, you missed an
opportunity on labeling the feeling you are looking for, you should use
presence or something similar

~~~
achen187
Thanks, let us know if you have any questions. We'd love to help you guys out.

------
tinus_hn
Isn’t the Sidekick name already taken for hardware devices?

------
dakna
Congrats on launching, especially with a physical device. Quick question, if I
commit to the promotional pricing now, can I scale up and add more users to my
plan for the same price per user after Aug 1st?

~~~
arthurwu
Thank you, and yes!

------
akshayhangloo
So, is it like Tandem with always on video ?

------
senojretep356
This is hands down the worst startup idea in the history of the world. I would
flat out leave at a company who introduced this or not start there in the
first place.

------
francescopnpn
This is peak YC

------
la6471
It may sell but only if you hype it a lot. As an idea this is very low in the
scale in terms of originality or functionality.

------
xenospn
Beautiful website! Good luck :)

------
ahstilde
Super neat! Happy to see Sidekick launch!

~~~
achen187
Thanks!

------
someone7x
You are so preoccupied with whether or not you could [found a unicorn off the
back of Covid], you didn't stop to think if you should.

To further elaborate:

What is one of the only benefits to the pandemic? Remote work.

Who wants to come in and ruin it? Sidekick.

Thanks, I hate it. I truly do. I only have to imagine the god awful dashboard
you'll inevitably offer (product managers gonna productize) and the dystopian
KPIs you'll kindly offer (not turning on your camera is the new tardiness
metric).

It's schemes like this that trigger an arms race (ostensibly to "reduce
liability", "promote productivity", and "increase security") that ultimately
leave workers with less agency and petty human managers with more avenues of
oppression to exploit.

For the sake of a world where workers aren't slowly boiled into digital
serfdom, I wish you nothing but trouble. I really do, because you are
emblematic of the short-sighted thinking that's wrong with the world.

~~~
dang
Please don't fulminate like this on HN. You're breaking the guideline against
shallow dismissals, as well as this one:

" _Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone
says, not a weaker one that 's easier to criticize. Assume good faith._"

Nobody's talking about imposing this product on anyone.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
someone7x
That's fair, in hindsight it's a lot harsher than it felt writing it.

~~~
replwoacause
For what it’s worth, I agree with your sentiment wholeheartedly in-spite of
the harshness of the tone that was used. I was hoping for a reply along the
lines of the one you posted because this can be an emotional topic depending
on the kinds of companies you have experience working for.

I also feel that some corporate muckety-muck is going to see this and foist it
upon their workforce, further subjugating them under the guise of
collaboration and togetherness. Luckily, I work someplace that doesn’t do that
to its employees but many are not that fortunate.

------
quercusgrisea
Why is this necessary when there are already many examples of successful
remote companies that don't need to constantly watch and listen to their
employees?

~~~
achen187
I totally understand and agree that there are a ton of awesome remote
companies that were able to do it with mostly async communication. We built
Sidekick for the subset of newly remote teams that actually need to be in the
same room to get their jobs done (certain types of cofounders or operations
teams). The product itself actively discourages any sort of "watch and listen
to employees". All communication is bidirectional -- if I can see you, you can
see me. We're totally in the same boat that we would never want Sidekick to be
used as a monitoring tool -- it would go against the DNA of our company.

------
mirrormaster
Seems like anything can get funding these days. I love how they say this is
better than running zoom or Google meet on an iPad. Give users a mediocre
android tablet with similar software and charge 25 dollars per user per
month!? The founders clearly haven't thought about the asynchronous nature of
remote work and even companies want an always connected environment, I don't
know why they would want this product!

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the feedback. We actually talked to a bunch of teams that tried the
Zoom on an iPad route and it usually failed because it was really hard to get
the team in the same room. Sidekick does a really good job at maximizing the
chances you're not alone -- I talk about some of the features in the original
post.

Totally agree it's not for everyone, especially those users that are really
happy with asynchronous work.

------
masukomi
There are multiple services available that do this, without hardware, and with
more privacy features (like being able to fuzz your camera such that people
know you're there but can't actually see you picking your nose or whatever).

they don't steal desk space. they let you use the same screen for other
things. they're cheaper.

BUT MORE IMPORTANTLY

I've tried them with my team at a past co and people were FREAKED THE EFF OUT
by the idea. They DO NOT WANT. It doesn't matter that it's logically the same
thing as being in an open office. they DO NOT WANT a camera pointing at them,
even knowing that it's not recording.

some people are ok with this, most aren't.

this appeals to "leaders" who don't trust that their people are working if
they can't see them at their desk.

DO NOT USE THIS. Society is _NOT_ ready for cameras pointed at them while they
work and folks feel it's a SERIOUS invasion of privacy.

~~~
achen187
Thanks for the feedback. We're definitely thinking about adding more privacy
features.

We're on the same page that Sidekick isn't for everyone. It's great for those
teams that want to feel like they're sitting in the same room. For these
teams, that's what makes them most effective at their jobs.

------
williamtwild
"New Hardware Device"

Looks like a run of the mill tablet to me.

~~~
shortweb3
It’s a Samsung Galaxy 10 2019. Worth about $200.

