
Show HN: An app to help overwhelmed PMs never miss an important request - gfragin
https://followup.loophq.com/
======
codingdave
This may sound crazy, but I'm OK with a request falling through the cracks if
it was not important enough for the requester to follow up with me.

The most effective PMs I've worked under had a heavy filter on incoming
requests, at least for established products, with "No" being the default
answer. If multiple people started asking for the same thing multiple times,
clearly it was important. But if you say yes to every little things that comes
in via any channel, you end up with a complex, cluttered product.

I feel that a product like this is better applied to a customer
services/support team, where you really do want to make sure every little
complaint is addressed properly.

~~~
Carpetsmoker
> I'm OK with a request falling through the cracks if it was not important
> enough for the requester to follow up with me

The issue with this approach is that there will be a bias towards people who
quickly/persistently follow up. Personally, I'm very hesitant to do so
especially with busy people, as I don't want to add to their workload (or
indeed, I dislike being pushy in general).

~~~
codingdave
That isn't what I meant. Admittedly, I can see why it was read that way, so
let me clarify the larger point:

As a PM, you need to listen to your entire community, not one person. Whether
they politely request something and wait, or whether they are excessively
persistent, that is still just one request. And unless you only have a handful
of customers, you need some consensus from the entire community that the
request is a good one before saying "Yes", and getting to work on it.

------
bryanmillstein
The value Loop gets with this level of access to user data will far outweigh
any benefit they offer. No wonder they're giving it away for free. How much do
you think users should be charging Loop for this data?

~~~
ghego1
Precisely my concern. After knowing about loop I was intrigued and I was
thinking of creating an account. I started the process with Gmail and I
quickly stopped as soon as I've seen the scopes for which they ask to be
authorized, for example edit/delete permissions on all my drive files. Not
going to happen.

~~~
gfragin
we totally understand the concerns and are hyper-vigilant about security and
access to user information. the permissions we ask to approve are the minimum
and standard permissions required by the underlying cloud platform (google,
office365, slack etc). part of the loop functionality allows the user to
interact with content that exists on the user's underlying platform i.e.
read/reply/forward emails, open/access/edit files etc. all of that is specific
to the individual user, is protected through the encrypted credentials and
token provided by the cloud platform upon oauth and governed by out privacy
policy and terms of
use.[https://loophq.com/privacypolicy](https://loophq.com/privacypolicy)

~~~
ryandrake
Your candid and detailed responses here are much appreciated!

The product hits a lot of checkboxes for me as an overloaded project manager.
If this ever turns into something self-hosted or (ideally) run-able directly
from my workstation/phone without a cloud account, I would very likely give it
a try! Best of luck.

------
plexiglass
Awesome. I'm looking forward to trying this out. As a PM, I currently use
Simplenote to jot down quick requests, or file it in JIRA if time allows.
Eager to see if this turns me into a superhero.

Also, it's common to perceive that when these small requests fall through the
cracks, its due to poor or lack of process or simply a bad PM! But I would
argue that, just like processes breakdown with scaling companies, the same
happens with PM's, just on a project level. Cognitive overload is real.

~~~
merlincorey
> Awesome. I'm looking forward to trying this out. As a PM, I currently use
> Simplenote to jot down quick requests, or file it in JIRA if time allows.
> Eager to see if this turns me into a superhero.

As a side note, a JIRA board full of random feature requests in my experience
will generally become a patchwork graveyard of backlog feature requests with
little to no coherent relationship or roadmap between them.

In my experience, when this occurs, it is then recognized that maintaining a
roadmap and list of feature requests works better in a wiki or similar
documentation-oriented space through which one can categorize and cross link
the feature requests as needed, as well as keep track of information such as
how often it has been requested, etc.

This allows for a clean separation between actual planned work that needs to
get done and prospective planned work that may never get done, but we want to
think about in the context of the rest of the work we may put in the system.

~~~
plexiglass
> As a side note, a JIRA board full of random feature requests in my
> experience will generally become a patchwork graveyard of backlog feature
> requests with little to no coherent relationship or roadmap between them.

Agreed. The purpose of these "on the fly" tickets is to document the request
in real-time, so it's not forgotten. It's critical to return to these tickets
to add color and file them into the proper epic.

------
lifeisstillgood
Overwhelmed Project Managers to me implies poor processes - but we all seem to
accept it.

Frankly there should be no need for a PM to do _anything_ except in face of
disaster -

\- plan the work \- do the work \- realise the pace of work won't hit the
milestones at the dates predicted \- ok - adjust

None of this needs a PM - just a few hours of a team lead. (ok so maybe that
is a PM). but basically if you have one ticket system, and one set of
milestones, you can see everything you need a Proiect manager for (need a ops
manager or a dev lead or hiring lead - yes but no not project management)

just don't do deadline driven projects and pretty much everything else falls
into place

~~~
k__
Most project managers I met were just the punching bags between customer and
devs/designers.

The good one absorbed it, the bad ones kicked down.

~~~
rodolphoarruda
Yes, they are the first sign that the company oversells its products/services.
As soon as the customer realizes his expectations are not being met -- or
never will be -- he starts punching the PM. Mature organizations would put
Sales in project status calls to speak with the customer in the first sign of
misaligned expectations, and that helps a bit.

------
notus
Is the data being sent to and processed at a third party? Many organizations
won't allow users to use something that is going to send their emails off to
third parties. I like the idea of it though.

~~~
gfragin
no third parties and thank you for your support!

------
shikharja
How does FollowUp decide which question is important to me? (if at all)

I'm concerned about the level of access required for this app before I try it
out (I am a Product Manager). Sounds like you'd be reading through all my
emails and PMs. Is that correct?

~~~
gfragin
thanks for your questions FollowUp is powered by the Loop HQ backend
(loophq.com) and is in essence the task extraction functionality broken out
into a stand alone product. 1\. when a user connects a platform (google for
example), the Loop backend runs the metadata from the platform's content
through its graph database to identify where does a specific email or file fit
in to the user's world. based upon that analysis, Loop scores each contact and
by association, each content item with a "Loopscore" which determines the
relative importance of that contact or content. this is a continuously
iterative process and is impacted by the user's continued behavior. 2\. I
refer you to our privacy policy which outlines the considerable protections
and restrictions we have put on ourselves in order to safeguard user
information
[https://loophq.com/privacypolicy](https://loophq.com/privacypolicy)

I would be happy to discuss further

~~~
hacker_account
cool. it's good to see a little insight into how something like this works.
but you kinda avoided the question by answering "refer to our privacy policy".
we should be talking about how something like this works so it doesn't look
shady when (not if) people find out after signing up. Of course you will be
"reading" the emails and slack messages. How else would this know about the
follow-up questions? I think it would be important to state that humans will
not be reading those emails but algorithms will be scanning them to know how
to help the PM. Not just read a lawyer speak privacy policy.

~~~
gfragin
Point conceded.

------
meritt
There's a 0% chance my current company nor any company I've worked for in the
past is going to allow a third-party company to access our entire email and
chat history. There are far too many instances of companies doing so with the
intent to repackage and sell your data, or simply shoddy security on their
side resulting in everything gets leaked.

If you want this to succeed with real companies, make it something we can host
on-prem and lock down so we can manage the chain of custody, while still
benefiting from your product.

~~~
gfragin
thank you for the feedback. a couple of comments 1\. if you use cloud based
services (google, office365, slack etc) which are the only services we
currently integrate, your company already allows a third-party to access your
email and chat history. 2\. depending on the circumstance, we are prepared to
discus an on prem deployment and in fact are already involved in some of those
discussions.

~~~
meritt
> your company already allows a third-party to access your email and chat
> history

I'd suggest, when trying to win over a technical community, you don't speak to
us like we're completely ignorant. Those "third-parties" are the service
providers themselves.

I'm going to trust Google and Slack a tiny bit more than LoopHQ's two
employees
([https://www.linkedin.com/company/loopscore/](https://www.linkedin.com/company/loopscore/)).
And as neither of you have any technical experience whatsoever, this tells me
you hired an outside team to build your products, which makes me question the
on-going product quality, support, and security even more.

------
loteck
Curious if HNers involved in management of cloud providers like 365 and Gmail
actually allow users to connect random cloud apps like this to their company
mailboxes? The pitch here seems oddly user-oriented rather than directed at
the enterprise.

Are companies actually allowing employees to exfil entire datasets to any
company who comes around with an app and privacy policy?

~~~
blowski
Most enterprises would have to allow a new app to connect. Even trying to use
a different mail client doesn’t work in my employer’s Office365 account.

~~~
gfragin
long term we would need enterprise buy in short term, users have been able to
use the site

------
gfragin
all - thank you for submitting your comments. couple of points 1\. as per our
privacy policy which I will make sure is live asap - - we do not share data
with any third party and we do all the processing in house 2\. the google
privacy requirements are quite rigorous and we just went through a re-approval
process under their new guidelines 3\. thank you for identifying the
typos...thought that was fixed 4\. regarding formalizing the request process,
our experience is that its difficult to mandate that a third party only use a
certain channel and even if you do things slip through the cracks

I would be delighted to continue this conversation with any and all. thanks
for your input.

~~~
miker64
on the third party front, it's _you_ who is the third party. My security team
would have kittens if I were to link slack/email/anything to ya'll. I think
that's what's at issue, not whether you then pass data outward (which, to be
clear, would also be unacceptable)

~~~
gfragin
thanks miker64 our experience has actually not been that - and once security
teams have had a chance to review there has been terrific acceptance. we are
only interacting with information that is already on a cloud platform and our
protections, policies and structure look to build on that security not subvert
it. the common fear is that we would aggregate information and sell to third
parties and that is dealt with in our privacy policies
[https://loophq.com/privacypolicy](https://loophq.com/privacypolicy)

~~~
yfiapo
I'm sure that will be the case for certain companies. For companies who
routinely deal with PII, PCI, or other regulated data the security teams are
likely to be much more worried about the potential for sensitive data to be
inadvertently shared outside of the company. Even if it is communiques about
only business sensitive matters (e.g., iPhone 12 XXL release) that is not
something very security conscious companies will be happy having in the hands
of a third-party without an appropriate security review.

Having run a security program at such a company, at the minimum I would expect
a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit of your company before I would allow my company to
utilize your services as it is tightly integrated to our internal
communication platforms.

This isn't to say you need that now but you should understand there are
segments of the potential customer base that will not work with you without
being able to pass that level of scrutiny.

~~~
gfragin
absolutely right. that is already on our radar given the types of customers we
are currently talking to. we are also seeing increased scrutiny from the API
providers who are insisting on their own security audits to allow API access.

------
yowlingcat
Something about this is disturbing. Overwhelmed PMs are usually a sign of a
larger structural issue regarding executive leadership or directionality. An
app helps somewhat increase the volume of things that can be processed in such
a rudderless structure is only going to compound the issue. In an organization
where PMs aren't overwhelmed, this isn't going to be an issue.

Creating software to solve organizational problems is a dangerously seductive
illusion. At worst, it could be used as a surface level token fix to allow
leadership to wash their hands of addressing a hard problem.

~~~
lukevdp
If an app helps a PM profess more feedback in the same time (efficiency), and
helps a PM process more feedback than they otherwise would have because
previously they forgot it (effectiveness), then that PM will be performing
better.

It might help some PMs that were overwhelmed to no longer be overwhelmed.

~~~
gfragin
our thoughts exactly.

------
brandonb
This solves a real problem for anybody in a management role, including PMs.

For requests that come in via email, techniques like Inbox Zero work pretty
well--you can treat your email as a todo list, and as long as your inbox is
empty, you know you didn't miss anything that your colleagues need from you.

But nowadays, many requests come in via Slack notifications. The problem is
once you view the message, the notification disappears--so unless you
explicitly have a very disciplined system to track requests as a separate to-
do list, the default is for little things to fall through the cracks.

So nice tool!

~~~
gfragin
thank you I hope you will try it out.

------
subpixel
I think this problem is best solved by formalizing the request process. If
you’re fielding requests in multiple channels and they are not landing in a
queue you can sort and prioritize, you’re inviting chaos.

~~~
ma2rten
Alternatively the person getting the request could put it in a queue.

~~~
kostarelo
That's still a "request process".

~~~
gfragin
the thinking here is that if a PM is managing 3-4 projects with 5-8 people per
project at any given time, there are potentially hundreds of
questions/requests that come in per day. Yes - some come in through tickets
but rare is the time that is so regimented. just putting them on a list
requires an assistant until now until now

------
Carpetsmoker
Scrolling the site with arrow keys is annoying and doesn't really work in
Firefox (scroll to something: "I want to see that full line", website: "yeah
nah, have the next section instead").

At any rate, does it come with a web verison? Because a mobile app for this is
in instant no from me. If it does, it's not very clear from the website.

~~~
gfragin
there is a web version at
[https://followup.loophq.com/](https://followup.loophq.com/) and just sign in
at the top of the page. or you can try the full product at
[https://www.loophq.com](https://www.loophq.com)

------
alectroem
Unrelated to the actual product, but there may be a typo or missing word on
the website under "how it works" bullet 2

"FollowUp then looks for questions in messages and extracts them into a" ....
something?

~~~
floatingatoll
You may want to email them at support@loophq.com about that, in case they’re
not looking here.

This may have been a soft launch that isn’t announced yet, given that the
Privacy/Terms links aren’t links yet, too.

~~~
verdverm
They are part of YC Startup School and have soft launched there as well.
Several of the participants have made the front page of HN.

Highly recommend YC SuS for anyone looking to develop their ideas.

~~~
gfragin
couldn't agree more. its been great

------
drudru11
Why don’t sites like this have an about and team page?

~~~
gfragin
what would you like to see? happy to elaborate

