
Show HN: Standup tool that works like Snapchat stories for remote teams - jpincheira
https://standups.io/index.html
======
jpincheira
Hi HN!

I'm JP, founder of Standups.io. Last March, I resigned from my full-time iOS
job with the idea of making a web/mobile app for async video standups. I did
some traveling (China/Vietnam) while I started to work on the app, but
eventually ended up back in Germany, escaping South Asia's rainy season :)

The idea of async video standups started to grow on me since last December
when I was in the north of Brazil. I was there for some weeks doing remote
work for my employer back in Germany, and I had to get up at 5 AM just to make
it for the 10 AM standup back in Hamburg. This didn't feel right. Other team
members were going through the same. So that's how it all started. Today I'm
finally launching and I'm super excited to get your feedback. I'm solo
founder, so it's been quite of a ride itself, but I'm looking forward to
what's next :)

iOS and Android apps are coming next — in some more weeks, as I feel it's
important to be able to post your standup update from anywhere, as long as you
have an internet connection.

I'd love to hear your feedback (feature requests, bugs, etc) and personal
experiences when it comes to team standups and how you guys are running
standups with team members that are not on-site / distributed, or maybe as a
full-remote team. I'm eager to implement some more features that might help
this kind of team setups better. You can try Standups for free here:
[https://standups.io/register](https://standups.io/register)

Thank you so much!

JP

edit: typos

~~~
brightball
I like the concept but I do struggle with the price point for 1.5 minute
videos per day.

~~~
confiscate
so what's the price where you will sign up right now?

if I lower it to $3/user/month, will you sign up right now?

~~~
jasonkester
No. never lower your prices because of a comment here. There will _always_ be
some cheapskate engineer here telling you your thing is too expensive.

That's fine. He is not your customer.

Your customer is businesses with money. Businesses that have seven dollars.

Those businesses, by the way, will just as happily spend $20/seat/month
because that also rounds to zero for them. You can experiment with charging
them that if you like. But whatever you do don't lower your prices. They're
too cheap already.

~~~
confiscate
Yes I already know that. I was trying to show brightball his comment about
"price too high" is ridiculous

If $7 / month is too high, then any price below $7 is too high.

He should just outright say he wanted it for free, instead of complaining
about price

------
lkurusa
This is a great idea, good luck with it!

A few small suggestions:

1) Often times, I find myself in a car or in an area with heavily limited
internet (i.e., the subway). I think it would be beneficial to allow a "listen
to the audio only mode", reducing bandwidth and/or ensuring I keep focusing on
the drive (maybe like a "team podcast" :-) )

2) In a similar vein, speech could be converted to text to make it searchable.
When I worked in a fully remote team, we had meetings where someone said
something that turned out to be important later on. Sadly, looking through
months of meeting footage is not something anyone of us wanted to do, speech-
to-text could be handy here.

~~~
jpincheira
Hello Levente. I'm super glad to see that you like the idea, really. Thanks
for checking the app out.

To answer your questions: 1) Audio-only updates are coming soon. And with the
iOS/Android apps is a great I idea to "listen" updates as you drive. Really
cool, and will implement this soon when the audio-only support is coming (will
work too by "listening" to videos as well).

2) Search is coming as well. You're idea is cool (specially for managers to be
checking into a project), and I am already thinking on making a JIRA
integration that puts all the associated/tagged standups into its related JIRA
ticket on the sidebar, but this could also work via the search (advanced)
section! Text-to-speech is also something cool, let's see how it all goes, as
it's also easily implementable using Google's Cloud Speech-to-Text :)

------
lillesvin
From a Scrum Master PoV, I feel like this app sort of misses the point of
stand-ups. Stand-ups are supposed to be daily interaction/live communication
between team members—not a daily report. The point is to further inter-team
communication in order to better overcome impediments. A pre-recorded update
isn't very useful if other team members has comments or questions. Stand-up is
also a great opportunity to ask if the rest of the team has any input on a
problem you may be dealing with.

From the website:

> Often times we miss standups.

Sorry to be blunt but then you're doing it wrong, or maybe it could be worth
reconsidering the choice of framework if it's not possible to implement the
most basic features of Scrum.

> To avoid updates that are rather long, we implemented a timebox of 1.5
> minutes [...]

This seems oddly arbitrary. You don't necessarily need to limit each
individual's speaking time. In e.g. a team of 4 people it's fine if each
person speaks for 3 minutes as long as its relevant for stand-up.

If you're removing the conversational aspect of stand-up along with timeboxing
people then it seems to me like doing stand-up over Twitter.

~~~
jsjohnst
While I get where you are coming from to some extent and partially agree, as
someone who’s also a certified scrum master, if there are a lot of discussion
going on in your stand ups, you are doing it wrong too. The point of standups
is to be quick update, with follow up discussions if something needs more
depth.

The best practice is for each person to answer the following three questions:

1) What did you accomplish since the last meeting?

2) What are you working on until the next meeting?

3) What is getting in your way or keeping you from doing your job?

Further, if your team is having discussions that aren’t relevant to _everyone_
at the standup, then by definition you are doing standups wrong.

~~~
lillesvin
Yeah, I agree, except "relevant to _everyone_ " is not accurate enough, I
think. It should be "relevant to reaching the sprint goal", because it can be
relevant to everyone on the team but completely irrelevant in relation to the
sprint goal.

Our stand-ups are strictly about stuff relating to the sprint goal and hence
the success of the team in the sprint. So the 3 points are all suffixed with
"... to help the team meet the sprint goal". Sometimes we'll spend 3 minutes
on our individual updates and 10 minutes on discussing an issue brought up in
point 3 because it affects the whole team and threatens the sprint. Sometimes
stand-up is over in just 3 minutes because there's nothing new and no issues.

The real-time feedback at stand-ups is super important, IMO. When doing point
2 from your list, there may be other team mates with valuable input. E.g. if
someone is planning on working on X and someone else have worked on something
related to that, then they may know of some gotchas and other stuff to be
aware of, where they can simply interject that they should maybe talk a little
about that after stand-up. We do that in my team all the time and it's saved
us countless hours because we managed to catch problems long before they
became actual problems and a a topic for point 3.

------
madmax108
Standups are awesome when done right... but unfortunately, given that my team
works fairly independently, standups end up getting stretched because some
member of the team prolongs his/her update to get a team opinion on either a
design issue or a technical problem (or a product issue).

The simple way we time-box our stand ups is by planking [1] while giving
standup updates. This ensures each person speaks for <1 min. All other issues
are discussed at the end of the standup. Better core strength is an unintended
benefit of the same! :-P

[1] [https://www.livestrong.com/article/538593-what-is-the-
planki...](https://www.livestrong.com/article/538593-what-is-the-planking-
exercise/)

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Planking? SV culture is parodying itself at this point. That is truly
ridiculous.

~~~
madmax108
I love how you've automatically assumed we're based in Silicon Valley.
Trademark HN armchair critiquing at it's finest!

~~~
Hasknewbie
To be fair, "SV culture" != "SV location".

------
madrox
The best SCRUM master I ever worked with had strong opinions about standups.
Standups, he said, were an attempt to address the principle of constant
communication. He said most places held to standups too literally and the
updates weren't useful to most of the people in the room, which negated the
whole purpose.

~~~
heymishy
Yeah I concur wirh this. Apologies if I've for the intent of this wrong but
stand ups are intended to be a team sync point where questions are asked,
mutual understanding reached and I doing a 1way update seems counter to the
intent of a stand up.

It definitely has its place to provide opportunity where you can't all meet
together but it you'd to rely promote questions and discussions following this
by all team members to avoid it being a box tick

------
bdagnino
Hi JP!

I´m a founder of a 20pp fully remote company, and I think your product could
have a great impact! However seeing such a high (in my opinion) price per
month per user is an issue for me. This product, while super useful, cover
only a small portion of the remote dynamics we face each day, and that price
per month per user in our case at least doesn´t justify it.

Loved the idea thought, so all the best!

~~~
jpincheira
First off, thank so much for your feedback. I'm truly happy that you think it
can make a great impact! :) On the other hand, pricing is something that I
will definitely be taking a look into soon: for now, I just wanted to launch,
so I made it per seat with 1 plan, no fencing of features at all.
Entreprise/business (lots of seats) is on the roadmap, let's talk so we can
workout a discount for now. Please send me an email at jp at standups.io
Thanks :)

~~~
bdagnino
Will do! And great about just wanting to launch! Better err and correct than
keep waiting till have a perfect plan (which will never come anyway :p)

------
terhechte
I really like the idea. I work in a partially remote team and organising the
standup in the morning can be tricky. There're a lot of low tech solutions to
this problem but what I like about this service is that it takes the simple
"story" approach from Instagram and uses that to solve the standup problem.
Nice. Good luck!

------
samstave
Created an account - UX is a little clunky:

have a + button to create a team.

Please have the ability to do a test/add a bot/test user.

Can I store the meeting? Get attendance reports? Notes?

If I create the meeting, but I dont attend/go on vacation what happens?

I can't see how to use it without having an actual other person to test it out
with...

I should be able to take/store personal video-notes, then share those out with
a team/create a meeting based on them perhaps?

For add member - please provide me a link I can just send to people to have
them click and add themselves as a member.

What happens when the teams get quite large?

I love async/remote standup as an idea - but have yet to find the right tool
for it. I'd love to help provide feedback...

\---

Sadly, I hope that you can sell - as I know that when it comes to /month
pricing, this will be harder to sell in lots of companies (Gsuite is only
$5/month per user for full email - which will have a higher-perceived value
than standup subscription)

------
Oras
Nice idea which will solve the connection issues during standup, enforce time
bound update and save the team time trying to align a standup. The only issue
I see is devs might not be bothered to watch it or follow up but it could be
quite useful for leads and managers.

~~~
jpincheira
Hello :) First off, glad you like the idea! You nailed it! One of the pains in
my previous agile teams was exactly this, dropping audio / choppy videos,
interrupting standups. Everybody still standing, waiting for our manager to
make a new call. Opening a new app for the video call, etc. This would be
happening way too often, and we'd be like "oh, man".

For the part of devs not bothered to watch it: soon audio will be coming, and
maybe —depending on feedback— audio to text could come too. Also, "seen" flags
are coming too, so the team manager and the submitter will be able to see
who's watched the updates.

------
pwf
The 'hero' graphic/screenshot says 'Thrusday', heads up:
[https://standups.io/static/media/app.130e8c9b.jpg](https://standups.io/static/media/app.130e8c9b.jpg)

~~~
jpincheira
Hehe thanks a lot for spotting that. Just updated it! :)

------
deedubaya
Add a slack integration that reminds team members to post their standup story
and you've got gold for remote teams

~~~
jpincheira
Thank you for your comment. I've been seriously thinking about this, but I
want to do it in a way that doesn't convert it into a chat/text-based bot :-)
But like you say, as a reminder/notification via Slack it sounds nice, I dig
it and will try to do this soon!

------
vimota
Looks great! Not sure if you're aware of it but Helpful
([https://www.helpful.com/](https://www.helpful.com/)) seems to be doing
something similar.

------
peterwwillis
I haven't tried to use it, but in case it's helpful, these would be the
features I would want: jot down notes before record, allow preview and then
re-record, allow saving text notes with the video, allow tagging people if you
need them to see a stand-up (ex. to ask for help), be able to see who has
viewed your stand-up, and a minimum stand-up time. Slack integration would be
great too, as each recorded message could pop into a slack channel when ready
(I don't know how notifications work right now)

~~~
jpincheira
Hello Peter. Most of these features are there, a few coming (in the roadmap)
like the seen flag.

Try it out with your team
[https://standups.io/register](https://standups.io/register) and let me know
how it worked for you :)

------
bastijn
For enterprises you could consider adding an enterprise pricing option with
on-prem hosting. Standups discuss IP and a lot of companies never let IP out
of premise/DMZ. Especially not in stored format.

You needn't even have it yet, you can use the pricing option to see if you can
catch a big fish who wants to pay for your development of it. (of course you
bring that different but it works the same).

~~~
jpincheira
Thanks for mentioning this. I understand what you mean. I used to work for a
1000+ company that currently uses GitHub, JIRA, Confluence and Slack, all of
them self-hosted. So yeah, and it's a German company, so they're extra worried
about protecting their data. Self-hosted support is definitely on the roadmap.
And will update the pricing page to explain this a little bit better. Thanks
again for bringing it up!

------
skrebbel
I like it, but how does this solve the thing that I thought was the reason
standups exist: to find out who needs help and to verify that the priorities
are still right?

I see how this can be used for status reporting, but who really cares about
that?

Note, I'm not trying to HN-diss this tool. I really want this tool - assuming
it helps us actually use the standup for setting priorities and helping each
other out.

------
stockkid
Hi JP, I love the website. Great job.

I'd start collecting email addresses at the bottom of blog articles to
reengage with the visitors in the future. You can do it unobtrusively and
actually it also helps users. For example, I would like to get an email update
when you publish a new content but couldn't find any way for it.

Good luck!

~~~
jpincheira
Hello Sung. Thank you so much for the kuddos and the tips! I will be doing
this soon, just added it to my backlog! :)

------
rpm33
What about closed captions for the hearing impaired ? I have a friend who
works in tech in SF and he has trouble doing video interviews because of this.
He is really good at lip reading but sometimes it's really hard to follow.

The closed captions generation doesn't have to work in real time.

~~~
jpincheira
You are truly right and this is definitely something I personally would like
to implement as soon as possible. Thank you so much for bringing it up.

I think that the solution would have to be just using Google Cloud Speech-to-
Text to get a text transcript and be able to overlay it on the video.

Please contact me via jp at standups.io as I'd love to hear more details on
how it'd a good way for your friend to easily use this feature.

------
chocolatebunny
Ok, so I don't think I've ever worked in a company that fully implemented
Agile effectively but in a previous job one team decided to just use an irc
channel and at a set time everyone would post a short one line statement about
what they're currently working on. Outside of our "standup" we used the irc
channel as a general shout for help when we had problems and we didn't know
who could help on. We didn't get a chance to run it for too long since the guy
who set it up got laid off after a few months but I thought it was pretty
straightforward idea.

------
laurex
Pro tip: try Marco Polo. It's free. That's not to say yours isn't a good idea,
and probably worth money if more specifically implemented for remote teams.

Disclosure: I work on this app, but the standup use case is an "off-label" use
that we ourselves employ internally. The app itself is for friends/family to
basically video text/walkie-talkie but it serves a use as asynchronous video
communication for other purposes.

------
addcn
This is a perfect use case for async video. Nice work!

What’s the follow up look like? Can I comment on videos to ask questions or do
you imagine that being done through existing channels?

~~~
jpincheira
Thank you for your interest! Yes replies/follow-ups are on the roadmap and
will come soon by eing able to reply video/audio/text (with tags).

------
paulie_a
I'll be honest, I will never watch a standup video.

~~~
peterwwillis
You might once your manager sees that you haven't watched the last 4 weeks
worth of standups....

~~~
paulie_a
At a previous job I didn't listen to voicemails from my boss for 6 years. I'd
hit delete immediately. Stand-ups are a waste of time, those videos would be
equally so just like those voicemails were.

------
bflesch
Great idea. From the screenshot the UI looks very sterile.

Would be great if the actual video content would get more screen estate to
focus on the team and not on the UI controls.

Also, why is your app not advertised on the website? I think the app should be
the main entry point to your tool and not a web dashboard.

~~~
sampl
FWIW I think the screenshots look great.

If someone’s going to use this tool every day, you want to emphasize the
videos and faces that change every day—not the buttons and links.

~~~
jpincheira
You are totally right... I like that idea. Thank you! I'll be updating this
soon and actually make a video to show the changing days with different
videos. :-)

~~~
sampl
Looking forward to it!

Just to be clear though - I think your current design already does a good job
at this :)

------
imnotjoel
Really like the idea. What about android and iOS version? It would make
everything even more easier.

~~~
jpincheira
Hello :) The apps are coming in the next few weeks. iOS is almost done at the
moment, but still tweaking a few things.

------
trevor-e
This looks very well done from the product side of things, but how is it
better than having a slack channel for the team to post async standup updates
in? Seems a lot simpler than using another service, and more flexible since
you can add links or tag other people.

~~~
jpincheira
I really didn't want to make another async chat/text-based bot. I wanted to
bring a bit of the on-site feeling / face-time human contact to teams that are
remote, specially those that are very distant, with a big timezone difference.
Working remotely is amazing, but it also has some problems, and I just wanted
to help solving the issue of loss of real human touch, (people's
expressions/smiles, etc), so that teams get daily face-time regardless of
location.

~~~
doubletgl
And aligning video thumbnails next to each other helps reduce the loss of
human touch you think?

------
dyarosla
I like the idea, and it looks nice, but this is definitely one of those
products that would benefit immensely from a video intro instead of static
screenshots that don’t convey nearly enough.

Also your free trial buttons are broken (visually, wrap and break) on small
mobile screens.

~~~
jpincheira
Footer CTAs are now fixed :) Thank you for letting me know.

~~~
dyarosla
Not just footer CTAs - they’re still broken! These are the ‘start your free
trial’ red buttons. I’m on an iPhone SE

~~~
jpincheira
Thanks for reporting back again about it. Now all CTAs are fixed, just tested
on the iPhone SE simulator :) Have a great weekend!

------
triedit33
Hmm, it doesn't seem to work. Is it live/ready or still in development? I
tried it just now and tried to send/record my message but it is not working.
Just got a spinner.

~~~
jpincheira
That seems odd, let me take a look into it. Could you please open the Live
Chat (when logged in, go to the Help sidebar and on the dropdown menu click
Live Chat Support, so I can help you more on this. Thank you :)

------
aloukissas
Tip: add a twitter card in your html head ;)

~~~
jpincheira
Thank you Alex! Will try this out! :)

------
vijaybritto
There must be an audio only version too. I'm pretty sure no one in my team
wants to see my face.

~~~
jpincheira
Thanks for mentioning that because I've had audio on my mind since the
beginning, and it's definitely gonna come soon! Please follow
[https://twitter.com/@standupsHQ](https://twitter.com/@standupsHQ) for updates
on this, and feel free to try it out :) I'll be happy to hear your feedback :)

------
thoughtpalette
Really dig this idea. Love the time box aspect. Is that an editable feature
(duration)?

Wish I was in a remote team to try this out.

GL!

~~~
jpincheira
I'm happy to hear you like it! Glad that I finally could launch.

Sure, timebox for now is fixed, but I will soon be pushing a change to make it
toggleable and editable :)

------
rpm33
Love the idea. Faced this several times myself while traveling.

~~~
jpincheira
Great to hear that you also went through this and that Standups.io will
hopefully help you on this.

------
everdev
But you don't need standups:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671464)

