

WorkLife (YC W15) launches to end bad meetings - dkash
http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/11/worklife-better-meetings/

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Chris_Newton
Great idea. There are few things more frustrating in business than
unproductive meetings, and so often they could easily be fixed with better
preparation, focus during the meeting itself, and/or follow-up. This seems
like the kind of tool that could genuinely help and could pay for itself very
quickly while still generating plenty of returns for you.

I have two hopefully constructive and slightly meta suggestions:

1\. Your tour page could benefit from some TLC. I looked at it on a large
monitor, and it was so spaced out and the text so large and poorly rendered
that it was actively unpleasant to read through. I’m happy to give more
specific feedback if it would be useful. (I’ve just realised that despite
being interested in your project and having reached the end of that page, in
the time it took to write this comment I have already forgotten almost
everything it said except for a couple of features I guessed would be there
anyway.)

2\. You’re writing a tool where business people are presumably going to
discuss work, potentially including all kinds of sensitive information about
current status and future plans. I lost track of how many deal-breakers your
current privacy policy contains in that context, but it was lots.

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dkash
Thanks for the feedback, Chris.

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Chris_Newton
You’re welcome. Best of luck with the project, I’m sure a lot of people will
appreciate it.

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dkash
Dave Kashen, co-founder here. Happy to answer any questions.

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johnny_utah
What integrations are you working on? I could see this being very useful with
an Asana integration.

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dkash
Asana integration is on our roadmap, along with a number of others.

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JacobAldridge
There are a number of integrated strategies that can support meetings to
either be more productive or not run at all (one of the big newspapers here in
Australia actually called me a meeting olympian for the sheer amount I've
worked with [1]). A clear Agenda at the outset is by far the biggest bang for
buck - in part, because it requires a system not specialised skills (like,
say, energy curve management).

Good luck to Dave and the team. Let me know if I can help with guest blogs
etc.

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/managing/supercharge-
yo...](http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/managing/supercharge-your-
meetings-20140528-38bns.html)

~~~
dkash
Thanks Jacob, will do.

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irickt
Site: [https://www.worklife.com/](https://www.worklife.com/)

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mathattack
Great problem to tackle. Meetings aren't going away, and they can be improved.

Two questions for the founder:

\- How much of this is process vs the tool itself? (How much is this an
improvement over Shared Google docs?)

\- The company name isn't MeetingLife. What's next on the agenda?

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dkash
\- We think the tool can shape the process. We're hearing from teams that use
it that meetings that used to have no agendas now have agendas consistently,
meetings that used to go in circles now stay focused and end with clear next
steps, etc.

\- There's plenty to do to fix meetings (and doing so will help improve
people's work life), so that will be our focus for the foreseeable future.
Funny enough, we did change the name from MeetingHero, we felt WorkLife was
more in line with our fundamental purpose and long term aspiration.

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mathattack
MeetingHero has a ring to it, but I suspect it would wind up with too many
Snarky connotations to the person who introduces the software.

What's the big benefit above and beyond using Google Docs?

Again, I'm a big fan of the concept, as fixing Poorly Run Meetings is a
solvable problem.

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Flemlord
Love this! Tracking deliverables from meetings is challenging. Would love to
see an "Old Business" list of deliverables (action items) from the prior
meeting in a series (e.g. weekly one-on-ones with direct report)

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thedangler
I just tried it out. Its very slick, how ever I assigned action item to myself
and under action items nothing showed up.

Also the meeting summary was never generated. At least I thought it would be.

Hope this helps

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dkash
The action items show up for past meetings, so if you were just playing around
and added it to a future meeting, it will show up once it's in the past. You
have to click Send Meeting Summary, and it will send it out by email. If
you're still having issues, pls email me dave AT worklife

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brendoncrawford
Great work here. Is this primarily focused on physical meetings, or is it in
any way also optimized for remote/teleconference meetings?

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anxman
Dave is incredibly skilled and capable. Looking forward to seeing where the
business goes.

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dkash
Thanks man, you're too kind.

