Show HN: Stairway, daddy that will enforce some online meeting culture

Show HN: Stairway, daddy that will enforce some online meeting culture(secure.stairwayapp.com)

68 points by mihar 13 years ago | 51 comments

gyardley 13 years ago |

When I went to your domain and read the main page, I didn't understand what it did.

The big call to action 'learn more' button took me to a series of points that didn't really clue me into what it was about. I thought I got it, but I wasn't sure - certainly not sure enough by the time I got dumped off at the signup page.

Both the 'about' and the 'features' page told me more, but I had to click around to get to those, and I went to them only after I went through the 'learn more' flow.

Now that I think I get it, it sounds pretty cool - asynchronous text-based meetings. But I had to click around a fair bit more than most people will to understand it.

polyfractal 13 years ago | |

Wanted to emphasize this point - I did the exact same thing. I read through the "Learn More" bullets and thought "hmm, this sounds interesting and useful...but I still really have no idea what it does".

It wasn't until I read the About and Features that I actually understood the product.

The benefits listed in the "Learn More" are really good...you just need to add a little more concrete information about the product itself.

Anyhow, looks interesting and I'm going to recommend it to my company. We work in three different locations (and two timezones), so it could be useful for us.

mihar 13 years ago | | |

Very valuable feedback! We are experimenting with different kinds of learn more tours and explainers.

Glad that in the end you got it.

brittohalloran 13 years ago | |

Yeah same here. No clue what your product IS. You need a big fat example on the homepage.

brittohalloran 13 years ago | | |

Ahhh, the '/tour' page is what your homepage button should link to. Even move some of that content to the homepage itself.

tadruj 13 years ago | |

We're testing different variations of the pitch. We find it really hard to pitch features and functionality to business/management people, so we have a few variations running that are pitching only benefits or pains, but no exact functionality. For the features tour we decided one must sign-up and try. And only then we take them trough features tour.

anigbrowl 13 years ago | | |

Don't pitch, show it. Pitches are for products that don't exist or work properly yet. Yo u have a cool product explanation with screenshots on the Features page, just add in another callout to emphasizie the due date field (in fact, I'd promote that field so it becomes clear that the deadline is of equal importance to the decision).

I HATE a pitch without screenshots. It's a waste of my time and makes me instantly skeptical of the product.

icco 13 years ago | |

I skimmed it and I definitely don't understand. I saw mention of asynchronous, but it looks like it's for video not for text?

mihar 13 years ago | | |

Where does it tip you off as being video? We're trying to learn here.

pjoter 13 years ago | |

maybe a short movie explaining things would do the trick.

jaredstenquist 13 years ago |

1) What is "Daddy"?

2) You definitely need some screenshots or a video. After browsing the entire site for a few minutes I only have a vague guess of what this application might do.

starship 13 years ago | |

haha, the whole time I was clicking around, a non-zero part of my brain was sitting there thinking, "ok, but where the hell did that daddy thing come from?"

jaaron 13 years ago |

What sort of pricing plan is this? The per-user expense _increases_ as you buy more seats?

https://secure.stairwayapp.com/plans

StavrosK 13 years ago | |

I guess they figured their utility increases as the meeting grows. It's not like you can segregate people into two meetings and get out of that, either.

fusiongyro 13 years ago | | |

Increasing the marginal cost discourages adding users. You punish people for having a lot of users, which creates a pain point, which creates an exploitable opportunity for your competition.

Better to charge a flat rate per user, or follow the 37 Signals example and not charge per user at all.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201206/jason-fried/huge-accounts...

tadruj 13 years ago | |

Asana has something like that. More users, bigger network, more meetings, more traffic, more resources.

bherms 13 years ago |

A lot of the text reads as though English isn't your first language. If this is true, hire a copywriter and revise your websites text.

tadruj 13 years ago | |

Thx. That's true. Will do. Do you think that this is important for the minimum viable product? We're just trying to get it out ASAP and we've been pretty sloppy with the text this time. Sorry for that.

mr1976 13 years ago | | |

Yes, I think it adds (or detracts, in the case of poor copy) from the credibility of the product as a whole. I actually have a use for the product right now, and I must admit the copy errors when I went through the site made me wonder what other errors would come up.

It's a good idea - don't let crappy copy lose you signups.

cdcarter 13 years ago | | |

Having good copy is vital to getting anyone to take your product seriously.

tantadruj 13 years ago |

I will never use this. You know why? Because my work at big big enterprise would be too transparent and everybody would know that I don't add value to meetings. On live meeting I just talk myself out of everything and that's it. We don't want decisions to be made on meetings.

draggnar 13 years ago | |

looks like they've found a disruptive niche then

mihar 13 years ago |

From my standpoint as an introvert, I see meetings done this was like a godsend.

I can’t express my thoughts clearly when there are other louder individuals at an in-person meeting. This way, I can sit down, relax, gather my thoughts and provide a whole lot more valuable input. This way everybody wins - me and my company.

Of course I’d have to say this doesn’t work in all circumstances, like free-for-all brainstorming sessions, but still.

pjoter 13 years ago | |

maybe this should be you pitch.

mihar 13 years ago | | |

Maybe.

cdcarter 13 years ago |

This is a really minor gripe, but consider localizing date formats. It's confusing as US user to see 18/6/12 as the date.

ScottBurson 13 years ago | |

Better yet, stick to ISO date format: 2012-6-18

Everyone can tell what that means.

jeremyt 13 years ago |

Just a quick couple of thoughts about your UX and landing page:

* There's not enough information on your homepage for me to figure out what you do

* The information I need is between one and three clicks away ("learn more", and then "more" until I've read enough to get it), clicking "more" just gets in the way

* I don't really get the "you will", "we will" dichotomy. Frankly, I don't care what "I will" do, all I want to know is how this product is going to make my life easier.

* Stop using buzzwords ("message-based collaboration", "asynchronously"), and just tell me what you do in plain English

* Some of the English phrases come out awkwardly ("We will guide you to prepare quality agenda before calling the meeting.")

Having said all that, it's a neat idea, and I hope it catches on. We all need fewer meetings.

tadruj 13 years ago | |

Thx, this is amazing feedback, exactly what we were looking for here on HN.

swalsh 13 years ago |

I spent about 30 seconds clicking around, I have no idea what your app is.

I think a video, or an example of someone using it would be nice. The philosophy alone is not enough for me to understand the app, or even make me want to use it.

the_stig 13 years ago |

Really cool&useful app, especially for long-distance teams that are experiencing timezone difficulties.

Meetings really can suck and take too much time. This app helps me to give feedback and move on with whatever I'm doing ...

jjb123 13 years ago |

Very impressive and refreshing. For our team, this would replace google hangouts and non-technical people needing to wade through technical discussions on irc... And more than anything, would replace a lot of unnecessary emails.

some1else 13 years ago |

Meetings may be more efficient when strict policies are enforced, but I think some forgiveness could be provided by allowing the user to edit/sort Agenda items after the meeting has been created.

The common use case right now is time-shifted decision making, but this would kick ass if it were real-time.

Good job with the design. Nice legible type, unambiguous form layout. I think the landing page could bring forward some content from the Learn More and Features subpages.

rf45 13 years ago |

At the moment I am mostly using skype or gotomeetings and I usually have two problems with the meetings online:

1. hard to find the availability for all participants 2. archiving meeting minutes and finding them when I need them

this could be the ideal solution, especially because i can control my time and still participate on the meeting.

do you have the same problems? how you are solving them?

tomazstolfa 13 years ago |

I've been a beta tester of Stairway.

Can't emphasize enough how fast the product evolved into a must have. No more "I didn't promise/say that.'

cslacasse 13 years ago |

The learn more page needs to be a single page in the browser history. After I clicked through 125 of them, I wanted to get back to the home page with my back button but couldn't.

I would have liked to see 4-5 of those "people hates" and then a demo of the product in action.

bantic 13 years ago |

This is very cool. There's so much that could be done to better organize and run meetings. It's great to see someone taking a stab at it. I wished there was more of a demo before signup. Even just some screenshots would have helped.

mihar 13 years ago | |

I think you missed the https://secure.stairwayapp.com/tour There are some screenshots. Does this help?

marknutter 13 years ago |

Daddy?

prawn 13 years ago | |

I would find a way to replace the word "daddy" ASAP in your copy. There'd have to be better options out there.

tadruj 13 years ago | | |

Done. There are. But which ones do resonate with people, that's the big question. This one did mighty good actually, quantitatively speaking. But qualitatively looking at this option I agree with you, the term is pretty edgy.

modarts 13 years ago | |

I'm assuming that was the result of an auto-correct.

marknutter 13 years ago | | |

I hope so, because I was wondering if it was some strange business-speak term that had to do with meetings somehow. "I have to 'daddy' another meeting at 2pm".

netrus 13 years ago |

I like it a lot, but cannot figure out how to write the concluding remark to an agenda point. Does the meeting need to be over for this?

mihar 13 years ago | |

You are correct. You can only decide a meeting when it's due. This is because all the participants are counting on the meeting to be available until that date.

prezjordan 13 years ago |

There's a LOT of JS running on that page.

CodeMage 13 years ago |

Any plans for providing Android app too?

tadruj 13 years ago | |

We're currently waiting for the approval in the app store for iPhone. Haven't made anything for Android yet, waiting for a few pokes on the demand side :) like this one.

dr42 13 years ago |

Like everyone else, I couldn't find what it did, but the tour https://secure.stairwayapp.com/tour albeit brief, it fully explanatory. I think the concept is great and that this has the potential to be actually very useful.

From a product point of view, I think it should integrate with a corporate LDAP otherwise you have the catch-22 problem of any social network like system.

I really like the idea of decision based (rather than talk based) meeting goals. Rather than "let's have a meeting to talk about it" it becomes "let's have a meeting to decide X", then it becomes possible to draw time-lines of the decision making process and those involved, which hopefully leads to accountability and improved engagement.

My only criticism is that companies would want to host this. The security concerns and longevity of the data would be beyond any IT depts stress threshold. I could imagine the privacy policy causing my companies IT dept to start having panic attacks. Then again, everything's going cloud, so maybe other IT departments will be fine with it.

tadruj 13 years ago | |

We're thinking to make it closer to smaller teams and individuals in the enterprise and then they'd take it bottom-up from there. Thanks for the awesome feedback.