Launch HN: PingPong (YC W21) – Video messaging for remote teams
I'm Jeff, co-founder and CEO of PingPong (https://getpingpong.com), where we help remote teams collaborate and stay connected by exchanging video, voice, and screen recordings asynchronously. Think of it as Marco Polo or Snapchat (sans ephemerality) for globally-distributed product teams.
We got the idea from our own experience on a different startup. Murphy, the co-founder and CTO, lives in Nigeria, and I live in the US (Utah). We had five other team members spread across three countries and four time zones. The problem for me as a team leader was how to share my ideas, feelings, and updates in a way that felt authentic and conveyed energy. I felt like I was spending my entire life either typing in Slack or scheduling Zoom calls at terrible hours. I had been kicking around the idea for our product in my head for months. At some point, I began thinking more about how to improve communication for distributed teams than what I was working on. In February 2020, after my second child was born, Murphy and I planned to slowly build a solution to these problems on the side. Then, the COVID situation exploded, and we knew it was time to go all-in. We pivoted our focus entirely. When we first started, our name was Girbil. The first version of the site is laughable: https://www.girbil.com/.
In synchronous work cultures, people expect contextual understanding in their interactions because it's assumed that everyone absorbs that context by osmosis in meetings, informal chats, and channels. Workers are used to having large portions of their day plugged into a flow of just-in-time information like a network. With asynchronous cultures, it's better to assume little or no prior contextual knowledge in every communication. Context is given by referring to documentation or by laying it out specifically. Workers are used to having large swaths of uninterrupted time to work deeply. Because we lived across continents, most of our work and communication had to be asynchronous.
We felt that current chat tools (e.g., Slack, Teams) are built for synchronous teams. You can see this in many of these products’ design decisions. For example, pressing enter sends a message instead of line-breaking, encouraging short-form messages that provide minimal context. Furthermore, the lack of a message workflow encourages a constant stream of low-value messages. By default, instant notifications are sent for every short message—even when the recipient is in do-not-disturb, the sender has the power to override. All these design decisions promote a constant flow of shallow, quickly-scanned information demanding immediate responses.
We want to build a communication product that better meets the needs of distributed product teams like ours—designed first for asynchronous teams across multiple time zones where it can be hard to get face time. We decided to start with video. We felt the medium itself, though not perfect, addresses a lot of the issues we experienced. With video, you tend to record only when you have something important to say. Most creators want to "sound good," so they put thought into what they're saying. Additionally, the listener can't "skim" the messages, and they receive a richer message in terms of intent, tone, and energy. Sharing an asset while screen recording adds another layer of depth and efficiency. But we're still trying to figure out how to maximize the above strengths of async video while mitigating its downsides (e.g., its linear nature). For example, we've limited face and voice recordings to two minutes to encourage succinctness (though screen-share recordings can be 10 minutes). We'd love to hear your ideas here. We've also made some design decisions to help teams focus. For example, instead of channels, we've built conversations. These are designed to be started with a specific go...
70 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 130 ms ] threadCan you talk a bit about the tech stack? How is your video handled and are you using any services worth noting?
One thing that Slack is useful for is an accumulation of a searchable knowledge base. Do you have any plans to make the videos searchable and/or are closed threads/conversations deleted to the end user?
Overall - this makes so much sense. At the beginning of the Covid lockdowns, my wife started regularly using MarcoPolo to keep in touch with her friends. She loved the semi-serendipitous messages and intimacy exchanged. This is definitely missing in the workplace.
Congrats on launching.
For desktop we've built an electron app with React and Node. Our mobile apps are built using Flutter.
We use WebRTC for the camera stream and web sockets to send the video stream to an EC2 instance. All data is stored in Amazon S3.
Your knowledge base point is a good one. We're working on searchable video transcripts and a tagging feature to make it easier to organize and retrieve the information.
Did you happen to do this in incognito or different privacy mode?
We have a bug where Google auth does not work in these modes.
Error 400: redirect_uri_mismatch The JavaScript origin in the request, https://www.getpingpong.com, does not match the ones authorized for the OAuth client. Visit https://console.developers.google.com/apis/credentials/oauth... to update the authorized JavaScript origins.
We've looked into doing this but haven't found a way to do it while supporting transcription.
We're currently planning on implementing single-use keys to balance security with transcription needs.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
For me if it's not e2e it's a nonstarter, which means I'm not using the transcription feature because I'm not using the product at all.
Perhaps we'll figure out a client-side solution or create ab e2e channel setting where transcription is disabled.
Really appreciate the push to figure this out.
One of the interesting things we've noticed is that recording yourself seems to encourage more intentionality in what is being said than a quick chat or SMS (maybe because you're more self-aware while recording?).
As you mentioned, some people are very intentional while writing, but I'm not sure that's the norm.
Many of the chat tools' design decisions encourage stream-of-conscious writing (e.g., press enter to send instead of line-breaking, one-line text boxes).
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
(I never meant to be shallowly dismissive but rather provide good criticism and lament if it sounded otherwise)
[1] and non-YC startups! anyone is welcome to ask for help with this at hn@ycombinator.com, as long as you remember that the worst-case latency for response times may be astonishingly terrible. You can see the advice we give to YC startups here: https://news.ycombinator.com/yli.html. The logistical bits don't apply to non-YC cos, but the communication bits emphatically do.
I see Dale Carnegie getting a lot of flak these days but this is one point he illustrates incredibly well in his most famous book in my opinion.
Slack brought SMS to the workplace.
Consumers use Snapchat, WhatsApp, and Marco Polo for video/voice recording, but no one has cracked this for collaboration in work cultures.
(I sadly had to resign from it, after getting royally screwed over by the 'investor relations guys' who were on the 'pump and dump' of our OTA stock, after we went public via a reverse merger.)
I have been thinking of building something like it again recently, using everything I've learned since - technologically and financially.
Best of luck! :)
These days, I would probably only offer it as a white-label/SaaS model rather than an 'open' social network. Possibly something private/invite-only.
The past few years have made me think that I'm extremely glad to have not been involved at all with it any more. I'd had some extremely lucrative offers from political parties for them to use one of its features, which I'm glad I turned down. The effect it would have had on the incumbent beta-testers at that stage would have been catastrophic.
I would also stick to 'organic growth' rather than outside investors, who could absolutely destroy your vision for the product, for their own ends, without a care in the world for the users and community. Lesson learned the hard way.
https://www.verbz.ai/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26265024)
https://www.woice.me/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26340042)
That said, we’re much more focused on video and screen recording, whereas these are focused on voice.
All I can say is keep going. I've been feeling the absence of this for a while, and have taken to making occasional videos on Loom to supplement live meetings and Slack messages. But it's a disjointed experience, and Loom is not trying to be a collaboration tool at all. It would be great to have a solution that does the whole thing end-to-end, with a focus on being more async-friendly than Slack.
By the way, I downloaded the PingPong app, and it seems great. Are you selling subscriptions, or just putting the free version out there for now?
P.S. If you haven't read this article on Figma's growth strategy, I'd take a look. There are some parallels with what you're doing -- i.e. SaaS, collaboration-focused, and attempting to dislodge incumbents with a similar list of features, but less focus on collaboration pain points. https://kwokchain.com/2020/06/19/why-figma-wins/
> By the way, I downloaded the PingPong app, and it seems great. Are you selling subscriptions, or just putting the free version out there for now?
No paid subscription for now; we're optimizing for usage and feedback. We should always have a free plan and introduce new features into a paid tier in the long run.
We hope to encourage people to pay with new, great features. I'm against moving features we've already given our users for free behind a paid plan.
ngould I'd love to understand this point of view. What are the pain points of the experience being disjointed between Loom and Slack for your team right now?
With screen recording, we've learned that so many messages can be made more efficient by showing an asset while you talk (e.g., documents, presentations, designs). We even will show our IDEs while doing standups over PingPong.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19561585
(I accidentally clicked the bookmark today and was confused if it was this thread ;P.)
This company might have had some relationship to the Clubhouse team?
https://twitter.com/semil/status/1254756645059489792?s=21
- lenght of video, needs more options - a way to see reactions to my vids faster and more concisely, maybe a timeline view - better UI/UX for threaded back and forth pingpongs - that camera bug on desktop where my face is super zoomed in
Boom! Love it!
I think asking people to stop and think a little bit (which I believe recording a video does) is great. I'll take one thoughtful video over 50 incoherent messages any day of the week.
Also thinking about trying this for a daily sync/standup since we often hear that people are not really listening to their teammates during these but instead are thinking of what they're going to say instead, which is of course entirely self defeating. Taking a minute to record your own video and then being able to consume your teams videos in an non-distracted way sounds spot on.
I'd love to have your team beta our Linux app when it's ready. Email me if interested. My email is in my profile.
In the “Woice” launch-thread, I noted that the power of voice-communication is in its real-time feedback loop that is like a collaborative search algorithm for both identifying and solving problems. My concern is how to keep that algorithm operational while losing the efficiency of real-time feedback.
I think the answer might come from my latest Slack irritant — that threads are only one-level deep. A deep conversation is just as difficult to hold over Slack as it is in real life, as it forces conversations to be linear and single-threaded. Due to that, it is common to “lose the thread” of discussion.
With async communication, it is possible to have a multi-threaded non-linear conversation. While losing the efficiency of being real-time, nested asynchronous communication could enable a broader search space.
A few commenters have mentioned Loom. But imagine if you could reply to a timestamp in Loom with your own video rather than an emoji. In a normal face-to-face conversation, you would interrupt someone to make a comment or question, and this would often change the course of the conversation.
Although face-to-face conversation is on the surface single-threaded and linear, I think good conversations actually hide the non-linear threads in people’s minds as the discussion alternatives between meandering and refocusing, enabling a wide-ranging conversation where many topics are examined and ultimately synthesized. The original thread is never lost even as other threads of relevance come and go.
So that’s my two-cents and I hope it’s helpful: to keep in mind that synchronous communication is only apparently single-threaded and linear, and that when moving to asynchronous you might want to explore how to retain (if not amplify) multi-threaded non-linear communication.
1. More personable 2. Ability to check on remote employees indirectly 3. Seems like it can lead to more meaningful company communication 4. I don't feel I need to organize a video chat to convey things that may be harder to convey via text. It's nice to have a quick option to record and send.
These are the items that are preventing us from implementation into our daily. We have a small team of 8 people (3 designers, 1 customer service, 3 operations, 1 marketing)
1. We'd rather have a one stop shop for our communication (ie. ability to send files & code corresponding with the video) 2. Currently just resorting to a facetime call or slack video call
Regardless - I'm still going to push my team to use this and get some more feedback as it seems your team is using it more frequently than slack.
https://www.loom.com/share/fe062f809754416b9d583266b47b9303
We will continue building out our platform, but we are instead focusing on features that generate a ton of value and are very hard to do (transcription for every paid user, instant trimming/editing, etc.). If there are other suggestions/gripes/comments about Loom, I'd love to hear about them! If you don't have a Hacker News account but do have a Twitter account, my DMs are open(https://twitter.com/vhmth).
Other than that, I want to say hats off to the PingPong team and other teams getting into this space!
That focus for Loom sounds on-point. As you said, those are hard to do and extremely valuable, which further differentiates.
Truthfully, I’m honored that you took the time to comment. I am a big fan of Loom and have been for some time. We pay for and use (and plan to forever use) Loom for some use cases at PingPong (e.g., videos on our product wiki, support pages, reporting bugs in our own product).
Is the concern that it may be too easily confused with the game? I'd love to understand your feedback a little better.
We felt that PingPong gives a pretty clear picture of sending something back and forth.