Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool
We've spent our careers working on creative tools. Tom started building web-based design products with Apple back in 2011. Our first startup – Macaw – was one of the first no-code tools on the market. It was acquired by InVision years ago, where we went on to build numerous other design tools. We are also long-time productivity junkies, having built nine different note-taking and task management apps over the past eight years. These were passion projects that were fun to build and use.
Working in the design industry, we noticed how designers struggle to communicate their ideas with design tools alone. They often spend more time in a text document outlining feature specifications than they do in their design program designing the actual interface. Task management is done in yet another program, and so on.
At the same time, we noticed how text editors don’t do a good job of supporting thinking. Our brains naturally think in a non-linear fashion. Great ideas don't flow out of us with a beginning, a middle and an end—they require an iterative process of divergence and convergence (the ‘double diamond model’, for those familiar). Forcing people to record their ideas in linear documents is a terrible constraint. It's much more intuitive to work in a non-linear fashion like designers do within their design tools.
Conclusion: Thinking tools lack communication and productivity features. Writing tools lack thinking and iteration capabilities. This means you need to string together multiple tools across an idea’s lifecycle, which is difficult to manage.
This gave us the idea for Clover: a single workspace to support all stages of an idea’s development: from brainstorming, design, planning, all the way to execution. It should be as good for thinking and iteration as design tools, have powerful text and knowledge management capabilities, and support planning and task tracking workflows. The mission is to help you think more creatively and get more done every day.
The heart of our implementation is a new type of document, which we call a Surface. It's a freeform spatial document with a heavy emphasis on text capabilities. This required us to build a new type of text editor from the ground up. At its core, it's similar to other modern markdown-style editors (like Dropbox Paper) but it also borrows mechanics from design tools (like Figma). Instead of working down a page from top to bottom, you can work in any direction, drag and drop text the way you would move layers in a design tool, sketch on top of your documents, embed rich media from across the web, and a lot more.
Building a workspace like this requires meeting users' expectations of not just one but many different tools: digital whiteboarding, note-taking, tasks, and knowledge management. Consolidating technology and UX into something that actually works across all of those different functions is an interesting and challenging systems design problem. Text editors are deceptively complex to build, and we had to rethink a number of things about traditional text editors to enable Clover's spatial capabilities. We don't have all of the features of the traditional programs, but we think having all of your tools together is more valuable.
We also spent a fair amount of time thinking about how a product like this should fit into your daily workflow. Our Daily Notes feature is intended to be a place to return to throughout your day to take notes, plan tasks, journal, etc. It has some special functionality to automatically roll over any tasks that you didn't finish from day to day, and it aggregates tasks across all of your pages, so you have one location to see all of your priorities.
Having notes, whiteboarding, tasks, and a daily planner all together in on...
108 comments
[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadEdit: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-cask/pull/117242 My first cask, help appreciated.
Congrats on launch and good luck!
First, can I tag parts of a daily note? My use-case would be tagging sections of a daily note related to a customer. In a given day, I may have 5 meetings with different customers. If I could tag each section with the customer name, it would help me in searching/reviewing those notes at a later time?
Second, can I add a Surface to the daily note? My desire is to be able to draw with the Apple Pencil on the iOS app on my daily note, just like if I added a Surface to the Page Tree.
Thanks and great job getting something fairly polished out the door.
Edited for spelling
Thanks for the info. I tried your suggestions:
Labels: That worked really well for my use case once I figured out the non-stated trick. I kept trying to inline a #label. It didn't work and I got frustrated until I realized I needed to be a Pro user to get this feature. So, you may want some messaging on that when someone tries to inline a label but they don't have the right plan.
Of course, if it could deep link into the daily note that would be more useful, but I think you have heard that from others. The current state doesn't stop me from using it but deep linking would be much more useful.
Surfaces: From an input perspective that actually works far better than I suspected. However, my concern would be having so many surface pages in the Page Tree. Myestimate is that I draw on about 3 out of 5 notes. So in a month, my Page Tree would be overwhelmed. Perhaps there is a way auto-place these into a folder.
Auto-placing pages is a pretty cool idea! We were considering making the Page Tree an opt-in area where you could just place pages you really need to build up in there and let you access everything else from the All Pages section.
https://www.clover.com/
https://www.cloverfoodlab.com/
https://www.clover.co/
https://www.cloverhealth.com/
When I hear “Clover”, I think payment processing and health care. Apparently it’s also a dating app and a food service.
In a crowded namespace you might want to consider using a descriptive term like “Clover Notes” in your branding so people can find you better and mentally separate you from the other Clover companies out there.
Also, when I hear “Surface”, I think of the Microsoft laptop. They position “Surface” as a tool for creativity, productivity, efficiency, etc., much like you do. Are you sure you’re in the clear to use that term?
“Use Surface as a whiteboard for better brainstorming, enhanced memory, intuitive organization, and workflows you simply can’t do elsewhere”, seems like a statement that would easily apply to the Surface laptop.
Apple got a trademark because it’s not used to trademark fruit, it’s used to trademark technology.
Same here, “Surface” isn’t being used to describe a physical surface, it’s being used in both cases to describe technology that facilitates collaboration, creativity, productivity, etc.
Imagine this out of context: “Log into Surface and enhance your creativity by collaborating live with others on your team through brainstorming, organizing and improving workflows.”
In pretty detailed terms you could describe both the Microsoft Surface and the Clover Surface products. Even if one is a physical product and the other digital, it’s very confusing.
I don’t think Microsoft trademarked it, but it’s still a little too close for my comfort as well as like you said there’s no telling what the Microsoft lawyers will argue if motivated enough.
That said, I would never use something like this on a subscription model.
Initially this looked like the perfect replacement for my notion + good notes setup. Inking is really important to my workflow so most of my feedback is around that. I also love having the calendar integrated into my daily notes.
- Daily notes don't appear to be a surface so cannot be inked on? This is pretty vital for me. In GoodNotes I basically have a new note page every day for scribbling. Otherwise this feature looks perfect for how I currently work. - The inking in general does not feel great in comparison to Notability or GoodNotes. It appears to do some path correction and overall everything feels very "stiff". Could use more pen tip size options and pen options in general as well as highlighting. - It's too easy to accidentally activate the context menus for text / shape / non-drawing areas when panning around with fingers or accidentally brushing them with your hand. Maybe a long press on these to activate those menus?
I love the idea of having notes, tasks and calendar in one place. You nailed the integration with google calendar, I just wish you could do something similar with tasks but I doubt it will fit into your current paradigm. For me, as a mixed OS user (Android phone, iOS tablet, MacBook for work) I need a task manager that is fully cross platform with notifications, quick add, etc. no matter which device I'm on. I could see using the tasks in your app for non-deadline, more project-management style things. But not as a daily "to-do style" app. And maybe that is the objective, just my 0.02.
Overall this looks _super_ promising and I would love to consolidate my current workflow into one place. And there are great ideas here, unfortunately the UX (at least on iOS and specifically in regards to inking / touch input) just falls slightly short of the competition.
We agree there is plenty of room for improvement with our pen tool. It's an area we're constantly refining. We're hoping to get pressure in there soon.
Surfaces on Daily Notes has been highly debated by the team. On one hand, it would be pretty excellent to us. On the other, it could inhibit other workflows by adding too much cognitive overhead. Because you can create a Surface inline using `[[New Surface Name`, we have pushed this decision off for the time being. Would love your thoughts on how you would like it to work.
Would also love to know what makes a daily driver to-do app for you. Maybe we can work that in. Either way, thanks for all the feedback. It's very helpful!
The only thing I miss from my previous setup is the syncing of audio to notes from Notability, but it’s a worthy sacrifice to have a simpler all-in-one workflow.
What data model are you using for collaboration/sync?
Events should be more group than single item, aka able to contain multiple note types, not just be assigned a surface or a note.
Someone already mentioned the pen -- but that is table stakes for a hand written note app.
Lastly, the canvas preview should be smooth, not 'gridded' as designed. I know that becomes a huge pain in the rear since everything has to be redrawn on the main thread... that said, these are the differences between good and great apps.
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Finally - these thoughts are only given because your team seems incredibly capable and brilliant. Very few could come up with paradigms such as these, and you deserve the success you seek.
Open it up, looks like mobile only. I do my planning an organizing on my big desktop monitor with good keyboard so this is a no go
Wants my email a lot. Maybe this guy is harvesting Hacker News emails
Subscription model. I hate those because I always forget to cancel. Besides I have free and open source note takers that are pretty good. Not everything I want but good.
Someone asked about Desktop further down in comments so you gave them a link
https://cloverapp.com/download
Download a large Electron app. Windows 11 refuses to run it because it's untrusted but I are smart and know how to get around that
If can do an Electron app why not just make it a website for people to try?
Asks for my email again.
It wants to connect to me Google Calendar and Email. It looks like a simplified interface to those two tools.
Sketchpad is an interesting idea. They've been tried since the 90's but maybe these guys got it right.
edit: I use Obsidian. They got me to become addicted to their software by having no fanfare or ceremony and allowing me to see what's great about it right away by trying it. It opens to a big download button. It doesn't ask for email. It's free forever for personal use.
Waiting for the obligatory Dropbox comment here.
I took a look in my note taking bookmarks folder to see what I meant. I thought Obsidian was open source but it's not. I was thinking of Joplin, which I haven't tried yet, but will today
https://joplinapp.org/
I know other people are giving you shit for this, but I'm exactly the same way. Combined with Syncthing, other software (particularly paid stuff like this) doesn't look even remotely capable in comparison. People hydroplane over the essentials and then act surprised when their unicorn app isn't the runaway success it should have been.
Dear Notes Apps:
Everyone else has already done you, and better. If you want to compete (like, actually compete), you have to match them on features and be better somehow. Things like being "cloud-based" are not selling points; they're detriments when compared to your competitors.
I always loved this freer and more visual form of note-taking so it’s really cool to see a full-fledged, more complete solution with media/images and the whole nine yards. Very cool!
It’s a great app!
- E2EE
Anecdotal personal data point: I already pay $10/mo for an E2EE note app with a passable/mediocre UX. I would easily pay up to $15/mo for a polished experience like your app seems to have, and more if it becomes part of my professional workflow.
- Android and Linux support
For personal use, you may have no issue ignoring these market segments, but it might be a hard sell for teams. One of the great thing about an app like Notion.so is that it works everywhere and you don't need to buy your team members specialized devices just to interact with the project stack.
Otherwise I'm really curious to see how you handle the transition of an infinite 2D space created on large screens to smaller devices, whether it's collapsing the space in some way, or using bespoke navigation controls.
Transitioning infinite space on mobile works to varying degrees depending on the content. Treating the documents like editable maps works relatively well especially for the consumption experience. We're iterating on some ideas on how to improve editing there as well. We've seen some tools completely ignore coordinates and place everything in one scrolling section, but we feel that is very detrimental to the mental model you construct of your documents and aspire to maintain space while still providing a smooth UX.
If it's E2EE, then some features will not be possible, such as content search.
In this case since they rely on apps, content search would be possible. You just store everything on the user's device.
Doing something like Airtable[0] is much more effective (not affiliated just a product I use), where I can go from the landing page to embedded product demos that require no login in seconds. It would be great to have something embedded like this or more detailed screencaps at least which showcase the product prior to me having to sign in.
[0] https://www.airtable.com/templates
Check us out (still in beta but I want to practice what I preach and get my own product on our page once its a bit more polished): https://www.getlancey.com/
https://www.airtable.com/
Why Bear vs Notion - to pick Notion up and write a quick note isn't great. It's much more organized. Bear is better for this.
Why Notion vs Bear - Better for making structured organized notes, better sharability / collab, rich formatting options. I tend to use notion when I want to share notes or plans externally.
Why Roam vs Bear - Bear syncs via iCloud Drive. My work does not allow iCloud drive syncing. This means Bear's notes would be local which I don't want.
Why Roam vs Notion - This is probably the least justified. I wanted to try Roam again for work notes + research. I do really enjoy the bullet point simplicity and linking of Roam. But I know you could do this on Notion. However, once again I feel like there's more structure with Notion and it's less easy to jot down some simple bullet points.
Based upon your this, do you think there could be a universal app for you to replace them all (perhaps new functionality inside of one of the existing), or do the different use cases merit the separation?
What do none of them do that you wish they did? Does this scratch any of those itches?