[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) - Bring your tasks and c...
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Launch HN: Akiflow (YC S20) - Bring your tasks and calendars
together
Hi HN! We are Nunzio and Sebastiano, co-founders of Akiflow
(https://akiflow.com). Akiflow is a personal planner that
consolidates all your calendars and tasks in a unified view of your
work. For people who like to plan their time, it is tough to be
realistic about what work you can get done without a calendar
showing you how much time you can invest in your tasks. But it is
hard to organize this because there is so much context-switching
due to tasks coming from different apps--not to mention
"unstructured" sources like email, notes taken during a meeting, a
message on Slack, etc.. I'm that type of user--for me, my calendar
has always been the 'primary source of truth'. But the user
experience was terrible. I had to keep to-do lists on the side of
another app and manually turn my tasks into events to see them in
the calendar. Tasks were scattered across messaging apps (emails,
Slack), project management platforms, video calls, the web, etc.,
forcing me to jump between tabs, tasks and tools. I had to manually
turn emails or Slack messages into tasks on Asana and always
remember to push new tasks into my task lists. We originally
started Akiflow with a narrower idea: a command bar, similar to
Alfred, to create tasks on Asana, Trello, etc.. or add events on
the calendar. After a while, we learned that what our users really
wanted was to have everything in one place. Once we understood
that, it was obvious that we should pivot to building that one
tool: a tasks+calendars app focused on making people faster. How
it works: most people start their day by checking outstanding
conversations on their emails or Slack from mobile or desktop.
There are two types of conversations--those that can be answered
right away (in which case just do it!), and those that generate a
task. The latter are what you save into Akiflow. Once you're done
processing your emails, Slack, etc., you open Akiflow where you
find all your tasks coming from your various conversations and
tools. Once in Akiflow, you can organize each task quickly--you
see all your to-dos and can drag and drop them into your calendar
between events already scheduled. Alternatively, you can snooze a
task for later if you need more time, or snooze it for someday if
it isn't actionable yet. Now you have a complete list of your
tasks for today and can hunker down to work. As your day goes on,
Akiflow sends notifications on what you should be working on, based
on your calendar events and tasks. We make this easy--for example,
when it is time for a call, you can join right away with a click or
a shortcut. We have integrations (via APIs) with multiple sources
of to-dos (Gmail, Slack, Todoist, Notion, Asana, Trello, ClickUp,
and anything else via Zapier and IFTTT) to consolidate tasks in a
single inbox. We added a lot of keyboard shortcuts and a command
bar (we had this ready from Akiflow #1) and built a desktop
application that manages all this information and helps schedule
it. The calendar works offline and supports both events and tasks;
it's built for time blocking and gives a comprehensive view of your
day, week or month with features that make everyday actions much
faster (join a call, share calendar availability, meet with, review
your days). We integrate with your Google Calendar with a two-way
sync, and we support working entirely offline. We also have a
mobile app currently in beta to add and manage tasks on the go.
The desktop application is built using Electron and React. We use
some native node modules to use a local SQLite database to store
all the information and provide offline support. Our desktop app is
in sync with our cloud, so multiple desktop clients will be kept in
sync. If you're interested in trying the product, we have a free 7
days trial available; after that, we have a basic SAAS pricing
model (https://akiflow.com/pricing/). We would love to hear your
feedback and ideas--thanks!
Author : nmnm
Score : 65 points
Date : 2022-11-03 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
| [deleted]
| sharemywin wrote:
| Curious what direction you plan on going?
|
| Business Teams planner: assign tasks to others, sync with other
| task tracking apps
|
| or Family planner: shopping lists, financial planner etc.
|
| or continue on a personal planner route
| nmnm wrote:
| We want to keep building the best experience for personal use.
| For example, more integration, improving time blocking features
| etc... We are also doing customer interviews to investigate how
| we can help teams' interacting better. If you are currently
| working in a team, we'd love to have a call with you to
| understand how we could improve!
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Once we understood that, it was obvious that we should pivot to
| building that one tool: a tasks+calendars app focused on making
| people faster.
|
| What is your opinion of this XKCD?
|
| https://xkcd.com/927/
| sfavaro wrote:
| That's one of my favourites ;)
|
| Currently, we don't believe that any of the apps in this space
| is clearly taking over the competition, and so we think that
| there is still the opportunity of finding the right way of
| doing it.
| ftio wrote:
| What's the go to market look like for a product like this?
|
| Large enterprises have little incentive to invest in additional
| calendaring functionality, and the market for individuals who are
| this passionate about keeping a schedule cannot be very big. If
| it's even 'medium-sized' (for some arbitrary definition of that),
| the CAC must be crazy because people aren't typically seeking out
| products like this, and competition in the app stores (and ad
| prices) are fierce.
|
| Is the game plan here to rapidly get enough traction to exit to a
| major player in productivity/calendaring? Feels like a tuck-in. I
| can't imagine how this becomes a huge business, but I'm genuinely
| curious to hear what the strategy and target audience might look
| like.
| nmnm wrote:
| Thanks for the question! We didn't really focus on the
| enterprise market yet. So far our customers are individual
| users looking for a time blocking solution that goes beyond
| calendar features. The main target is busy professionals like
| managers and founders, the response has been very good and we
| really feel like we've been scraping the surface of the market.
|
| Regarding the CAC, so far the vast majority of our growth was
| organic we invested very little in paid advertising.
| ISL wrote:
| Is Jira integration planned? (I didn't see it on the list 'o
| sources above)
| nmnm wrote:
| It is! https://product.akiflow.com/features-and-improvements-
| reques...
|
| We are getting more and more requests for developers' tools! In
| the meantime, you can already connect Jira via Zapier. We
| already created some templates for you to use and you can find
| them in Settings > Integrations > Add via Zapier or use these
| links: https://zapier.com/apps/jira/integrations/akiflow
| https://zapier.com/apps/jira-software/integrations/akiflow
| https://zapier.com/apps/jira-service-desk/integrations/akifl...
| ISL wrote:
| Awesome -- Jira, for all of its complexity and oddities, has
| been the only tool full-featured enough to handle my task-
| management and collaboration needs.
|
| Thanks for innovating in a crowded space :)!
| sharemywin wrote:
| isn't zapier like a million dollar a month?
| nmnm wrote:
| They should have a free tier that you can use up to 100
| tasks/mo. We can't wait to have the native integration
| ready!
| technicalreview wrote:
| Akiflow convinced me to actually pay for a planner app. It has
| shown to be quite handy so far.
| nmnm wrote:
| Thank you so much for this :)
| neil_s wrote:
| Since Timeful got shut down, I've been looking for a great
| solution for task time-blocking. This comment thread has so many
| great solutions for me to try, including Akiflow, thanks for
| working on this problem! I can't use it right now because our
| corporate Google Workspace accounts are locked from sharing, but
| looking forward to using it eventually.
| maslam wrote:
| No connection to the Akiflow team. I found the tool on my own and
| really like it. It's snappy and does what it claims to do. I
| don't really need their Calendly-lite implementation but
| everything else is very well put together.
| sfavaro wrote:
| Thank you very much, Maslam! We really appreciate your support!
| If there is anything we can do to improve Akiflow for you, let
| us know.
| insomniacity wrote:
| I look at things like this and cry because I know I'll never see
| it inside the large corporates I tend to work in.
|
| I'd pay for it myself, but I wouldn't be able to integrate with
| anything - eg our O365 tenant will be fully locked down.
| sfavaro wrote:
| We are fully aware that this is a problem in large corporates.
| Is there some kind of certification required by your company
| that would help ease the process?
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Okay, so apologies in advance because I hate it when people ask
| _me_ this question.
|
| But, how do you compare to Motion (https://www.usemotion.com/).
| I've been super curious about using a product like this. The
| other one I considered was Sunsama. (https://www.sunsama.com/).
| Would love your thoughts here.
| nmnm wrote:
| Hello that's absolutely a fair question, I think that all the
| apps mentioned are working on similar problems and they are
| doing a great job!
|
| A lot of our users have been using either Sunsama or Motion and
| I'm sure that some of our users moved to them after trying
| Akiflow. We have many differences in terms of features, UI and
| UX. For example, Motion puts a lot of focus on ai powered
| scheduling while we are more focused on making sure the users
| can plan their time "intentionally".
|
| One thing I learned building Akiflow is that productivity is
| extremely personal and there's no right or wrong. I'd encourage
| to give a try to all and see what works
| swyx wrote:
| congrats on launch! hope you fixed the memory issues
| hyperupcall wrote:
| This tool looks quite similar to Amie.so - which I use in
| conjunction with Todoist - do you have any major differentiating
| features? It seems like mainly there are more integrations
|
| It seems unfortunate that the free plan is really just a 7 day
| trial, unless I misunderstood
| hyperupcall wrote:
| Just signed up and it seems it is not possible to use this on
| Linux. Disappointing... Is Linux support planned?
| nmnm wrote:
| Hi! Yes https://product.akiflow.com/features-and-
| improvements-reques... We are also going to release a web app
| soon which should help linux users
| hyperupcall wrote:
| Thank you - this is a basic prerequisite for any
| productivity app imo
| nmnm wrote:
| Hello, feel free to reach out on the chat for more free trial
| if you need!
|
| I didn't try Amie personally, but I agree that importing tasks
| automatically via integration is one of our differentiators. We
| put a lot of effort into creating a strong task management tool
| and we have a set of features to enhance planning. For example,
| we added rituals to plan our day, folders, labels, and sections
| to organize your tasks. On top of that, we offer a full
| calendar experience optimized for time blocking with features
| like "meet with", share availability, multiple time zones and
| customizable views
| hyperupcall wrote:
| That sounds amazing - there are some similarities with Amie,
| but customizable views is something I'm looking forward to
| try out
|
| Thank you - it's quite unfortunate that there isn't a "free
| plan"
| jayonsoftware wrote:
| Love your product
| nmnm wrote:
| Thank you so much! :)
| dhbanes wrote:
| App looks great. I connected three google calendars, however my
| personal calendar is inexplicably missing _some_ events. One is
| recurring, the other was a one-off. Any idea how to fix?
| sfavaro wrote:
| Hey, I'm sorry to hear that you are having issues with Akiflow.
|
| It would be great if you could send us a message in the
| intercom chat so we can check what's going on.
| borchardtmp wrote:
| Amazing Nunzio! Congrats
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Having made something similar [0], and having seen a lot of these
| types of tools, I'll paste a comment I made before [1]:
|
| """
|
| I've done a lot of research into this calendar/tasks/notes space,
| how does this compare to
|
| - Sunsama [0]
|
| - Daybridge
|
| - Routine [1]
|
| - Agenda
|
| - NotePlan
|
| - Cron
|
| - TickTick
|
| and the hundreds of others out there?
|
| I've also seen a lot of apps like this shut down over the years,
| such as Sunrise [2], Woven [3] and more. Personally speaking, I
| even hesitate to continue on my own app as well because it seems
| the market is saturated with the same exact idea and style, but
| it seems that users aren't really that attached to one company
| for it to generate enough revenue to keep building.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990238
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26565629
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11676448
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882680
|
| """
|
| [0] https://getartemis.app
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32312413#32313370
| [deleted]
| nmnm wrote:
| Hi congrats on Artemis, looks very cool! This is indeed a huge
| and very competitive market with a lot of different solutions.
| We saw a lot of founders tackling the problem with different
| approaches leading to structural differences in the tool they
| develop, so I think that there's actually much space for
| innovation and improvements! Would love to have your feedback
| on Akiflow :)
| amoghs wrote:
| >After a while, we learned that what our users really wanted was
| to have everything in one place.
|
| This is so spot on! We're having similar learnings with eesel [1]
| too. Work is far too scattered across apps. Thanks for sharing
| your journey so far and congrats on the launch!
|
| [1] https://eesel.app
| danr4 wrote:
| congrats on the launch. site works terribly in safari.
| warpech wrote:
| What a timing! I just found information about Akiflow on a
| blog[1] and decided to give it a try. I had no idea that you've
| officially launched today!
|
| I used to use an app called Acapela[2] for a while, but they went
| out of business.
|
| I am mostly interested in Slack integration and it seems that you
| nailed it. Pricing for your product ($15) is double than Slack
| itself ($7.25), but I will be happy to pay the price if it solves
| my problem of scheduling work that falls in through Slack.
|
| [1] https://brandonkboswell.com/blog/Optimizing-the-iPhone-
| for-p...
|
| [2] https://acapela.com/
| nmnm wrote:
| That's so great to hear :) Would be great to hear from you
| after the trial to understand if the integration with Slack
| works as expected!!
| jtthe13 wrote:
| We use office365 for calendaring. The onboarding flow stops at
| "connect your Primary Google Calendar Account". I understand one
| has to start somewhere, but it still boggles my mind why so many
| B2B startups treat Office365 as second order of priority. Does it
| come from genuine market research on the addressable market, or
| tech myopia of Google apps usage in the startup ecosystem? Guess
| we'll stick with Sunsama for the time being.
| jedberg wrote:
| I think a lot of that comes from the fact that O365 are more
| corporate users. And oftentimes they are restricted from
| connecting their calendar to 3rd parties due to corporate
| policy.
| sfavaro wrote:
| Yes, this is also part of the reasons why we started with the
| Google platform and not Office365.
| sfavaro wrote:
| Hello jtthe and thank you for your feedback! We are aware that
| many people would benefit form the Office365 integration. It is
| in our roadmap (https://akiflow.canny.io/features-and-
| improvements-request/p...) and will be developed in the next
| few months.
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(page generated 2022-11-03 23:00 UTC)