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Comment by ravenstine | Hacker News Reader

I keep hearing this but it makes no sense to me. If people need to collaborate, what exactly is stopping them from doing it over video? On my team we collaborate all the time remotely.

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From our experience, the best collaboration doesn't happen during planned meetings. It happens during spontaneous conversations and that's what we're trying to bring back.

I kind of get that, but none of the remote collaboration I experience is done through planned meetings. It happens during conversations we have spontaneously. It's just those conversations happen over Slack and then over video call.

This isn't to say that I disbelieve your experience, but it still baffles me there are remote teams out there that fail to collaborate at a sufficient level with tools that already exist. I hope Sidekick succeeds to a level that doesn't one day turn my home office into a remote version of Office Space.

The difference is when someone starts a call or an IM, its usually about something specific and so the expectation is that the conversation lasts just as long as it takes to resolve the specific issue. Spontaneity of conversation requires a culture of interaction without a specific aim. In an environment where you want to maximize such spontaneous connections, calls or IMs can't compare to always-on.

Yep, feels like they've fallen over on the whole 'define a problem' thing. Have they got any actual clients or just a bunch of fellow cohort YC companies all clapping each other on the back.

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