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Meet the Capiche Community, March/April 2020.
Welcome to Capiche!
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using?
What tech problem can you not figure out?
We’re super excited that you joined Capiche recently—and can’t wait to learn more from you this month!
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Product Marketing @ FullStory
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
At FullStory I'm supporting multiple product launches based directly on requests from our customers—one feature we'll ship as an MVP with plans to iterate quickly and another that's more of a paradigm shift. It's a privilege to see customer ideas brought to life.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
Currently reading "Small Fry: A Memoir" by Lisa Brennan-Jobs. I'm only about half-way through the book but it's radically changed my perception on what it means to be holistically successful.
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using?
Not new but new (again) to me, re-adopting Asana for project management. It's a satisfying task organizer that works great across our Marketing department.
What tech problem can you not figure out?
How to be responsive in Slack without bugging people during off hours. Now that we've got "Schedule send" for Gmail, I want the same thing for Slack channels. Is there an app for that yet...?
One thing my team is trying is adding a little "meme" acronym ahead of our messages. For example, if a message starts with PRAYL (Please review at your leisure) it's clear to everybody it can wait until later. It's amazing how far a few letters can go when everybody agrees to operate around them.
I read Small Fry last year and loved it. Definitely a good way to round out a mental image of Steve Jobs—and a wake up call about what really matters in being successful.
On Scheduled send in Slack, there are actually a few tools for that:
- The Slack team's documentation recommends Kyber, which adds a ton of features in addition to scheduling messages.
- Timy is another tool just for scheduling messages.
- If you already use Zapier, you could make a Slack bot to delay messages (essentially you'd have Zapier watch for a Slash command then would need to include the message and time as Zapier named variables, and set the Zap up with a Delay for that time you entered, and finally a Slack Message action to send the message.
Chief Technology Officer at New Story
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
We're bringing a tech product to market: Felix. It's primarily application is an offline-first survey tool for data collection internationally.
Governments and nonprofits don’t have realtime access to reliable information to make better decisions. We help them identify the current needs of their community and deliverable actionable insights so they can build trust and maximize resources.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. She challenges readers to think differently about how we assess results and make decisions. The idea of the decisions as probabilities provides both a more generous and more accurate interpretation of the world.
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using?
Loom. Our team uses it to send messages, film 'how to' videos, and hand off work when completed.
Felix sounds super cool. Is this offline but on-device forms, or paper forms with a system to digitalize them?
I do need to give Loom a try, seems everyone's using it now!
You should talk with TJ about Felix. He has been working on that exact problem with a lot of success for the 5+ years.
Founder & CEO at Human Lambdas
What are you working on that you’re most excited about? We're building a highly customisable software solution to help companies easily set up, operate and measure manual routine workflows.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most? Principles, by Ray Dalio. It gives a good insight into the mental models and unique management style of one of the most successful investment firms of all time. This book has helped me reinforce the habit of thinking more rigorously and objectively.
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using? Postman, to easily test API endpoints and share those calls with my team.
What tech problem can you not figure out? Remote whiteboarding sessions. It's the only kind of meeting where we still feel it's hard to find a decent substitute to being present in a room.
Director of Engineering at Better
What are you working on that you’re most excited about? We are taking on the mortgage industry which is a long-entrenched, messy, and highly regulated industry. There is a lot of room for improvement and part of my mandate is to think about how we should develop and ship Mobile apps as part of our offering -- today we have none. I'm really excited to think about how and where we can make a solid impact with Mobile on the space.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most? The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. It did a great job outlining what makes teams fail to operate at their highest level and it is going to be an incredibly useful tool in my management toolbox. I really enjoyed the hypothetical scenarios it set up as a vehicle to get the point across.
What’s the newest software you’ve started using? Amazing Marvin. Started using it for personal task management and it's much much more full featured than any personal task management tool I've used in the past. At times almost overwhelmingly so, it seems like the Jira of personal task managers which is both good and bad.
What tech problem can you not figure out? I'm always struggling with personal task management. I rarely do small tasks that befit a checklist, I often think of my tasks as a stack where I am doing one thing then push another onto the stack and work on that then once I finish it and pop it off the stack I go back to the thing I was working on. No task management software is really designed to work this way. I have built my own webapp for it but its UI is clunky and I don't end up using task management software that isn't always available which means also available offline (I commute via Subway) which means I'd need an app and as a side project I haven't been able to carve out enough time to write an app to accompany the web I've written. As a result I end up falling back on other tools (Trello, Apple Reminders) but none really operate the way I do.
Welcome, @victorquinn!
So, does Amazing Marvin solve your personal task management challenges? When I read your response to #3 I got excited about trying it out, but then I read your last response and it sounds like it still falls well short of an ideal solution for you.
As you can imagine from my response to #4 it doesn't entirely but it is the best off-the-shelf solution I've found.
I'd definitely suggest giving it a whirl if you're looking for a personal task management solution and found the rest lacking.
It does have an app so it solves my offline use case and it kind of has the ability to set tasks as "in progress" (you can enable time tracking so it highlights a thing you're actively doing).
I also haven't devoted the time to dig through all of the myriad configuration settings in-depth to see if anything truly fits my use case. Again, it's like Jira in that it can be configured to do just about anything so it's possible it can do what I need and I just haven't found it yet. I've tried various out of the box configs and they're neat but not exactly what I'm looking for yet.
Hopefully this helps!
A mobile app for mortgages (and refinancing?) could be very interesting.
That's a very unique task management strategy, but it does make sense. I like to have several things going at once so I can switch tasks when I get stuck on one project. Have you tried using kanban boards (like in Trello)? Feels like that could almost fit what you need.
Industry Analyst at The ITAM Review
I've just published research into the SaaS Management tools market - companies like Zylo, Intello, and Cleanshelf who are helping companies to get to grips with SaaS spending and risk. So sort of companion services to Capiche. On a note related to that the tech problem I wish someone could solve would be personal spend analysis and tracking - proper deep insights into subs for Spotify, Netflix etc plus your spending on Amazon. Renewals management for those would be good too, having recently got burned for auto-renewal on Flickr & Office365 (yep, that's part of my day job which is kind of embarrassing). Really don't get a huge amount of time to read these days - other than to my 10 year old so I'm probably more of an authority of kids books than anything else. Likewise movies - it's all kids stuff these days. If you love animation take a look at Missing Link from LAIKA on Netflix. Beautiful film stuck full of very English humour (think Monty Python)
Very interesting—do you have any links to share where we could read that?
Agree with you on wanting a way to manage personal subscriptions. I set annual repeating tasks for myself to reconsider subscriptions a few days before they're due to renew, but it is tough to get a full overview.
I'll have to check out Missing Link—I love Monty Python, even if I only first watched it when it landed on Netflix a couple years ago.
Here's a link to the report - it's pretty in depth and kind of written from an IT Asset Management perspective. Tool profiles will probably be of interest http://bit.ly/saasmanagement
eCommerce Developer at Magnanni
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
A PWA that our sales event team can use for taking custom orders. It must work offline, because Wi-Fi inside retail locations can be unreliable.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
Not so much read, as watched -- Will Wright's Masterclass on game design. Game design is a hobby of mine, but good UI certainly crosses over into my daily work. Thinking of UI as a toy is a great metaphor. You have buttons you want the user to touch and experiment with, and you really need to make them appealing.
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using?
Monday.com. I like it so far. I've been around a while, so I'm used to "ugly" project management. A lot of my colleagues can't use software that isn't easy on the eyes, so switching to Monday made a lot of sense.
I've also just started using a coding font with ligatures (JetBrains Mono). Jury is still out on that one...
What tech problem can you not figure out?
Scheduling for the correction of technical debt. That deadline is about to hit, and you make a comment in the code: /** @todo Fix later **/. It's hard to schedule time to tear off the duct tape and just replace the duct. When the choice is between adding a new revenue-generating feature or making a repair for future stability, a lot of opinions and expectations must be managed. And to be honest, new features are more fun top program. This is both a tech problem and a management problem I struggle with.
When the choice is between adding a new revenue-generating feature or making a repair for future stability, a lot of opinions and expectations must be managed. And to be honest, new features are more fun top program.
Agree, I think this is a constant struggle in every engineering organization, particularly in startups. We're approaching this very challenge right now on Capiche. :)
Are PWAs reliable enough today, even on mobile, at caching information when offline and syncing it once you have a connection again? I've lost data far too many times on CMS when the internet decided to die right when I hit submit...
Oh interesting, I still haven't watched a Masterclass but have been very tempted by a few of them. Will Wright's one of the greats!
Changing your typeface can definitely change text-heavy workflows. I'm partial to a number of monospaced typefaces, though writing-focused ones for my work , including the beautiful-but-pricey Pitch.
PWA reliability depends a lot on how it is programmed. A lot of PWAs focus on performance instead of reliability, and it’s common for them to do lots of caching for reads but require a reliable connection for writes. We are writing both the backend and the frontend to make sure it works how I want. When data is sent from the PWA to the server, it must get an acknowledgement receipt from the server. If it does not, it queues the message to retry again later. If the server receives data with the same UUID twice, it will not create a new record. This makes it so that if the server gets the data, but the app does not get the receipt, we don’t have duplicates later. This strategy works because our records are immutable (once an order is placed, it cannot be changed) and because we can train our salespeople on how to deal with the queue. More complex strategies are needed if you can edit the records. Even this is not bulletproof (the device could break with records in the queue), but we have an offline policy for that edge case.
I would absolutely recommend Masterclass to anyone who is tempted.
Ahhh very interesting, that makes sense for your product use-case for sure.
Indie Consultant
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
My main focus now is to nail down the positioning for my new indie consulting business. B2B SaaS tools will be a key component, but I'm not quite sure how.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
How to Take Smart Notes has really changed how I engage with the material I'm consuming, and seems like a realistic path to starting to write online.
What’s the newest software you’ve started using?
Roam is key to my new daily writing/reading process.
COO at Noah & Co.
1) What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
- I oversee operations for an office leasing brokerage in Midtown, NYC (ie. we help businesses find office space to lease). In the traditional world of commercial real estate, brokerages operate with mind-numbing inefficiencies. I'm excited to be working on several different workflows that will streamline and optimize processes internally for brokers and in turn, provide a more enjoyable client experience.
2) What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
- 100 Ways to Motivate Others by Steve Chandler & Scott Richardson. I actually listened to it on Audible a few weeks ago for the second time - a ton of great value and tips to use in your day-to-day business.
3) What’s the newest software you’ve stared using?
- Integromat. I've begun dabbling with it in the most basic of uses and have really enjoyed it thus far. Plan to continue exploring further this week!
Excited to be part of this growing community!
Ohh I bet you must have some strong opinions about WeWork :D
- Only a few :) Shared/flex space isn't going anywhere though - and WeWork has played a huge part in that.
Neat on Integromat, how are you finding it compared to Zapier?
- A bit too early to tell but I do know one thing - I've missed reading support articles from one of Zapier's former technical writers :) I'll be sure to check back as I toy with the tool a bit more!
Web Analyst and Product Designer
What are you working on that you’re most excited about? I’m currently enrolled in a Product Design course where I’ve been paired up with a startup in the dental industry. My goal is to help make their software more user friendly. After completing the course I’ll be looking to jump into the nocode community.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most? I’ve been going through the articles on Farnham Street relating to Mental Models. After being introduced to the concept by a medium article a few month back I’ve been trying to make a bigger effort to think about how I think and why I make the decisions I do. Ray Dalio’s Principles 5 Step process has also been useful in helping me think about how I’d structure the application of these mental models.
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using? I’ve recently been getting to terms with Figma, it’s a great UX design tool with a lot of online help. Pocket has also been useful for giving me the option to listen to articles that I’d like to read.
What tech problem can you not figure out? I use a software called Duet to turn my IPad into a second monitor. It has a wireless feature that I can’t get working without first plugging my IPad into my laptop.
Nice to meet you all
That's super cool, having a way to directly put the skills you're learning to use! UX in a medical product sounds like a unique challenge. What's the most interesting thing you've learned so far there?
I've used Duet way back when the same way—though think it only worked with a wired connection when I was using it. Might be related to your iPad model? Seems only some of the newer ones supported wireless.
Super glad you're here!
So far I’ve realised how important user experience when it comes to implementing change. With an office job you can almost guarantee that the person will be on a computer at a desk. But in the medical industry users are up and down having to tend to patients. For example, I was going to help with a mobile app version of the tool I’m working on but I later found out that dental nurses aren’t allowed to have phones at work in the UK.
After posting the comment I decided to give it enough go. The wireless feature is part of the paid plan, to get it going I opened the duet app on my IPad first then opened the app on my laptop. Sometimes it’s the simple fixes aha
Thanks Maguay, Happy to be hear
That's a great insight. I'd attended a UX writing workshop last year and their primary example was how the fun, friendly copy often used in startup software was entirely the wrong tone of voice for a finance/banking application and ... that makes sense, but I wouldn't have thought of it at first.
Simple fixes are the best!
Head of Partnerships at MainStreet (workonmainstreet.com)
Hello All: My company - MainStreet - has developed an automated business savings platform; we call it Honey For Hiring. Our software enables startups and SMBs to quickly claim qualifying federal, state, and local R&D tax incentives without having to hire expensive and time-consuming accountants. Accordingly, we've been able to save companies $50K on average in under two weeks. I think we can all agree there's nothing better than helping founders succeed!
I recently began using Copper (G-Suite friendly CRM) and love it. Copper's only glaring flaw is it's very pricey for an SMB-focused platform. The functionality is awesome, but there are far cheaper and, in some cases free, CRMs that achieve 80-90% utility.
Honey for Hiring sounds really cool. What's the tax incentive you've found that most people don't realize they can use?
What'd you use before Copper? I'd used it way back when it was called Prosperworks, but haven't tried it again recently.
I've found that many founders don't know about government incentive structures in general, which isn't surprising. The IRS is difficult to navigate as is and no founder is focused on savings. Rightfully so, they're focused on growing their core business and top-line. That said, startups are ecstatic when we're able to identify and claim $10,000s of credits, deductions, and payments for them. This is a long-winded way of me saying they vary, but we're happy to find them :)
That's what we think! People can learn more here: https://www.workonmainstreet.com
Principal at Valia Ventures
What are you working on that you’re most excited about? I am most excited about working with the founders in our portfolio and continuing to meet incredible entrepreneurs building the future. Every week is exciting in my world.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most? Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker. We all know it's important to take care of our health or everything we do professionally will take a hit, but this book gives you the data to back that up and allows you to see specifically how big of an impact sleep is on our lives.
What’s the newest software you’ve started using? I know as an investor I'm usually further behind the newest product trends but I've settled into a good workflow process using both notion & airtable which are relatively recent additions to my toolkit. I've tried a few applications recently that have failed to stick, unfortunately.
What tech problem can you not figure out? How to find a genuine replacement for takign notes in meetings. Otter and other dictation products are ok, but if I could be 100% focused on the meeting/call and end up with perfect notes I would be willing to pay for a solution. Let me know if there's something out there that I just haven't tried!
If there's one thing I always come away with after going to startup week-type events, it's that the enthusiasm for building new stuff rubs off on you. Curious if you can share, has anything changed in your investing outlook for the near future right now?
I've been curious about Why We Sleep but not quite enough to put it on the reading list yet. Did it change any of your sleep habits?
Airtable and Notion are both amazing. What's your favorite thing about the duo so far?
On not taking notes during meetings: If the meetings are recorded or streamed through Zoom, it offers an automatic transcription service that saves a Word document with the text of your call. Another service that I haven't tried but have heard good things about is Otter.ai, which automatically transcribes meetings and lets you add notes, highlights, images, and more if you want. Could be worth a try!
Consulting Data Scientist
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
Natural language processing. Specifically extracting knowledge out of text, and making it accessible to other machine learning models.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
Wait But Why series on AI (https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html)
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using?
Notion (notion.so)
What tech problem can you not figure out?
Email. It has not evolved sufficiently, and I am not able to figure out it's place.
Natural language processing is fascinating—would love to hear more about what you're working on there!
Wait But Why is amazing. Their Life in Weeks calendar is incredibly sobering, almost everything else they publish incredibly insightful and inspiring.
On email, what email app do you use ... or what do you find most frustrating about it?
Hi @maguay!
I am currently working on trying to extract information from text to populate a graph database. The field has exploded in the last two years.
I tried using a bunch of apps, but am back to Gmail, Outlook and try to maintain inbox zero. Mailbox was an app that I loved using back in the day, but nothing as exciting has come on my radar. I have tried Superhuman, but I find it quite close to Gmail web app.
Very cool. Are you building it internally, using pre-built text extraction tools, or building a public-facing product?
If only Sparrow had stayed around ... did you ever use it?
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
I'm working on being more strategic, thoughtful, and intentional with what I do in my life (personally, professionally) and to do that I'm consuming a lot of information to better understand a good framework for goal setting.
** What’s the newest software you’ve stared using?**
Similar to @wimsy, I've also started using Roam and it has completely changed my approach to not only how I consume content/material on the internet, but how I start my day and do work throughout the day. A major component of the tool is the daily notes section, and I use it as the scratchpad for the day as I learn, consume, process, ideas and things I'm working on and I love knowing that I have all of that information stored in Roam that can be surfaced later, at a time when I may need it.
Those sound like great goals. Do you have any resources that helped you start being more thoughtful and intentional in life and work?
Have you found yourself going back and looking at older stuff in Roam Research much, or mostly just a good place to write stuff down to remember it just in case? I feel like the problem I've always had with notes apps is that I write stuff down but either forget to look it back up or can't find it when I do.
In terms of content discovery, I think that's one of the powers that I have seen from Roam is that it makes surfacing related content much easier. As you build your personal knowledge management, content that you once discovered before will surface again later, when you need it. I've been learning a lot from Tiago Forte's approach to personal knowledge management.
We'll see how it works out!
I'm a founder at Fabrikator.io, it is a manufacturing management system for small and mid size businesses. In another saying it's like JIRA for manufacturing.
I started to use Raindrop.io for bookmarking and its working great! I'm creating collections and sharing with my teams. I cannot suggest it more!
That's fascinating—sounds like you're taking kanban full circle, then, since it started out as paper cards in Toyota factories.
Raindrop looks so nice. I got tempted to try it after it was recommended several times in a recent discussion about best bookmarking apps.
That's exactly our motivation, bringing kanban back to it's home - manufacturing. It's easier to explain it to people like you who are familiar with digital products and software development however I find it a bit challenging explaining to small businesses who are not digitally transformed yet.
I bet. What’s your typical pitch to them—trying to compare it to some software they already use?
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
Starting a new business and all the different levers to pull and software and hardware decisions to make. Gotta say that the drudgery of setting up some systems and all the legal is the downside for me. Visualizing the upside is what excites me.
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
Easy. Antifragile - I've listened to the book several times, but the simplified concept was enough for me. I've always been a simplicity fan, this was a great add-on to that concept for me. (Although I do see that "adding-on" is the opposite of simplicity.
What’s the newest software you’ve started using?
Seraf for investment tracking
Nothing quite like building something from the ground up. Would love to hear more about your business if it's not in stealth mode!
Antifragile's a book I've seen mentioned a lot but haven't taken the time to read. What's the most actionable takeaway you got from it?
What are you working on that you’re most excited about?
-I'm working on a toolbox that helps accelerate telehealth adoption during the COVID crisis: telehealthtoolbox.org
What’d you read recently that influenced you the most?
-On Grand Strategy by John Lewis Gaddis... an insightful review of approaches to strategy making across history from Pericles to Roosevelt to Fitzgerald. The author dives into the drama of specific stories and zooms out to identify a few themes common to strategy developement across history.
What’s the newest software you’ve stared using? What tech problem can you not figure out?
-Our design teams have just made a big transition to Miro to continue project work during COVID.
Incredibly cool that you're from the Frog design team!
How are you liking Miro so far? Are you using it to replace whiteboards from when you were working in person?
On Grand Strategy sounds like a fascinating read; adding that to my list, thanks!
Working on building a platform for women to learn programming and earn by working from home.
My business partner (twitter: @MortozaTasnim ) discussed this idea with me in the beginning of the year. Her thoughts were pretty clear, she said, being an women in Bangladesh, earning engineering degree, she had to struggle a lot to get a proper job in her relevant field. The struggles are real specially for South Asian women. There are tons of aspects to her problem, more on that later.
Her goal is to provide training to women to shift them to a remote work environment where they can earn money by working from home. Most of the time, these educated women spend time in household chores only whereas they excel in creativity and passion.
I am working on helping her build a platform where Queens (we are calling these women Queen, who are interested to learn and earn from home) will get free training from engineers and eventually will be linked with real works to earn money.
I joined Capiche Community yesterday in the beta program, it looks like an amazing platform!
I hope our Queens will get help from all these amazing people in this community. I am looking forward to introducing the Queens to this platform once it is available for everyone.
Love what everyone is doing here in Capiche Community.
I request your support in Queen as well as we develop it gradually over-time.
It is amazing to see a great community building overtime here. Glad I am part of it.
We have 15k newsletter subscribers, and have around ~2k of them in a Slack group. We're starting to encounter issues in terms of community management - specifically, it's hard to pin content like c...
Google lets you subscribe to a calendar using a URL - although when using an Outlook 365 Calendar link, events are copied over once, and then the syncing stops. This seems to be a relatively new is...
Three major considerations I have been using to evaluate the plethora of options available: 1. Effortless/non-intrusive: It shouldn't feel like a video call 2. Price: As this app would be complime...
Agree! We've just tried to create a culture around the idea that just because Slack is real-time and feels chat-like, it shouldn't be treated as urgent. SMS is our agreed-upon channel for urgent messages. That said, I still think this is a real challenge, and I don't know how scalable our current approach is.