Launch HN: Muddy (YC S19) – Multiplayer browser for getting work done
I like that it's all timeline based. For my use case, we currently use Front email thread and then link to a Shared Dropbox where we post everything (including links to like a Google Doc or webpage). I think having chronological bookmarks like you do would be clearly better. I also know many people who use Google Groups and Google Doc to document progress too -- which I think would be insane / nightmare but teams do it. You all definitely would solve that automatically.
Couple other notes:
- Whenever I screenshare with a team or others I see 1000 bookmarks or tabs on their browser. I could not imagine the nightmare of how that would impact my workflow or the timeline. Trusting AI to clean stuff up or hunt is not for me.
- I can tell you all have been heads down blitzing (dog in video, phone ringing in background of another) but I think a separate "Solutions" page where you tackle specific examples would be nice to see or browse.
- Maybe too much or not really your goal, but right now need some sort of client integration for an outside person. I can't imagine giving access to a client on a whim and training them on this. Instead, maybe automatic email integration where their emails show up in the timeline and can respond directly from there. Would produce a really great timeline for where things left off and when things are being communicated. Being able to sub-comment and share files/updates/things on Front on email threads is one of the most killer features for productivity and a team. Mixing this with what you all have could be even more next level. Again though, might not be the goal.
Congrats and best of luck! Big fan of people trying to tackle PM stuff and think you all are doing a great job.
Browsers are interesting since they can do almost anything but "you can do anything you want!" is intimidating for many new users.
We've given e-mail thought and it's certainly a door we are considering as we keep on building. Has anyone built a browser without thinking about an email client? :P
COVID hit and we had the itch to look at the browser in a different light. Building a browser seemed intimidating...but it was quarantine. Long story short, built a few different ideas and here we are :)
Chromium is huge but has terrific documentation (once you find the current copy) and Google hosted code search. Digging through crbug.com often helped point us in the right direction.
2 unlocks that made us confident to pursue this project:
1) Repeatable way of patching Chromium and keeping up with upstream changes 2) Writing UI in web technology instead of C++ Views toolkit.
It might also be cool if it could automatically import sheets or google docs if I were to drag a csv or .txt file in and just magically open the project up. I hate having to upload via google drive
Looking to explore such automations in the near future -- important to us that it feels great to create new files in Muddy (and have Muddy do any of the busywork we are used to)
I think my usage of figma,sheets,etc. is 90% single player, until the moment of sharing my (maybe unfinished) work, where I go through an intense period of collaboration with others for an initial review, then tails off, and becomes async.
I can't see myself using muddy for the single player part, but it sounds interesting for after that initial intense collab process. Especially if the process includes multiple apps, as opposed to a single design review in figma etc. I find the longer running async collab is when I get the most scatterbrained across apps.
In a way, we like trying new software. Downside is each app has the need to build their own slightly different file system, which makes finding things extra challenging. Wanted to solve with Muddy.
2. Auto updating across Mac and Windows (in 2024!!). Google Omaha is hard to setup, Sparkle is jank on Windows. Throw in binary delta support and it's an oof.
3. Our team builds Muddy on Muddy and ditched Slack when product got stable. Few other beta users and their companies as well. Slack is super sticky and has some terrific workflows, but more "quality" conversations today happen natively in apps and almost all apps have commenting functionality. Just easier to talk next to the context. So a lot of Slack convo's become "where is X" and we think Muddy will stop the need for those questions all-together.
We used some similar tools like Workona in the past but without constant maintenance, links would get stale and we'd abandon it. Wanted something that did that for us automatically.
(Also we support: website annotations, team presence, and letting you rewind a project's timeline back to any point in time)
(Also, landing page nit, but the kerning on the H1 is pretty wide, and the kerning in the wordmark is a bit tight IMO.)
If you hit any of the other results, it will open the site for you
Compared to Arc -- Muddy is focused on making getting things done together better rather than infinite customization. It's a different set of tradeoffs but with a similar rethinking of the browsing experience.
https://i.imgur.com/2WeVGxK.png
It's so frustrating. Early in your product lifecycle it should be painfully easy to get started and you shouldn't be worrying about this kind of security.
p.s. fan of the work on replicache and of course chrome