• Cryptagon -> Pixel power, build UI quickly use it ourselves siterate. Heavy interface, every bit of it had some interaction. Prosumer, hardcore users of crypto.

• Polygon -> mobile, felt a bit different

• Tandem Finance -> super simple product design

• Heyo

• Extreme minimalism. Almost a subset of discord. We almost tried to kill any UI element that was not core to the experience of get in sync.

  • We needed screens share, but we were starting from a minimalist place. Instead of creating a new window that would float, we opted for growing the current window. We had this paradigm where a little thing could grow and then shrink
  • Screen-share is for collaboration, but we often collaborate on top of docs. What if we build a super collaborative doc editor?

Wisp

• The UI started to get complex. We tried to fit magical things into small spaces: click on the doc that the person is in, jump to them. In Google docs or Figma you can follow a person. We tried to extend that concept beyond the current artifact. "What if you could follow someone" anywhere they are in their work environment? Very much like walking around the office with your thinking partner. Felt like a big breakthrough.
• In reflection is one of those things that feels magical when you use it, but the frequency of use is low (but meaningful), but it comes at a high cost of product complexity. We would add more of these in the future, I think we gave ourselves the freedom to add complexity to the product. Another company would have been ruthless about simplicity, we didn't for good or bad.
• I remember feeling like we were adding panel after panel to the UI. People on the left, like discord voice channels, docs in the middle (like notion), and doc list on the right.

• I remember feeling the urge to combine the two sidebars in to one, Peple up top, pages below. That felt a lot cleaner.
• Suddenly that allowed space for the “call experience” to live on the right side.

• For a second we considered building a collaborative browsers. A browser designed to always feel together with your teammates. Built around calls and shared cursors.

• For another second we considered created a sort of quick-link canvas/document with embedded calls. The idea was: create a quick doc/page and you’re instantly collaborating with your voice or video.

• The three designs above were already hinting at a desire to disconnect the call experience from the rest of the UI. Even floating that interface on top of the other elements.
• Dealing with docs was feeling very rough, it’s was a hard value prop, and a long road towards parity with other doc editors at the time (i.e. Notion, and others). By that point we applied to YC and gotten an interview.