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Tandem 2.0 — Unlock serendipity with the most powerful virtual office
Tandem is a virtual office to connect effortlessly with your distributed or hybrid team. See who’s around, talk in one click. Unlock serendipity and real-time collaboration.
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@robinraszka amazing question. tldr: we earn the switch through relentless iteration + innovation. We started with a simple thesis: if we focus on internal, realtime communications, increase Presence, and drastically remove Friction, we'll give teams what they're looking for: the feeling of working together, even more so than in an office.
In practice, this isn't enough. You need to remove the blockers to switching (e.g. build parity with Meet/Zoom in reliability, virtual backgrounds, cross-platform support, calendar/meeting integrations, mobile support), and also make the new experience so good, for everyone on the team, that even the skeptics switch. It's a high bar, but for many companies, we're clearing it. And we're just getting started.
We've prototyped ways to collaborate that feel 100x better than in-person, but are too radical or confusing to be widely adopted. As we push further into presence and reducing friction, pretty soon it will seem absolutely insane to the whole world that we once used clunky conference calls to talk with teammates. Without the virtual office, you'll feel slow, blind, and alone.
In other words: We've seen the future, and our early teams have seen it too, and that inspires us to make it happen in a way that everyone, at every company, can benefit from.
@rajiv_ayyangar Thanks for taking the time to respond :) I think it's a good pitch, but I struggle to imagine how this mindset might actually convert e.g. you basically have ~1 min to convince a new user TO give it a few more minutes. Most people entering the new user funnel won't even get so far in the journey to appreciate your "relentless iteration + innovation"—which is great, I applaud you for that, if you can keep it going for years, you will eventually make it in this state or totally different iteration of the product, I'm sure of that.
Less friction, virtual backgrounds, calendar/meeting integrations, mobile support—feature parity—are mirages and time suck e.g. Zoom has a UI that didn't change since the launch... inviting people is a pain, and yet, people are still using it...
I'm convinced you need to break the mold (dramatically) to get attention because no avg. user will understand why this is 10X better in the first minute vs. all the others in the space screaming for attention. If you have seen the future—as you say—why not build it? Why not go radical (but usable) for "radicals" instead of those looking for feature parity? How else do you stand out? What's the Cybertruck version of Tandem? Can't see it, yet 😬
@robinraszka you should try Tandem for a day and see! It is quite radical!
I hear you on the impatience of new users, but I'm a big believer in solving for sustained value first, then making the onboarding as quick and easy as possible. We had a big uptick last PH launch, but it took a lot of effort to make Tandem something teams actually *live* in, and I'm glad we prioritized that!
@rajiv_ayyangar We tried, and slowly churned back to Zoom...
Been trying all the new shiny things... they all have 2 views and the same UI paradigms: a buddy list and a meeting view with different level of clutter e.g. modals sprinkled on top of it. Not one is making the jump from rotary phones to multi-touch 😅 The space kinda looks like this:
https://twitter.com/Kristennette...
@robinraszka have you tried it with your full team? anytime in the last few months? As I recall you didn't give it a proper trial! (e.g. switch your meetings to Tandem for a few days and get the whole team onboard).
Curious what we could do to make a full-team trial easier!
congrats on the launch. would Tandem work well with slack or is it more of an all or none product - reason I ask is we would love to try it but feel some hesitancy moving everyone off their current go to tool
@ugwigr Most of our customers use Slack! We use Slack and love it for async messaging internally. We have a /tandem integration, plus you can have Slack presence be driven by Tandem so...when you're going back and forth, and see someone in a Tandem room or table, you'll know you can just start talking to them!
Good luck on your launch! Being fast and easy could pay off over Zoom, Meet, Slack, Discord etc..
@milkers ease and speed are SO underrated. 2 seconds vs. 2 minutes to get into a call is a complete game-changer in how you connect with your team!
Tandem has been such a joy to use. It has become kind of a virtual office for our small team at Mailbrew 🙌
@rajivayyangar @iambetaful @davidzh Thanks David! mega-congrats on LiveKit! Been hearing great things :)
Tandem is one of the most indispensable tools we use for remote work, alongside G-Suite and Slack.
My distributed startup team at EV Life has used Tandem since before COVID. Remotely, it is the closest thing I've experienced to sitting in a room with a teammate to collaborate on a big project for hours or tap someone's shoulder to get 2 minutes of quick feedback.
We've been using Tandem for over a year, and have found it essential for quick collaboration, for our chattier teams to work well together seamlessly and to help the company as a whole feel less lonely.
@daniellemlovell 🙏less lonely is our mission! And thanks for being early-early testers of Tables! How are you liking it so far?
We've been using Tandem for over year and honestly I don't know how we could live with out it as a remote team. I'm super impressed with the product y'all have built and can't wait so see what you ship next.
@mattcrail thanks so much! Love your blog as well! Curious what your team thinks of Tables!
Free for small teams, whoop! Tandem is rock-solid. The degree to which performance and reliability has improved over the last year is amazing.
@davej thanks! Team communication has to be so reliable - like getting water from a faucet. It’s not always easy but we’ve got a stellar team and it’s worth the work 🙏
@davej We're so glad you noticed all the improvements! Over the last year we built our own AV stack and infrastructure and have been quietly rolling it out to our users :)
Hi PH! I'm Rajiv, co-founder of Tandem along with @bernatfortet and @iambetaful.
We launched nearly 2 years ago (the PH community's feedback was key to setting our product direction) and we've learned a ton since then:
- We've learned how crucial audio-video reliability and performance are, and we've invested deeply in infra to give you the best possible experience.
- Despite all the ink spilled on asynchronous work, at the end of the day, we build relationships, friendships, visions, and strong teams by talking.
- Presence is more than signals - it's about Stories, feeling connected with, and aware of, conversations your teammates are having.
- As the world starts going hybrid, the Virtual Office and the Physical Office need to co-exist and become intimately aware of each other.
- Through supporting and listening closely to larger companies, we've learned how to scale serendipity! (see Team Tables below)
Tandem is, no joke, 1000x better than when we launched. We've kept the lightweight desktop interface, and added powerful ways to connect, collaborate, and be human with your team. We also recently reached a truly awesome milestone:
2 million hours of calls on Tandem! 🏄♀️ 🙌
We started Tandem when my co-founders each had kids and we started working remotely. We missed the flow and camaraderie of working together, so we started building. Since then, my co-founders' kids are walking and talking (and high-fiving us on Tandem), and we've been joined by a truly world-class set of builders and thinkers that have pushed our vision of Tandem further and further.
We're launching three new features here on Product Hunt:
👥 Team Tables - serendipity and co-working! Get a coffeeshop vibe with "overhearing" (to activate for your team, go to Settings > Team Settings > scroll down for Team Tables)
📱 Mobile (iOS + Android) - Great for walking 1-on-1s! It's a virtual office in your pocket!
📅 Never be late to a Meeting - stay in flow with Meeting Reminders and Auto-Join, and see when your next meeting is at a glance. No more checking Calendar!
We've kept the streamlined, minimal desktop app that doesn't get in your way, and improved some of our best-loved features:
- Hybrid Calls just work - "Same Room" prevents dreaded audio feedback when some people are in the same physical room.
- Celebrate with ✋ High-Five (TM) and 🚀 Emoji rockets.
- Get in touch quickly with 👋 Waves, DMs, and ⏰ Notify when free.
- Instant interactive screen share - see your teammates cursors and point things out.
And you can indeed use Tandem to replace Meet/Zoom (or integrate!):
- Calls scale to 30 participants
- Multi-platform (mac, windows, linux, iOS, Android)
- Virtual backgrounds + blur
- For scheduled meetings, Tandem can launch Meet/Zoom and you'll still have the Presence and visibility of Tandem calls.
You can see our distilled thoughts on the Virtual Office and Presence here: https://blog.tandem.chat/the-vir...
Sign up for free and trial Tandem with your team at http://tandem.chat —
We've made Tandem free for teams under 10!
Your feedback has made Tandem great, and is what will make it even better. Please tell us what you think! 🙏
-Rajiv
@bernatfortet @iambetaful @rajiv_ayyangar Hi y'all! Tandem looks very compelling. Kind of a random question if you don't mind sharing. Who made your promo video?
Our team has been using Tandem for a while and I have been loving all the micro updates that they have been pushing which makes us all feel connected while working virtually. It's hard to explain what in particular makes this product great, but once you start using it it is hard to use anything else.
Love Tandem. I've started using it working with Lu.ma who have a team all over the world, and have been recommending it to people ever since. Its unobtrusive but really fully featured, seeing which app someone is using makes it easy to find a good point to wave, and aspects like seeing which song they are listening to give it a fun team feeling. The video calls have always been reliable too.
Loved the ideas and the presentation! I really wish I had a team to start using it 😃
We have been happy users of Tandem for a while now. Awesome to see the team continuing to crush it. I can’t imagine running a remote team without Tandem!
@agordhandas thanks so much! And for all your feedback, especially in the early days!
Hi PH! I'm personally very excited to show off what we've been working on over the past few months. Team tables has been an especially fun new project as we try to re-think what working together virtually should look like. Being able to quickly talk and then go back to working has been great for our team's productivity, and we're excited to share it with your team as well. Special thanks to Rajiv and Bernat for being awesome partners on the journey.
@iambetaful aren't you glad you're not the only one writing code anymore? :P
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