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Kona — Build remote team culture in Slack
High-performing remote teams use Kona to build trust and culture over Slack. Be there for your remote teammates, become a better manager.
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I’m absolutely in love with products that prioritize employee wellbeing. We’ve been using Kona for a long time now and I have to say it’s insanely impressive. When Kona pops in and let’s me know HOW a team member prefers to communicate, it’s kind of a magical moment for me. Love this team and product, and everything they stand for.
@jmitch Thanks for the note Justin, & thanks for hunting us! Y'all over at Yac are genuinely the GOATs :)
Hi everyone!
I’m Sid, co-founder of Kona. @itscorine, @andrewthezhou, and I started working on this in October 2019 while we were students at UCLA. We love remote work, so we interviewed 500+ remote leaders to learn what makes it so hard. Even with the pandemic, managers always mentioned the difficulty of building trust and relationships.
Kona is our response to the isolation and lack of emotional connection on remote teams. We've been lucky to go through Techstars and work with 50+ awesome teams at Asana, Medium, Typeform, Outreach.io, HelpScout, TeamSnap, CoffeeMeetsBagel and more to develop the early versions.
It’s been so fulfilling to help managers stay emotionally connected with their teammates, and we’re so excited to launch this! You can sign up on our website to get access.
Kona empowers you to lead with empathy without changing your workflow in Slack. With Kona, you can:
💚 Check-in on emotions in Slack. No more mood spreadsheets or distracting surveys.
👏 Build trust and support one another. Talk about your cookie at lunch or that stubbed toe.
🗓 Add crucial context to meetings. Read the room before you enter a Zoom meeting.
🌟 Get a manager sixth sense. Alerts on health trends help you show up as a leader.
📊 Track team health data. Make data-based decisions for your team culture.
Sign up to make your remote workplace happier for everyone :) We'd love to know what you think!
Cheers,
Sid
https://twitter.com/pandiyasid
@itscorine @pandiyasid Thanks Sid, great explanation! Excited to show Kona off to the world :)
Amazing. I love this product and it's so well integrated into your normal workflows as a remote worker. Keep up the incredible work!
@scott_hanford You're the best, Scott! Thanks so much for the kind words. That's the goal: help managers support their teams without working harder!!
Hey all, really really excited to finally introduce our little puppy Kona to the world!
Kona is a Slackbot that helps improve team culture with very much a human-first, vulnerability-first approach. It's so hard to build team culture on remote teams — we offer a solution that'll help out.
We really hope you like the product, & let us know what you think!
I love this and totally want it!! Any plans to support multiple timezones and teams distributed across diff countries?
@surayashivji thank you! We actually already support those - it was one of our most requested features. Our customers with globally distributed teams have the checkins set up for the morning in whichever timezone you're in :)
I think this is a great app for remote teams to bond better. Have applied for a spot via your site and can't wait to get started!
This is super neat. We've tried a lot of tools for remote culture building, none of which we've loved. Super excited to explore Kona!!
@helenamerk Thanks a ton for the note, Helena! Exactly what we're trying to solve! :)
This is so sick! Every team needs it in their slack ASAP. Only thing I'd change is that @andrewthezhou should start selling their plushies like Fast hoodies...
@andrewthezhou @alec2435 Thanks so much, Alex!! And yes, we couldn't agree more;)
@alec2435 Thanks Alex, man... you really put me in the roughest of spots huh? ;)
Congrats on launching Sid, Corine and Andrew! Every manager can benefit getting more visibility into their team's psyche and they should be encouraged to check in with folks on a more human level
@sahilkhosla14 Thanks a ton Sahil! This is something that has become a core part of keeping your best talent in the 2020s :)
Big fan of this product and the team behind it! In fact, we even have Kona installed inside of our own workspace. Congrats on the launch!
@tedspare thank you so much! Yes, burnout and culture building are actually now the top concerns for leadership teams. This is the #1 thing a team can be doing!
Building culture is one of the most important problems to solve in remote work. Kona shows how deeply Sid + team have though about how to solve it.
@vedika_jain Thanks Vedika! We've been thinking & working on this product for a while, & it's exciting to finally share it with the world.
Very excited to see Kona enhance the process of building culture in remote teams. Great team & great product!
@ke5havrao Thank you Keshav! We're so excited about building the Future of Work!
feeling understood, comfortable, and part of the team - all underrated aspects of fostering healthy work culture! so proud of this incredible team @pandiyasid @itscorine @andrewthezhou for putting this together, I know how much time and energy has gone into it over the past few years. what will happen for teams who are currently using Kona remotely but may eventually transition to in-person as workplaces start opening up again in a year or so?
@pandiyasid @itscorine @alexandrahlii Thanks for the note, we totally agree! :)
We see Kona as a tool that can be used regardless of whether or not there is an office. We saw remote as an "amplifier" — it makes these issues significantly more difficult to deal with, which is why we built Kona in the first place!
Great job, Kona Crew (Krew?). Building team culture on remote teams can be difficult.
Understanding how everyone on the team is feeling can go a long way to improving empathy.
@joegiglio What about the Kona Cult? :p
Thanks for the note Joe, really appreciate it! We 100% agree :)
Excited for @pandiyasid @itscorine @andrewthezhou as this is an amazing team that continued to execute and truly build an amazing brand and product that the world so desperately needs! Build and lead teams with intentional empathy. Cant wait to see what this company and team looks like a year from now!
Congratulations on launching Kona! It's amazing to have new tools for building connection and empathy, and the product is launching at the perfect time for our new and more distributed world.
This seems like a really promising tool, and is more important than ever now! I think even folks who don't normally get on the "feelings train" can appreciate this because of the data aspect. Well done!
ntwrk