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Ryan

Friday - Slack complement for distributed teams

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The easiest way to stay connected as a distributed team. It's like a journal for work.
Friday.app helps you automate routine communication like daily standups, weekly status updates, CEO updates, and any other regular communication event you can think of

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Luke Thomas
Maker
Thanks for hunting us @ryandawidjan! We built Friday because there's a need to see what's going on at work from a high-level. Workplace chat and project management tools are GREAT at collaboration, but it can still be difficult to understand what's going on. This is especially true with distributed teams. I've worked remotely for a few different companies over 6+ years. The best places I worked understood that you need to create communication "routines" to help people stay connected. The worst places I worked didn't do this. So we built Friday to help. Friday breaks down barriers to sharing regular updates (daily standups, weekly updates, retrospectives, etc). We will do everything except fill out the update. It's kind of like a journal for work :) Friday is not a Slack competitor (we use Slack internally). We aren't a project management tool either (we use Trello internally). We're a new tool that helps you understand what's going on at work from a high-level. Feel free to give it a try and let me know what you think!
Ryan
Hunter
@lukethomas14 my pleasure Luke - have loved your blog and thoughts on the subject!
Chris Cole
@lukethomas14 I feel like this would be great for the team at @webflowapp, that is very distributed and embraces that as part of their culture.
Ryan Hoover
Feels similar to Humble Dot which we use at Product Hunt. Curious how this compares. 🤔
Luke Thomas
Maker
@rrhoover a few things from what I can tell: 1.) more question types (emoji question, likert, list, block editor, etc) 2.) We have more customization around visibility of updates. Instead of public/private questions, you can pick if individuals, team(s), or the entire company can see results. We had public/private questions a while ago but customers found it to be confusing because you need to context switch in the middle of your update. 3.) We don't have shout-outs. We a feature-set called power-ups (kudos/ideas for improvement) that can be toggled on each workflow. Again, more customizable. We get 3-4x as much recognition sent in Friday vs. other tools because it's baked into workflow. 4.) We're a bit cheaper 5.) You can do top-down updates in Friday (note from the CEO, etc) 6.) We're a fully distributed team building tools for remote work. We aren't all in the same office ;) Again, this is my view, but I'd encourage anyone to try both tools out and pick the best solution for their needs. It's great to see others trying to solve this pain.
John Capecelatro
I've been a user of Friday since its earliest days. It's been an incredibly helpful tool for me as a manager to better engage with my team in a seamless, unobtrusive way. I've found the product evolution to be thoughtful and consistent, and I'm excited to introduce new teams I work with to Friday! Would highly recommend giving this a shot.
Luke Thomas
Maker
@jcap49 thanks John! Really appreciate your support. Lots more good stuff on the way in the next couple of months :)
Basheera Kunnil
@lukethomas14, congrats on the Ph launch 👏 Love this 😍
Steven Moseley
I’ve tried managing a distributed transcontinental team via Slack, PM tools, email and Hangouts before. It’s unmanageable. Lots of early mornings and late nights. Friday’s toolset is exactly what was missing to allow people in different time zones to work together seamlessly. So glad this exists! 👍
Grant Deken
Happy customer here. Slack is so ephemeral and disorganized. We started using Friday so we can streamline the most important communication and drive transparency across the team. Our whole team adds their goals at the beginning of the week and then debriefs and scores themselves at the end of the week to see how we did. I also love the weekly CEO note. It gives me an opportunity to set the focus/pace each week. Maybe best of all is this team is not slowing down, and the product just keeps getting better and better. Congrats @lukethomas14 and the Friday team.
steve johnson
Love this product and have used it for teams up to 300 people. Great ability to quickly get feedback and suggestions from team members. Give it a try!
Ryan Dunnewold
Maker
👋I've worked with @lukethomas14 at two companies now. Previously at Crystal together. Currently Head of User Experience at Friday with him. Love building a product for remote teams as a remote team. Was not fully sold on remote work before Friday. I won't go back :) Hit us up if there's anything you want to see us build! We've got an exciting roadmap for 2020!
Rich Paret
I love this product for any team, not just distributed ones. As you scale, it gets harder and harder to get a pulse on what's happening at your company. Most systems people buy or build in-house report in one direction: up. That's setting yourself up for failure and also missing a key opportunity: getting your teams on a regular cadence of communication is a secret scaling weapon. Less time in meetings, more transparency and agency for your team (they can't solve problems they don't know about), and more excitement - hearing about progress is infectious.
Justin Battenfield
We have 3 different physical locations and Friday has brought such a unity for us. I use it for Daily Stand-Ups, Weekly Retros, Weekly Planning, and my One on One's. @lukethomas14 is always open to feedback and wants to do great things for distributed teams.
Adam Fraser
Just started using Friday this week and we're really loving it. The Slack integration is fantastic, I like that we can set up workflows that JUST email my small team without broadcasting to a public channel (which I imagine we will also use, just not initially). My main concern was that filling in these workflows would be annoying but I have one that's triggered about 30 mins before our standup meeting and its actually super quick and helps me prep so I can be as concise as possible when it's my turn. We also set up a couple of flows to help make sure everyone has a good understanding of our priorities and what they're doing each week. Looking forward to see how these pan out for us.
Ryan Dunnewold
Maker
@adam_fraser1 Glad to hear you're loving it so far! Feel free to reach out if you run into any pain points. We iterate quickly!
Waikit Lau
Love Friday.app! Our team is entirely distributed and a tool like Friday helps streamline and automate a lot of process. You don’t know how much overhead you deal with until it’s gone. These guys are barking up the right tree.
Luke Thomas
Maker
Thanks @waikit! Appreciate the support.
Owen McCarthy
It is intuitive, built by very effective co-workers, and improves teams productivity/retention. 100% recommend
Anuj Adhiya
Anything Luke does is worth it. 'Nuff said.
Patrick Robinson
As an early user of this product, it made check in's seamless, transparent and automated. The UX is top notch and the educational content around their playbooks and heavy topics around distributed work are things I reference when communicating to enterprise leaders. 5 stars, would recommend.
John Short
We've been using it for our team for months. We love it. Awesome for remote and colocated teams alike imo.
Michael Andreuzza
The logo reminds me to Figma.....
Steven Fitzsimmons
I've been following @lukethomas14 from the sidelines since early on when this was a side project (I think!). seeing Friday evolve to what it is now - a legit company with tons of happy users - has been awesome. slack has a ton of pains for remote/distributed teams, and really glad someone is tackling this. excited to see where this goes
Luke Thomas
Maker
@fitzrocks Ha yes :) In fact, I wrote 5k words earlier this week about the inside story behind bootstrapping for a couple years -> https://www.lukethomas.com/boots...
Brian Dean
Looks really cool! Nice job Luke 👍 👍 👍
Luke Thomas
Maker
@backlinko thanks Brian :)