What do you think of my idea?

Honestly, I see this as a feature, not a stand-alone product. It seems like it would be easier for a company to simply add a "lingo" page to their intranet (or whatever system they use for internal communication).

It's also not a well known or big enough problem to most people. So, marketing/advertising will be hard and possibly expensive.

I'd recommend that you think bigger. An on-boarding application might be a good thing to explore. You can use your idea within that type of application, but provide much more value.

Hope that helps!

I think rather than taking this up as a full-page website/app, you could create a small app offer it as a plugin to Slack for the companies to use.

Sometimes those terminology takes a 7 page PDF to explain just 3 words. Seen it more times than I care to admit.

Hi Mads, I had a similar idea years ago but I dismissed it because I thought that:
1)nobody would really be interested
2)there was no tech to implement it
3)why people should add lingo to the database?

But now, reflecting upon your post, several lightbulbs switched on:
1)Reading the post replies it seems that there is definitely some interest
2)The tech is here. Just think about Google Assistant. Potential access to over 400 millions of devices. No apps to install. Fast as hell
3)Example: by monthly giving a % of the revenue to a random selection of n contributors

Example:
Employee John Doe works at QuantisticGuitar Inc. , a company that produces quantistic guitars (the evolution of electric guitars). He notices that his company uses a very particular lingo, for example employees use the term "Quantuning" to indicate the peculiar procedure of tuning a quantistic guitar.

He grabs his phone:

"Ok Google, speak to LingoBot"

Lingobot here. What do you want to do?
"Insert new lingo"
Ok. [Google Assistant grabs user location] I see you are at "QuantisticGuitar Inc." Is that right or do you want to input your company name?
it's right
Ok gimme the lingo name
"Quantuning"
Ok gimme the lingo meaning
"Peculiar procedure of tuning a quantistic guitar ecc ecc"
Ok thank you!

[...a month after...]
Tom Red is preparing for a job interview at "QuantisticGuitar Inc." . He read on reddit about a new site that can ease his workplace integration.
He grabs his phone:

"Ok Google, speak to LingoBot"

Lingobot here. What do you want to do?
"I am searching for a company lingo"
Ok, what company are you searching?
"QuantisticGuitar Inc."
Ok, the database contains 33 lingos for "QuantisticGuitar Inc.". You can have access to it for (arbitrary example) 3.3$. Do you want to pay and proceed ?
Yes
[Payment procedure]
Thank you! Watch your mailbox. You will receive a PDF containing the Lingo you requested.

[...a month after...]
At the job interview.
Boss: Do you know what "quantuning" means?
Tom Red: Who doesn't know that?
....

This was just an example but I hope to have switched on some lightbulbs in your head too ;)

The way I see it, explaining the lingo is part of a solid onboarding process for a new employee. Perhaps you can explore whether a lingo playbook can be part of a larger picture. A simple employee onboarding package or sorts.

What if you built an app that creates a lingo poster for them so they can keep it up on a wall or send the PDF to new employees?

I'd love to see a mail plugin which parses out all corporate emails and adds non-dictionary words, ALL-CAPS words, or repeated phrases like "touch base" etc into a list which can be voted on and answered over time.

If you're concerned about privacy, companies could have a single mailbox where employees can forward specific emails. Jargon would get added to a corpus to be voted on and answered over time.

I wonder if you could create this as a browser or slack plugin that adds a hover or even a link to any words or phrases that have an internal definition?

I think the issue of there being a lack of transparency and progressive onboarding when it comes to new recruits is a real problem, but as I see it, your take on the solution is a feature and does not warrant a product in and of itself.

I personally use gitbook as a way of documenting all aspects of my companies- it's a very simple, user-friendly interface that can be shared across teams small and large.

Do you think this could be a viable alternative in line with what you're suggesting?

One big problem is not the tool, but getting people to actually use it. Many might not even realize they are using lingo.

If you can build a product that integrates into communication tools and asks for meanings of these terms automatically, that might be a game changer.

It’s valuable for the person who doesn’t know.

But how is it valuable for the people who have the knowledge and ultimately are forced to keep it up to date?

I’d try to find and talk to people who are already tracking lingo in internal wiki pages, google docs and so on. Coz if they ain’t already putting in the effort they’re not gonna start.

Maybe it’s managers who are responsible for onboarding who are the prospective buyers? See how they solve this lingo thing currently. If they don’t care to solve it say thank you and find someone else who already cares enough to keep it up to date in some system.

In my opinion it's too small of a product for companies to pay for, but hey isn't 'small' the best way to start ;)
Think you're leaning more towards employee onboarding (like some others said), just not sure what products are out there in this space. I assume many!

Might be a tough type of product to sell, since companies that'd need an employee onboarding tool are growing an busy (that's their pain point), which means they won't have time and focus to keep the content in the tool (lingo and company rules, etc) up to date. If you can fix that, you might have something pursuing.

The question is: how passionate are you about HR and employee onboarding?

Acronyms Seriously Suck - Elon Musk, to SpaceX

There is a creeping tendency to use made up acronyms at SpaceX. Excessive use of made up acronyms is a significant impediment to communication and keeping communication good as we grow is incredibly important. Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but if a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don't want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. This is particularly tough on new employees.

Full text: gist.github.com/klaaspieter/12cd68f54bb71a3940eae5cdd4ea1764

Lingo is one part of a much broader problem: communication. Communication between large numbers of people is a massive problem. Communication is a meta-industry worth trillions. We're beginning to see it arise with companies like Slack.

Lingo by itself isn't a huge pain point, and I'm not sure that anyone would take out their wallets to pay you for it.

Edit: Although a Slack bot might actually be a great way to test the waters. I'd imagine typing something like /lingo ABCXYZ into Slack could return a definition.

I think the biggest advantage you could have over the wiki/intranet apps is accessibility. Too me this would be most useful as a browser extension and/or a desktop extension. Something that can always be accessed by selecting a word and opening the context menu.

I also think this problem is real but the challenge is on how to add enough value without bolting on too much other stuff. I'm thinking adding short articles, links to specific systems or more in-depth documentation, small diagrams, cross referencing but then you get into wiki / knowledge-base territory quite fast :-) Might not be a bad thing though?

Ideally this should be super easy to get started with, very accessible for people withing an organisation (maybe work with a unique link that needs no specific auth?), or something you can embed easily into an existing wiki / documentation system with just a snippet.

Sounds useful although I think it could be a difficult sale (given that everybody experiencing the problem probably doesn't have leverage to immediately buy new company-wide software, for starters).

Could be a Slack bot/app, perhaps. Definitely more a feature than a product though.

Good luck!

In my previous company, an adtech one, we had an FAQ for new-comers (or even ourself), because adtech has so many many abbreviations.
But it was not enough, because the "lingo" continues to evolve over time (and the FAQ didn't get updated), and to understand complex words (I mean, business-oriented speaking), you really need to understand easier terms first.

The best source of information was Internet ofc, but almost more importantly: by talking to each other. Because you give examples, argue etc. to make your mind and intuition. People have different opinions because some things are not clearly defined.

You have a good idea, but not sure how to make it a SaaS in its current form.

I imagine this as native apps that run in background in which you could right click a "lingo word" to see the definition (or add definition if one doesn't exist).

This idea definitely solves a pain point for many people, across many industries. I've heard from friends in sales, marketing, design, etc, etc, that the best way to progress and grow inside their field is to first embrace the particular "lingo" in that industry.

I just want to encourage you to keep going with this idea.

I agree that it should be simple, and easily searchable. But I'd suggest separating the hierarchy in terms of industries and professional roles.

Good luck!

It seems like an achievable app to build. Keeping something small and focused is really important. How would you make money?

Hi

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