27
47 Comments

Ever get lonely working remotely?

Finally taking the jump to get feedback on an idea I've been thinking about for a while in silence. I'm planning to build a platform to co-ordinate light video chats with other remote professional makers.

The kind of place you can have a chilled 15 minute catch-up with someone to get a bit of human interaction into your day and feel less like you're locked away from the world!

Would love any feedback & if anyone's keep to have a quick video chat about it as a way of starting some traction please hit me up.

  1. 3

    Can't believe you have the same idea. Iam currently working on this but did not have enough time.

    1. 2

      Nice you guys should work together. Two minds are greater than one. Collaborate, don't compete.

    2. 1

      Same here, working remotely for almost two years. I have been planning to work on it, but I can't find enough time.

    3. 1

      Cool! Wanna have a call to share notes? 😅

  2. 2

    Sounds like a cool idea. I've worked remote for the last year and a half. The first year I loved every second of it. Now I think the first year butterflies are wearing off a bit and considering getting a co-working membership just to be around people (working at coffee shops get expensive real quick)

    1. 1

      Hey Luke I feel you and sometimes it's a constant sales exchange at coworking spaces. I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) and would love to know your thoughts

  3. 2

    I've been also thinking about a similar idea. I'm working remotely for almost two years and feel lonely quite often. I would love to chat with people who share similar interests. Bonus if they live nearby so at some point I could meet with them in real life.

    1. 1

      Hey Lukas, I feel you and sometimes it's lonely and isolating.

      I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) and would love to know your thoughts

  4. 2

    I work in an office of 600 people but everyone on my team is in Ohio. Even with other co workers around it gets lonely.

  5. 2

    Great idea, I'd use it for sure

    1. 1

      Hey Shawn, I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) for this and would love to know your thoughts

  6. 2

    Sounds interesting! :)

  7. 2

    This sounds like a good idea! It seems even though we're right in a social platform for makers, it's hard to feel some kind of close connection to anyone on here unless people meet in real life or perhaps have video calls.

    Also WHY is Barrack Obama following you on Twitter????

    1. 1

      Hey Marco, I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) to do that and would love to know your thoughts

    2. 1

      Thanks Marcos! Let me know if you'd like to have a video chat to hang out & validate the idea a bit!

      Not sure about Obama on twitter 🤔

  8. 2

    Hey @n1c,

    I really like this idea. It's easy to sit and get stuck in your own head about the myriad of issues that you go through working alone.

    To have a space where I feel safe to get human interaction from like minded people in the indie community would be super useful.

    1. 2

      Awesome, thanks Marc!

    2. 1

      Hey Marc, I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) and would love to know your thoughts

  9. 1

    I was almost one year not on Indie Hackers? WTF? Time flies.

    I had notifications for this thread. I don't know what you thinking. But the following word's come to my mind. Zoom, Covid-19, pandemic, quarantine, explosition in remote work, loneliness, depressed people. All in one Year.

    Maybe we should really consider to build that thing together.

    Interested?

  10. 1

    I believe I applied :D

  11. 1

    I work from my home so I get the pain point. I am not sure if video chatting is sufficient to take care of that need though to be honest. Personally I find that the interaction needs to happen in person; meeting with people etc. I meet with people a few times a week and that is sufficient for me. It doesn't have to be anything related to work either. Clearly this is just my opinion, but I would think about how to also facilitate in-person interactions in addition to video chats. The hard part will be monetizing it because I don't pay to interact with people now; convincing me to start paying would be tough. There may be other aspects in the solution that could be monetized though, like advertising or product sales.

    1. 1

      That's a good idea, I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) and would love to know your thoughts

    2. 1

      Thanks for the feedback Neea; you make some great points!

  12. 1

    Maybe meetup is the solution?

  13. 1

    Hey Nic - great idea :)

    I’ve actually been working on Pragli, a virtual office for remote teams.

    A bunch of remote communities and teams use us to facilitate those social interactions.

    Maybe you could use the product to help build out your community? You can check it out at pragli.com

    Let me know if you want to chat over Zoom about it too ☺️

    1. 1

      Rad; thanks Vivek I'll check it out!

  14. 1

    Sounds interesting! I'd give it a spin!

    I'm also reminded of ShipTunes (formerly pomo.chat) from @wimgz which was a big hit with makers.

    I'll add, I made a lot of great friends at a local IndieHackers meetup here in San Diego. We now all regularly chat on Slack. :)

    1. 1

      Rad thanks for those links!

      Out of curiosity is the Slack group one specifically for that meetup, or a generic one? I'm actually going to our local IH meetup tonight (Cape Town) and I run a Slack group for South Africa tech in general but the IH channel is pretty quiet.

      1. 1

        Our Slack group is specific to our location here in San Diego. We are fortunate to have a very driven IH crew here.

        That said, Twitter is definitely my favorite place to make like-minded friends. :)

  15. 1

    Yes I get lonely! But I know it's for the best. Sometimes it's easy to be a homebody when working on thegoodstartup.com, but my favorite moments are when I finally get out and work with people around me, maybe not even necessarily working WITH them. I just keep telling myself it's better than the alternative. Work is work, and play is play, and maybe my idea of work is just very isolating haha

    1. 2

      Yeah I hear you; one of the things I enjoy the most about working remotely is that isolated no interruption time when you can really get things done. Then being able to break it when I please by going for a walk around the neighbourhood or to a coffee shop or something.

      I guess the trick is figuring out if scheduled video chats would be a good break like a walk around the block, or a bad interruption like someone disrupting your flow 🤔

    2. 1

      I feel you and after working remotely for 7 years, sometimes it's lonely and isolating. I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) and would love to know your thoughts

  16. 1

    Good idea!, feels as you're trying to solve an issue social media is doing. maybe find a way to solve that prob with a different approach. Perhaps a shared camera environment with the feeling of LinkedIn with different professional industries.

    Good luck,

    -Eduardo

  17. 1

    I don't hate the idea, but I also wouldn't be a user. I do something similar already, in two different ways. I have an hour long "office hours" call with a few buddies of mine once a week and then most Wednesdays I have a group of friends (as few as 1 as many as 4 at one time) that hop on a "Whiskey Wednesday" chat just to shoot the shit (and consume whiskey).

    That said, I already have a network of people to chat with because I haven't always been a remote worker, so that probably has helped a ton in fostering this kind of stuff.

    1. 1

      This is interesting feedback thanks Josh! When your have calls with friends do you ever set an agenda? And do all work in similar fields? Also is it video or just audio?

      In a way it’s like you already used the tool and disintermediated which raises the point of am I just trying to reverse engineer friends 🙃

      1. 2

        Nah, for WW stuff it's casual, usually just catching up, talking about shared interests, sharing recent crazy shit that's happened et cetera. Quite informal, but since [nearly] everybody has met in real life, it's pretty easy to jump in and interact.

        For office hours, we have a loose agenda, the TLDR would be "did you do what you set out to last week, what are you planning to do this week to move the needle?" and then just general banter about our businesses and such.

        Both are video and auto, depending on how many people / the week, it's either the video service Standup.ly uses... slack's video chat or google hangouts.

        Probably worth mentioning that everybody that I do these video calls with are all in the same Slack team, so we also have the casual banter / chatting pretty regularly on top of seeing eachother's ugly mugs on the regular.

  18. 1

    Hey Nic, I read the other comments before I posted mine.

    I live in Pondicherry, India so there aren't many meetups that happen here so almost all of time is me working completely remote. So a product like yours would be nice just so meet like minded people and talk about problems, solutions and getting to know their local place.

    As you have suggested in one of the other comments, a profile would be nice to have so that people can view the profiles and schedule calls to talk. Or maybe like an online meetup with a small group of people so let's say each online meetup would have only a maximum of five people (the people don't need to have the same skills or common interests). The online group chat eliminates the awkwardness as well as fear of doing a 1-1 conversation.

    If you launch the product please do inform me. I'd be interested as one of your early users.

    1. 1

      Hey Nakkeeran, I also find having both virtual and in-person meetup helps.

      I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) to solve for this and would love to know your thoughts

    2. 1

      Hey Nakkeeran, thanks for the reply! You're right and I've been thinking about the fact that 1-1 can be a bit of a high pressure (awkward) situation, it'd be cool to experiment like you say with small groups.

  19. 1

    This is a great idea! I'm experimenting with the idea of working remotely at the moment and I don't know many people, either phone call or even meeting in person would go a long way!

    1. 1

      I feel you and after working remotely for 7 years, sometimes it's lonely and isolating.

      I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) and would love to know your thoughts

  20. 1

    Sounds like a great idea. Keep us updated!

    1. 1

      I just created CoWop (https://cowop.org) and would love to know your thoughts

  21. 1

    Not sure about using this for social interactions. I would prefer to get that in person. However I would like a master-mind group of people indiehacking or working remote... I guess it really is the same thing just the wording of how it is sold would change.

    1. 1

      Hey Matt! Yeah I hear you, something I've been rolling around in my head is how do you make it kinda low effort so it's not some scary thing to interact with but also be meaningful/useful as well. I imagine it comes down to having some sort of profile for people where they can state what they're interested in talking about and trying to get calls setup between people who have similar goals (like serious v.s. chilled etc).

  22. 1

    This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

  23. 1

    This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

    1. 1

      Hey Alex! Yeah that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out because there are phases when I'm going to meetups and having with people and everything is balanced. Then sometimes it feels like it'd be nice to just have a bit of watercooler talk.

      (unrelated, I really like the idea of sebenz.ai hope it's living on in some way with number boost and friends)

      1. 2

        This comment was deleted 4 years ago.

Trending on Indie Hackers
How I grew a side project to 100k Unique Visitors in 7 days with 0 audience 49 comments Competing with Product Hunt: a month later 33 comments Why do you hate marketing? 28 comments My Top 20 Free Tools That I Use Everyday as an Indie Hacker 15 comments $15k revenues in <4 months as a solopreneur 14 comments Use Your Product 13 comments