I feel working remotely is lonely. So I built this.
I want to connect remote workers with other remote workers from the same city. That way they can get to know each other and eventually meet in person for lunch or work.
Do you think that's a good idea?
Update
Thank you for all the positive feedback. This is really motivating and the reason why Pipewing has gone live now!
It seems to be a copy of lunchclub. What's the difference?
Yes, it's a similar technology. But lunchclub is focussed on professional networking. Pipewing is focussed on finding new friends in your city you can later meet in person, e.g. at a cafe, co-working space, at home, to make working remotely more social. It's about casually socializing locally not professional networking globally.
Okay, I think you would really need to double down on your niche as Lunchclub does have a filter that says meet peers as opposed to building business/finding a cofounder.
Thanks. That's great advice. I'll probably target on one city first. To ensure I'll get this niche focus.
Why not just copy lunchclub? there's no shame in that. There are local meetups for people that want to make 'friends'.
Here's what I dislike about LC:
The matches aren't really perfect
I think 45 minutes is too long, max 30 minutes
I'd rather have local connections than international connections
Is this project up and running? I cover news and resources around the remote working culture on https://virtualmojito.com/
Let me know if you wanna be featured, keen to hear your thoughts.
Hi Felix. Pipewing is live now.
Virtual Mojito looks very nice! I'd love to be featured. At the moment, I'm still experimenting with a small group, but I have a long waitlist. Let's connect in a few weeks.
Tried to sign up but got bounced haha
Thank you! Yes, I need to prepare some things and focus on few cities first. To ensure that you'll get great local matches. Pipewing will open up to other locations over time.
Disclaimer: I'm an introvert, but would consider using something like this, because I get the problem. Not sure about 1-on-1: feels too intimate. I'd feel more comfortable starting in a larger group, and then have an ability to later have 1-on-1s with people that I felt some connection with. Also, provide guided icebreakers, or thematic meetings or something like that to help with small talk. (It's also very possible that I'm simply not your target audience, and a product I would use looks very different from what you are trying to build, which is absolutely fine too).
Thanks, that's a great insight. I feel if one could build a product that connects efficiently, but isn't intimidating at all, it could help a lot of people.
My city has a local tech group that I take part in every so often, so I know a lot of the local crowd already. They have a slack, hold tech conferences, are pretty active on twitter, and have quite a few meetups. I don't necessarily think that I would want to have random 1 on 1 video calls with them for no other reason than to chat, though.
I think there's value in networking, but I'm not sure I would want to meet, even with a 1 on 1 video call, without a predetermined agenda. It would just seem awkward. I've also always thought it's weird to get random DMs from people that just want to chat but never tell you why 🤨 but some people are fine with that.
I've had phases where I have weekly meetings with other developers/indie hackers before, although those have kind of dwindled out in the past year.
Thanks. This helps. I guess the target audience are people who aren't as well connected as you are. Although, from past experience, I think that a system that creates regular 1:1 calls (from existing connections) can help to maintain and improve the connections you already have. Maybe that's a thing?
It reminds me of lunchclub but that was for professional networking.
Well, keep it up.
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I think the experience of "working together" is motivating, whether it's students studying together at the college library or moved online. . This can be done at low cost with WebRTC connections browser to browser, so you don't have to pay for a server in the middle during the whole call (just for signaling to set up the call).
I am not sure how you are monetizing this, from the website. You will want to let us know, is this a monthly subscription? Or are you feeding advertisements into the video feeds? Or what?
It will be very important to develop your matching strategy, so people ABSOLUTELY LOVE the people they are paired with. Location is an OK strategy, but I'll bet there are more variables you can tap into and get better matches. You may find that 1-to-1 is too limiting, and you want like 4 people on a call so there's a larger chance you connect with at least 1 person on the call.
There will be a lot of work to refine the idea and make it sticky. Nudging people to come back on a regular basis, have pre-planned "work days" with each other, nudge them to have some discussions and become friends (not just a face on a screen), nudge them to meet offline in real life (restaurant coupons??)
There can be a great service here, but there's a lot of work "around" the core video streaming to make it a delightful, sticky experience.
WebRTC is amazing. But if both clients sit behind very restrictive NAT's or firewalls, you will need to relay the audio and video signals via a TURN Server. According to the post below, this applies to about 20% of the connections:
https://medium.com/the-making-of-whereby/what-kind-of-turn-server-is-being-used-d67dbfc2ff5d
Thank you! Very valid points. It's a free service, I intend to use the traffic and data to show targeted remote job opportunities for users who are looking.