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#looking-for-cofounder: Collab to build a scrappy accountability tracker for Slack

Inspired by @louisswiss's thread, I realize I'm not the only one who craves an accountability Slack app. It's an app that's been on my entrepreneurial build list forever (and y'all know I'm all about accountability), but I've n

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    Sorry for the hiatus @Harlem! I felt like I'd been spending too much time reading other people's cool stories and second-guessing everything I was doing based on the firehose of info, so have been abstaining.

    I've been working a ton on a project (the Rotten Tomatoes prediction game I might have mentioned) that's about to finish a private alpha, and have another one I'm considering starting to sell soon, so I don't think I've got the time for another project.

    Best of luck, reach out if ya need someone to bounce ideas off of, and keep kicking ass! (I saw you've been raking in the dough with Hair Genius - so cool!)

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      (Laughing!) To abstinence!

      You did mentioned your prediction game! Excited to read your progressing! Send me a note if you release!

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    I've built one I use internally. It's been great to us.

    It's web admin and slack bot. Items go in, get mapped across a timeline and a nudge for update (click button to set status or provide comprehensive feedback/ description)

    https://youtu.be/ehu-LT5h13g?t=17
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIsFBDzUrME&feature=youtu.be

    It's a cool "feature" in our main app -- however we've removed it. Didn't realize the potential for demand around it.

    ...or perhaps I'm misreading goal...

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      Yep to the latter. Looking for something quite different! (But thanks for sharing! It looks super useful!

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    Interesting.. What would it do?

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      Awww yeah. Have you heard of Committo3? It's absolutely my favorite accountability mechanism. But it hasn't been touched since 2015 (android) and 2017 (iOS). I'd love to iterate on this concept.

      Perhaps for a scrappy solution, the app would:

      ( 1 ) Enable folks to enter their 3 commits for the day;
      ( 2 ) Nudge folks who hadn't entered their commits by a designated time.
      ( 3 ) Nudge folks who hadn't completed their commits by a designated time.
      ( 4 ) Post the course stats daily.

      And it would be great if this all could be done via Slack.

      But for course creators, I think the real value would be to schedule 3 tasks that should be completed a certain day; generate the daily task lists for individuals taking the course; and then 3 & 4 from the above. (Smiling) But that could be the paid version.

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        Feel like you can do all of that with Standup.ly as well.

        I have a little founders group that I run and we use the aforementioned to collect weekly goals, do a mid-week check-in and a end of week retrospective / recap. Also using their video meeting option (paid tier I believe?) to do a top of the week video conference to bounce ideas off of.

        There are nudges as well if you're slackin' on replying.

        We only do the 3 checkins, but you could easily setup a daily standup in the same fashion. There's also Geekbot that has similar features. All via Slack.

        What would set this apart from my existing scrappy implementation?

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          (Great tool for stand ups!)

          However, you may be confusing my idea with the stand up I "host" here on IH. This wouldn't be a "stand up" app, but whether a task management/accountability tracker specific to course creators.

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            Seen your threads, wasn't even thinking about that (also, I should probably start partaking, but I don't do dailies, I work mostly in the context of the week :).

            I had honed in on where you mentioned

            I realize I'm not the only one who craves an accountability Slack app.

            So was thinking about that in the context of how I run my own accountability / founders group in my Slack team :)

            Didn't think about the context of having task management though, definitely not something I've seen out there, not in the standup Slack integration space.

            Curious to see what you come up with, I know Slack integrations do let you do some amazing things!

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              Would love to see you in there! Unfortunately, it looks like I wasn't able to persuade @Davey. And I've no idea what in the hell happened to @AndrewV! But who knows... maybe someday!

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    Ah. And if you are interested, kindly point me to something you've built! And how long it took you to build it!

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    Hi,

    Sorry, have been a bit busy, lot's of consulting these days and little time to play.

    This isn't exactly my cup of tea normally, but if I had the time I might have been interested.
    Always interesting to see you work your magic on the projects you started.

    The problem is time though. Can't add more to the plate at the moment. My customers already keep me very busy.

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    Hey @Harlem, thanks for the tag!

    So I've been thinking about this on and off for a while now and just can't find anything that fits what I need.

    I'll probably end up building something to solve this for my course participants/accountability group. 1-2 course participants are interested in helping build it too.

    If we're working on the same thing, I'd be more than happy to share/work together with anyone who's interested :)

    I do have a really specific use case in mind though...

    • A stand-alone web app where each user can input their daily goals for today, their weekly/monthly goals, and whether they achieved their goals for yesterday ("yes/no" plus a comment). Ideally should also track mood (today I'm feeling good, bad, sad etc)
    • A leaderboard where everyone in the group can see each user's updates and their 'streak' (how many days in a row they have updated their goals, how many days they have achieved their goals etc) and ideally badges for achieving certain streaks
    • An integration with Slack where users are reminded daily to update their goals, and the updated goals are crossposted into a Slack channel for all to see

    I talked it over with my current participants and we don't want to use Slack as the only/primary interface for this. It's just too confusing and fiddly.

    Anyone interested, have feedback or questions (or a solution) please reach out. I'd love to hear from you!

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      FYI I feel like we have built a solution quite similar to what you're looking for with my co-founder. It's a lightweight goal-tracking app that works like this:

      • You create a page and choose a frequency of updates (weekly, monthly, quarterly).
      • You add goals, preferably outcome-based (get 100 signups, increase weekly active users by X%).
      • Then every week the app will send you a nudge to share simple updates (red-yellow-green status + value + text). It plots you against a projected progress chart and keeps track of your history.
      • It integrates with Slack so that you can both get reminders in Slack and update things from Slack.
      • People can comment on your updates to provide help/feedback.

      The purpose of the platform is to help people stay focused on long-term goals. We're definitely not the right tool if you want something for daily updates or stand-ups. We're more an assistant that reminds you of the big priorities and helps you see how far you've come - then you can use something else like Trello to manage your daily backlog.

      If you're interested you can try it at https://tability.io - we don't have video tours yet but I'd be happy to give a quick tour.

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        Looks beautiful!

        However, I am looking for something similar to Committo3!

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      Ah! It seems we're after two different solutions.

      While I like your direction, and I'd be into it, I've found from years of "hosting" accountability groups, complexity defeats even the best of intentions. But I would love to be proved wrong. And it's very cool that you've a dedicated group of builders and beta testers!

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        complexity defeats even the best of intentions

        For sure, couldn't agree more!

        I've been doing the accountability thing manually in our group for ~2months now, and talked to everyone taking part in detail about what would make them more likely to show up and perform every day.

        Probably not the right solution for everyone though!

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