Aimful augments Google Calendar to protect your time from bad meetings: — ask the host to specify why you are needed — ask invitees to confirm in advance that they come prepared — collect topics before each recurring meeting
Wow, i really like this concept! Do all my meeting attendees need to add the Aimful chrome extension to be able to see the details though? And also, is there any way to "force" people to use Aimful when im on the host?
@britt_joiner Aimful is applied to all the meetings you are hosting as Aimful user and all the data are written also into invitation description so everybody see them - no need to install it to everybody.
There are several actions which you can trigger as Aimful user to "force" others to do something but they can do so again without Aimful installed. We are using Slack app (inside the organisation) and polite e-mail notifications with one-click action for responding.
@dan_muller1 cool! i was wondering if it put the info inside the event description, but i didn't see that on my end, maybe because i do have aimful chrome extension. will share this with my team! looks pretty cool! congrats on the launch!
Hey team,
congrats on the launch! 🥳
Can we use Aimful to run better meetings with our customers and prospects or is it just for an internal company communication?
As an asynchronous and almost no-meetings company we do our meetings well (I believe), but when it comes to working with our customers who do not have the same mindset and often come unprepared, they don't read the prepared notes and then we spend most of the time reading it out loud. 🥲 Can Aimful help us with this?
Hey @sotak 👋, thank you!
Aimful is for all the meetings in your calendar, even when you're invited by your customer or prospect. We are using set of one-click actions that makes the meeting really valuable for all the attendees.
e.g. You can politely ask the meeting host what contribution they need from you so you can come prepared for the meeting.
@sotak We send a notification to external invitees as well so they can view all the actions and use the web-based UI to perform all the actions, like see what is required (though that part is also copied into the meeting description) and confirm that they have gone through the preparation - that way you know, even before the meeting starts, if they have done it.
Hey PH community 👋
I’m Dan Co-founder & Product Owner of Aimful. We are excited with the whole team (shoutout to @veronika_gabrielova@honzakral@jiri_janousek) to announce launch of Aimful.io for Google Calendar
❓Why are we building Aimful
Calendar apps haven't evolved for decades. Especially the meeting invites. All recent innovations are about keyboard shortcuts + smart scheduling + time zone support.
🤔 However, nobody seems to ask:
— what should be the results of the meeting?
— is it necessary for you specifically to attend?
— what is the expected contribution from you?
— is meeting the best format to reach what is needed?
Why doesn’t your calendar autonomously ask the host to answer these questions, if the meeting invite is poorly prepared?
Instead of building a new calendar (which we would love to do!), we decided to start with augmenting an existing one.
4️⃣ Versions later…
We have already killed 4 previous versions. They were invaluable, they taught us about the hidden workings of meetings that are rarely talked about. Each time we took the lessons learned and produced a new version.
🙏 We're hungry for honest feedback
Help us shape the product. Help us design the product around you.
Special thanks to @kevin for hunting us!
@honzakral@jiri_janousek@dan_muller1 I am happy to be part of this team and that I could help to deliver this version of Aimful to Google Calendar
@kevin thanks for hunting us! Sending you virtual candy 🍬🍬🍬
@dan_muller1 Learning from previous versions and developing them to be more efficient says a lot. I appreciate your product and wish you all the best for future improvements.
This is one of those things you see and are just like... wow, how did we make it to 2022 and not have this already?
So much of a knowledge worker's waking life is spent in meetings and it makes a lot of sense to do whatever we can to ensure they're the best use of everyone's time. Great to see Aimful solving this problem.
Thanks @winston_christie_blick, we were thinking the same things when we first approached the problem. It is a difficult one, dealing with people, but we feel we are getting closer to the solution
Product is valuable but my suggestion for you, the tag line gives me different impression at first glance. You have better words on your website - Align before meetings, not during meetings.
@varunrazora thanks for the feedback 👍 There are several benefits we see in our product and it's sometimes hard for us to choose just one to be mentioned. Great to know your opinion on this!
I can't tell you how many times I attended meetings where some participants came perfectly prepared and others did absolutely nothing. It was a waste of time and bummer for everyone. Love the built-in feature that helps enforce some base level of preparedness / understanding.
Congrats on the launch team!
You get the point @danhejl 👍 bad meetings causes a lot of frustration. Like 2/3 of people are complaining about that during our interviews. Aimful is the cure 💪
Was an early adopter and love how this has helped me think critically and quickly through meeting goals. Great tool for transparency and improved meeting engagement. Excited to see you all on Product Hunt! ✨
Amazing product! I've been using it for a while now as a beta user and can certainly vouch for the idea as well the execution to a good extent. What I would love to see the team succeed at is accounting for cultural and hierarchical nuances of who and how to ask the questions to, and getting more people in the teams to adopt this so that it is equally useful for all. Good luck team Aimful!
Hey @akshaybhalotia we are super happy for having you on board. Your feedback is really helpful for us - there's a bunch of ideas that we are currently working on based on your inputs.
Been with Aimful from the beginning. We actually had a lot of meetings with people that were not supposed to be there, with uncertain agendas that basically just extended their length. Aimful helped the key stakeholders plan better, invite the right people, reduce the number of meetings and save a lot by cutting the time of each meeting to what's necessary. I'd say that we have probably 30-40% fewer meetings now and not missing any.
@dan_muller1 Not yet. I'm a founder of a tiny pre-seed startup so almost all of my meetings are one on one with freelancers or my developer. I look forward to growing large enough where it becomes invaluable though.
If you feel like you need to improve your meeting culture, this is the go-to app! Had the opportunity to test the earlier version and it gets better with every upgrade. Cheers!
Ahoy all, I am following Aimful closely from the first days, they are seriously on the mission to change meeting culture for the better. Keep up the good work, guys!
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