Flat - Simple, delightful, collaborative work tracking

@ron_feldman1 Thanks so much Ron -- it's been great collaborating with you during our beta period. You've given us a lot of valuable feedback and ideas!

@absilutely Thanks Abdallah, look forward to hearing any further feedback you have!

@absilutely Exactly – we often hear managers talk about their teams using these tools in terms of "compliance" and "enforcement". We think if that's the situation you've already lost the battle. The problem is these tools have historically been built for managers, and imposed on team members. Flat takes the opposite approach: we aim to serve the team, and then managers get visibility "for free". But it has to help the team do their work or it will just get in their way, they'll stop using it, and then managers can't see what's going on, and the tool fails.

@naomigarcia Thanks Naomi! Andrew here, one of the other founders of Flat. Yes, we're definitely aware of them. On the surface they may look similar, but if you dig in, I think you'll find Flat to be radically and refreshingly simpler -- and that's intentional! We believe strongly that added complexity in work tracking tools is a big tax on team members being able to use them effectively, so we've been quite obsessive in designing Flat to be as simple as possible. Happy to answer additional questions!

@kyrylosilin Thanks a lot! Andrew here, one of the other founders of Flat. Great questions! On your first question, Flat's biggest differentiation is the user experience, namely how radically and refreshingly simple it is. That means anyone can pick it up and get going right away, from an inexperienced intern to the company CEO. And that makes it easier for teams to actually adopt and use, without friction. Flat is also lightning fast and offline friendly, so it never gets in your way. On your second question, one unique feature I'd point to are "blockers". They're depicted in one of the screenshots above, and they're a super simple way to capture and discuss why a topic is stuck and can't move forward, so there's never a question like "is this blocked?", "what's it blocked on?", "who's responsible for addressing it?", or "what's the latest update?".

@teon_stamenovic1 Appreciate that! Flat's a great fit for all those use cases. Feel free to ask any additional questions or leave feedback!

@m4jiz Thanks, glad you like it! If you don't mind, can you elaborate on any areas of the UI/UX where you felt unsure? We've worked pretty tirelessly to make Flat as delightful and intuitive as possible, so I'd love to hear about any areas where we could still improve!

@m4jiz we'd love to hear how Flat can be improved, would you mind posting your notes here? Or you can email me at seth at flat dot app, thanks!

@seth_purcell Ill try to do that, good luck today

@audrey_jake1 Great question -- Flat works really well alongside both Slack and Google Docs! Most teams using Flat keep using those other apps for what they're best for, and they use Flat as the home base that ties it all together. Flat's Slack integration lets you receive Slack notifications when a teammate in Flat mentions you in a comment, makes you the owner of a topic, changes a topic that you own, etc. These notifications go to a private channel between you and Flat’s Slack bot; they don’t pollute shared team channels with tons of noise. Flat's Google Drive/Docs integration lets you see previews of files/docs directly within a Flat topic, no setup required, so you don't have to jump to another tab just to reference something in a doc. We definitely plan to expand and offer additional integrations in the future. Do you have any specific ones in mind?

@andrew_kallem Thanks for sharing the detailed insights

@etiennegatti Totally agree that they can be a nightmare! Flat is carefully designed to hit a sweet spot with just the right amount of structure. After you've given it a try, do let us know if you have any suggestions or questions. Thanks!

@etiennegatti we find a lot of teams are using Notion for project management because it's simpler in some key ways than the more structured tools, but they tend to be more technical users because of the configuration required. We think an even simpler approach is possible and that's what we're aiming for.

Thanks, @evan_paul!

@phil_sarin Thanks Phil, really appreciate that!