Foster

Your friendly, human writing partner.

5.0•1 review•

50 followers

Your friendly, human writing partner.

5.0•1 review•

50 followers

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Team collaboration software

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Writing assistants

Quality writing wins. But most writers work in isolation, without an editor or collaborative writing environment of any kind. We've built a magic button inside Google Docs that summons a world-class team of writers, editors, and experts to transform a draft.

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Launch tags:Productivity•Writing•Tech

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Maker

Hey, PH! I’m Stew, one of the co-founders of Foster. Foster is a button that lives inside Google Docs. Writers can tap it to get collaborative support on their writing within 24 hours. Behind the scenes, we’ve built a collective of friendly, vetted writers, editors, and experts who love jumping into first drafts and helping improve them. We built this because writing on the Internet follows a power law. The best piece of writing on a topic tends to have an exponentially larger impact than the average piece. But writing great stuff is super hard. It’s hard to attract readers if your writing isn’t already great. And if you do find readers, you’re met with a deeper challenge: the majority of people who read things on the Internet do not comment or respond to them, and silence is a poor teacher. This leaves most writers publishing into the void, learning at a painfully slow pace. I wasted a couple of years publishing into the void before my co-founder Dan and I designed a better process for our own writing. It looks like this: 1. Write. 2. Rewrite alongside talented, constructive editors. 3. Improve by incorporating direct, tangible suggestions. 4. Publish and deliver more value to readers. We’ve spent months turning this process into a single button that lives in Google Docs that writers can tap to summon editors and experts to appear directly inside of their work. All drafts on Foster are privately routed to vetted contributors who we believe will be able to push them forward. A few of our early users are Hacker News regulars who have used Foster to improve their work before submitting it. These were both sent through Foster prior to being submitted to HN: We need a middle class for startups , What's the Future of IDEs?. And while it’s exciting to see individual pieces improve, many writers tell us that using Foster has elevated their writing skills generally (Tweet) and motivated them to write more (Tweet). Today, we’re opening up Foster to anybody who writes. You can go to our landing page, install our Chrome extension, and pick a plan based on how much you write. Your first draft is on us – you can use “FIRSTDRAFT” for a free month of our Hobbyist plan. We are deep believers in the power of feedback, so we hope you’ll let us know what you think in the comments!

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4yr ago

Congratulations for finally launching on Product Hunt, @dannyhuntco and Stew! Let’s get to #1, everyone 🚀

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4yr ago

Foster has been an amazing resource and a critical part of my editing flow. Thanks for all the great work, guys.

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4yr ago

Focusmate

@stewartfortier heck yeah! Been using Foster for a few months now and having great affordable editing on demand is a superpower. Really excited to see where this goes.

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@taylor_jacobson it's a privilege to support your work! As you know, I'm a long-time fan 😍

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@ndewilde beyond grateful for all your support, and even more grateful for your writing 🙏

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4yr ago

I joined Foster - formerly known as Compound Writing - back in March 2021. I saw one of their founders @stewartfortier offering a free 15-min call to riff on blog post ideas and that call was super helpful. We connected on a personal level and I wanted to give it a shot, so I signed up. By that time I had been writing on and off on my personal blog for ~ 5 years... I liked the direction it was going but somehow never got into a consistent writing/publishing habbit. My main focus were techie-type blog posts like "How I Learned Production" or "Why Traditional Businesses Struggle to Go Remote" and to be honest, most of the stuff I read in my spare time was along those lines too. During our onboarding call I got paired with a poet. At first, it blew me away. Who wrote poetry these days? How do I read and edit poetry... but soon after I realized it was this literary diversity that I was missing. Reading and editing writing across all ranges of topics and styles gave me a new appreciation for the craft. I learned through editing other people's writing. Some of my best writing went through the Foster workflow: 1) Like Father, Like Son: DJing as a Performing Art Form → https://www.artlapinsch.com/djing/ 2) The Stromberg Mindset: On Germany's Geopolitical Delusion → https://www.artlapinsch.com/stro... A year and a half later, I can confidently say that I wouldn't be the writer that I am today without this amazing community. Yes, Foster is a workflow but more importantly it's a group of well-intentioned writers who help each other out. If you write online, join Foster and thank me later 🙌 cheers, Art

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@artlapinsch I continue to admire the range and scope of your intellect, alongside your openness and kindness. Looking forward to many more years of writing together!

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4yr ago

I've been a fellow Foster member for almost 2 years at this point. I witnessed it grow from being a small community of 30-something writers. My essay 'What's the Future of IDEs?' (https://news.ycombinator.com/ite...), that went through Foster as virtually everything I write nowadays, directly allowed me to get a dream job at a billion-dollar startup (more of the story here: http://giansegato.com/essays/joi...). When you realize that quality matters, and that it's editing that propels your writing to the next level, you'll see why no one writing online can possibly do without Foster.

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@gianluca_segato I've loved watching you deepen your craft and use writing as a lever in your life. It inspires me to keep doing the same!

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4yr ago

Bublup

I love this solution. When I'm writing, at times of confusion, I wish someone would lean over my shoulder so I could point at a paragraph or sentence and ask, "Does this even make sense here?" and receive a couple of opinions or pointers on how to keep moving forward... at the moment that my brain is scrambling. That's really when it counts. Also, the fact that it's built right into Docs instead of needing to copy/paste my content somewhere else altogether. This seems to remove a lot of unnecessary friction.

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@wadesellers well said! That's exactly the vision. 🙏

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4yr ago

Gamma

In a world where it seems like everyone is making a Substack or Medium these days, this could be such a cool writing boost. How many people usually contribute to each piece?

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@naomichao the average piece tends to get 3 contributors!

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4yr ago

I love the Foster community. The edits are awesome, but the people are what makes a real difference. They made you believe in yourself (and craft!) as you procrastinate and have second thoughts. When you pull the trigger to publish something at midnight - hoping no one will see it - you may get an instant response that shakes you up and makes you remember why you are writing in the first place. That's the magic of Foster!

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4yr ago

@hsinleiwang I am so incredibly grateful to have met you at Foster Charlene. Your writing reveals the best of Untold Truths!

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@hsinleiwang preach! Well said! ✨

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4yr ago

Did you ever buy something or try something and think not sure that I need this but "What the heck? Why not?" and then discover that you found something you very much needed and wouldn't want to do without? That's the Foster community. It gave me the kick in the keyboard that I needed along with the confidence that I could share within a safe and nurturing environment. It is a privilege to meet authors from all over the world with divergent views and interests. If you are serious about your writing and would like to join a supportive community, then I highly recommend Foster.

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4yr ago

Type

Maker

@jude_klinger thank you, Judith!! So grateful to have you as part of the community ❤️

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4yr ago

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