Kwin, co-founder of Pluot here.
Pluot is a small, affordable video conferencing device that sets up in five minutes in your conference room. We've tried to make video conferencing super easy to do: starting or joining a video meeting takes ten seconds.
We designed Pluot for people like us, people who work on fast-paced projects with small, distributed teams. We’re career startup-ers. As collaboration tools have gotten better and better, we’ve seen more and more of our friends hire people in multiple locations and open small offices in multiple cities.
Old-school conference room video conferencing systems are expensive, hard to set up, a pain to administer, and have frustrating user interfaces. But big-screen video conferencing is really, really useful. Crowding around a laptop to have team meetings with remote colleagues is no good.
We think we can fix all that. We are really looking forward to hearing the feedback from the Product Hunt community.
We are running a launch special: the Pluot hardware is FREE. We send you everything you need for big-screen video conferencing, except the TV. (You just pay $50/month as long as you’re happy using the Pluot service.)
We’re also running a *Product Hunt launch special*: a special edition “ghost white” production run of our Pluot device. Also, anyone who chases this link and orders a Pluot by the end of the week -- whether you order the standard black Pluot or the Product Hunt ghost white Pluot -- gets a *Product Hunt Kitty in High Definition* velcro patch. https://pluot.co/?utm_source=pro...
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@kwindla Really interesting. I always deal with remore teams and for some reason Skype and Google Hangouts are not the best solution. I've a couple of questions for you. 1) Why do you need a hardware device to make video conferencing? 2) Do you have screen sharing integrated in Pluot?
@massimosgrelli Thanks for the questions!
1) You don't need the Pluot hardware if you just want to do video conferencing from your laptop or desktop computer. Here's a link to start a new Pluot meeting ... https://pluot.co/new
Open that in Chrome (we only support Chrome for full meeting participation, right now). Your browser will redirect to a new, unique, Pluot meeting URL. Copy the URL and send it to someone else, and they can join the meeting, too. That meeting URL stays usable forever.
So, that's pretty much like Hangouts or Skype. But making Pluot a hardware device is how we provide big-screen video conferencing -- video conferencing on a conference room TV -- that "just works." We're trying to ship a product that is as easy as possible both to set up the first time, and to use every day. Defining both the hardware and software helps us make sure that the big-screen usability is as good as possible.
2) Yes, we do support screen sharing. In fact, screen sharing is one of the ways Pluot is unique: two people can screen share simultaneously in a Pluot meeting. Also, the Pluot hardware supports plugging into two TVs, so you have a lot of pixel real estate to see the screens people are sharing. We want Pluot to be the best possible tool for engineering and design meetings, and when we have team meetings we often find ourselves wanting to see a couple of screens at the same time. For example, in a sprint meeting it's useful to keep a tool like Trello visible on one screen, and on the other screen to go through a series of feature prototype mock-ups and demos.
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Hey there, I just checked the intro video on your website.. In my opinion you should have focused more on how this compares to Skype and Hangouts - those are your closest competitors, right?
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It's really quite hard to gauge how this differentiates itself from the existing solutions (Skype/Hangouts/AppearIn etc.). The main video doesn't seem to say much more than that video is a powerful form of communication. The tagline says 'big screen video conferencing for startups'. Again, confused here as the 'big screen' part is dependent on the size of the screen you put it on, Skype could equally be big screen? Is the real differentiator in the hardware, not the software? If so, what makes the hardware worth paying for over free existing software only options?
I'm not saying you've not built something great, you may well have, I just can't work out how this differentiates itself from your tagline or video.
Either way, congrats on the launch, hope it goes well for you!
@fredrivett Sure, let me try to do a better job laying out our thinking. Feedback about where we need to be more clear in our explanations is always appreciated!
You can definitely run Skype/Hangouts/appear.in/etc on a laptop or dedicated computer plugged into a TV. And use a bluetooth keyboard, or something like that, to control it. But the user experience isn't seamless. And unless you also buy a webcam and a mic/speaker, the video and audio aren't going to be great. By the time you've bought the gear, and spent time setting it up, and have made sure everyone in your office knows how to use it, you've done a fair amount of work. We hope you'd rather just have us ship you hardwear that you plug in, turn on, and are up and running with in five minutes. (And, this week, the Pluot hardware ships to you at no cost, so there's no upfront investment to get started with Pluot.)
And beyond the hardware, we support driving two TVs and our UI is designed for that (in addition to having a mode for single TV), which is a really nice experience. And we support two simultaneous screen shares, which is great for meetings where people are working on a project together. (Engineering standups, design reviews, sprints, meetings with clients where you're talking through both timelines/todos and demos/examples/raw material.)
So, differentiation is both hardware, software, and the integration between the two. :-)
Does that make sense? How would you guide us towards explaining this on the website more effectively?
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@kwindla Hey Kwindla, appreciate you taking the time to respond. My thoughts weren't meant to be negative towards your product by the way, I'm pretty sure its better than anything I've ever built! Just wanted to give feedback on how it looked to someone who had used lots of other solutions and hadn't experienced any major issues with them 👍
From the hardware side, I can see the benefit. Our setup at work is shoddy at best, with a poor external mic, no external camera. It's poor and it needs upgrading, but we've never spent the time looking into it. So from that side, if the hardware is a superb solution and not crazy expensive I can see a win on that front.
In terms of software having two TV's sounds cool. Two simultaneous screen shares is interesting, I can see the benefit there. I know Skype doesn't allow that, but think Appear.in does? Maybe not in the way you've executed though, can't comment there.
To be fair, I hadn't actually visited the website. I gave the feedback based on the video here, and the tagline. The website adds some value, talking about the hardware makes sense there. In terms of what to add, for me I would try and clarify what problem you're trying to solve over the generic 'remove teams need video'. I think all remote teams know this, and all remote teams have solutions. So I'd try and pinpoint the exact pain people are experiencing, and hone in on how you solve that. You can even go as far as what @JohnONolan does with Ghost, where they have specific pages to compare Ghost with Wordpress, Medium and Tumblr: https://ghost.org/vs/wordpress/. That's probably a bit far down the line for your launch, but something to consider.
In terms of interesting features for differentiation, the ability to auto record meetings and put them up in a shared workspace, easily grabbable via a Slack command could be interesting. And easy tagging as you're in the meeting, so you can pop a marker point on, and then at the end easily go to that, crop a section out, and send it to a colleague or channel on Slack. Or allow the user to mark points on the call as you go, the start and end point, and who it should notify. Then at the end it automatically does it for you.
I'm not sure on that, just thinking out loud, but that sort of thing could help differentiate. Bringing new functionality to make meetings simpler to run and more powerful. Happy to discuss more, but that's my initial thoughts for now! :)
P.s. cool that you're giving away the hardware free for now.
P.p.s I'd never buy that though without knowing it was really good quality. In particular we'd want a wide angle (fish eye?) lens so it captures the whole room. Macbook cameras aren't made for that and do a lousy job as a result.
P.p.p.s. On your homepage, I'd love to know who Claus Moberg etc work for, rather than just 'Startup CEO'. Sounds very generic and lots of people call themselves "CEO's" even when they're running a 1 man startup part time. Seems a bit cookie cutter without that info. Same goes for the other 2 quotes.
Ok that's actually enough for now 😁
@fredrivett I can say that we used to use hangouts for our daily standup, and we went through the same process every morning: (1) debate who was going to "host" the hangout on their computer, (2) that person walked their laptop over to a communal desk, hooked their computer up to a thunderbolt display, and got the hangout up and running, (3) invariably, the mic and/or video would be set to the wrong input (between their laptop's native hardware or the external display) so the lucky individual would fuss with it for 5-10 minutes, (4) we would all have to stand around this communal desk for the duration of the standup (a very awkward way to conduct a meeting with remote team members who are invariably sitting at their desks in front of their own cameras). After the standup was over, the "host" would disconnect their computer and go back to their desk, so there was no continuing telepresence opportunities for remote employees.
Fast forward to Pluot: The first person into the office fires up the pluot session from slack. The session pops up in our display and everyone is automagically invited. Come 9:30, we have our standup with everyone seated around a large conference table with the displays at the head (a super friendly configuration that seems to promote better conversations). There is dedicated hardware, so the hangout persists after our standup, throughout the day, regardless of whether the person who started it leaves for a meeting. And best of all, there is no training or user curve. You open the box, set it up in ten minutes, and you are ready to go. The hardest part was buying and setting up a TV stand capable of holding two 42" monitors.
@pointandstare Great question. With Pluot you can drive two TV screens, if you want to, which is a really nice thing for a lot of kinds of meetings. Especially combined with Pluot's support for two screen *shares* simultaneously. Also, we designed the Pluot box to be controlled by your phone or laptop, which most people like a lot more than using a dedicated remote control. We think we did a better job designing a UI from the ground up to work well on big screens. And, finally, the $50/month price -- with free hardware -- does make it easier to get started with big-screen video conferencing.
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Great to see more competition in this market. I am a remote employee for a startup so this is exciting. We have gone through various attempts, currently we are using Highfive. The biggest issues I have:
1) Our conference rooms have AppleTV, so there is always fumbling to go from Highfive to AppleTV or back. Is there any plan to have some sort of integration with AppleTV, now that it supports 3rd party apps? (Such that we could keep it on the AppleTV input always)
2) AUDIO -- HVAC systems are a fact of life in offices. Certain conference rooms are nearly impossible to hear, if the HVAC is running. Does Pluot do any special processing for background noise? External mics? What is the audio strategy?
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I'm looking for a video conferencing tool to use with clients and new leads. Pluot looks like it could be exactly what I'm looking for! Here are some thoughts based on checking it out today:
-It'd be nice to have a permanent and custom URL that I can keep in my calendar to send to clients in meeting invites. Maybe Pluot's links let you sign off and on multiple times, not sure :-) It would be nice to have a more user-friendly URL, if possible, based on my company name or personal name.
-Before jumping on a client/lead meeting, I want to be able to test my audio. I don't want to wait to find out if my audio settings need to be tweaked when the client gets on the call and signals that he or she can't hear me.
-It's pretty common for new users to have trouble with their audio settings with in-browser conferencing tools - the browser and/or their computer settings may need to be tweaked, especially if they have a headset, bluetooth, or external monitor with it's own set of speakers. It'd be helpful to have a set of the 3 to 5 most common troubleshooting tactics that I could quickly walk through to help a client quickly fix their audio problems.
-Finally, it would be really helpful to have in-browser chat if possible. For internal meetings, most of us are on Slack, so it doesn't matter. But for clients or leads (or anyone who we're not connected with on Slack), a simple way to quickly and easily send links or text snippets is really important. It can help communicate if someone has audio problems (sensing a theme here?), and it can help us to send file sharing links, text snippets, etc... quickly and easily without having to open our emails.
Also, your customer support was awesome. She jumped on right away with me and fixed my issue in less than 2 minutes when testing :-) Nice!
Pluot reduces the friction of starting and keeping a remote meeting going without all the weird hang ups of Skype or Google Hangouts. It's nice to see a company realize that this problem should be solved with both hardware and software. If you've got a remote team and want better collaboration, get Pluot!
We have been using a prototype Pluot box for conferencing with our distributed team for about six months. It has been awesome. The difference in quality of meeting between this and everyone gathering around a single laptop with a hangout open is remarkable. We leave our pluot meeting open all day, and remote employees are encouraged to leave their connections on as well.
This service (and hardware) is well worth the $50/month
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