In 2023, I left Goldman Sachs and joined Boomerang, a much smaller company. One thing I didn’t expect, but quickly came to appreciate, was how much visibility I’d get across the whole business. In a smaller team, you don’t just see your own work. You see product, marketing, ops, hiring, customer issues, and everything in between. A lot of that showed up in one place: the daily standup. It became one of my favorite parts of the day. But it also exposed a small, recurring problem. With 15–20 people on a call, answering a simple question — “who’s missing?” — was not always simple. People scan the Zoom list. Someone calls out a name. Someone double-checks. Someone joined from a phone. Someone has a different display name. And just like that, 3–5 minutes are gone. Not a huge deal once. But every day, across months and years, it adds up. At some point, I started noticing patterns. For example, we had two people whose names started with A — Alex and Amanda. Two with B — Ben and Brendan. Two with C — Cody and Craig. In my head, that became “2abc.” A tiny mental shortcut for who should be there. Once I saw it, I couldn’t unsee it. For more than two years, I would quickly scan the standup list and call out who was missing. Nothing formal. Just a small habit. But it saved the team a few minutes almost every day. As the team changed, the shortcut became harder to maintain. New people joined. Names changed. The patterns shifted. What used to be easy to track in my head became less reliable. Around the same time, something else changed: With AI, turning a small practical idea into working software is no longer a huge lift. So I built it. TaoBot Attendance — a Zoom-native meeting assistant that helps you see who was expected, who is present, and who may need attention. No scanning. No guessing. No awkward roll call. It comes with free monthly credits, so teams can try it without much setup. I’d genuinely love feedback from people who run recurring meetings: - Does this solve a real problem for you? - What would make it more useful? I’ll put the link in the comments. Curious how many teams are quietly spending those same 3–5 minutes every day.

TaoBot Attendance

TaoBot is a Zoom-native meeting readiness assistant.

TaoBot is a Zoom-native meeting readiness assistant.