[mgadams3]

Hey HN. I'm Mike co-founder/CEO of Grain.

I decided to start Grain b/c I was tired of requesting access to recordings of convos and repeating myself when I could just share the part of a recording instead. Our team built something pretty cool that I honestly didn't see coming when we started.

Happy to answer any questions and thanks for the support.

[perlgeek]

Since you built your product based on another vendor's platform, are you concerned that they might cut off access? Do you have any contingency plans for that?

[mgadams3]

Cultivating an app ecosystem on their platform is a publicly stated goal of Zoom. Cutting off any start-up building on it would be counter-productive and lead to their competitors gaining the advantage of innovation on their platform instead.

See: https://marketplace.zoom.us/competition

[wmeredith]

Twitter used to say the same stuff and they cut their dev community off at the knees once they got big enough (mostly because of said community building out their feature set).

[specialist]

Let the sharecroppers do all the research, development, marketing, refinement. Then steal their thunder.

Been there, been done like that.

[jeltz]

It would not be the first time a company cuts off parts of their app ecosystem. Strava has done so for example.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2019/07/strava-relive-cc-app-pla...

[tiborsaas]

SoundCloud said the same and they turned their back on the developer community.

It probably happened to many other platforms too

[DigitalSea]

Twitter has famously done the same thing a few times as well.

[mgadams3]

There are lots of differences but yes, it's a calculated risk we feel good about given those differences.

[DonHopkins]

What features does Zoom's developer API support?

Which do you use, and how do you like them?

What other features do you hope they support in the future?

[mgadams3]

Good question!

Here are their docs: https://marketplace.zoom.us/docs/api-reference/zoom-api

But we use everything around recording, including live streaming.

Zoom has a great team of folks in the developer forums that are really helpful. My biggest gripe would be that not everything that breaks gets documented and logged so it can be really frustrating when our service breaks b/c their webhooks are down and there is no status on their end that this is the case.

We had a list of a dozen thing we wanted them to support when they started and they are all now in there... so pretty happy w/ progress.

[MichaelApproved]

Are you concerned that zoom will gradually add these features to their core products?

[mgadams3]

Not really, Zoom has gotten to where they are by focusing on what they're world class at, which is reliable connectivity. I don't see them changing focus on anything but keeping the lead they have that made them so successful. This DNA has always been the core of Zoom since Eric branched out of Cisco.

[Waterluvian]

Maybe I'm being pedantic but isn't it your job to be concerned about risks like this? It sounds like your answer is "we don't need a plan because the volcano won't erupt." I'm seeing people responding with a list of volcanos that erupted without warning.

Approached more technically, I'd ask, do you have future plans to stratify what back ends your product will work on, particularly if zoom stops being an option?

[mgadams3]

Zoom is just one of many media input sources for us and the only one we launch with b/c the benefits outweigh the drawbacks.

[missedthecue]

Why did you name it grain

[mgadams3]

Thanks for asking.

We bounced around on really bad names like Radical (as in transparency/candor), Arthur (everyone has a seat at the roundtable), Zebra (literally just a placeholder)...

But landed on Grain because it means something about our product. Grains are little pieces that can accumulate to become something meaningful. Thats what our video highlight clips are all about. Little nuggets that come from somewhere else but can stand on their own. We get most excited when thinking about what can be made when you combine the "grains" together.

Also easy to say, a real word, 5 letters and the .co was cheap and nobody else has claimed the mindshare around the word. Today we start working on our SEO game :)

[icelancer]

ETA? I filled out the form and it said it wasn't quite ready for me (Founder).

[jakecadams]

Hey! this is Jake, Mike's co-founder. We don't currently have a windows app and only support Zoom users. If that's you, you can email me: jake [at] grain [dot] co

If not, we will be working on building out support for windows /linux in coming months [we use electron] as well as other VC providers.

[icelancer]

Yeah, I am a Windows (mostly) Zoom (always) user for the purposes of Grain. I'd be willing to use iPad Pro / Retina Macbook to test though, looks like something I could really use. I'll email you.

[ianceicys]

Filled out the survey too, same result. Really looking forward to your windows client being available! Thank you!

[mgadams3]

Frankly we didn't anticipate my calendar filling up so we added my co-founder Jake... his filled up so we added our intern Max... his filled up so we're finding someone new. Stay tuned, thx for the patience.

[oars]

How did you convince a company like Slack to start using your product?

[mgadams3]

10 years of start-up network building has helped and so we got referred into them by people who they trust.

The bootstrap problem to get early teams before you have credibility is crazy difficult. It takes time to do it well and with authenticity.