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263 points bigmicro | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source

Hello HN community,

This is bootstrapped/indie hacker-ish. Would appreciate feedback.

What it is: You create a link (e.g. onair/yourname), and anyone can call you from it. Caller uses a web browser to make the call (not dedicated app). You can create as many links as you want, and can direct calls to colleagues in a round-robin or escalation manner.

In a way, it's like the "opposite of Calendly"; whereas Calendly is about meetings in the future, OnAir is about immediate meetings.

Motivation behind it: One of our SaaS products was struggling to grow. We believed that if we provide more "hand holding" to visitors on the landing page, it will increase conversion. It's like speaking to the guy behind the counter before making a purchase. That idea/experiment, over time, became OnAir.

Feedback: Identifying the perfect use case / customer has not been easy. E-Commerce store owners, which I thought would be ideal customer profile, are not responding as expected (e.g. "why use this instead of a WhatsApp button?"). The value of branded links, round-robin, recording/transcription, lead capture, etc does not seem to matter much to them. Ideas are welcome.

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AndrewVos ◴[] No.42148630[source]
Looks good, I want to give it a try next week.

Appear.in (now called https://whereby.com/) used to have the same functionality and I would just share my link everywhere so that team members could call me whenever they wanted.

Although, Facetime is kind of the exact same thing isn’t it?

replies(1): >>42148990 #
1. LorenDB ◴[] No.42148990[source]
This may come as a surprise to you, but there are plenty of us who don't have Apple devices to use FaceTime with.

OK, I do have a Mac Mini for development purposes, but I don't want to have to drag it out of storage just to make a call.

replies(1): >>42152202 #
2. Twistyfiasco ◴[] No.42152202[source]
Apple users can send a facetime link that is usable on non-apple devices.
replies(1): >>42155399 #
3. klabetron ◴[] No.42155399[source]
Which I suppose is a failure of marketing by Apple? If casual non-Apple readers of HN don’t know the links work for non-Apple devices, no one does :)

(I’m an Apple reader of HN and I didn’t know this either!)