Zoom wasn’t built for the distributed era

Riff
2 min readMay 13, 2022

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We weren’t surprised to hear that 600 odd people were less creative collaborating on Zoom as compared to in person, in Bruck’s & Levav’s paper published in Nature in April 2022. Zoom wasn’t built for the remote era, nor was it built for teams to riff on ideas quickly and creatively.

This new era of creative work within product teams calls for a new tool. Which is why we set out to build Riff, a video workspace that brings distributed teams together for quick chats and creative meetings.

If you think collaboration with your team could be done better, look no further. Here is how using Riff will help.

You can view a quick 30sec snippet of Riff here. Riff is currently in private beta, and free of charge! If you’d like to get started, schedule a quick 10min demo here: https://calendly.com/ib_riff/10min.

1. Meetings for creators & builders

The best brainstorms happen when you get to riff on each other’s ideas. Rather than staring at each other, let your work take centre stage. Share things instantly — drag and drop images or links into Riff, so that others can see what you’re talking about. Share multiple screens to compare ideas, and point using your cursor.

2. Riff knows if several of you are sitting together and will cancel out the echo

Are your calls plagued by terrible echo when half your team is joining the call from the office? With Riff’s smart mic technology, hybrid teams can run their meetings without echo. Everyone can join with their own computer, rather than hovering around one mic or constantly having to mute. Remote team members are forever grateful — they can see everyone’s video, and feel included in the meeting.

3. Is it urgent? Don’t wait to schedule it, just chat

The next time you are hit with a lightbulb moment you don’t have to wait until you’ve scheduled a meeting or frantically type it into Slack before it dissolves back into the ether. See who is available, and start a conversation in just one click.

4. Should others be in the know? Allow them to listen in

You can choose to make your conversation transparent, meaning that others can listen in in case they’d like to contribute. Encourage serendipity & transparency for your remote team.

5. See what your team is up to

Great teams rely on each other. On Riff, you can see what your team is up to — who is talking to whom, who is available for a chat or currently in a meeting. Get that feeling of being back with your team.

Riff is currently in private beta, and free of charge! If you’d like to get started, schedule a quick 10min demo here: https://calendly.com/ib_riff/10min.

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Riff
Riff

Written by Riff

Riff is a lightweight virtual office for high-velocity teams.