I recorded a demo last week. Screen share, walkthrough, the whole thing. Sent it to a potential customer.
He watched the first three minutes.
This happens all the time. We build async videos to save time, but nobody watches them. Remote workers now juggle 4.8 different conferencing tools, and 40% say they're wasting time switching between them.
The tools we built to collaborate are making us lonelier.
#The Async Overload Nobody Talks About
Someone sent me an hour-long video a few weeks ago. It was about AEO/GEO optimization—how their startup improved their appearances in ChatGPT and Gemini using their own system.
I couldn't concentrate through the whole thing.
I skipped around looking for the juicy parts. Never found them. Closed the tab.
Here's what I've noticed: whenever I save articles or videos for "later," I almost never go back. When I do, I just drop them. The intention was there. The follow-through wasn't.
#Async video optimizes for the sender, not the receiver.
It's easier to record than to write. Easier to dump information than to structure it. The person sending the video saves time. The person receiving it loses focus.
The numbers back this up. 60% of workers feel increased burnout from digital communication, and 42% experience stress trying to get the tone right in written messages. We're not just tired of tools. We're tired of performing for tools.
Meanwhile, 91% of workers have had their digital messages misunderstood. Each misunderstanding costs 18 minutes to resolve. That's 19 minutes per day spent re-reading and overthinking emails.
We built Loom, Notion, Slack—all one-way streets dressed up as collaboration.
#What Happens When You Stop Broadcasting
I've worked with remote teams at startups and big companies. The ones that moved faster didn't add more async tools. They added sync moments.
Two things became immediately apparent: brainstorming and social gatherings.
People think those are luxuries. They're not. They're energy boosters.
A 30-minute social gathering brings you up to speed on what's going on. You get a concentrated dose of context. Like a cold drink during a long walk when you're touring a city. You get a social vibe from the concurrent presence.
After that, you feel energized.
Last week I met with a prospective customer for another project. Before the meeting, I was working in parallel on three ideas. Only one is built. All of them are based on groups of people cooperating. I was starting to think maybe my ideas are too complicated. Too difficult to sell.
Then I sat in the room with someone. He liked the ideas. He said, "You're geared towards this concurrent presence thing."
That shift—from working alone to being with someone—changed my energy completely.
#Sync moments don't slow teams down. They recharge them.
Between 30-40% of remote employees feel less connected to their teams when working remotely. We tried to solve that with more tools. More channels. More notifications.
It didn't work.
#The Watch Party Insight
I'm building ShortVibe around micro-events. Not meetings. Not webinars. Micro-events.
Here's what that means: screening a series of short videos to an audience and chatting about them. One pain point. Solved well.
The pushback I get is always the same: "We can just do this in Zoom with screen share."
Sure. You can.
But Zoom has dozens of features that complicate the experience. Most of them are distractions. ShortVibe focuses on one thing: screening videos and chatting around them.
When I prepare a demo meeting, I select the parts that target the person I'm meeting. I met someone doing entrepreneur events, so I prepared a demo with a series of videos from X where founders tell stories.
That's what receiver-optimized communication looks like. You don't dump everything. You curate for the person on the other end.
I almost added "watch later" to ShortVibe. Not because someone asked for it. Because I noticed my own behavior. Whenever I save something for later, I drop it when I get there.
So I didn't build it.
#Watch parties over watch later.
The only video series I finished recently was a collection on the Laravel PHP ecosystem. Each video was under 10 minutes. They structured it as an Advent calendar, revealing a new video each day. It was like a workshop.
Short. Structured. Social rhythm.
#The Shift From Broadcast to Gathering
I've been chasing this concurrent virtual presence idea for years. It hit me when I wrote a blog article about programming live auctions with Node.js. The core idea was pushing updates from the server to the web page instead of the web page polling the server.
Building live auctions added real-time chat and video streaming. Taken together, that's what I keep chasing.
ShortVibe is a small part of that huge auction events platform, rebuilt for a specific purpose and pain point.
The data shows people want this. Overall audience engagement has jumped 172% since events went virtual. Attendees spend 27% more time at virtual events than in-person ones when there's active participation and shared experience.
But here's the thing: 49% of marketers say audience engagement is the biggest factor in event success. Organizations that didn't try to engage virtual attendees were 150% more likely to fail.
Passive consumption doesn't work.
We built tools to push content out. The next wave of remote tools won't help you broadcast. They'll help you gather.
#What I Learned From Failing
I launched an auction events platform years ago. Nothing happened in the first few weeks. I was exhausted from development. I posted on social media hoping people would come.
Nobody arrived.
I spent those weeks reading books on marketing and business. The conversation in my head was simple: I don't know how to do marketing, so I should learn. Then proceed to the next step.
I cut the marketing budget to extend the runway. I waited six to eight months before hiring someone to do marketing.
That was the wrong move.
In retrospect, I should have spent three times more at the beginning, failed fast, and killed the idea. Optimizing for low burn rate to increase runway is insignificant. You're better off doing a push and throwing money at the problem at the start.
#If you're in month three, cutting your budget, telling yourself to be patient—cut your losses.
The silence after shipping is brutal. You expect momentum. You get nothing.
But here's what I know now: the smartest teams are rethinking what real collaboration looks like. Less noise. More thinking. Less broadcasting. More gathering.
#The Micro-Event Philosophy
When I make product decisions for ShortVibe, I use one test: does this feature make the product enterprise-level, or does it keep the micro-events vibe?
Anything that adds team features dilutes it. Anything like handling invitation responses can be postponed. The core is small and simple. Extra bells and whistles dilute.
I'm working on three ideas right now. All of them are based on groups of people cooperating. Compared to other solo founders, these are more ambitious. Every time I look on X or Reddit, I feel the same doubt: maybe my ideas are too complicated.
But I keep building ShortVibe because concurrent virtual presence is my passion.
The tools we have now—Loom, Notion, Slack—they're all broadcast tools. You record. You post. You send. Someone watches later. Maybe.
The next wave won't work that way.
The next wave is built around gathering. Small groups. Shared moments. Synchronous presence.
Not because async doesn't have a place. It does.
But we've overdone it. We've turned collaboration into content creation. We've turned communication into performance.
#The future of remote work isn't more tools to help you broadcast. It's better tools to help you gather.
Watch parties over watch later.