Launch HN: Clover (YC S20) – Notes, whiteboarding, and daily planner in one tool

[attasi]

Hi HN, This is Tom, Adam, and Brandon from Clover (https://cloverapp.com) – a digital notebook that blends notes, tasks, whiteboards, and a daily planner into one streamlined app.

We've spent our careers working on creative tools. Tom started building web-based design products with Apple back in 2011. Our first startup – Macaw – was one of the first no-code tools on the market. It was acquired by InVision years ago, where we went on to build numerous other design tools. We are also long-time productivity junkies, having built nine different note-taking and task management apps over the past eight years. These were passion projects that were fun to build and use.

Working in the design industry, we noticed how designers struggle to communicate their ideas with design tools alone. They often spend more time in a text document outlining feature specifications than they do in their design program designing the actual interface. Task management is done in yet another program, and so on.

At the same time, we noticed how text editors don’t do a good job of supporting thinking. Our brains naturally think in a non-linear fashion. Great ideas don't flow out of us with a beginning, a middle and an end—they require an iterative process of divergence and convergence (the ‘double diamond model’, for those familiar). Forcing people to record their ideas in linear documents is a terrible constraint. It's much more intuitive to work in a non-linear fashion like designers do within their design tools.

Conclusion: Thinking tools lack communication and productivity features. Writing tools lack thinking and iteration capabilities. This means you need to string together multiple tools across an idea’s lifecycle, which is difficult to manage.

This gave us the idea for Clover: a single workspace to support all stages of an idea’s development: from brainstorming, design, planning, all the way to execution. It should be as good for thinking and iteration as design tools, have powerful text and knowledge management capabilities, and support planning and task tracking workflows. The mission is to help you think more creatively and get more done every day.

The heart of our implementation is a new type of document, which we call a Surface. It's a freeform spatial document with a heavy emphasis on text capabilities. This required us to build a new type of text editor from the ground up. At its core, it's similar to other modern markdown-style editors (like Dropbox Paper) but it also borrows mechanics from design tools (like Figma). Instead of working down a page from top to bottom, you can work in any direction, drag and drop text the way you would move layers in a design tool, sketch on top of your documents, embed rich media from across the web, and a lot more.

Building a workspace like this requires meeting users' expectations of not just one but many different tools: digital whiteboarding, note-taking, tasks, and knowledge management. Consolidating technology and UX into something that actually works across all of those different functions is an interesting and challenging systems design problem. Text editors are deceptively complex to build, and we had to rethink a number of things about traditional text editors to enable Clover's spatial capabilities. We don't have all of the features of the traditional programs, but we think having all of your tools together is more valuable.

We also spent a fair amount of time thinking about how a product like this should fit into your daily workflow. Our Daily Notes feature is intended to be a place to return to throughout your day to take notes, plan tasks, journal, etc. It has some special functionality to automatically roll over any tasks that you didn't finish from day to day, and it aggregates tasks across all of your pages, so you have one location to see all of your priorities.

Having notes, whiteboarding, tasks, and a daily planner all together in one tool makes it frictionless to carry out ideas from beginning to end and ensures nothing gets lost in the cracks.

Clover is used for a wide variety of things – taking notes, planning tasks, etc. Some of the more interesting one ones we've seen are: planning out presentations and practicing them with Clover's frames and presentation mode; outlining a vision for a sales team using our diagramming tools; drafting blog posts and using a Clover surface to iterate on the text or take notes in the margins; simple kanban to manage small projects; watching videos on a surface while taking notes and pasting screenshots directly next to the embed.

We charge a simple monthly subscription and you can try it out here: http://cloverapp.com.

We’d love to hear what you think of the product and ideas on how to improve it. Thanks!

[u2077]

As others have mentioned, I want to try it first without having to create an account and give you my personal information.

Also, your FAQ says “We do not track any personally identifiable information. Additionally we do not sell or share user data with third parties.” but your privacy policy says “ We may share your personal information with third party advertising companies to market our own Services and grow our Services’ user base, such as to provide targeted marketing about our own Services via third-party services as described in the advertising purposes section above.”

I would like to use sign in with apple so I don’t have to use my personal email, especially considering you cannot change your account email at this time.

Looks like a great app from what I can see, but between obsidian & procreate my needs are covered without a subscription.

[attasi]

Honestly, we haven’t even considered allowing a test drive without an account but the community here has given us some really great opinions in why that is so important. We’re going to discuss this and see if there’s some way we can do that. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this!

[nerdponx]

It's weasel words. "Personal information" is not strictly "personally identifiable"; it doesn't matter that you can trivially de-anonymize people with even a modest amount of data.

[threwawasy1228]

I've said this many times but I dislike that I have to make an account before I even know what the product is or if I will like it enough to justify an account. I hunted around for a sec and I could not find anything that would let me see a real demo or example of the product that didn't require making an account.

Doing something like Airtable[0] is much more effective (not affiliated just a product I use), where I can go from the landing page to embedded product demos that require no login in seconds. It would be great to have something embedded like this or more detailed screencaps at least which showcase the product prior to me having to sign in.

[0] https://www.airtable.com/templates

[visarga]

I searched around for about 10 seconds, didn't find a way to demo or see a video, turned back.

[adi_lancey]

Interesting comment and felt like I was supposed to find this! My team is actually working on something along those lines so companies can directly embed a "demo-able" version of their product whether its on their website, sales outreach, or share through emails without opening up their actual product to everyone.

Check us out (still in beta but I want to practice what I preach and get my own product on our page once its a bit more polished): https://www.getlancey.com/

[ciarlill]

Some initial feedback after noodling around for 20 mins:

Initially this looked like the perfect replacement for my notion + good notes setup. Inking is really important to my workflow so most of my feedback is around that. I also love having the calendar integrated into my daily notes.

- Daily notes don't appear to be a surface so cannot be inked on? This is pretty vital for me. In GoodNotes I basically have a new note page every day for scribbling. Otherwise this feature looks perfect for how I currently work. - The inking in general does not feel great in comparison to Notability or GoodNotes. It appears to do some path correction and overall everything feels very "stiff". Could use more pen tip size options and pen options in general as well as highlighting. - It's too easy to accidentally activate the context menus for text / shape / non-drawing areas when panning around with fingers or accidentally brushing them with your hand. Maybe a long press on these to activate those menus?

I love the idea of having notes, tasks and calendar in one place. You nailed the integration with google calendar, I just wish you could do something similar with tasks but I doubt it will fit into your current paradigm. For me, as a mixed OS user (Android phone, iOS tablet, MacBook for work) I need a task manager that is fully cross platform with notifications, quick add, etc. no matter which device I'm on. I could see using the tasks in your app for non-deadline, more project-management style things. But not as a daily "to-do style" app. And maybe that is the objective, just my 0.02.

Overall this looks _super_ promising and I would love to consolidate my current workflow into one place. And there are great ideas here, unfortunately the UX (at least on iOS and specifically in regards to inking / touch input) just falls slightly short of the competition.

[attasi]

Hey, thanks for trying it out!

We agree there is plenty of room for improvement with our pen tool. It's an area we're constantly refining. We're hoping to get pressure in there soon.

Surfaces on Daily Notes has been highly debated by the team. On one hand, it would be pretty excellent to us. On the other, it could inhibit other workflows by adding too much cognitive overhead. Because you can create a Surface inline using `[[New Surface Name`, we have pushed this decision off for the time being. Would love your thoughts on how you would like it to work.

Would also love to know what makes a daily driver to-do app for you. Maybe we can work that in. Either way, thanks for all the feedback. It's very helpful!

[tchock23]

I had a somewhat similar setup to you with Notion and Notability. I tried Clover and at first it didn’t stick but I gave it another shot and eventually transitioned over entirely.

The only thing I miss from my previous setup is the syncing of audio to notes from Notability, but it’s a worthy sacrifice to have a simpler all-in-one workflow.

[candiddevmike]

FYI the animations for your signup and "where ideas grow" are killing my browser performance. Beefy desktop, Google Chrome. I'd get rid of them personally or use standard CSS animations when the elements come into view.

[yodon]

Can you let me drag/add a slack message to a page with the message summary and link to the message just like I see when I reference a message somewhere in slack? I desperately want to be able to accumulate a stack of messages I need to follow up on or respond to, but without that auto-populating context thumbnail it's too hard to know which opaque link is which.

[attasi]

Dang, that's a pretty cool idea. We'll look into it!

[amznbyebyebye]

This would be awesome to have

[leppr]

> ideas on how to improve it

- E2EE

Anecdotal personal data point: I already pay $10/mo for an E2EE note app with a passable/mediocre UX. I would easily pay up to $15/mo for a polished experience like your app seems to have, and more if it becomes part of my professional workflow.

- Android and Linux support

For personal use, you may have no issue ignoring these market segments, but it might be a hard sell for teams. One of the great thing about an app like Notion.so is that it works everywhere and you don't need to buy your team members specialized devices just to interact with the project stack.

Otherwise I'm really curious to see how you handle the transition of an infinite 2D space created on large screens to smaller devices, whether it's collapsing the space in some way, or using bespoke navigation controls.

[attasi]

Thanks for sharing. We do feel a need to provide Android support even for personal use cases, so we're working on that. Completely agree that it's critical for teams, too.

Transitioning infinite space on mobile works to varying degrees depending on the content. Treating the documents like editable maps works relatively well especially for the consumption experience. We're iterating on some ideas on how to improve editing there as well. We've seen some tools completely ignore coordinates and place everything in one scrolling section, but we feel that is very detrimental to the mental model you construct of your documents and aspire to maintain space while still providing a smooth UX.

[xanaxagoras]

Couldn't agree more. My trust in third parties holding my data is approaching zero. Anything that holds deeply personal information like this without e2ee is a non-starter.

[apollo1213]

Most users actually do not care. They care about usability and price.

If it's E2EE, then some features will not be possible, such as content search.

[jmann99999]

I really like this. I use DEVONthink currently for most of my notes. However, I really like the "daily" note nature of this. I have a couple of questions that would make this very useful and maybe change my current process.

First, can I tag parts of a daily note? My use-case would be tagging sections of a daily note related to a customer. In a given day, I may have 5 meetings with different customers. If I could tag each section with the customer name, it would help me in searching/reviewing those notes at a later time?

Second, can I add a Surface to the daily note? My desire is to be able to draw with the Apple Pencil on the iOS app on my daily note, just like if I added a Surface to the Page Tree.

Thanks and great job getting something fairly polished out the door.

Edited for spelling

[attasi]

Thanks for the questions and ideas. We do support tags, which you can add inline using the format `#tagname`. This will create a Labels section in your sidebar which will show a list of all pages tagged with that. We've had many feature requests to make this more granular – to show blocks tagged with the labels – which we've been working on but haven't shipped yet. As for Surfaces on Daily Notes: I typically create a new Surface inline from Daily Notes by typing `[[Page Name`. This gives me a clean Surface to work on without messing with everything else going on in my day. It also generates a backlink for you from that Surface back to any days linking to it. Would love to hear if this helps your use cases at all. Thanks!

[anonymouse008]

Very, very interesting... a few quick things:

Events should be more group than single item, aka able to contain multiple note types, not just be assigned a surface or a note.

Someone already mentioned the pen -- but that is table stakes for a hand written note app.

Lastly, the canvas preview should be smooth, not 'gridded' as designed. I know that becomes a huge pain in the rear since everything has to be redrawn on the main thread... that said, these are the differences between good and great apps.

----

Finally - these thoughts are only given because your team seems incredibly capable and brilliant. Very few could come up with paradigms such as these, and you deserve the success you seek.

[attasi]

Thanks for the suggestions! Always pushing to move from "good to great." Love the idea of multiple notes per event.

[gesusc]

Thanks for the feedback and the kind words. We're always working to improve our hand writing features so stay tuned for that. I added all the other items to our list as well. Let us know if you think of anything else!

[scrumper]

Delighted to see this. Nearly a decade ago I made a sort of virtual desk blotter which let you put notes or drawings anywhere. It was during paternity leave after my first child was born and I was in that weird head space of free association caused by extreme sleep deprivation. I've since discovered One Note which has that as a core UX device, but I still think mine was nicer, though I never really finished it.

Clover's Surface seems like a grown-up, slick version of what I was trying to achieve on my own. So I'm really pleased you're making a business out of it. And it's a desktop app!

I wish Apple hadn't ditched the whole OpenDoc thing - it'd be so good to draw a frame and have that frame be, say, an Affinity Designer document that you could edit directly in the Surface. (A bit like OLE with an Excel sheet in a Word doc in the old days on Windows.) This feels like such an amazing organizational model for complex, multi-tool, project-based work. At least, that's how I'll use it. But this is only 2 minutes into my use of the product...

Congrats, it's great. And the price is attractive too - this is one I really hope I end up subscribing to as I go through the trial.

[boxmonster]

My experience in case it helps:

Open it up, looks like mobile only. I do my planning an organizing on my big desktop monitor with good keyboard so this is a no go

Wants my email a lot. Maybe this guy is harvesting Hacker News emails

Subscription model. I hate those because I always forget to cancel. Besides I have free and open source note takers that are pretty good. Not everything I want but good.

Someone asked about Desktop further down in comments so you gave them a link

https://cloverapp.com/download

Download a large Electron app. Windows 11 refuses to run it because it's untrusted but I are smart and know how to get around that

If can do an Electron app why not just make it a website for people to try?

Asks for my email again.

It wants to connect to me Google Calendar and Email. It looks like a simplified interface to those two tools.

Sketchpad is an interesting idea. They've been tried since the 90's but maybe these guys got it right.

edit: I use Obsidian. They got me to become addicted to their software by having no fanfare or ceremony and allowing me to see what's great about it right away by trying it. It opens to a big download button. It doesn't ask for email. It's free forever for personal use.

[smoldesu]

> I use Obsidian. They got me to become addicted to their software by having no fanfare or ceremony and allowing me to see what's great about it right away by trying it. It opens to a big download button. It doesn't ask for email. It's free forever for personal use.

I know other people are giving you shit for this, but I'm exactly the same way. Combined with Syncthing, other software (particularly paid stuff like this) doesn't look even remotely capable in comparison. People hydroplane over the essentials and then act surprised when their unicorn app isn't the runaway success it should have been.

Dear Notes Apps:

Everyone else has already done you, and better. If you want to compete (like, actually compete), you have to match them on features and be better somehow. Things like being "cloud-based" are not selling points; they're detriments when compared to your competitors.

[gesusc]

Hey thanks for checking us out. We do have a web app available that can be accessed here https://app.cloverapp.com/login. We are cloud based which is why we require you to create an account to use the app. With that being said we offer a free plan (that has some limitations) and a free Pro plan trial (with no credit card required) so you can try out all the Pro features beforehand. Hope that helps!

[CedarMills]

>Besides I have free and open source...

Waiting for the obligatory Dropbox comment here.

[kndjckt]

Love this! Current user of Notion (structured planning + sharing), Bear (small on the go notes (mobile mainly), Roam (work + research notes), and Noteshelf (any written notes + sketches). Will be interesting to see if this can replace some of these. I'll write feedback here if I have any. :)

[azinman2]

Curious why/how you use multiple apps that seem to cover the same basic functionality?

[ryanSrich]

This looks cool. I’ve been looking for a more permanent replacement for Roam. Everything I’ve tried so far (Obsidian, Logseq, Athens, Mem, etc.) have all been either clones, or just small improvements. I have yet to see something that grabs me in the same way Roam did years ago (block refs was an aha moment).

My other must have feature is mobile, which it looks like you have covered. I haven’t tried Clover yet, but do you have interlinking and block references? I assume so as that’s a pretty basic core functionality of a note taking tool now, but I understand a product is always a work in progress.

Also, do you have migration tools for importing existing notes? I have 75k pages, and that number grows by 20-100 daily, so it’s a big ask to abandon that.

Anyway, congrats on the launch.

[attasi]

Hey there, We don’t have block referencing in the same way Roam does it… yet. We allow you to copy a block link and paste it which will create a link to the block with text preview. We hope to add improved support for this soon.

A 75k page import is quite the load. We have bulk markdown import but that may test its limits. How would you ideally perform that and where are you importing from?

[porker]

If Roam grabbed you, why are you looking for a permanent replacement?

[dsomers]

I like the idea here, but it does not seem to support the Apple Pencil feature for handwriting to text when I try to write in text fields, which is a bit of a deal breaker for me. I hope you can fix that because I do like most everything else.

[urlwolf]

Wonderful take on what's missing in current notetaking. Agree that text editors are not good for thinking (forcing the constraint of linearity "Great ideas don't flow out of us with a beginning, a middle and an end"

I use only native apps for thinking. Latency kills my train of thought. And web apps have plenty! Both typing latency (typometer, a java app, shows 45ms in best case scenario!) and creation/navigation latency (going back to a previous page, creating a new one). But I know my requirements are pretty unique, I'm not representative of the general public. Best of luck!

[epaga]

This reminds me of an iOS app I built years ago (primarily for myself) called Mindscope https://apps.apple.com/de/app/mindscope-thought-organizer/id... - a visual, hierarchical text canvas. Scapple meets Workflowy if you will.

I always loved this freer and more visual form of note-taking so it’s really cool to see a full-fledged, more complete solution with media/images and the whole nine yards. Very cool!

[navigator8]

Hey! I also use mindscope even on ios 14. Any chance of updating ios 15.

It’s a great app!

[attasi]

Oh cool! I haven't tried Mindscope, but it does look similar. Nice work!

[eitland]

Feedback about the landing page:

The image front and center is small. And then when I pinch to zoom to look at the picture on the front page it makes itself smaller.

Also no screenshots gallery.

General feedback: this is an area were I feel there is a lpt of potential.

Personally I use Pencil Planner on IPad and it solves some of the problems in the same space brilliantly, like handwriting on top of digital calendar, how to allow both freeform notes and portrait / landscape etc.

I'll probably stick with that, but again I think you are into something and Pencil Planner is only available on Apple devices anyway.

[ketzo]

Despite many, many tries, I’ve never found a note taking tool that really captures the way I think, and I until I do, I’ll always welcome a new entry into the field.

Congrats on launch and good luck!

[attasi]

Thanks! I'm curious to know more about how you think :) Why hasn't anything really capture it yet?

[deejaybog]

Congrats for the launch, it all looks very polished!

"Surface" is the killer feature for me. Been waiting for someone to build this for a while.

Conceptual question: isn't Document just a degenerate case of Surface? Can we just have one type of page ("Leaves" ;))? Document-like functionality could be exposed through the Text tool or as a separate "text editor".

In the same vein, Favorites can be just a Label.

[attasi]

This is something we are constantly exploring. They are in fact the same under the hood but it’s been a tricky UX challenge to provide a seamless and intuitive way to toggle between the two. Always thinking about this though. Have any thoughts on it?

[screye]

I will be following this very closely. I have been asking for this for about 10 years now. Signed up, will be using it for a few weeks to evaluate.

[gesusc]

Awesome! Let us know what you think.

[EricMooo]

Congrats on the launch! Your team's execution is really impressive.

When I tried Surface in the browser there was noticeable sluggishness if I intentionally added a lot of elements on the page. This reminded me of reading about how Figma leveraged WASM to improve their performance on the browser. I wonder what your thoughts are on WASM and web side performance in general.