ecotto123's comments

Thanks! Gatherly looks good, the eIDAS integration is a great niche.

We just launched, so we’re still in the "discovery" phase regarding our user base but you’re right that many pro services want zero overhead, which is why a paid hosted version is on our roadmap to capture that majority.

We are starting with the self-hosted/open-source angle for two reasons:

Privacy & Control: For agencies handled sensitive data who aren't ready for a full SaaS commitment.

The "Tech-Forward" Freelancer: People doing smaller contracts who want a professional portal without another recurring subscription.

We plan to work on getting merged into Unraid to lower the barrier for those smaller self-hosters so it feels less like "ops" and more like a one-click install

Hey HN, I’m Edgar.

For the last few years, I was working on a group travel app called Hoku. The tech was fun to build, but I struggled hard with the marketing side. I ended up building internal tools to help me generate content and keep my social feeds alive while I was coding.

In the end, Hoku didn't get the traction I hoped for, so I decided to shut it down in December. But I realized the marketing tool I built for myself was actually more useful than the travel app.

So I polished it up, packaged it, and that’s what Sidecar is.

It’s basically the tool I wish I had when I started—something to take a raw idea and turn it into a full content calendar so I could get back to building.

Happy to answer questions

hahaha I agree this is also part of the problem

We currently have sign-in with google and apple but thanks for the suggestion of sending a link without a sign-in requirement. I do see how some people would like that better than downloading the app.

I truly appreciate your response because this is the type of feedback and questions I'm looking for. If you take out the UI the main difference is group messaging which is a new feature but as I'm typing this I realized I haven't added this to the website.

My vision is that this will be the app everyone uses to travel with friends. Some of the things in the near term I'm looking to add is travel booking (hotels, flights, cars), AI where you type the location and the type of things you want to do to create a customized vacation, and voting on vacations before they are planned for example to see if my friends are more interested in one location compared to another. Also a share expenses feature is also in the future

Hello, My name is Edgar, I’m the founder of Hoku. I launched Hoku about 11 months ago as the best platform to plan vacations with friends. Well during this time life happened and I stopped working on this product for a few months but we listened to all the feedback we got from our first launch. Some of the feedback was group chats, having more information on activities and creating your own personal activities.

We spent the last few months working on those features as well as making performance improvements to make the experience enjoyable. We have a ton more features coming soon so stay tuned and we appreciate all the feedback you have.

Forgot to mention we are working on a group messaging feature to ease the planning process. Coming soon so stay tuned!