TLDR; The next evolution of Polairis is an integrated document collaboration environment. Check out a full demo below!

In case you missed it, I announced in my April 26 update that I’m now publishing the newsletter on an ad hoc basis instead of a biweekly cadence. The last five weeks have been quite the adventure, and I’m excited to share what I’ve been up to!

What’s New ✨

After rebranding Bookmark to Polairis, I finished building a lightweight MVP (i.e., minimum viable product) of an internal search engine that integrates with Google Drive, Confluence, Jira, and Notion. I then reached out to PMs and PMMs at tech companies to show them the product and learn more about the challenges of navigating information across SaaS apps in the workplace.

When I took a step back to look at all the user research I’ve done to date, I was struck by how documents continue to be the predominant place where work gets done, but the way we collaborate in documents hasn’t changed all that much since Google Docs came out in 2006.

We spend a lot of time discussing documents over email or Slack and coordinating document-related tasks in project management tools like Asana — all of which take us out of the documents where the real work is happening.

This brings me to the next evolution of Polairis: an integrated document environment that makes collaboration more seamless and delightful! Key features include:

• An inbox that centralizes all comments across Google Docs, so you can address and resolve them more quickly without letting any fall through the cracks.

• A workflow feature that tracks the stages of a document’s lifecycle, so you can streamline and assign action items like writing and reviewing drafts, making revisions, and getting stakeholder approval.

• Private and time-sensitive comments, so you can ensure that comments get the attention they need from the right people.

In the 8-minute demo below, I walk through an interactive prototype of Polairis (built in Figma and recorded using Loom)!

Any feedback on the prototype would be greatly appreciated, especially if collaborating in Google Docs is a big part of your job. Please feel free to leave comments in Loom (which can be anonymous), share your thoughts over email, or reach out to schedule a video call or in-person chat. I’m excited to continue improving and iterating on the designs!

FAQ 🤔

I’ve had the opportunity to show this prototype to several people (who were all very generous with their time 🙏), and I want to address a few common questions that came up:

1. What’s your approach to pivoting?

   • Pivots come in all shapes and sizes. I like First Round Capital’s 4Ps framework which identifies four levers you can pull along the journey to find product-market fit: the persona, the problem, the promise, and the product. Successful founders manage to have a strong vision while also being open-minded to change. Examples of big pivots include Figma’s pivot from drone software to an interface design tool and Slack’s pivot from a video game to a messaging platform!

   • I see this new Polairis prototype as an evolution that builds on everything that came before. Features like the Explorer, pinned documents, and Links were all inspired and shaped by my learnings from Bookmark. Pivoting can often feel like a sign of defeat, but I’m learning to embrace every pivot as a step closer to making a product people will love using! (Plus, the economics student in me is determined to avoid the sunk-cost fallacy; just because I spent a lot of time building a product doesn’t mean I should keep investing in it.)

2. How does this product compare to tools like Notion?

   • Notion aims to be an all-in-one workspace with its own native text editor and organizational tools. My approach is to let other companies specialize in what they do (i.e., let Google Docs excel at multi-player real-time collaboration) and have Polairis integrate with the best-in-class products. I’m starting with Google Docs, but the vision is to expand to other tools that would also benefit from a more powerful and unified collaboration environment.

3. Couldn’t Google easily roll out similar features?

   • Google Drive has billions of users. A radical change in UX would be risky. Anecdotally speaking, innovative Google Drive projects often don’t make it across the finish line because of various complications that arise when you’re a gigantic company. If Polairis takes off and Google likes the features I’ve built, that seems like a good problem to have!

What’s Cooking 🍳

• Launch a landing page: I hope to have a new landing page to share in the next newsletter update! More on the marketing front coming soon…

• Build the product: I’ve been familiarizing myself with the Google Drive API to make sure the features in my prototype are technically feasible. I’m excited to pick up React next!

• Continue the search for a co-founder: This has been a very time-consuming and tricky process to navigate. I’ve been using platforms like YC Co-founder Matching, joining founder communities, attending VC-hosted startup events in NYC, and meeting friends of friends. Progress has not been linear, but I’m trying to be patient and trust the process. After all, choosing a co-founder is one of the most important decisions I’ll make!

That’s it for now. Until next time!

Nicole

Made with 💜 from NYC. Shout-out to Brian Y., Ann Y., Abhinav N., Alex W., Allen Y., Trishan P., and Will C. for all their support over the last month!