Talky started as an interesting demo two years ago this February, but it became a product that has seen thousands and thousands of new users each month.
We believe Talky can be an independent communication platform built entirely on open-source technologies (both our own code as well as great projects like Jitsi, Prosody, and restund). We believe we can do it bootstrapped without VC funding or the support of a telco—and with security and your privacy in mind.
In fact, it already is all of these things!
But we need your help to make Talky stronger, better, faster and other things that would make Daft Punk finally proud of us. We don’t just want Talky to be an open alternative to existing solutions. We want it to be one of the absolute best solutions. And with your help, it will be.
Why not just charge for Talky?
In fact, we already do have paid Talky customers for a version that you can run securely behind your company firewall (contact us if you’re interested). :)
Our intent is to always keep the basic Talky service free and available, in keeping with making it as easy as possible to use for anyone. We have a lot of plans for how we will make money from Talky, like:
- use Talky’s core platform to build and run products for others who can’t or don’t want to integrate or maintain these kinds of technologies
- offer on-premises versions of Talky
- share our expertise with clients in technical consulting
- sell white label or branded versions of Talky
- give the option of paying for premium features
We already do most of these in some capacity. (If you’re interested, let’s talk!)
So why do we need your support?
We’ve put two years into making Talky great and building open-source tools for web-based collaboration. But getting Talky to our ultimate goal of improved quality and accessibility will take more than we can give at the present. And we’re in it for the long-run with Talky, but it’s still in its early days.
Our team of 30+ yetis balance the challenging dynamics of being a product company, as well as consultants and trainers, while maintaining a vibrant presence in the JS, WebRTC, and open-source communities.
We’re asking you for the opportunity to focus on making what you already love even better.
The future we see for Talky is an exciting one. We’ve been very hard at work on the technical fundamentals over the past two years, and we are thrilled to be able to turn even more of our focus to the real reason we're doing this: building an unparalleled user experience.
As mentioned, we’ve already added the improved user experience, added text chat, and enabled larger conferences, but these features need further polishing and your feedback!
In addition, there are some features we need your support on that are under development but need more work before they’re ready to release:
- File sharing
- Reserved rooms
- Better handoffs between Wi-Fi and mobile networks
- Updated iOS app to support all of the above
And finally there are some larger projects that we could take on as stretch goals if there’s enough interest:
- An Android app
- Opt-in recording
- Broadcast for even larger groups
Why Kickstarter?
Talky has been independently bootstrapped since Day One (no venture capitalists, no telco sponsors, no outside investors). As a result, Kickstarter is the only form of fundraising that fits with our core philosophies as a team.
We’re only willing to accept funding from the people we most want to deliver for: our awesome users.
We want to provide an amazing service for a long time, not get acquired and sell our users to a bigger company. It only feels right for us to accept funding from the people who use Talky, love Talky, and want to see it improved.
So this month, we’re kicking off a Kickstarter campaign to raise $60K to make Talky better.
By making Talky a stronger service and a viable alternative to, say, Skype or Google Hangouts, we’re empowering you with more options for how you choose to communicate. Bringing more attention and interest to the technology behind Talky, WebRTC, gets more folks involved with and experimenting on their own WebRTC projects. Which in turn, further develops the SimpleWebRTC and global WebRTC open source communities.
What do you think?
We’d love to hear from you about all of this. Please feel free to reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, and via email. (Heck, you could even let us know on LinkedIn!)
You can help us spread the word!
The vast majority of web users have never heard of Talky. Help us spread the word. The #1 most valuable thing you could do to help us succeed with this Kickstarter and with Talky in general is to use it, talk about it, and share it.
We’d be honored to have your support.
Sign up below to learn more about Talky and the upcoming Kickstarter!