💡 Ideas: Short Notice

A waitlist for unplanned calls

Problem

A meeting gets canceled and you have unexpected availability.

Solution

A waitlist people can use to facilitate last minute calls. When they have unexpected availability, they’ll choose someone from the list and, if the timing works out, jump on a call.

It’s like Calendly, without the scheduling. The main difference being the requesting person must be open to a last minute, unplanned call.

This wouldn’t necessarily work for everyone. It works in situations where one side has limited availability, as an alternative to scheduling far in advance.

Target users/customers

Busy professionals

Open questions

• Business model. How would it make money? B2C isn't ideal, and a B2B model isn’t clear yet.

• User experience. How to ensure its a great experience for the requester? This is absolutely critical to get right. Honoring preferences around timing, notifications, and mediums are all important. Power dynamics are also a consideration.

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Background

This has morphed and evolved since I first wrote it down, nearly 6 months ago. Every time I share it with someone, new ideas and use cases pop up.

Recently, I realized the guts of this - last minute, unplanned connections - could actually solve a number of problems. For example, feeling disconnencted from your coworkers or professional community.

With many possible use cases, it’s been challenging to come up with a good name. Short Notice, Unscheduled, Last Minute, Impromptu, and Waitlist are all possibilities.

The irony, as Jeff Dolan pointed out, is that a solution to this problem used to exist - you would simply pick up the phone and call someone. But our collective relationship with phone calls has changed since then.

In a world where everything is scheduled, organic collisions - like bumping into a friend at the grocery store - always feel like a delight to me. This might be a way to consistently reproduce them.

Next steps

A friend and I have been talking about working on this together. Next steps include validation, digging further into business models, and evaluating go-to market strategies.

I’m not sure that this is the idea, but I am jazzed about the prospect of working with someone I’ve known for years and respect so deeply. We each get more excited the more we talk about it, which is a very good sign.

What do you think?