Show HN: Bema: Work messaging built for humans

Posted by ben_d on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @07:51AM
from the show-hn dept.

Hi HN! I'm Ben, the founder of Bema. I've been frustrated with the current state of work messaging software for a while now, and I've heard similar complaints from friends and coworkers. (Too many channels, easy to lose things, distracted from actual work.) I set out to build a platform that would encourage asynchronous communication with an option to break glass if needed. Here's the result, let me know what you think.

( 5 comments | 2 points | on HN )

Re:Show HN: Bema: Work messaging built for humans by jon-wood on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @08:51AM (#50351969)

While I applaud the sentiment here how many people work for an organisation that would be ok giving full Slack access to something like this, especially given the complete lack of information on how that data is being processed beyond an incredibly vague mention of Cloudflare in the privacy policy?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Bema: Work messaging built for humans by drcongo on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @08:54AM (#50351999)

It says "Connect with your current messaging provider" and then never mentions that ability again. What does that look like?

Personally, I absolutely despise what Slack has become and would love to replace it, but I can't see anything about this app that might persuade me or my coworkers to install it.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Bema: Work messaging built for humans by ben_d on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @08:59AM (#50352063)

Thanks for the feedback! We support bidirectional message syncing with selected public channels in your Slack organization. You invite the app to public channels you want to sync and then we have a setup wizard to help you setup your organization in Bema. Can definitely make this more obvious in the marketing copy.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Bema: Work messaging built for humans by boxed on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @09:11AM (#50352218)

I don't see how this can work even in theory. The shape of the platform always gets deeply ingrained in the behavior and even semantics of the users using it. Having radically different UIs on top of existing systems that other users might or might not see the same is fraught.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Show HN: Bema: Work messaging built for humans by xnorswap on Tuesday November 03, 2026 @09:03AM (#50352119)

> despise what Slack has become

I'm genuinely struggling to understand how slack is much different now than 5 or more years ago. There's a handful of features that are easy to ignore, but the fundamental experience has barely changed in a decade.

What is it about slack that you despise?

[ Parent | on HN ]