Hey PH, I’m Rob, co‑founder of Cushion.
My co‑founder Dave and I built Cushion last year as an internal tool so we could work on projects together.
Traditional chat apps create noise that buries important information and distracts you. Slack channels feel like never‑ending meetings, so getting solid feedback and making progress can feel like a nightmare.
Now we’re launching it for everyone!
Cushion combines posts, messaging, and check‑ins into a new way to collaborate. Async by default, it’s a refreshingly calm and focused way to work. With Cushion, teams find they are more organised, focused, and productive.
What makes Cushion different:
- Posts → The default way to communicate. Single‑topic conversations, threaded by default, so everything stays organised, skimmable, and easy to find.
- Connect → Close out conversations with AI. Tag your team to gather feedback. Link related posts.
- Inbox → A focused inbox that rolls up all your posts and keeps them neat. Set reminders to follow up later.
- Check‑ins → Regular updates on what work got done and when. This keeps everyone in sync without the time sink of endless meetings.
- Automations → Automate busywork with AI, like reviewing work, creating Linear issues, and linking related posts.
Plus, there’s much more: integrations with Slack, Linear, and GitHub, 1:1 private messaging, daily email digests, notification scheduling, and more.
We’re 100% bootstrapped, with no outside funding, and we’re in it for the long haul. Dave and I would love you to try Cushion and share your feedback.
The async-first approach makes sense for distributed teams, but the real challenge is always getting people to actually change their communication habits — that first week of adoption is brutal. Curious how you're handling onboarding for teams migrating off Slack, because the muscle memory problem is real and most tools underestimate it. We ran into this at a previous product and started using Told to surface in-app prompts at the moments where users would otherwise default back to old behavior, which moved activation numbers meaningfully. Are check-ins structured or freeform, and does Cushion nudge teams to use them consistently or is it purely pull-based? That distinction matters a lot for whether async discipline actually sticks.
Hi Rob, congrats on the launch! I'm really interested in async communication and gone through many different communication tools for my team of 5. The best we've experience we've had in this regard is Campsite before it got acquired from Notion.
Just signed up for Cushion, and after a very pleasant and simple first time set up, I'm curious to know - what are you doing different to campsite or any other async tools?
Love the concept of combining posts, messaging, and check-ins into one place. As someone who's built a real-time messaging system from scratch (TCP-based, for a social app), I know how hard it is to get the balance right between "instant" and "async" communication. The async-first approach for small teams makes a lot of sense — not everything needs to be a real-time ping. How do you handle the transition when a thread gets urgent and needs immediate attention?
The async angle is interesting — most teams I've seen try async end up just recreating Slack with slower response times. What's the actual mechanism that stops it from devolving into that? Curious how you handle the moments where something genuinely needs a fast answer.
Interesting concept. I like the idea of making collaboration calmer and more structured. The combination of posts, check-ins, and AI summaries sounds like a thoughtful workflow. How does Cushion help users quickly find the most important updates when there are many active discussions?
Been stuck stitching Slack threads and a standup bot before, and the handoff is always where things disappear. Cushion putting posts, inbox, and check-ins in one loop feels much cleaner for small teams, especially if blocked work from a weekly check-in can surface straight into the inbox.
