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.
Report
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.
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?
We were big fans of Campsite and the main difference I guess is we’re here and they’re not 😅
We have a lot of the same opinions on how communication should work in small teams but we’re going in our direction with it. Particularly around the role AI plays in helping teams move faster.
If you have any feedback we’d love to hear it.
Report
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?
We have a very performant search function. Because of posts it’s much easier to find the conversation via search.
Also we have AI automations that automatically link posts together that are similar so you can create these networks of posts around the same topics.
Report
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.
@zerodarkhub we have realtime chat for instant answers. We just encourage most communication to be Posts. Not everything needs to be done now.
Report
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?
@sparkuu teams typically tag someone directly and you can subscribe to notifications on a certain post or channel.
But beyond that we find that most things aren’t urgent and don’t need to be. Posts encourage you to think in blocks of work rather than immediate response.
That said if something is on fire and you need to get in touch with X - we have realtime messaging exactly for that reason
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.
I've been following Rob and Dave since they started building cushion. glad to see them on product hunt. If you're a team tired of slack noise, its worth a serious look!
Report
Two-person team, we use Slack for everything and it's chaos. Last week I spent 20 minutes looking for a decision we made about pricing -buried somewhere in a thread inside a thread. Posts as the default instead of chat flips the whole dynamic. One thing, though -when you say "close out conversations with AI," what does that actually produce: summary , action items or just an archive flag?
Report
Nice design, reminds me of Slack. Congratulations on the launch!
Replies
Cushion
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.
Cushion
@piroune_balachandran absolutely dead on!
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?
Cushion
@haiderhaqiqi Thanks! Glad to have you on onboard.
We were big fans of Campsite and the main difference I guess is we’re here and they’re not 😅
We have a lot of the same opinions on how communication should work in small teams but we’re going in our direction with it. Particularly around the role AI plays in helping teams move faster.
If you have any feedback we’d love to hear it.
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?
Cushion
@vik_sh a few ways:
We have a very performant search function. Because of posts it’s much easier to find the conversation via search.
Also we have AI automations that automatically link posts together that are similar so you can create these networks of posts around the same topics.
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.
Cushion
@zerodarkhub we have realtime chat for instant answers. We just encourage most communication to be Posts. Not everything needs to be done now.
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?
Cushion
@sparkuu teams typically tag someone directly and you can subscribe to notifications on a certain post or channel.
But beyond that we find that most things aren’t urgent and don’t need to be. Posts encourage you to think in blocks of work rather than immediate response.
That said if something is on fire and you need to get in touch with X - we have realtime messaging exactly for that reason
Told
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.
Cushion
@jscanzi interesting points
We do see that but usually teams that try Cushion come into wanting the change.
They’re either sick of Slack or they are trying a new approach for a certain project.
The will has to come from them. Were just here to help them facilitate that.
Told
@rob_hough thanks a lot for your reply!
I've been following Rob and Dave since they started building cushion. glad to see them on product hunt. If you're a team tired of slack noise, its worth a serious look!
Two-person team, we use Slack for everything and it's chaos. Last week I spent 20 minutes looking for a decision we made about pricing -buried somewhere in a thread inside a thread. Posts as the default instead of chat flips the whole dynamic. One thing, though -when you say "close out conversations with AI," what does that actually produce: summary , action items or just an archive flag?
Nice design, reminds me of Slack. Congratulations on the launch!