Hootnotes launches visual hub for remote team work

Melbourne startup Hootnotes has launched a visual collaboration workspace for teams working remotely or across multiple locations, ahead of a planned push into the US market this year.

The product centres on a shared, interactive digital space where users can organise ideas and coordinate project work. It targets use cases such as brainstorming sessions and hackathons, as well as ongoing collaboration for distributed teams.

Founder and CEO Neill Whitehead said the platform responds to how knowledge moves inside organisations when people no longer share the same physical space.

"The most valuable knowledge in business used to be exchanged informally - at whiteboards, in hallways, at the water cooler. Remote work broke that flow. Hootnotes is designed to bring that early, informal knowledge transfer back into real time, capturing ideas as they happen and turning them into shared understanding across the team," said Neill Whitehead, Founder and CEO, Hootnotes.

Product focus

Hootnotes positions itself as a visual "playground" for work. Users can map concepts on a shared canvas and keep related material in one place, with support for embedded content such as videos, PDFs and slide decks.

Feedback tools include Pins and Threads, which link comments to specific items on the canvas. The aim is to keep discussions attached to work artefacts rather than scattered across chat channels or email chains.

Whitehead said the product is designed for the earliest stage of teamwork, when ideas are messy, spread across multiple files and tools, and easy to lose.

"We built it for the first mile of collaboration, where ideas are messy, spread across different files and tools, and often lost. We deliberately focused on making the experience simple and intuitive, because that gives teams something they will actually use every day and gives us a strong foundation to add more powerful capabilities over time without losing ease of use," Whitehead said.

Early trials

Over the past year, the startup has tested the product with teachers and students across multiple Australian universities. It has also run trials in local government and healthcare.

A user involved in a major infrastructure project described the software as a way to reduce the burden of keeping stakeholders aligned across large volumes of documentation.

"Managing a multi-million-dollar project means keeping a huge number of stakeholders aligned across hundreds of documents. Hootnotes has become an essential tool for simplifying this process," the user said.

"The real value is not just sharing PDFs, but bringing documents, images and notes together in one shared canvas where feedback is immediate, comments are pinned precisely, and discussions stay organised. That removes the need for multiple emails on the same issue and makes collaboration faster and far clearer."

Target sectors

Hootnotes has identified design-led industries as an early fit, where teams work on visual assets and need structured input from multiple parties. Whitehead pointed to architecture as one example, where clients, architects, engineers and builders exchange drawings and specifications and work through comments and change requests.

"When designing a home, for example, you have architects, clients, engineers and builders all working together. A shared visual space where everyone can comment and resolve issues quickly can dramatically speed up the process," he said.

Market push

Hootnotes is entering a competitive segment that includes established workplace collaboration products and specialist whiteboard-style tools. Whitehead cited Global Market Insights research valuing the global collaboration software market at more than USD $18 billion in 2024.

Remote and hybrid work patterns remain a key demand driver. Roy Morgan has reported that 46% of Australians work from home at least some of the time. In the US, 22.8% of employees work remotely at least part-time, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics.

Whitehead said those figures underpin the company's plan to prioritise US expansion in 2026, as it looks beyond Australia for growth.

"The opportunity is enormous," he said. "The way teams collaborate is changing rapidly, and we believe Hootnotes is positioned at exactly the right moment."

Founding team

Hootnotes was founded in Melbourne by Whitehead and developed with a leadership group with experience across software and digital collaboration. One co-founder, Chief Marketing Officer Dr Alexander Campbell, has focused on usability and adoption.

Whitehead has worked across multiple software sectors and helped scale an Australian cyber security company that was later acquired by a large US firm.

As Hootnotes prepares for its next stage of product development, Whitehead described the current release as a base layer for broader functionality later.

"What we are releasing is the foundation. We've deliberately started with a simple, mixed‐media collaboration layer that teams find intuitive to use, giving us a strong base to add more innovative capabilities over time without sacrificing ease of use," he said.