Async polling and whiteboard for Amazon Chime meetings

A product manager running a weekly decision meeting on Chime hits the same dead end every time: there's no way to run a quick vote or sketch out an idea on a shared canvas without leaving the call. The complaint is specific — 'Chime lacks advanced video conferencing features like whiteboard and polling' and 'Chime is not supported with whiteboard and polling features on all systems.' This isn't a niche gripe; it comes up across multiple independent reviewers describing the same missing pieces.

The reason this hasn't been fixed inside Chime itself is structural. Chime is Amazon's conferencing layer, but it exists in an ecosystem where AWS customers are already expected to stitch together services. Amazon's incentive is to keep you in the AWS ecosystem broadly, not to build a polished end-user engagement layer — that's not where their margin or differentiation lives. So the product team ships reliability and integrations, and the whiteboard stays missing.

Today, a Chime user who wants polling either pastes a Google Forms link into chat (kills the in-meeting energy), opens a separate Miro tab (requires everyone to have an account), or just does a voice vote and hopes the loudest person doesn't dominate. None of these are real solutions. A whiteboard session means screen-sharing someone's desktop with a drawing app, which is clunky and one-directional.

This is a business because the AWS-connected buyer segment is large and technically comfortable — they're already used to paying for add-on services that layer onto AWS infrastructure. A team that uses Chime because it's inside their AWS stack will pay to fix a recurring productivity gap without switching their core tool, especially if it integrates cleanly with their existing AWS identity and doesn't require a separate login.

What to build

Build a Chime-integrated web app — authenticated via AWS SSO — that adds a persistent shared whiteboard and real-time polling panel accessible from a sidebar link injected into Chime meeting invites, with results stored in an S3 bucket the team already controls.

Where to start

Start with AWS Marketplace listing so AWS-native companies can purchase it against existing AWS credits — this removes the procurement friction that kills every other SaaS sale into enterprise AWS shops and gives you distribution without a sales team.

The hard part

AWS's API surface for Chime is deep but the meeting client itself doesn't support native extensions, so injection into the meeting UI requires a workaround — either a browser extension or a companion web tab — and either approach creates a support burden when Chime updates its client.

How it makes money

Usage-based pricing tied to active meeting participants per month, billed through AWS Marketplace so it rolls into existing AWS invoices.