Standuply is a bot that runs standup meetings by interviewing your team members in Slack and delivers answers to Slack, Trello and email.
Kevin William David interviewed Alex Kistenev, CEO at Standuply to know more.
Hi Alex, So what is Standuply?
Standuply is a Slack bot that automatically runs asynchronous standup meetings. It builds Agile charts from JIRA and integrates with 3rd party tools to enrich standups with more data.
Based on data from JIRA, Standuply advises how to improve. It’s our basic A.I. on the mission to adapt processes in every Agile team.
Tell me more about the problem you are trying to solve?
We’re solving a problem of running standup meetings and other Agile practices in remote teams. To retain talent more teams become remote. However, it brings downsides.
Due to time zone differences, teams have fewer overlapping time. People don’t meet face to face. Less information flows. Processes fall apart.
How is Standuply different from what already exists in the market?
Standuply is the only Slack bot doing standups with 3rd party integrations and machine learning. Biggest competitors: Geekbot.io, StandupJack.com, Howdy.ai.
Those making web apps don’t see how important is to be a bot first. Agile teams use Slack for status updates, data reports, and notifications. A chatbot automates that and integrates with tools a team uses.
Who uses Standuply? Can you tell us a bit about the different customer segments using Standuply?
Startups and product companies on Slack use Standuply. Remote ones show the most interest. It’s usually Project/Product manager with a development team of 5–10 people. They use it for daily standups.
Over 150 teams from billion dollar companies use Standuply (incl. IBM, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Expedia, SAP, Walmart).
For many teams, Slack is their virtual office. They want more data in Slack. Such teams use Standuply also for additional integrations to Slack. Like JIRA to see Agile charts or Google Analytics to track website visitors.
How are your customers using Standuply? Could you share a few different use cases?
In addition to above, co-located Agile teams do use Standuply. They set up and follow chosen processes. It could be a preparation before physical standups, running retro meetings and team mood check.
Have there been unique use cases for Standuply that you hadn’t thought of or expected?
Some people use Standuply as their daily journal to keep up with their ideas and things to do.
Were there any early ‘growth hacks’ or tactics that have contributed to your current success?
Yes, we gathered the list of 1000 Slack communities (see bit.ly/1000slack) and it was spread like wildfire. Content marketing works really well for us.
What were some of the biggest challenges while building the product early on and how did you solve them?
Making people pay for your product is not easy. We had to segment our customers to find those ones who are willing to pay. Thus, we came up with free and paid plans.
We did several tests offering various plans to separate groups of users. We found that the best offer is to keep the product free for smaller teams.
What have been some of the most interesting integrations you’ve added? Are there any that have been particularly impactful for you?
Burndown chart from JIRA that Standuply posts in Slack is the unique use-case. You can have it in JIRA, but in order to get in Slack we have to get all the datapoints and build it on the fly. No-one else does that.
Before we finish, What are the top products that you depend on to run the company & how do you use them?
Slack, of course we use it for all the team communications. The rest are Intercom for communications with customers. It easy and smooth. Kayako for customer support — everything Zendesk offers at a cheaper price. Google Apps for Google Docs and emails — works perfectly. MailChimp to send emails — works out of the box. Cloudflare — to manage DNS records.
Originally published at siftery.com.