Wisembly - Prepare And Run Successful Business Meetings

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French startup Wisembly is the developer behind new startup project getsolid.io. Wisembly raised $1.9 Million last year from Alven Capital. Solid and Wisembly are collaborative solutions for effective and successful business meetings. In other words, they help you successfully prepare and run your business meetings. Below is our interview with Laureline Ruano-Borbalan from Wisembly team:

Q: What was the inspiration behind building Solid and Wisembly and who is your ideal customer?

A: Over the past few years, a bunch of applications have tried to kill off the idea of going to meetings (37Signals, Slack, etc.).

Truth is, it is not going to happen… Check out the following key points that led Wisembly to launch a very “solid” solution :

According to a study published by Bain, 15% of a company’s total time is spent in meetings.
Increased information flowing around today’s businesses inevitably leads to more interactions and communications between people, and more meetings.
(Almost) everyone agrees that there are times when meetings and real-life interactions are necessary to advance a project or organization.
A large amount of time and thus money is wasted daily because of unproductive meetings ; according to research from Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics, executives spend upwards of 18 hours per week – 1/3 of their working week – in meetings, and an estimated 25-50% of meeting time considered wasted. Software company Atlassian puts the cost of unnecessary meetings to US businesses in terms of wasted salary hours at $37 billon !

At Wisembly, we do believe in productive meetings. Yes, we do! This is how Solid was launched, the one and only solution for 100% productive and actionable meetings.

Q: Tell us something more about Solid and how is it different?
A: Solid is THE solution to run effective, easy and actionable meetings every time. With Solid, you will get the most out of your meetings, and stop wasting time and money.

Before the meeting – Get everyone prepared for a successful meeting
With Solid, you will :
– Retrieve all your agenda info in 10 seconds
– Set the objective and details of the meeting’s agenda in advance
– Share the agenda with all participants in advance

During the meeting – Keep the meeting focused on the agenda
– With the timer, you have a clear idea of your meeting’s level of progress at any time
– All participants can add up info live to the meeting’s minutes : record all your actions, decisions and open issues

After the meeting – Capitalize on the meeting’s content :
– All participants receive a detailed summary of the meeting’s outcomes and also a list of their personal upcoming tasks
– A survey is automatically sent to all participants to get their feedback on the meeting’s efficiency.

Solid will soon be synched with all the services you use everyday (Evernote, Office 365, Slack, etc.)

Q: What tips would you give an early stage startup when trying to launch a new product?

Focus on value
Focus on value before focusing on design, technology or marketing. By “value” we mean the value your product will add to your customers’ experience and life. Facing the market’s reality is key to success ; you need to make sure your product will answer your customers’ needs.
Test, test and re-test!
Test the prototype in many different situations, with many different types of potential customers. New ideas will emerge from the habits and use of the testers.Wisembly is the perfect case in point : when launching Wisembly, the initial idea was to launch a social network. After long hours of talks with startupers, friends and more importantly potential customers (agencies, marketing, HR, IT professionals), the founders re-adapted the idea to launch a collaborative solution for meetings. And guess what… it did work out pretty well !
Focus on early-adopters
We believe in E. M. Rogers’ theory. Before reaching the critical mass, you need to seduce early-adopters. They are more venturesome, embrace change opportunities, and often enjoy opinion leaders’ roles. The idea is to create a dedicated community that will easily understand your product’s value and then naturally help you reach a larger market. The early adopters’ voice will be much more powerful than your own demonstration that your product is necessary, better, awesome !

Q: Are there any key individuals outside of Wisembly that have been of great help to your startup?

A: Clients first : our clients and power users challenge our product every day and their feedback is a treasure. They give us ideas to upgrade / adapt the product and lead the evolution of the product.

Also, our investors : Alven Capital.

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