Even though working from home has helped many employees to have a much more relaxed approach to work, there has definitely been some drawbacks to the work-from-home culture. With interactions minimized to just virtual connections, working together in teams has become a comparatively less productive process in today’s work atmosphere. When new members join the team or new hires enter the workspace, they lack genuine connection with their co-workers.
Bill is a Slack app designed to help teammates bond and feel excited to work together. The pandemic has resulted in an almost complete shift of work from offices to homes, Bill is that team member that will bring everyone together and create a more enjoyable atmosphere for teams working online. In conversation with co-founder David, we learn more about Bill and the ways in which it will help the workforce!
What is the startup/product about? Give us a brief description of it.
When your team gets to know each other better, great things happen. Teammates will begin to trust each other more, they will be excited to show up and work with each other, and maybe they will form meaningful relationships outside of work.
Bill is a Slack app that uses fun icebreaker activities, games, and events to help your team get to know each other better. Imagine Bill as an active member of your team who is always designing new activities based on your team’s needs. You can rely on him to elevate your team culture and simply bring more fun into your Slack workspace.
How many co-founders are there? Please introduce them and their backgrounds.
David has a background in film production and creative writing. Steve has a background in design and advertising. After meeting Steve while interning at an ad agency in 2018, the two began working on a variety of projects together.
How big is the entire team currently?
2
How did you come up with the idea? What motivated you to do this?
Early this year we decided that we wanted to solve problems for teams working remotely. Since we both came from creative backgrounds, we first started interviewing designers working remotely to learn about their problems. After talking to a bunch of people, we realized that the problems specific remote designers were facing weren’t ones we were willing to try and solve.
But, we began to learn about the big problems companies working remotely are facing. One of those was building and maintaining culture. Especially for companies that are growing. How does a growing company that is working remotely ensure that new hires feel like they are part of the team? And how does leadership find the time to create new “culture” activities? These are the big questions we asked ourselves while building Bill.
What are the marketing plans apart from the product hunt/beta list launch? How are you planning to acquire new users?
We do a lot of cold emails. It’s a fun, but difficult process of trying out new copy that will get our target users to talk with us. We’re going to begin releasing more articles on our blog, and attract some attention through SEO. We’re also active on our twitter account @billisfun.
Do you have a separate dedicated team to take care of marketing (digital marketing/traditional marketing)? Which digital platforms are you focusing more on?
No. We’re focused primarily on Twitter.
What according to you is the biggest challenge that you faced? Is it product development or marketing or scaling or … ?
Selling has probably been our biggest challenge we had to face. None of us come from a selling background, so learning the selling process took a lot longer than we expected.
Who are your competitors/alternatives? What sets you apart from them?
There are great products out there tackling culture issues like Donut and Know Your Team. When we were developing Bill, we were very focused on making Bill as human as possible. We felt that as a culture app, having a bot that is personable and relatable was very important. Our users feel like Bill is actually a part of the team.
What are the future plans with the product/startup? Any new features you are planning on?
We have a new feature coming called “Talk With Bill”. The idea is to create a podcast where we have a conversation with someone from your team. We ask them questions about their life, career, and personal interests. We also handle the recording and editing of the podcast. This will be a fun way for teammates to get to know each other better.
Know a great start-up story or want to share your own? Write to us at interact@insidermediacorp.com and we will get back to you. For more updates follow Venture Mirror on Facebook