Speaker 1: All right. I am so excited for you all to listen to this episode of Forward Thinking Founders. Just before we get started, I just wanted to allow you to understand that we are officially beginning an e-mail list, as we have some major plans for the podcast and we'll be telling people on the email list very first and most likely only the people around the email list. So really feel free to sign up and get around the e-mail list at f20r.com. That's F as in Frank, two, zero, R as in red, .com, and I'll see you over there. Get more information about task toolspodcast
Speaker 1: All suitable. How is it going, every person? Welcome to one more episode of Forward Thinking Founders, exactly where we're speaking to founders about their companies, their visions for the future and ways to collide. Today, I am quite excited to be talking to John Xie, who's the CEO and co-founder of Taskade. John, welcome towards the show.
John Xie: Yeah, thank you. Fantastic to become right here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good to have you on. Let's just get proper into it. For people that never know, can you clarify what Taskade is?
John Xie: Yeah, confident. So, we constructed this seriously crazy tool and it is a combination of lots of points in one, but in the end, the vision has been to create a unified workspace for remote and distributed teams. And with Taskade, we created it extremely straightforward for teams to chat and video conference with one a different, manage tasks and projects, but in addition write product specs and documents, all with one straightforward and sophisticated tool.
John Xie: And I assume one part that is actually stunning about Taskade is that it is not merely made for real-time collaboration, it's also asynchronous. So it might perform across with distinctive teams on distinctive time zones. As well as the app at this time today is accessible on virtually every platform imaginable, from web, to desktop, to iOS and Android, to even obtaining a Firefox and Chrome extension.
Speaker 1: Holy smokes. We'll have to go into that inside a second, right after we dive into some of the features and whatnot. But, oh wow, every platform. That is awesome.
Speaker 1: All appropriate, so let's stay on the product for now. So, can you go into a number of the sort of some... I know you've tons of capabilities because I've used Taskade, but can you go into a number of your favorite characteristics and also the techniques that teams can get benefit out of them on Taskade?
John Xie: Yeah, certain. So I believe the key elements of Taskade is definitely the reality that you possess the task management portion after which you also have the communication aspect of it. The projects on Taskade are extremely special since it is practically like a piece of origami. You could produce a activity list then you could transform it into a mind map using the same data structure. Then one of the teammates could collaborate with you around the similar project but within a column view, and then he or she has to switch it back into a job list view.
John Xie: When we began this thought, the idea was to assist visual thinkers and people which are like me, which might be just crazy and can not focus and concentrate, and have like a Schuyler brain, to be capable to strategy, organize and actually focus on the big picture, but additionally definitely have the ability to drill down and assume compact and create points down and break it into tiny actionable methods.
John Xie: So Taskade genuinely is like an outlining tool at its core, that is incredibly flexible, truly real time, having a chat and communication element attached to it. That is essentially a chat room next to your project.
Speaker 1: All correct, so we're going to role play slightly, for the reason that I'm not by far the most ... or I'm someone that undoubtedly wants a tool in this category of organization and communication. And I'm type of one of those people that scatterbrained somewhat bit. I have some papers over there, I have some stuff on Google docs, whatever.
Speaker 1: So, I'm curious, for people like what you just talked about that have a scatterbrain, let's say they are founders, turn into a founder. What would be your assistance or ideas on what to complete on Taskade very first? What to add in 1st? The best way to get the most out of it within the beginning, then the way to ramp up? I am curious if you had been just providing me assistance as a potential user.
John Xie: Yeah, positive. So I believe one thing that we actually encourage new users and new teams to complete is the fact that you start off off with one of our current templates, proper? After which from there on, truly try and get to find out some of the fundamental keyboard shortcuts, like tab and shift-tab to outdent and indent, and be capable of collapse and un-collapse diverse sections inside your document, within your process list. And of course, playing around with the unique views and components.
John Xie: It may possibly sound incredibly difficult, but in reality, we definitely try our greatest to help keep this product as straightforward and as elegant as you possibly can, since we recognize, having constructed and designed products for customers within the past, that truly the second you make things even two or 3 clicks away, no one will ever learn it.
John Xie: But given that day one, I believe for us, Taskade has been designed for remote and distributed teams which might be looking to truly just get things carried out and get function carried out, from ideation all of the strategy to completion. So being capable to brainstorm, outline then start to tracking the process, assigning the job and syncing that with your calendar. And after that going back to the exact same precise app, to ping your teammates to get an update, and to ticking that box off and checking it off and finishing it.
John Xie: And I consider currently you see teams carrying out this across a number of tools. And we ourselves have always been hacking together a lot of distinct tools in an effort to get this accomplished. And that's where the original idea came about, combining collaboration with communication about tasks and notes and receiving work carried out.
Speaker 1: So, you possibly do not like when people make comparisons like this. So just for understanding, I am going to produce it.
Speaker 1: Would you say you are form of like a Slack plus Asana combined with the exact same backend and flow that communicate with every single other and seamlessly? Are you able to describe it like that?
John Xie: Yeah, sure. I feel in numerous approaches, we've a whole lot of teams coming to Taskade from products like Asana, products like Trello, and after that they were using Taskade for communication within the pretty beginning, but not to the sense that it really is hashtag channel-based, proper? Like Slack exactly where it gets much more focused around, I consider, group chat or team discussions.
John Xie: With Taskade, conversation and discussion is often inside context and significantly far more focused around a project you happen to be operating on. And that was portion of our philosophy where, okay, if you would like to chat and also you would like to socialize and you choose to have a sense of a neighborhood and belonging, you may do that with quite a few different group chat tools. But for us you could really video conference on the project itself. You can also reference the job that you happen to be operating on on a project as you happen to be chatting. But it's not about chit-chat, and yeah, in a lot of ways, our users obtain it better than getting a group chat tool due to the way that we've designed communication on Taskade, and we'll continue to genuinely increase that as we go forward.
John Xie: In terms of the Asana comparison, I feel it is a gorgeous product. I consider that the reality may be the company has been about for 10 years. They've a great deal of technical debt within their product, however it is incredibly effective, and I believe for teams like ourselves and nimbler teams which might be technical too as product-driven you truly don't want 90% from the functions that's there. And to Taskade is occasionally like... The original mindset was maybe it truly is better to just start out a new, and commence having a fresh plate, and come with a brand new product concept built on a modern Slack, with writing in mind very first and foremost, not just adding one process assignment at a time. And really giving users that all-natural feeling of pen and paper for tasks and communication and collaboration. That's the thesis.
John Xie: But, yeah, so you are employing, I believe, Asana and Slack are the larger or the most significant, some of the biggest players within this space at the moment.
Speaker 1: Nicely, I assume what's interesting is the fact that they may be huge players. There is tons of significant players. It really is like significant space, giant market place, a great deal of players. But you are tackling more than one area of it, which I think is intriguing. And as a way to do that, it sounds like you've taken this technique of being everywhere. What I imply by which is, I'm on your website right now and it says, "Download our apps on iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Chrome, and Firefox."
Speaker 1: I am curious how... I do not even know what to ask. How lengthy did it take to construct out all of these? And more importantly, the superior question is, why did you start out with all of them? Or did you not, and that's just recently? I'm curious to hear ethos about it, building there on all the platforms.
John Xie: Yeah, sure. I believe because day one, it was incredibly significant for us to create a tool that is scalable and accessible across every single platform, mainly because we are designing for teams that happen to be distributed for teams that could be collaborating with clientele. And also you could be on iOS, they could be on Android. You could be somebody that stayed inside the office all day. I may possibly be someone that is certainly traveling a good deal. And with Taskade, considering that day one, it was component of our foundation when we had been designing product specs and technical specs. And fortunately, there is certainly technologies now that makes it possible for us to seriously scale across platforms.
John Xie: And initially and foremost we're web primarily based, ideal? But then we are in a position to make a web-based product natively for just about every platform as a result of technologies like React, to React Native and so on and so forth. But, yeah, it is a thing that's extremely difficult, and most people when speaking to us earlier onset, "No way you guys are going to frigging do this." And we have been in a position to actually pull this collectively inside a matter of a year in addition to a half or so with a very little group. But even in the very starting, we bootstrapped the company for, I would say, virtually six, seven, eight months ahead of we even had a single verify or interest from angel investors.
Speaker 1: I desire to get into an region that we never speak about a whole lot on the podcast which is operating the team and managing that team and whatnot, even when the team is like you and a couple other people. So, let's talk about this.
Speaker 1: In the last year along with a half as you constructed out all of these, how big was your team? And just for context, how big is your group now? Has it changed or you still staying super lean?
John Xie: Yeah, sure. So we started off with three co-founders, Stan, Deon and myself. And after that as we began building this product out, we scaled to 5 people total. And now we're nine total. The team has been totally distributed considering the fact that day one. Stan is primarily based in Singapore. Sheila, our initial engineering employ, she is primarily based in Philippines. Ellis is based in Malaysia. And after that, most recently, we added even more members for the team that are spread across.
John Xie: So for us, we're dogfooding our personal product. And genuinely, with regards to operations, when it comes to truly understanding the aspect of remote operate and distributed teams, we don't even believe about it in a sense of our consumers, since lots of people inform me remote collaboration to them may very well be the truth that they are functioning across the developing, across the street, or on a unique floor, due to the fact they don't have time for you to book an office, right? Or meeting space. But for us, really, it's across distinctive times zones and figuring out the way to ideal optimize for the time which you do have face-to-face with every other for real time.
John Xie: After which I assume one philosophy that I really do think in is the truth that real-time from time to time, but asynchronous collaboration the majority of the time. And which has worked seriously well for us. And additionally, I believe one thing that truly assists would be the reality that Stan, Deon and I, we're all gamers. Deon and I actually met online playing Star Traveler in middle school. Dan located out we had been neighbors in Queens, and that is how I began working together. And Stan can be a big Dota fan, Dota 2 fan and I assume for us we're like, "Okay, games have already figured this idea out with regards to multiplayer, with regards to tips on how to make this sense of neighborhood and to scale." And we wanted to bring a great deal of those elements in to the workplace, into process management, into getting things performed. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I desire to deviate somewhat bit and go down that rabbit hole slightly. I've been thinking the rabbit hole of games. I'm interested to hear, what do you see going on in... Properly, in fact sorry, just before I ask any of that, are you currently paying interest at all to the gaming market and Esports or any of that or are you quite heads down on Taskade?
John Xie: I'll say no. We have been definitely always keeping our eyes open, something tech connected, yeah.
Speaker 1: Got it, okay. So I'd just love your thoughts on what's happening in EA sports and what's... I do not know and where do you think it really is going? I am fascinated with that complete world and I assume after VR catches as much as it, we're going to be live inside the future for sure. So, I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on Esports and exactly where do you think it's going and are you currently involved with Esports at all?
John Xie: Yeah, no, positive. It's really funny you simply brought up VR mainly because right after YC we have been like, let's take a smaller break. We really purchased the Oculus Quest and then Deon began designing Taskade UX and mockups as an alternative to Oculus Quest. I believe it was the brush paint or one in the paint ups in 3D. I believed that was hilarious and we have screen captured it, but we truly do assume that the way that gaming has evolved, it is often been like driving multiplayer and this concept of lower latency forward, to bring people collectively irrespective of where you might be.
John Xie: But with Esports and with the launch of league of legends for example, it really created this whole ecosystem of like people taking games seriously. And I think that should continue on. It is just a matter of time where this becomes a lot more and more mainstream. I would say inside VR itself although, I haven't seen anything that seriously took off in relation to multiplayer inside the VR ecosystem but I do consider that could change. Anything that that is watchable, as entertainment but also in the VR round. That'll be seriously frigging fascinating. And I am hunting forward to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I personally am waiting for... well, not necessarily waiting, but operating for the day where I amass some amount of wealth and after that I'll 100% open up a sandbox VR franchise in Phoenix, Arizona. And just kind of make... If I still live in Phoenix and just make that the spot for VR Esports, if it really is achievable. I see sandbox VR carrying out their issue and I just believe it is so exciting of knowing the power of VR. I am definitely interested to determine what is going to take place in that. Not in the next five years but far more so inside the next 15. I believe in 15 years we're going to possess some definitely exciting stuff.
Speaker 1: And anyways, so you happen to be maybe the seventh or eighth individual non coincidentally that is come onto the podcast that has this interest in remote operate, the remote movement. And I am sort of just curious, I don't believe I've ever asked this ahead of, why is remote taking place now and how far do you consider it's going to go?
John Xie: Certain. I feel for us when we started constructing Taskade, there is this complete movement, really it didn't start out really taking place back in early 2017 and in 2016. But for me personally, even for the duration of higher school when I was building my initially company, my group was just like totally remote because I had to go to school and I was operating a business with people in Canada, inside the US, in India and using what ever technology feasible so as to function with them. And at that time I remembered there was the PalmPilot. Then there was the Blackberry. There was also like a Windows mobile phone. And just technologies was not there but to make operate probable and to make remote function and distributed seriously achievable.
