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Swit, a collaboration suite that offers ‘freedom from integrations,’ raises $6 million in seed funding
A marketplace dominated by Slack and Microsoft Teams, along with a host of other smaller workplace communication apps, might seem to leave little room for a new entrant, but Swit wants to prove that wrong. The app combines messaging with a roster of productivity tools, like task management, calendars and Gantt charts, to give teams “freedom from integrations.” Originally founded in Seoul and now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Swit announced today that it has raised a $6 million seed round led by Korea Investment Partners, with participation from Hyundai Venture Investment Corporation and Mirae Asset Venture Investment.
Along with an investment from Kakao Ventures last year, this brings Swit’s total seed funding to about $7 million. Swit’s desktop and mobile apps were released in March and since then more than 450 companies have adopted it, with 40,000 individual registered users. The startup was launched last year by CEO Josh Lee and Max Lim, who previously co-founded auction.co.kr, a Korean e-commerce site acquired by eBay in 2001.
While Slack, which recently went public, has become so synonymous with the space that “Slack me” is now part of workplace parlance at many companies, Lee says Swit isn’t playing catch-up. Instead, he believes Swit benefits from “last mover advantage,” solving the shortfalls of other workplace messaging, collaboration and productivity apps by integrating many of their functions into one hub.
“We know the market is heavily saturated with great unicorns, but many companies need multiple collaboration apps and there is nothing that seamlessly combines them, so users don’t have to go back and forth between two platforms,” Lee tells TechCrunch. Many employees rely on Slack or Microsoft Teams to chat with one another, on top of several project management apps, like Asana, Jira, Monday and Confluence, and email to communicate with people at other companies (Lee points to a M.io report that found most businesses use at least two messaging apps and four to seven collaboration tools).
Lee says he used Slack for more than five years and during that time, his teammates added integrations from Asana, Monday, GSuite and Office365, but were unsatisfied with how they worked.
“All we could do with the integrations was receive mostly text-based notifications and there were also too many overlapping features,” he says. “We realized that working with multiple environments reduced team productivity and increased communication overhead.” In very large organizations, teams or departments sometimes use different messaging and collaboration apps, creating yet more friction.
Swit’s goal is to cover all those needs in one app. It comes with integrated Kanban task management, calendars and Gantt charts, and at the end of this year about 20 to 30 bots and apps will be available in its marketplace. Swit’s pricing tier currently has free and standard tiers, with a premium tier for enterprise customers planned for fall. The premium version will have full integration with Office365 and GSuite, allowing users to drag-and-drop emails into panels or convert them into trackable tasks.
While being a late-mover gives Swit certain advantages, it also means it must convince users to switch from their current apps, which is always a challenge when it comes to attracting enterprise clients. But Lee is optimistic. After seeing a demo, he says 91% of potential users registered on Swit, with more than 75% continuing to use it every day. Many of them used Asana or Monday before, but switched to Swit because they wanted to more easily communicate with teammates while planning tasks. Some are also gradually transitioning over from Slack to Swit for all their messaging (Swit recently released a Slack migration tool that enables teams to move over channels, workspaces and attachments. Migration tools for Asana, Trello and Jira are also planned).
In addition to “freedom from integrations,” Lee says Swit’s competitive advantages include being developed from the start for small businesses as well as large enterprises that still frequently rely on email to communicate across different departments or locations. Another differentiator is that all of Swit’s functions work on both desktop and mobile, which not all integrations in other collaboration apps can.
“That means if people integrate multiple apps into a desktop app or web browser, they might not be able to use them on mobile. So if they are looking for data, they have to search app by app, channel by channel, product by product, so data and information is scattered everywhere, hair on fire,” Lee says. “We provide one centralized command center for team collaboration without losing context and that is one of our biggest sources of customer satisfaction.”
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Hello Alfred launches new platform to reach more buildings and improve accessibility
Hello Alfred — the startup that assigns in-home assistants to take care of your recurring chores and tasks — has announced the launch of a new service tier that will provide more properties and residents with access to the company’s underlying technology.
The company, which won the Startup Battlefield competition at our 2014 Disrupt event in San Francisco, looks to unlock valuable time for users by handling the long list of small routine items that add up over the course of a week and still require human oversight.
Hello Alfred partners with building owners to provide residents with dedicated home managers that assist with various errands and on-request services, such as apartment cleaning, grocery delivery, laundry services, prescription refills and more. Users have a direct line of communication with the company’s hospitality team through Hello Alfred’s mobile app, where they can manage tasks and set recurring appointments.
The new platform, “Powered by Alfred,” acts as a fairly similar but more accessible alternative to the company’s current offering. Residents in buildings equipped with “Powered by Alfred” are given access to all of the company’s solutions with the exception of the weekly visits from dedicated home managers currently included in the existing service. By excluding the dedicated in-home service, Hello Alfred is able to offer its new service tier at a lower price point and integrate with more buildings faster.
Property owners using “Powered by Alfred” can customize packages to include the services that best fit the needs of their residents and can upgrade or change service levels at any time. Both residents and building owners using the new platform are also given more control and direct access to Hello Alfred’s proprietary technology, allowing users to control functions that normally fall under the purview of the company’s dedicated home managers.
Additionally, with the launch of the new offering, Hello Alfred will be consolidating its various solutions under one central app, where residents and building managers can handle all inquiries, appointments and payments.
Hello Alfred’s new service tier, “Powered by Alfred,” provides a single, shared access point for resident and property owners to manage inquiries and drive property performance / Hello Alfred Press Kit
The launch of “Powered by Alfred” seems to be a natural evolution for the company, which seeks to make its offering more accessible to all residents of all backgrounds.
Hello Alfred previously employed a consumer-facing business model, in which customers would pay a monthly subscription fee for the array of in-home services and access to the company’s team of hospitality specialists, referred to as Alfreds.
However, around the time of the startup’s Series B round, Hello Alfred adopted the model of partnering directly with property owners to offer its services complimentary to residents. The partnership structure was not only a more conducive model for scaling but also enabled the company to offer the same services to any resident in an Alfred-equipped building, regardless of socioeconomic status.
Hello Alfred quickly built up a sizeable backlog of property owners hoping to integrate the platform into their units, according to the company. However, the task of maintaining dedicated staffing for every unit in every location made it difficult for the Alfred team to satisfy its swelling demand, having to instead focus resources primarily on luxury properties.
With “Powered by Alfred” removing in-home management services, the company has been able to improve accessibility and better satisfy the market’s appetite for its services, now rolling out the offering to non-luxury buildings and properties that previously sat in its pipeline.
Behind the launch of the new platform — which the company has piloted over the course of several months — Hello Alfred has increased its market share by more than 50 percent, with its services now available in more than 150,000 residential properties.
“We want Alfred to be a utility. We want to make “help” a universal utility and make it something anyone can access,” Hello Alfred CEO and co-founder Marcela Sapone told TechCrunch. “We wanted to find a way where we could accelerate growth and get human-focused help into urban buildings to help most urban environments.”
The launch represents the latest step in Hello Alfred’s broader expansion plans, which appear to have ramped up in recent months. Hello Alfred is now active in 16 cities — including Houston, where the company plans to launch next week — with its new offering available across all of its active markets. The startup already boasts an impressive partnership roster that includes more than 20 of the largest property owners in the U.S., and the Alfred team expects its new offering to open up further opportunities for partnerships across different property classes and different stages of a resident’s life cycle.
“As WeWork transformed commercial real estate, Hello Alfred is transforming residential real estate, and redefining what it means to live in a city today,” said Sapone. “This business expansion allows us to not only satisfy increasing demand for our service, but to connect every part of the resident experience — from the moment you sign your lease, until the moment you move to another Hello Alfred building.”
To date, the company has raised just over $63.5 million in venture capital, according to data from PitchBook, from prestigious investment brands that include New Enterprise Associates, Spark Capital, SV Angel, Moderne Ventures, Invesco and others.
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Task management app Asana takes on the spreadsheet with ‘custom fields’
Asana — the enterprise SaaS business started by Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and early Facebook employee Justin Rosenstein — has made a name for itself as a workflow and task management app that aims to help teams be more productive by making it much easier to figure out what needs to get done. But today, the company is taking the wraps off a new service that will… Read More
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Slay squad goals, not just tasks, with Lattice
You know what to do at work today, but do you know why? Goals. Having clear goals is critical to keeping productivity and morale high on any team. Whether it’s a launch date, level of traction, sales quota or hiring objective, teams perform better with well-defined motives. Lattice weaves goals into your workflow. Built by Y Combinator president Sam Altman’s brother Jack, Lattice… Read More
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Wrike Brings Deep Customization Options To Its Project Management Service
Work management tools tend to come in two flavors: either as a really expensive but customizable enterprise solution or as a more consumer-oriented product that gives you very little flexibility. Wrike hopes to bridge this gap with the latest update to its work management and collaboration service today. Read More
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Asana Doubles Down On Mobile, Releases New iOS App
Asana, a company that provides collaboration tools to corporations and groups, today released a unified iOS application for iPhone and iPad. As other companies have in recent quarters, Asana built its new iOS app using native code. (The app is due to land in the app store at any moment, so if you don’t see it in the App Store, hang tight.) The firm has an Android app similar to its new… Read More
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