Upwave

@noxowe Hi Laszlo, thanks for you question. There are quite a few differences between us actually. Firstly, we are specifically a business team tool. Trello has much broader aims, it can be used for shopping lists for example. Our focus on helping teams collaborate and improve productivity allows us to better meet their needs. You could call it a different philosophy. A lot of our paying teams have actually come to us from Trello. They share many of the same complaints: What we hear most often is that Trello is "bloated" with features they don't need, as a result of that the user interface is "clunky" or "too complex" for some low IT skill team members and therefore not easy to use and more importantly, difficult to onboard the whole team. Here at UpWave our focus is on keeping things as clean and easy to use and onboard as possible. We have made a promise to our users that we will never have what they call "feature creep". This is a scenario where an app keeps adding small new features over time and without realising it they end up with a "bloated" interface and (we believe) unnecessary complexity. For our core user base we are often the first step into digital collaboration tools so this "simple" approach, although it might seem trite, has been absolutely vital to our high growth since launch in June 2016. Now, this commitment to an easy simple tool is not for all teams. Some will need deeper functionality than what we provide but we believe we have a core customer base that needs a product like ours. And this user base is growing rapidly, with paying teams in more than 30 countries all over the world, in industries that vary from accountancy firms in France to breweries in Norway, to dentist practices in Brazil.. In my opinion, team task management solution can be compared to a market like the auto industry. All cars can get you from A to B, but what suits your personal taste and lifestyle the best? There is a lot of choice out there and our approach is unique, just like the make up of every team out there is unique. I hope this answers your question, Laszlo. Please get in touch if you have any follow up questions, we are more than happy to answer.

@danhesketh So what makes UpWave more of a business tool? That you cut out features and promise not to implement new without caution (which is common sense)? I guess you have your audience and I wish you luck but seems like just an another board-lsh PM tool in the line of Trello, Asana and ~10 more commercial solutions as well as tons of free software like Kanbanshi, Kanboard, Taiga etc. But I like Scandinavian aesthetic, that's cool ;)

@vladzima Thanks. Simplifying things is actually really hard. We daily get feature requests that on their own makes a lot of sense. However, taken together they add clutter and complexity. Our target user is moving from excel, post-it's and even pen&paper. Simplicity of use and ease of onboarding teams is vital for them. Trello as you mention recently said in an interview that 50% of their users are technical and 50% non-technical. We target the non-technical users 100% with dedication. Most workers in both the private and public sector worldwide are non-technical, and they are just now looking for alternatives. In that sense UpWave is a business tool where most teams can collaborate, independent of skill level. We are used by breweries, architects, municipalities, airport managers and some (famous) pubs to name but a few. Our differentiation from other players, in addition to simplicity, is that we concentrate on flexibility of processes. We are on the flipside of structured project- and portfolio management, where you have many tools, and have had for years. Finally, we have the minimalistic Scandinavian design, which we want to keep as another differentiator. Appreciate that you like that!

@danhesketh cool, but with @MeisterTask (also having a free plan), whats the difference here?

@ariaitch A full comparison with @meistertask is a bit beyond the scope of a short post, but I will give it a go. On the positive side, MeisterTask has some nice features we do currently not have, such as search in notes (we have that planned), time tracking (which we will never have as that is smoothly solved by others) and more reports. They are in general feature rich, and can serve many purposes for many teams. Our advantages vs. MeisterTask include: - Sleeker design and less clutter - both in general and on notes (design is of course subjective, and minimalism is not for everyone - think Scandinavians vs. Oligarchs) - More team focus from the get-go - Easier onboarding (no annoying confirmation mail - free tip for MeisterTask here) - Simpler UI In addition we have many minor features MeisterTask does not have (to my knowledge) such as drag-n-drop colums, color flexibility, rows for grid system (hidden feature in UpWave to avoid complexity) and more. Lastly, we have full functionality from the start - no free tier. More and more B2B SaaS products are scrapping the Freemium model of yore and moving to 14 or 30 day trial instead.

@kjetil_molokken_ostvold interesting - thanks! Not as short of a post after all 😉

@ariaitch No. It is difficult to keep things short and simple when you are having interesting discussions.

@danhesketh Seems interesting, but I don't see why I can't sign up and use this as an individual user. How would that degrade the experience for teams?

@ravalnishit Hi Nishit, thanks for your question. Glad to hear you like it! Well it's hard to choose a favourite, it's a bit like having a favourite kid - the others might get jealous and it's not fair. But if you are forcing me to choose, here at the office we love the subtask/checklist feature. It means you avoid a lot of clutter and makes it easier to track progress on a particular task. Less visual noise just makes it easier to work out what everyone is supposed to do next.

@odd_moe Appreciate it. And thanks for being an avid user and promoter.

Looks very interesting and seems like a lot of work have been done here! @run 3

Sounds Good, I am also going to try this one @ Winter Olympics

@eonpilot Thanks for the feedback. We guarantee that we will not change our name. Much easier to search for UpWave than our initial name "Someone"...

Very interesting questions @stinhambo. I will try to answer them separately. 1. Idea. The original idea was not a new version of Trello. It was rather a major improvement to a collaboration platform called Symphonical (now abolished). Two of UpWave's founders worked on it for several years. Symphonical got great traction in sign-ups, had enterprise customers with 1000+ users and was one of the first Google Hangout partners (http://www.infoworld.com/article...). It all looked promising. Sadly, Symphonical got way to complicated and bloated, and user onboarding suffered. Also, the business model (freemium) did not work. We are trying to rectify all this with UpWave. 2. Validation. With UpWave, we have worked closely alongside early pilot users. Intercom is a great tool for engaging users and getting feedback. The people we speak to are self-selecting for the most parts. Some users get very engaged and we love developing the product together with them. Also, our development process is extremely agile. We are constantly pushing out new features and improvements, getting early feedback, and iterating again. 3. Asking people to pay. This is an extremely interesting discussion. Not just for us, but the entire SaaS community. After launching, we were freemium for 4-5 months. We expected this to work out fine, but conversion rates were just to low. So we changed from freemium to trial around summertime. This was crucial for our business. It allowed us to: * Only have the most relevant users providing feedback * No costs associated with people who were never going to pay anyway * Increase revenue! We both hope and believe the freemium craze will end, as it is unsustainable in the long term. Too many companies have free versions with too much offered, while their paid versions are overpriced. Look for example at the recent debacle about Evernote's changes in pricing plans and cutting down on free features. They gave away too much for free. Also, we know that some of our major competitors have insanely low conversion rates, with less than 1% converting from sign-ups to paying users.

@punkscience Hi Darryl, thanks for the support! As I said elsewhere, our approach won't be everyone and I agree, it's a competitive space but it's not a winner takes all market. There's room for smaller players to establish themselves and grow, as we are doing at present. Long lists is actually a huge challenge for everyone who is using tools like ours. That's why we built the subtasks/list functionality to avoid clutter. We made a promise to our users that we would keep it simple and we continue to get a lot of feedback on just that so we are happy to oblige. As for Omar, we find that some of our less technically proficient users are still using internet explorer. The first advice we give thim is always this: