Hi there,

We have a nice batch of new readers, so we wanted to take a step back for this edition.

Want to see our scheduler in action? Here's a demo.

We set out to build a company that helps teams make the most of their time. Why? Because time time is the most valuable asset we can spend only once. Becoming more aware of the fact that we have limited time is one of our key beliefs. And, not coincidentally, the central point in Rick’s bestselling book, launching internationally in February 2022.

There are thousands of books and apps that promise more focus and productivity. A lot of them require a healthy dose of discipline. You might be someone who can do that, but most in your team might not. We made it our goal to build a tool that solves a problem instead of yet another complicated workflow to adopt.

From the outset we knew we wanted to build something to help find time for what matters most. Our research confirmed this: most teams know what’s important, they just don’t have the time. Schedules are packed and distractions everywhere. And because everyone has different working schedules – something that’s enlarged since the pandemic – it’s impossible to be mindful of everyones preferences. So we opt for the very next empty spot we can find.

It does not matter how empathetic you are as a leader or co-worker, you simply don't have the time to make it work for everyone.

So when we started building the first version of Rise in May 2021, we set out to fix this. Rise is a webbased calendar that sits on top of the Google Calendar API, so there's no signup or data migration required. We believe building a new client is crucial to drastically improve the UX for scheduling. It's also a differentiator that we believe will boost adoption. Finally: by building our own client it's easier to expand to include other services than if we would build a plugin specifically for Google Calendar.

With the first version of this scheduler ready for us to try, we figured we wanted a way to let teams experience the value of Rise without actually using Rise. To do that we built a feature we called Rise Report. With a single Google login, we analyze all calendars of a team and (virtually) reschedule as many internal events we can find using our scheduler. Before and after we measure time to focus (at least 120 mins of uninterrupted time) and fragmented time (the pockets of time shorter than 120 mins).

The results absolutely blew us away. Without changing how many meetings teams have, we estimate that Rise can get back hundreds of hours to focus every week. There's even more potential, since the scheduler is quite conservative: we skip events that are long, with external people or are overlapping other events, for example. So far we ran the reports for about 30 different companies, and here are some results:

Next we started using the report to pitch the team. Our goal was to get one or two teams to agree to becoming launching partners and to roll out Rise internally. We transformed the data in a deck and started scheduling calls. We priced Rise at €20 per user per month and forced ourselves to try and actually close the teams we interviewed. So far, we signed three teams right away. They said things like: "I was aware there's a lot of time to win, but if this amount of hours is really true, this is an absolute no-brainer" and "We're always looking for tools that can help bring back more focus and this seems super promising". Three more companies have now seen the data and we'll follow up soon (we did not get a single direct "no"!)

Initially, we were skeptical of doing another productivity tool. Or to be more precise: we were skeptical of building a scalable and viable business with a product most users perceive as free. It's not difficult to get traction on a waitinglist and Twitter with nice screenshots. It gives a false sense of progress. It's way more difficult to figure out what to offer to actually convince leaders at companies that Rise is an essential product. We now have initial proof that those leaders are seeing the benefit and are willing to invest in a product that helps improve scheduling, focus and performance.