Emails, instant messaging and cloud storage endlessly multiply the channels employees have to access knowledge within their own company, sometimes creating a rabbit hole in which crucial information can get lost.
A team of five co-founders at Boston startup Thoughtblox didn't want people to keep wasting time by digging into a folder of docs. So, they created a web platform to store, organize and update in real time all the pieces of information that companies need to keep growing—things like customer feedback, notes from a conference, best practices and new ideas.
"There's a type of information within groups of businesses that we think is falling into the cracks; We call [it] 'working knowledge,'" said co-founder Jennifer Vu. "We want to be the first real home to that working knowledge."
“We want to be the Legos for your organizational mind.”
Recently, the software company attracted the attention of Village Global, the early-stage VC firm backed by some prominent names in the tech industry like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos (who are also some of the stockholders behind clean energy-focused fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures) and Mark Zuckerberg.
Cambridge-based Thoughtblox was the first Boston company to be invited into Village Global’s Network accelerator program, which the startup completed last year. The three-month program, called Catalyst, aims at speeding up the growth of formation-stage companies via a personalized growth plan. It came with a cash investment of $150,000 from Village Global.
The company got in touch with Village Global thanks to serial entrepreneur Jennifer Lum, who's a network leader for Village Global in Boston and helped them identify and invest in entrepreneurs. Lum, whose company Forge.AI came out of stealth in December last year with $22 million Series A, is also an investor in Thoughtblox.
Here's a video showing how Thoughtblox 2.0 works:
Think of the Thoughtblox web app as a corporate social network, or as an internal wiki—a site on which users collaboratively modify content. It works by creating groups of people who contribute to the collective wisdom by adding posts. These post are then tagged and classified so they're easy to locate by the right people, even after months.
The idea is to create a dynamic database for needs that go beyond immediate communication. In fact, CEO Brad Glisson and the Thoughtblox team use Slack, which they see as a different tool from their software. "We do more what we call 'task conversations' in Slack, so it's like quick exchanges, like 'Hey, can you guys meet in 15 minutes?'," he said, noting that Slack works well for small, tightened teams.
"We're particularly focused on growth-stage companies, so it may be 50 people going to 100 really fast," Glisson said. "We want to be the Legos for your organizational mind."
