Portland startup Edify’s engineering onboarding product is ready for the masses.
The company released its product, called Eddy, Monday after testing it with about 20 beta customers since last summer. Eddy is a software tool that helps automate the onboarding process for engineering organizations.
The tool lives in Slack for now but will be available for Microsoft Teams soon, the company said. Eddy walks new engineering hires and their managers through the onboarding process in a scheduled way. The company has found it can cut the onboarding process from seven months down to 30 days.
“Engineering onboarding is complex and technical,” said Edify Chief Technology Officer Kate Farmer in a written statement. “This often overlooked and underserved part of building remote teams has led to a $22 billion churn problem in the engineering industry.”
By streamlining onboarding, the company wants to help companies retain new hires. According to company research one third of new hires start looking for new jobs prior to completing months-long onboarding.
The company’s early beta customers are converting to paid customers, said CEO Kristen Buchanan, and many are expanding their use of the product and adding new engineering teams within an organization.
Customers range in size from 10 engineers on staff to some with more than 100.
The company is an alum of both Techstars Seattle and the Portland Incubator Experiment. It is backed by venture capital investors including Flying Fish Ventures, Portland Seed Fund and Atlassian Ventures, the venture arm of software maker Atlassian.
Since the beta testing, the company has made significant product changes, Buchanan said. There is a new web app dashboard for managers that they can use to create and modify team onboarding plans, and there are new ways for new hires to connect with teammates for support through the first 30 days.
