Blog

In this Series, we’ve shown you how our Product, Marketing, Sales and Customer Services Teams use Kindling among themselves, within the company and with our key customers and partners.

Using our product has allowed us to better communicate with each other and with our customers, to solve problems as they arise and to find areas of the product that need improvement. Zooming up a bit, we’ve also learned several key lessons along the way. Some of these were hard-earned, and many apply to any start-up. We figured that sharing these would be a good way to wrap up the Series.

Lesson 1 — We Don’t Know Everything.
We’re smart, but we don’t know everything. By asking both our employees and our customers how we need to get better, we acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers. With every idea submitted, regardless of its source, we are reminded of that very true fact. A start-up needs to be a listening and learning entity, because you’re trying to create something anew in an uncertain, often risky environment. Only by listening and quickly adapting can you navigate towards success.

Are you asking the right questions of your employees? Your customers are trying to talk to you, are you listening?

Kindling was born to address a need — a growing group of designers and technologists were finding it difficult to keep track of ideas and the discussions around these ideas. We were trying to address the problems that were emerging as we scaled the business . We didn’t have a way to centralize ideas, to manage the feedback from our customers, to communicate with our remote employees, or a non “gut” way of determining what development items should take priority over others. Email was failing us.

Kindling owes its success not just to selling our software, but also to using it. This post is an introspective on how we at Kindling use our own product (or dogfooding, in context of software). From Product Management to Development to Sales & Marketing, we all find benefits from being connected to the centre of our business — ideas.

Part 3: Customer Services
Part 1 of this series was an interview with our CEO and Product Lead on how he and the Kindling Product Team use Kindling to shape the product roadmap, and Part 2 was an interview with our Strategic Account Executive on how our Sales Team uses Kindling to add a market perspective to product discussions. Part 3 is an interview with our Director of Customer Services, on how the Customer Services Team uses Kindling to better address our customers’ needs.

Kindling was born to address a need — a growing group of designers and technologists were finding it difficult to keep track of ideas and the discussions around these ideas. We were trying to address the problems that were emerging as we scaled the business. We didn’t have a way to centralize ideas, to manage the feedback from our customers, to communicate with our remote employees, or a non “gut” way of determining what development items should take priority over others. Email was failing us (click here to learn more about a free program designed exclusively for Startups).

Kindling owes its success not just to selling our software, but also to using it. This post is an introspective on how we at Kindling use our own product (or dogfooding, in context of software). From Product Management to Development to Sales & Marketing, we all find benefits from being connected to the center of our business — ideas.

Kindling was born to address a need — a growing group of designers and technologists were finding it difficult to keep track of ideas and the discussions around these ideas. We were trying to address the problems that were emerging as we scaled the business. We didn’t have a way to centralize ideas, to manage the feedback from our customers, to communicate with our remote employees, or a non “gut” way of determining what development items should take priority over others. Email was failing us (click here to learn more about a free program designed exclusively for Start-ups).

Kindling owes its success not just to selling our software, but also to using it. This post is an introspective on how we at Kindling use our own product (or dogfooding, in context of software). From Product Management to Development to Sales & Marketing, we all find benefits from being connected to the centre of our business — ideas.

Part 1 – Product
The first part of this series is an interview with CEO and Product Lead focused on how he and the Kindling Product Team use Kindling to engage with employees, partners and customers to help shape the product roadmap.

We’re announcing a new program today, Kindling Loves Startups, where we’re giving away 50 seats of Kindling to any startup for free. This post gives some of the background for the program, why we’re doing this and how Kindling solves a real need for every startup.

I love startups. Everything’s ahead of them, they’re like an NFL team in preseason — all hope. We’re gonna win the Super Bowl this year.

Through the course of my work, I often get to meet startup founders. I always enjoy these conversations. If you ever are feeling tired or demotivated, have a coffee with someone involved in starting a company — their energy and optimism is contagious.

Navigating a startup from creation to success can be viewed as an exercise in expert decision-making. Choosing the right things to focus on — and the things to not focus on — might be the most important skill for startup founders and early employees. And I know from my own experiences starting companies that there is no shortage of things to do, and no lack of opportunity.