Businesses can share a lot of information during meetings. But disseminating that information to all relevant team members after the fact can be tricky. That’s where Hugo comes in.
The software company offers a program that promotes active sharing of important business insights. You can learn about the tool and the company behind it in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Offers a software product for team meetings.
Co-founder and CEO Josh Lowy told Small Business Trends, “Hugo is team meeting note software that gives fast-growing companies a common platform for their team to save and share meeting insights, in real time.”
Business Niche
Promoting active sharing.
Lowy says, “Most documentation products on the market focus on providing a place for storing business knowledge. The problem with a ‘set and forget’ solution is that team alignment will never be solved if the information that everyone needs to stay on the same page is inaccessible and hard to find. Hugo is a solution for teams to actively share meeting insights in real time, becoming part of the fabric of collaboration. Hugo meeting notes power teamwork through notes that are shareable and actionable across the business.
How the Business Got Started
To promote better feedback within another organization.
Lowy explains, “Hugo was actually born out of solving a problem for ourselves while we were facing challenges building a totally different product. At the time, we were focused on meetings, but the solution revolved around meeting preparation for individuals.”
Biggest Win
Getting their first paying customer.
Lowy adds, “In an industry saturated with so many tools, seeing a business part with dollars, to solve a pain point that we could solve, was one of the most encouraging indicators that we were on to something.”
Biggest Risk
Switching to a completely different model.
Lowy says, “As much as I hate the connotations of the word ‘pivot’, choosing to discard the original iteration of Hugo and start from scratch building Hugo as it is today was undoubtedly our biggest risk. In retrospect, discarding a product with limited traction for a product that the market says it would use and pay for seems like an obvious decision, but the reality of building a product-based business like ours is that you always feel that ‘one more feature’ will get you there, so throwing away months of hard work feels unbelievably risky.”
Lesson Learned
Don’t wait to grow your customer base.
Lowy says, “In the beginning we over indexed on the product being able to solve all of our problems. I think if we started again, there would be more of an upfront focus on growth marketing. Early wins on the marketing side can help get the flywheel going even when the product isn’t at 100%.”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Bringing in more talent.
Lowy explains, “Being a software company we’re turning ideas and hard work into tangible product. More brains and hands = more product, faster.”
Team Activity
Filling out a decision log.
Lowy adds, “Every week each member of the team logs a decision that they made, along with rational behind the decision and what the expected outcome is. We share our decisions in a weekly meeting and then review them again at a later date to compare the expected vs actual outcome.”
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Images: Hugo; Top Image: Josh Lowy; Bottom Image: Josh Lowy and co-founder Darren Chait