Some entrepreneurs jump right into business ownership. But others hone their skills by working for larger companies, where they learn the lessons that help them shape their business ideas. The latter was true for the founders of Notejoy. Formerly executives at LinkedIn and SurveyMonkey, they took those experiences with them as they built their new product. Learn more about Notejoy and its founders in this week’s Small Business Spotlight.
What the Business Does
Offers an app for team collaboration.
Founder and COO Ada Chen Rekhi told Small Business Trends, “Notejoy is a collaborative notes app for teams. It helps you get your most important work out of the noise of email and Slack and into a fast and focused workspace. Notejoy is a software application that’s available across web, desktop, and mobile devices.”
Business Niche
Offering a note app that’s specifically for teams.
Chen Rekhi says, “There are a LOT of note-taking apps out there, but many of them are focused on individuals. We’re solidly focused on building a fast and beautiful experience for teams to collaborate on their ideas and work in real-time.”
How the Business Got Started
Out of an understanding of corporate difficulties.
Chen Rekhi explains, “We made the decision to leave our corporate jobs and start Notejoy because we realized from our work experiences that today’s collaboration tools have been failing us. People absolutely hate creating docs and wikis, because it’s hard, so instead they end up sending emails or chatting in hallways, and so much knowledge and value gets lost. Employees are always recreating the wheel because they can’t access prior work. As founders, we’d both spent a lot of time thinking about how to improve the productivity of our apps and tackling this as the next project was the obvious next step.”
Biggest Win
Integrating the app with Trello.
Chen Rekhi says, “A lot of businesses small and large use Trello to manage their to-do lists, so making it easy to attach Notejoy to Trello tasks was a huge win for our users as well as us. We were able to get in touch with the right people on the Atlassian team and make the integration happen, and it’s really meant that we have another great example to point to of how we’re deeply integrating with the popular workplace tools.”
Biggest Risk
Leaving jobs at big companies.
Chen Rekhi says, “Both of us left impactful and exciting jobs to start Notejoy because we believe in our mission as a company. Our CEO and Founder, Sachin Rekhi, was a product executive at LinkedIn leading their sales solutions initiatives. I was the SVP Marketing at SurveyMonkey. We went from large, well-resourced companies and have started our business on our own. It’s a tremendous career risk but also very motivating at the same time.”
Lesson Learned
Never stop learning and growing.
Chen Rekhi explains, “There’s never a point when you’re creating a product that it’s “done” and while it’s a common message, it’s also one that is hard to internalize. We had Notejoy in a private beta for about 9 months prior to launch, and after launch we learned rapidly based on the feedback from new customers.”
How They’d Spend an Extra $100,000
Spreading the word.
Chen Rekhi says, “We’d spend it on promotion and online advertising for the product.”
Company Mascot
Dexter the dog.
Chen Rekhi says, “Our company mascot and office dog is Dexter, a 3 year old Havanese. He makes it a point to greet every single person who visits us and make them feel welcome!”
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Images: Notejoy, Co-founders Rekhi and Chen Rekhi, Dexter the Dog