Everyone knows founders are incredibly busy, and some it challenging to manage their schedules. Chadwick Carlson and Marc Gingras join Startup Savants to talk about Nook, a software company they founded that has a calendar tool that allows users to get a better handle on their work lives.
- Startup Savants is a business podcast that tells the stories behind up-and-coming startups.
- Chadwick Carlson and Marc Gingras join Annaka and Ethan to talk about their software company Nook.
- Nook’s calendar tool consolidates meetings, day-to-day interactions, and notes in one place to help users gain more control over their schedules.
Pivoting With Changing Times
The first idea for Nook came to Carlson and Gingras during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the app, users could book “seats” for employees when they came into the office as opposed to working from home. This required coordinating schedules so there weren’t too many people in the office at any one time, and Nook was great for that.
The company had some success with this business model, but they soon realized that because COVID would not last forever, they needed another use case for Nook. “We started to figure out that the main problem is actually around coordination, and where coordination happens is around the calendar,” Gingras said during the founders’ interview with Startup Savants. “So then we said, Let’s build a better calendar app for people that work in a remote environment. And that’s where Nook Calendar came to fruition.”
Although this was an advantageous pivot, soon an even bigger opportunity presented itself: consolidating the information in other scheduling apps. “People are using so many different applications, and they live with a scattered brain. They’re trying to figure out what’s the most important information: ‘what are my to-dos?’” Gingras told the Startup Savants podcast hosts. “And so we’re actually pivoting yet again because of this bigger opportunity. This product is still not out, it’s going to be out in the fall. [We’re] super excited about what we’re working on right now.”
Improving Communication and Interaction
Nook still plans to offer its calendar app because, Gingras and Carlson say, it’s fundamentally different from others.
“How it’s different is really around how you communicate and interact with [the] people that you work with the most,” Gingas said during the interview. “So when you think about your organization, whether you’re a small organization or a large organization, you may be working mainly with 10, 15 people at most. And what we focused on when we were building the calendar was, how do you… make those interactions with these 10, 15 people better? Whether it’s knowing where they’re working from, making it easier to schedule meetings with them, [or sharing] your status of what you’re working on.”
Calendar apps are a dime a dozen, Carlson noted, but they really haven’t changed much over the years. That presents an opportunity for Nook. “On that scheduling piece, that’s a really important component, especially when everyone’s remote,” he said during the interview. “It’s easy to meet, but it’s also too easy to meet at times. So everyone’s schedules are really full and complex.”
Nook addresses this problem with a scheduling page that everyone can see, which means they know when someone is available and when they’re not. “We incorporated that directly into the calendar application as opposed to being a sidecar or an additional subscription service to the calendar because we think it’s evolved to the point where the calendar needs that by default,” Carlson said.
Startup Savants Podcast
The Startup Savants podcast is a business podcast created by The Really Useful Information Company (TRUiC). Listeners can hear the stories behind startups, as told by their founders, who are in the midst of growing their companies.
Ethan, an entrepreneur, and Annaka, a branding expert, host the Startup Savants podcast. They bring disparate skills and life experiences to their interviews, providing listeners with important business insights and a holistic perspective on the startup ecosystem.
Hear from a variety of real startup founders from around the globe and with varying backgrounds about making their startup ideas a reality. Learn from experts sharing their industry knowledge on venture capital, securing funding, and more on the Startup Savants podcast.
Final Thoughts
Chadwick Carlson and Marc Gingras join the Startup Savants podcast to discuss Nook, a software company that helps users better control their schedules using the company’s calendar tool.
You can find the Startup Savants podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
