Hi David, thank you for finding time to do this interview. Can you briefly describe Staat? What is it, what problems it helps solve, and who are your customers?
We want to optimize productivity and collaboration with a manager-first lens. Staat helps users quickly understand development progress scattered around decentralized data and tools. We are working to solve the pain of the manager's workflow (or lack thereof) and increase productivity, flow, and overall satisfaction.
Staat is intended for engineering managers, product managers, project managers, directors of engineering, VPs of engineering, CTOs, and other positions who need to have an understandable overview of the development process at a glance.
📑 Introduction: About Staat
How exactly does Staat work?
Staat consolidates the most important data from managers' everyday tools into one place. Staat allows you to build, remix, and continually reap the rewards of breaking down team tools through what we call, Smart Views.
Smart Views are table-based protocols to aggregate and interpret large amounts of data from various sources with a set of elements that can be used to filter, label, and be remixed into new personal tools.
Just like music producers who use production software to put 1000's elements together to make a song, Views are the equivalent of workflow production software. Views let individuals understand and work with information faster.
What sets you apart from your competitors? In which fields are you innovating?
As cliché as it may sound, while we do not have many direct competitors, our customers and prospective users are often utilizing spreadsheets, 1-off meetings, direct communication (aka nagging), and various slack channels to try and solve this same problem.
While there are tools out there that solve problems that are complementary to ours, no one has quite created a solution like Staat that solves what we call the "middle layer" of management.
As you know, management takes on many different forms: from high-level strategy to sprint planning to daily standups and task management. This middle layer of management is often unaccounted for but expected to be done with excellence by a manager, and yet there are no real tools dedicated to empowering this. We are starting with solving the pain points that make up about 80% or more of a manager's day and career.
We believe giving managers more visibility on a day-to-day, and sprint-over-sprint cadence will dramatically improve their quarterly level strategy and annual planning.
📈 Future plans
If you could start again with your product, what would you do differently from today's perspective?
We'd ship faster because the best thing for the product and the business is to get feedback. Regardless of whether or not that feedback is negative or positive, we've found it all to be net positive because it enables us to build a more value-add product.
Facetime with customers has driven the business forward more than any other single element.
We can agree that talking with customers frequently is the best thing you can do in terms of product development. What are the next steps and plans with Staat?
The next steps for Staat are obviously to continue onboarding the many customers that have signed up. We are also planning our roadmap of where we want to take the product. We expect to have some exciting collaboration and team-centric features as well as features that enable managers to customize Staat into a workspace that truly works for them.
🚩 Favorite products & localization
Would you like to highlight some services or products you like to use on your own?
Needless to say, I'm a power user of Staat 😅 I transitioned into the head of product about halfway into our growth and, as such became dependent on Staat to keep track of project progress.
Our CTO (and main developer) is based in Seoul, South Korea, while I'm in San Francisco. The time difference is enough to get behind and lost in project progress, but using Staat has essentially removed this time difference and helps us work truly asynchronously.
Learn our own experience with 🐕 dogfooding Localazy.
We are also avid users of 📝 Notion at Staat. From external documentation like our changelog and tutorials to our marketing planning and product strategy, Notion is our go-to. As much as we use Notion, we've learned a lot from their growth as a product and company.
The Spark mail client ✉️ is a new tool for me personally. I've been on the search for an email client that did exactly what I needed it to do, which is helping me manage my 6+ email accounts, and it's done an incredible job. I highly recommend it.
What is your motivation for localization? Why did you choose Localazy?
We are big fans of Localazy and how effortlessly you can make translations happen with it. As we grow, we are confident we can get our product in front of more people from all over the world with Localazy. 🚩
We especially like the friendly customer support. 🥰 Another thing worth pointing out is the fair pricing, and the number of integration options you offer. We are also thinking of trying the Continuous Localization services in the future if we couldn't source translators on our own.
✔️ Conclusion
Is there something you would like to say?
We are still onboarding our earliest users and are offering a promo code for our pro tier for these early users. If you're interested in connecting your project boards and taking Staat for a spin, I'd love to get you set up.
➡️ You can either sign up on our site or email me directly at [email protected].
Thank you, David, we are looking forward to seeing you succeed and are happy that we can help you make localization of Staat as effortless as possible. 🤩
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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://localazy.com/blog/interview-staat-bringing-new-smarter-ways-to-manage-your-day