The Future is Collaborative
Overview:
In April 2008, GitHub redefined coding. A previously individual, siloed process suddenly became a collaborative process – GitHub turned on the multiplayer option in coding and redefined how developers work. That same year, two facebook engineers quit their jobs – they felt that company communication (a fundamentally collaborative process) was horrible. They decided to fix that and ended up creating Asana. Then a seismic shift happened – legacy solutions were being replaced by collaborative-first solutions. Between 2009 – 2012, Figma, Notion, Asana, Google Drive, Slack, Miro, and Zoom were all founded. All these companies bet on the future of software as being a collaborative one and all became category-defining products.
Now, the future of collaborative software is entering a new era. Companies and industries that aren’t necessarily collaborative in nature are realizing the importance of implementing collaborative features. Instead of just fundamentally collaborative processes like coding, design, and company communication being redefined, we are also seeing industries like tax, accounting, and governance becoming increasingly collaborative. This opens up a whole new wave of opportunity – there will be a) an emergence of companies providing collaborative software to highly fragmented industries b) an emergence of companies powering collaborative infrastructure c) an emergence of vertically-specific solutions such as space design software. This is why I’m betting on the future of collaborative software.
Companies I’m Watching:
Highnote – a tool to collaborate on any audio file by making comments, recording voice notes, and sharing ideas. I view Highnote as the Google Doc’s for musicians (and really anybody working with audio) – anyone can comment on any specific piece of the audio file to provide instant feedback. It will be interesting to see whether Highnote can evolve from being a really nice feature to an end-to-end platform that manages the whole process of creating and receiving feedback on audio.
Snippyly – API’s that make your apps multiplayer, just like Figma. I’m super excited to watch how Snippyly powers the infrastructure that supports collaborative software in 2023. With an increasing demand from companies to implement collaborative features into existing solutions, products like Snippyly are perfectly positioned to power the infrastructure that supports this.
CollabKit – software that lets teams integrate contextual collaboration into their product through a customizable React SDK (mainly focused on integrating commenting tools). This fits into the powering collaborative infrastructure thesis and is still early in its development.
Podcast creation and editing software like Podcastle and Riverside. Both are end-to-end podcasting platforms that provide studio quality recording and editing through a web-based platform. Collaborative podcast creation and editing software that enable remote podcast creation are exactly what the industry needs. The major challenge to overcome is reliability – local recordings are still viewed as safer options and platforms like Riverside and Podcastle have to overcome this. I’m particularly interested to see the competition between Podcastle and Riverside in 2023. Podcastle is very similar to Riverside, but Riverside appears to be heavily focused on collaboration (especially on the editing and podcast management side), which definitely gives it a leg up for team-use.
Loctax – a collaborative tax governance platform. Loctax enables collaboration between in-house tax teams and stakeholders and is the single source of truth for all relevant tax data and documents. Essentially, Loctax takes a necessarily collaborative process (the tax process) and provides a platform to streamline it between multiple parties.
Video creation and editing software like Runway and Veed. Video editing is a collaborative process and current software (such as Premier Pro & Final Cut Pro) are not built to be collaborative. Solutions like Runway and Veed fix this. Like the podcast creation and editing software industry, it will be interesting to see how Runway and Veed evolve in 2023. Both utilize AI to improve the editing process and both enable cloud-based collaboration (with Runway supporting real-time collaborative editing). Though early, I’m also excited to see Ozone (the Figma for Video) hopefully launch in 2023.
Rayon – the Figma for Space Design. I wrote an article about why I think Rayon has the potential to shake up the space design industry and they are one of the main companies I’m incredibly excited to watch grow over the next 12-months. They are still so early but if they are able to execute on their vision, Rayon could be a game-changer for the space design industry.
Outverse – a community tool for product-led companies to scale community discussions, feedback & knowledge base. Building a strong community is so important for early growth, especially for product-led companies who need to continuously iterate. Outverse fosters this communication through its platform that connects users and dev teams. This one is still super early, so it will be interesting to see how effective their platform is at building out this communication flow.
Spline – a collaborative 3D modeling software. I previously wrote an article on why I think Spline could be the future of 3D design. Their software lets teams collaborate on their 3D designs in real-time and has one of the best UI’s on the market. I’m excited to see whether Spline can grow to become a sophisticated tool that can achieve the same level of detail with 3D modeling as legacy solutions. If they are able to pull that off while maintaining their user-friendly UI, I think Spline is well-positioned to be a leader in the 3D design market.
Clay – a software to organize, share, and review 3D models in one collaborative platform. This is a perfect add-on solution to existing 3D design and modeling tools such as Spline – I’m interested to see whether Clay attempts to operate as a standalone app or instead focuses on enabling integrations with modeling software like Spline to integrate comments and reviews within their platform.
Agentnoon – collaborative people planning that uses predictive analytics to make communication and collaboration between HR & Finance teams smoother. The platform lets HR teams turn visual position & role based headcount budgets into sheets for finance teams.
Fieldguide – an automation and collaboration platform for modern assurance and advisory firms that digitizes the end-to-end engagement workflow on a single platform.
Queue – a platform built for design agencies to send work for feedback, bill clients, and hire freelancers to pick up workload. Queue enables collaboration in a highly fragmented process (the outsourcing of design) between clients and design agencies. This not only results in a faster review and feedback loop for designers, but creates a central platform for design agencies to manage their work.