Technology has dramatically and quickly reshaped the workplace; work processes and project management look nothing like they did 20 years ago. Web 2.0 ushered in a wave of apps which gave teams the ability to share files, compile to-do lists, and set deadlines. Today, the emergence of new productivity tools promises to meet the needs of any team, improving workflow, group organization and collaboration.
Despite the explosion of collaboration in workplace applications, we’re still doing the majority of our work on the same technology built two decades ago.
As technology continues to change the workforce, the workforce demands changes in technology. Time and again, I have seen innovative startups set out on a mission to change the world, ironically running their entire businesses on siloed tools created to improve productivity for the individual — not for a team. People build spreadsheets from scratch, customizing formulas for each project. They use separate documents to write product specifications and create business plans. For the most sophisticated companies, they may add one or two collaborative project management tools. But, by and large, the nuts and bolts of actually running a business are still disjointed and complicated.
Shishir Mehrotra recognized this challenge early on during his days at Google where he oversaw YouTube’s product, engineering, and user experience teams. He ran his team off of documents and spreadsheets because he couldn’t find any other tool that could fit with the team’s needs. After leaving YouTube, Shishir and Alex DeNeui teamed up to invent a new place where real work could happen.
Today, Coda is launching from stealth. I could not be more excited to announce Greylock led the series A investment and that I am on the board.
Coda offers a new way of working together allowing individuals and teams to build whatever they need in order to effectively and efficiently run their business. Coda has created a new, unique productivity platform, with live networked data that can support any work flow. Coda brings together the selected key elements that you need to run a business — from parts of documents and spreadsheets, to databases, sprint boards, and to-do lists — into one platform so you can get the job done more efficiently and collaboratively. Check it out:
In the networked age, people need collaborative tools that help teams work with one another, no matter where they are. At Greylock, we invest in companies with strong network effects that connect people together (take a look at Convoy, Figma, and Airbnb, as examples). For three years, Shishir and the Coda team have been working hard to reimagine, rethink, and rebuild a new way of working together from ground up. Coda is inherently collaborative and open; now teams can build a doc that is as powerful as an app. These docs can support any collaborative work process for businesses.
Shishir is exactly the kind of entrepreneur we love to back. He came from Google and Microsoft, where he helped build the last generation’s productivity tools. He’s run major businesses at both companies, and knows first-hand how hard it it is to run a business effectively. And he’s recruited a world-class team of former product, engineering and customer success leaders from companies like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Box, Amazon. The Coda team is uniquely qualified to take on this complex problem.
Coda runs on Coda and I’ve seen what teams can build when they have the freedom to be creative and build new docs that meet their unique needs. They have already helped key beta customers streamline and amplify their groups’ work processes. As Coda is a new productivity platform, I anticipate an amazing and wide range of new documents that serve as applications for important collaborative work processes.
