Human Error

3 min readAug 29, 2016

This week we discuss dealing with human error in a startup. We also discuss evolving our presence in trucking over a year.

This blog is a weekly reflection of WorkHound’s time at Dynamo, a logistics-focused accelerator based in Chattanooga, TN. This is week seven.

Human error

We screwed up this week. Nothing that was noticeable to our customers, but we made some boneheaded moves internally. The reason: human error.

Now, we would love for human error to not be the problem, but people are really good at finding ways to create errors in systems. Things take time to automate and the process is never perfect. Anytime human error is possible, human error will happen. Gotta love Murphy’s law.

But when this happens, you can do one of two things: you can place blame or take action. Our team chose the latter. We owned up to the mistake, we communicated the issue, we created steps to resolve immediately, and put in place some safeguards so we don’t screw up again.

This was a beautiful moment where our company values helped us win. Here’s the value that guided us:

Always be learning:
“We learn from our customers, the market, and each other. ‘Best practices’ are average, we strive to excel. We don’t place blame for failure or mistakes, we celebrate and learn from them. If we don’t screw some things up, we aren’t moving fast enough.”

The difference a year makes

One year ago, we walked away from the Great American Truck Show with a $5K check and a grand introduction of WorkHound to the trucking industry.

No one knew who we were at the show and we were asking more questions than answering them.

I just got back from GATS and was delighted at the difference a year makes.

Trucking companies in our sales pipeline reached out to meet with us. Mentors introduced us to a number of key players in the trucking industry for conversations. Youtube stars of the driving world partied with us. Companies expressed interest in partnering with us.

But the sweetest part of it all: Getting to meet with our customers face-to-face. We learned more details about their product experience than we would have remotely. They helped us see new ways our product is being used. But most importantly, they told us how WorkHound was helping them better their company. And that feeling is worth its weight in gold.

We’ve got a long way to go, but we’ll enjoy the small wins along the way.

Read our previous posts about our time at Dynamo

WorkHound Joins Dynamo // Week 1 Recap // Week 2 // Week 3 // Week 4// Week 5 // Week 6

What is WorkHound?

WorkHound is a software platform built to help carriers keep drivers and improve the truck driver experience. Truck drivers use their smartphones to share feedback and ideas with the carrier, which WorkHound aggregates and turns into actionable insights to help manage and retain drivers. WorkHound is co-founded by Andrew Kirpalani and Max Farrell.