Announcing our $3M pre-seed round from LocalGlobe, Headline and a group of 30 angel investors
When virtual meeting grids are the new cubicles, asynchronous communication could be our salvation. That’s why we’ve just raised from some of the world’s best investors, to power truly flexible working.
The age of Work-From-Anywhere is here, and it has liberated us from our cubicles and commutes. But it comes at a cost.
Back-to-back meetings have become the norm.
For years, Robin & I prided ourselves on how well we avoided scheduling superfluous meetings. But as everyone switched to remote work, we were suddenly spending ten hours a day on video calls at our kitchen island. We felt miserable.
In the absence of a workspace where we can easily grasp context, we created more meetings to fill the void. 5-minute catch-ups slowly morphed into 30-minute meetings.
We’ve ditched cubicles, only to find that we’ve been forced into Zoom grids and relentless calendar blocks.
We knew there was another way: asynchronous communication.
We think asynchronous communication can fundamentally transform the way we work for the better. It’s the best way to move projects forward without the need to communicate at the same time. Robin used it to manage his teams across 4 different countries and time zones. I had worked 5 years at 360Learning, a company famous for its “no-meeting” culture, and the key was to train people on async communication techniques.
Yet, from this experience, we also knew that written asynchronous communication has its challenges. Emails, Trello, or Slack messages often go unread, and they lack the richness of verbal interaction.
An issue that in the office could be solved in 5 minutes slowly morphed into a chain of confusing messages, or forced us into back-to-back video calls.
That’s how we came up with a new way to overcome this obstacle: asynchronous meetings.
Asynchronous meetings combine the flexibility and speed of asynchronous communication, with the context & interactivity of meetings.
Whether it’s sharing new ideas, receiving feedback on the latest design, or troubleshooting a bug with your team, asynchronous meetings allow people to work wherever, whenever and however they like.
Instead of spending all day in back-to-back video calls, people can record short video updates on a topic, such as a product iteration, and then give or receive feedback around a specific element — as if you were behind a screen with your colleague pointing a zone with your finger — and make decisions accessible to everyone.
THE DIGITAL WORKSPACE FOR DISTRIBUTED TEAMS
After months of research and iterations, we’ve finally found the solution we wanted: Claap, the 1st Asynchronous Meeting Platform.
A new workspace dedicated to distributed teams where people can easily share their updates, collect feedback and solve problems while giving everyone the context they need to make informed decisions independently.
Today, we’re delighted and proud to bring on board LocalGlobe, Headline (formerly e.Ventures) and a group of 30 angel investors* who have founded — or helped grow — companies like Front, Oyster, Automattic, Stripe and GoCardless.
Together with our team and our investors, we’re on a mission to enable asynchronous communication for everyone. And make working-from-anywhere a reality.
Robin & Pierre
*Full list of Angel Investors:
- Mathilde Collin — Co-founder @Front
- Tony Jamous — Co-founder @Oyster
- Kima Ventures, founded by Xavier Niel and Jean de la Rochebrochard
- Logos Fund, a venture fund founded by Shane Mac & Chris Herd
- Aadil Mamujee — Investor & Head of Product @Automattic
- Tiny VC founded by Philipp Moehring and Andy Chung
- Roxanne Varza — CEO @StationF
- Benedicte de Raphelis Soissan — Investor & Co-founder @Clustree
- Chantal Ambord — Chief of Staff @Blablacar
- Daniel Nathan — Co-founder @HomaGames
- Jean Canzoneri — Co-founder @Ogury
- Nick Hernandez — Co-founder @360Learning
- Farmers Fund, a collective of entrepreneurs including Jeremy Attuil (Libeo), Maxime Brousse (Selency) or Barthelemy Kiss (Powder)
- Ian R. P. Hogarth — Co-founder @Songkick
- Matt Robinson — Co-founder @Nest and GoCardless
- Alex Gezelius — Investor & Co-founder @Village
- Thomas Hernandez — VP Product & Engineering @Veepee
- Olivier Godement — Product Manager @Stripe
- Gonzalo Manrique — Co-founder @IronHack
- Alex Berriche — Co-founder @Fleet
- Rahul Kulkarni — Head of Product @Wecasa & ex-Shopify
- Jeff Gardner — VP of Strategic Partnerships @api.video and early Intercom
- Anh-Tho Chuong Degroote — Co-founder @Lago
- Ahmed Menouni — Co-founder @LazyApp
- Craig Revord — Executive Coach
- Fernando Fernandes — Entrepreneur
- Martin Duhamel — Head of Sales @Front
- Esther Delignat-Lavaud Rodriguez — Investor @LaFamigliaVC
- Mehdi Boudoukhane — Co-founder @Cycle
