Is Infinity better than Trello?
In short — no. Not yet. March 23rd 2018.
There’s that one question for all early-stage startup founders:
“How is your product different or better than the best one in the market?”
You think you knew the answer from the minute you started working on the idea, and you’ve already repeated it hundred times to your co-founders, friends… and yourself.
But when a potential customer asks you to compare publicly, it makes you rethink your values compared to others.
Hasan asked us a question on Betalist which inspired me to write a post about it.
Can we really say ‘better’?
I’ve seen mistakes by many founders who don’t hesitate to make bold promises on how they’re going to revolutionize how people do shit.
This kind of early messaging and hype can turn into many disappointments later.
That’s why we at Infinity want to stay humble when choosing our words.
On launch, we probably won’t offer a better solution than a 7 year old company with 15M users.
However, we’ve picked a set of core problems to solve better than competition.
And we hope to get you excited about it.
Our idea is to be open with you and show weaknesses.
It’s the only way you can help us make something better for everyone.
How is Infinity ‘different’ than Trello?
I’ve used Trello for years and I love it.
The simplicity, no-thinking process for the lists and tasks creation, the ease of use, add-ons… It just flows.
One of the best things with Trello is that it gives you space to constantly improve your way of organizing things.
Over the years, I tried many ways of organizing and developed my own set of templates to plan, organize and update projects.
I’ve organized only myself at first, and in period of 3 years I’ve managed to also organize multiple clients and projects for a 20 people company.
Until we’ve reached Trello flexibility limitations.
Imagine organizing an agency in which 20 people operate.
Those 20 people have different types of information and they work for different clients.
The agency has 10 clients.
Those 10 clients each have 3 different departments/teams.
Each team has different segments they are working on. Let’s say its 5.
Each of those segments has sub-segments.
Each of those sub-segments has sprints.
Each of those sprints has tasks and sub-tasks.
All of those tasks include different work like files, documents, codes, links, metrics…
We pushed Trello to its limits, but eventually things got really cluttered. We couldn’t see or feel what we’re doing and where we were headed.
Flexibility as a core value
For us it was a key problem, so the first core value for Infinity is flexibility.
Flexibility to structure our organization however we want.
That’s why we created an infinite depth Grid that holds Cells.
With infinitive depth we have as much space as we need to organize whatever we want, however we want — and never bother removing anything.
All in one PM solution as a second core value
Flexibility is important.
But your actual project data is more important.
You need flexibility and structuring only if you have a lot of project resources to put in.
That’s why our vision is to have a set of default productivity plugins and lots of integrations ( in the future ) with tools you use for work everyday.
Each Cell is a holder of any kind of project assets.
Assets include tasks, files, notes, links, data, integrations, etc…
This gives us the ability to store all project resources in one place, neatly organized, sorted and structured.
Cells are also flexible and can serve us as any kind of structure point in our workflow.
We can name Cells anything: sprint, task group, folder for files, drive for notes, employee, day in a week, process… Whatever we need.
Future problems to solve
If we think about how things are done at work, we can say it goes through 3 phases:
- Initiating and planning
- Work and collaboration
- Closing and reporting
Currently, we’re at the point where we have a flexible core system, ready to be challenged with the 3 work phases mentioned above.
Initiating and planning
This is where Infinity as a tool helps us with Infinite Depth Structure, Visual Grid, Mind-map and Cells which can be anything and hold any kind of project assets.
The additional ability to share, load and create Cell templates will further help processes evolve and become reusable.
Work and collaboration
This is where Infinity as a tool helps us with plugins for Tasks, Files, Data Attributes, Notes and Chat.
Currently we’re working on improving plugins and making integrations with major organizational and productivity tools.
We understand that every organization operates differently and uses a different set of tools to get their work done.
That’s why one of our goals in the future is to open plugins API for developers and enable custom solutions, as well as to develop more native plugins for different industries.
We’re also investigating how to make team members more engaged in work. This is where we would love to work closely with you to understand how to make the best work gamification system.
Closing and reporting
For managers it’s most important to always understand how the work is progressing, where they stand at the moment and if there are issues preventing work to be finished on time.
With ability to handle a lot of well structured data we’ll be able to create customizable report dashboard and filters to analyze meaningful work data.
This is what we’re planning to solve before the full product launch in Q4 2018.
Once ready, will Infinity be ‘better’ for work?
It’s our goal and we’re passionate about making a difference.
Our mission is to inspire makers and help teams do better at work.
We need your help to understand how you would use Infinity and how we can make your workflow reach peak efficiency.
We’re planning to launch full product in Q4 2018.
We’ll start sending beta access to our Closed Beta Club members starting from May 1st.
Members will be able to test and use our product for free.
Get Early Access
If you want to stay updated and get access to Infinity before the launch, visit our website and signup for early access.
