Podcast When It Clicked

Before it became Google Docs, it was Writely, software that broke new ground by enabling real-time document collaboration. We look back with its founders on why they initially turned down Google, the need to create a fake save button, and how they discovered the feature that defined the software’s success.

After countless hours spent battling with a stack of forms and a Kinko’s fax machine, Parker Conrad knew the HR process was ripe for a revamp. In this episode, we’ll hear how this three-time founder discovered an untapped market within employee management, changed the mindset around HR tech, and turned Rippling into a billion dollar company.

Today, Shopify powers more than 1.7 million merchants with enough sales to make it the second largest online retailer in the U.S. But getting here meant making some unconventional choices. In this episode, we dive deep into the company’s backstory to learn why Shopify decided to do more than build “websites with shopping carts” and how its plan to turn everyone into an entrepreneur led to its success.

Scratchpad was designed as a tool to simplify Salesforce. But for neurodiverse individuals, it’s also a lifeline. In this episode, we peel back the curtain on Scratchpad to find out how its founders tapped into its neurodiverse users, and how designing a product for the various ways people think made all the difference.

Email is a tool people love to hate—so much that many tech companies have tried to kill it for good. But Mathilde Collin saw the flaws with email as an opportunity, and set out to build a company around improving the inbox. In this episode, we delve into the founding of Front, and find out how two entrepreneurs from France built a billion dollar business on a software tool others had overlooked.