Years ago, when we were colleagues at a major bank, we toyed with the idea of starting a business together. Now, that has become a reality. Here’s a little anecdote about how it all started.
I remember it well; it was the beginning of 2024 when I received a message from Pieter. He was asking if I knew of any good tools that could help him follow up at the right time with the associations he had visited to demonstrate his app. Due to the large number of visits, Pieter was losing track. Had he already sent emails to potential clients? Were all their enquiries answered? Which potential clients were interested, and which were not? What questions were still lingering for these potential clients? I suggested a fairly generic CRM tool, assuming it would be capable of all that.
A few weeks later, we met for a bite to eat to catch up, and Pieter mentioned in passing that the tool I had recommended didn’t offer the functionality he needed. With my knowledge and experience with the Kanban Method, I had made some assumptions that turned out to be incorrect. Fuelled by my enthusiasm for this method, I explained to Pieter its importance, like having explicit policies regarding the statuses of work items, for example. Right there and then, we conceived the idea that it would be really cool to create a tool that could facilitate these little automations, with visual support for users to easily maintain an overview
.
We quickly fantasised about a board with several sales processes listed and a number of columns. We dreamed of a scenario where you have a ticket on your board for a potential client, and after you’ve done your pitch, you drag the ticket in the lift from “pitch” to “follow-up.” Three days later, an email is automatically generated for your potential client, including your standard follow-up message and the presentation you used. If you’ve included the written questions and answers in the email, you send it right away. The system, following the automation you set up, moves the ticket to the “aftercare” column and creates a “call back” task with a due date of 10 working days.
And from this shared fantasy, Kanban Ease was born.