Promana Exclusive Podio Web Interview

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Podio, an all in one project management tool has been gaining steam in the project management and collaboration marketplace.  Its almost infinite customization caters to just about everyone, whether you work at a small business with a few employees, or a large company with multiple departments handling different tasks.  With thousands of applications for Podio available, as well as an app creation tool that can be done without having any knowledge of programming, it seems there is little to complain about.  Podio is revolutionizing today’s market and is showing users like us just how different things are changing!

Podio Co-Founder Jon Froda

Jon Froda, Podio’s co-founder has graciously given me his time to conduct an interview.

When & why did you start Podio?

We started Podio because the way we were working was broken. We wanted to empower people to work the way they want,  in a more collaborative way, with workflows tailored to their needs. We found out that the only way for that to happen was to give the power back to the people who do the job, by creating a tool enabling them to define and build their own workflows and processes. With this the Podio App Builder was born.

Three guys in a basement in Copenhagen with some Thin Lizzy records and a generous coffee shop next door. We actually worked together on some collaboration and social software projects before starting Podio, and we discovered that the adoption of these tools depended heavily on the amount of ownership people took. So the process of starting Podio was very much about solving that challenge, and making prototypes and testing those to see the reaction of users. I even made a physical App Builder – a sort of game board where you could build apps and map your processes with various playing cards.  We used that for prototyping, and it helped us understand what people really wanted to achieve.

We have more than 40,000 organizations signed up and we are growing rapidly. The word of mouth and endorsement we see everyday on twitter is amazing.

Where are you located?

The Podio HQ is in Copenhagen, Denmark and we recently opened in San Francisco.

We follow the market closely and we’re obviously looking for trends. There is a lot of inspiration to get from the social web as well, a lot of innovation actually comes from that market.

Being that Basecamp seems to be the 800lb gorilla in web based project management software, can you discuss what you like/don’t like about 37signals’ software, and how Podio is differentiated. 

I don’t have an opinion on 37Signals software as such. I admire what they’ve accomplished in the past.  If you have look in the Podio Appstore (https://podio.com/store ) and see the various work processes that people build apps for,  it’s quite clear that Podio is much more than a Project Management system. People use Podio for everything from Recruiting, Event handling, Bug tracking and Innovation processes–it’s really an interesting long tail of work processes.

The willingness of our users to engage with us and the product. Search for @podio on twitter and you’ll know what I mean, people really enjoy the power Podio gives them to handle their work.

I think the software space is still primarily led by technologists. I would love to see more people from other areas of life get involved and lead, especially in the early stage companies.

We set out with a strong mission to change the way people work, make it smarter, more efficient and fun. This is not a thing you do in one or two years. We managed to get Podio off to a good start (see coverage of our launch http://www.fastcompany.com/1741452/podio-employs-a-novel-approach-for-us-launch ) and the reviews we have gotten so far are stellar. But as I said there is still a lot of work to be done, and we are going to stick to our plan, and do that.

We have an even split between the US and Europe.

You will see even more flexibility and ways of getting work done with Podio, both for internal and external collaboration.