Published
Author: Wiktor Walc, CTO of Tiugo Technologies
Collaboration has quickly become a necessity in today’s business climate. Eighty-three percent of employees rely on using technology for collaboration and over half of businesses have increased their spend on collaboration tools since the pandemic. After all, the right digital tools can help streamline inefficient processes and result in increased effectiveness in the workplace. In fact, online collaboration tools and digital workplaces have been found to increase workplace productivity by up to 30%. We found this especially true in the content editing space where traditional collaboration methods, such as sharing Word documents as attachments across multiple parties, led to wasted time and effort. The inability to work together in real-time wreaked havoc as teams attempted to connect various edits and versions into one final, approved product. As the need for real-time collaborative editing rose, the CKEditor team quickly realized we had the opportunity to become innovators in the marketplace, with a vision of providing collaboration tools easily to any application.That’s where CKEditor 5 , a powerful, modern, and user-friendly rich text editor that enhances CMS and CRM systems, was born. Leaving Behind What We Knew
For more than 20 years, we built CKEditor into a high-quality rich text editor. By prioritizing real-time collaboration, we were essentially leaving behind everything we built as a WYSIWYG HTML editor and what our customers had come to expect. After all, there was no way to build the functionalities, such as real-time collaboration or track changes, we wanted to add to CKEditor 5 on top of our current version due to limiting architecture. In order to address the needs of the market and answer what our prospective clients were asking about, we chose to take a risk and build a completely new editor on top of new architecture with collaboration at its heart. The Unknown Path Forward
The road to a successful product launch seemed dismal on more than one occasion. We had no external funding to cover any period of potential loss, a slowly aging UI/UX in CKEditor 4 and numerous issues with the development of CKEditor 5. Yet, we knew if we could get the collaboration functionality right, our product would succeed. To get there it would take increased work and effort, coupled with resilience and determination across our organization. It took almost four years of research, planning and developing to launch CKEditor 5. The first version excited prospects with its potential, even if not every piece was completely in place. The more conversation we had, the more we got closer to addressing future customer needs. Lessons Learned from Taking the Leap
Today, CKEditor 5 is a successful rich text editor that solves collaboration challenges for our clients. For Kanbanize , a global leader in Kanban software, CKEditor 5 allows team members to collaborate and stay inside the Kanbanize application rather than switch to another application. For Addiction Recovery , the software enabled streamlined content creation for the fast-growing company. Writers on the team are able to work together in one place, editing the same document and connecting in the comments section to resolve issues as needed. Success stories like these have resulted in company growth at 35% year over year. But along the path we learned a few valuable lessons. Shortcuts aren’t an option
The reality is, we could have added real-time collaboration and other features to CKEditor 4. However, we were not comfortable with the quality of the product incorporating those changes. A poorly designed product went against our core values as a company and would jeopardize the integrity and dedication of our team. Creativity is key
As we continued to build and launch the first stable version of CKEditor 5, we still needed a product for our clients. So, we chose to offer both CKEditor 4 and CKEditor 5 in parallel. While unusual, this allowed us to focus as a company on how to move forward strategically, rather than just recreate an existing model. Listen to your customers
What better way to understand market trends than by listening to your potential buyers? CKEditor 5 was originally based on current demands in the content editing space coupled with holes not filled by any software component vendors. Today, the product is built with live collaboration in mind, even in near constant development. Customers and our open-source community are willing to state they need from CKEditor 5 to make their lives easier and more efficient. By building a trusting and open community, our customers were flexible with us as we addressed complex problems that required substantial time to solve. Further, real-time feedback allows for continual upgrades, like side panel document outline, a table of contents plug in, slash commands and more, all coming to users in Q2 2023. You are nothing without your team
The development of the next-generation rich-text editor would not have been possible without the work of a highly motivated team that refused to be discouraged by slow progress and low adoption. CKEditor 5 was built on trust and support giving engineers freedom and time to explore new directions. In order to create an innovative solution, we needed to give our team the space to do their best work and manage from a distance. Our long-term strategic goals were made possible, thanks to patience and determination of a trusted, agile team. Real-time Collaboration Achieved
CKEditor 5’s journey all began with the understanding of how the future of work would look to our prospective and current customer. Content journeys are becoming increasingly customized, automated and shareable. By focusing on collaboration and its ability to enhance our customers’ work, we were able to build a best of class product that boosts team productivity and allows customers to work smarter and faster.

How CKEditor Successfully Launched the First Collaboration Functionality

(BUSINESS ENTREPRENEUR) Recruiters, please stop asking job applicants to send in one-way video interviews—they are demoralizing and could very well be discriminatory. Published
It’s hard enough out there for job seekers, but now some companies are requesting one-way video interviews from candidates. This is problematic on several levels. Unless the job is specifically “making TikTok or Reels videos of yourself,” HR departments should not ask this of job candidates. Even if that is the precise job description, a portfolio would be enough to show that an applicant can do the required work well.This format is also ripe for discrimination, as the recruiter can make assumptions and decisions due to their implicit bias more easily over a disembodied video than for a flesh-and-blood interviewee. For starters, job hunting and interviewing are two stressful activities for most people. Especially post-pandemic, when it’s more likely than ever that candidates have been unemployed or underemployed for too long already, the pressure people feel about finding a job is intense. Interviewing makes most people nervous to begin with. Being on camera makes a lot of people even more nervous. One-way video interviews are not unlike public speaking, something an estimated 75% of people have a phobia of public speaking to some degree, according to various publications. Add to that the discomfort many people have seeing themselves on camera, and one-way interviews seem not only rude, but also cruel. One benefit to one-on-one interviews , either by phone call, Zoom, or in person, is that the interviewer and the candidate have the opportunity to interact in a more authentic, conversational way. This can help put the candidate at ease, or at least will give them an opportunity to ask the HR recruiter questions about the role and the company. It also gives the interviewer a better feel for the candidate and how they would fit into a company culture or team. There is an exchange of energy for better or worse. Face-to-face, or person-to-person interviews show candidates that you value their time as well as your own. One-way video interviews are one sided, indicating that only the recruiter’s time is valuable or worth being valued. Many job candidates have likely already applied for several positions. Updating and sending out a resume and portfolio, filling out an online application form, and possibly crafting a cover letter should be enough to convey a candidate’s qualifications to move on to an interview. Many of those documents are lost in the ether, as many recruiters and HR teams do not reply to all applicants. One-way video interviews seem impersonal at best. As with the resumes and applications, there is also the possibility that nobody will watch it, that nobody will reply. How soul-crushing. To add insult to injury, the process for these seems wildly inconsistent from company to company, with some telling the candidates to make it as long as possible. Other companies provide automated, popup questions at timed intervals, either cutting the candidate’s previous answer short or leaving them with dead air time waiting for the next question. Excruciating—surely not an opportunity to shine. The thought of someone putting themselves through a process that could be so grueling for them personally only to hear crickets in response is simply depressing. It’s possible that a real live human won’t even see these, because if an HR recruiter doesn’t have the time to schedule a phone screener at least, they likely won’t be taking the time to watch all of the one-way video interviews they receive. This shows so little regard for the applicant that it reflects poorly on the company—and tells applicants something about how the company will likely treat their employees. If Reddit r/recruitinghell and members of the Austin Digital Jobs Facebook group are to be believed, a lot of candidates won’t bother with these awkward and dehumanizing one-way video interviews anyway. In a popular Reddit post, hundreds of commenters weighed in to agree with u/tron_mexico25’s post saying he turned down a request to do one of these. The Reddit post concludes, “If you would like for candidates to pursue your open roles, I would humbly suggest someone reaches out with a more personal touch instead of asking candidates to speak into a camera with no opportunity for meaningful interaction.”
Both HR recruiters and candidates in Austin Digital Jobs responded to the posting of a CareerPlug article , written by their Director of HR, Natalie Morgan, that they should be avoided and “are hurting the candidate experience.”
The ADJ members strongly agreed with Morgan that these one-way videos were disrespectful, “gross,” “terrible,” “indefensibly dumb,” and a waste of time. One ADJ member, Annette Priest, sums up the whole vibe perfectly, when they say, “Yuck. You’re almost never treated as well working for a company as you are when you’re interviewing. Consider this a red flag and run away!” I agree completely. Applicants, you shouldn’t subject yourself to these. Recruiters, please be better. Truly great entrepreneurs are also well organized and know which tools will help them see their startup ideas to fruition. That can be key for getting a startup business off the ground. Good ideas and a strong entrepreneurial spirit aren’t always enough on their own. Sometimes you need the right mix of technology and tools to keep the more mundane and tedious tasks from bogging down your efforts. Here are six tools almost any entrepreneur can use to help keep productivity high when starting a new business:
Lawtrades: For legal help
For most entrepreneurs, it’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but making sure you have your legal ducks in a row is important for any startup. Lawtrades helps with that while trying to keep costs down — music to the ears of any startup business owner. The service is a legal marketplace of sorts designed specifically for startups and entrepreneurs. It connects business owners with legal professionals that it claims don’t charge “bloated law firm hourly rates.”
Lawtrades offers a number of services, including business formation, employment and labor, contracts and agreements and intellectual property. Do: For productive meetings
Anyone who has started a business knows that it doesn’t happen without a multitude of meetings. Do is a service that can help make your meetings productive so you can waste as little time as possible. The app allows you to plan and share an agenda to make sure everyone is on the same page. Other features include the ability to track accountability by showing you which points and/or tasks have been covered. 1Password: For easy password management
Starting a new business likely means starting and managing lots of online accounts. The 1Password app from AgileBits helps you save time by remembering passwords and other information for you. The app helps you generate strong and unique passwords for your many accounts, and secures them behind one safe password known only by you. The app doesn’t only work for passwords — it can also help remember other information such as credit card numbers, safe combinations or street addresses. Kanbanize: For product development
If your startup involves a specific product or set of products, Kanbanize helps you develop them with your team without bogging down the process. The software allows you to post and share boards that include product information and progress, and you can choose which people see which information. For example, if you want to update investors on the status of your product development, you can share certain boards with stakeholders and no one else. Evernote: For organization
There are many applications available that aim to help team productivity, but Evernote is one of the best. The software allows you to collaborate with your team all within one workplace, keeping projects and other work together. You can also give feedback on ideas and share notes while syncing the data across computers and phones. There are many other features as well, including in-app chat functionality and integration with Google Drive. TaskHusky: For web development
Almost any new business will want some sort of business, but a staff of web designers and developers isn’t always an option for startups. That’s where TaskHusky comes in. TaskHusky is an on-demand service for small businesses that need help with one-off tasks with the Shopify, Bigcommerce or WordPress platforms. The company has a simple three-step process: You create a task and pre-pay, a TaskHusky team member is assigned the task and gets to work and the task is completed and is sent back for your approval. The takeaway:
Smart entrepreneurs understand they can’t get everything done on their own when it comes to starting a new business. These six tools may not be everything you need to launch and maintain a startup, but they will go a long way to helping you keep productivity at a high level. #productivity
Practical suggestions for eliminating distractions
Research suggests that the average human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to just eight seconds today. For perspective, that’s shorter than the average attention span of a goldfish! And if certain offenders are worse than others, business owners would have to be near the top of the list. It’s not that the human brain is less capable of focusing today than it was a decade ago. The problem doesn’t lie within – it can be found without. It’s the direct result of the onslaught of new distractions competing for our limited focus. As a business owner, your responsibilities run deep and wide. And if you aren’t careful, you can easily become overwhelmed and rendered useless. Here are some practical ways to fight back:
1. Centralize communications
As a business owner, it’s not uncommon to have half a dozen communication channels open at one time. Between email, phone, SMS, Slack, and social media messages, you find yourself constantly tending to notifications across a spectrum of isolated platforms. The result is constant back and forth movement that’s difficult (if not impossible) to keep track of. One way to fix this is by centralizing communications. There are numerous ways to centralize communications, but a social intranet is a fantastic option – particularly if you can find one that integrates with G Suite (or whatever collection of tools you use). 2. Block distracting websites
We all have our favorite go-to websites. These are the sites that we mindlessly browse when we’re looking to kill time or avoid doing work. News sites, blogs, and social networking sites are all good examples. And though there’s nothing technically wrong with any of these, they become problematic when they keep you from important tasks. If sheer willpower isn’t doing it for you, try using some sort of website blocking tool that prevents you from visiting these websites during work hours. ( Here’s a list of some of the top options.) 3. Create email time blocks
Email is a time killer! The average business owner receives well over 100 emails per day and, if you aren’t careful, managing your inbox can become a full-time job. One of the best techniques is to create email time blocks. These are blocks of time – between 15 to 60 minutes – that you dedicate exclusively to email. And then during the rest of the day, you log out of your email account and reserve your focus for other tasks. You might think this sounds impractical, but it’s really not. A 20-minute email block early morning, late morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon is enough to keep you in the loop without totally eating away at your schedule. 4. Silence your phone
Your phone is another attention magnet. By silencing your phone for large chunks out of the day, you can keep your focus on the tasks that matter. (If you have an assistant, ask them to filter your calls for you and only pass along the ones that are urgent and necessary.) 5. Avoid multitasking
 As Americans, we love to brag about multitasking. We flaunt our ability to juggle multiple tasks at once like it’s a badge of honor. But no matter how skilled you think you are at multitasking, there’s simply no evidence to suggest you’re getting more done. In fact, all of the research indicates you’re preventing yourself from being as productive as you could be. As Travis Bradberry writes for Forbes , “Multitasking reduces your efficiency and performance because your brain can only focus on one thing at a time. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both tasks successfully.”
Bradberry points to additional research from the University of London that found multitasking also lowers your IQ and leads to long-term cognitive impairment. In other words, it doesn’t just impact short-term focus. It also inhibits long-term results. Reclaim your focus and boost productivity
Focus can be difficult to cultivate. But if you want to enhance your productivity and output, it’s a critical element in the equation. From centralizing communications to eliminating your reliance on multitasking, a quick and thorough response is a must. As digital transformation efforts ramp up due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study released by Cisco has highlighted some key insights into how small businesses will need to adapt in order to survive in the “new normal.”
The study, conducted by International Data Corporation (IDC), analyzed more than 2,000 small businesses across eight different markets, including the United States, Canada, Germany, Mexico, United Kingdom, Brazil, Chile, and France. Using a four-section index to assess a small business’s digitalization efforts , the research found that 16% of companies said they were “thriving and feel their businesses are agile and resilient.” While 36% stated they were in “survival mode.” Regardless of where they were ranked in the index, the study concluded that 70% of firms were in the process of ramping up digital transformation within their company due to the coronavirus pandemic. “The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the digital divide that was already present in the small business market, and it is forcing companies to accelerate their digitalization,” said Daniel-Zoe Jimenez, AVP, head digital transformation & SMB research at IDC. “Small businesses are realizing that digitalization is no longer an option, but a matter of survival.”
The study also highlighted several challenges associated with digital transformation. The three biggest obstacles that businesses seem to face during the process were digital skills and talent, budgetary issues (lack of funds or previous commitment of funds), and cultural resistance to change. Despite these roadblocks, 45% of companies surveyed stated that they expect over 30% of their business to be digital by 2021. And 32% responded that they are planning on developing a digital strategy. This included investing in talent with the right set of digital skills moving forward. Those decisions fall in line with Cisco and IDC’s recommendations. These include creating a three-year technology road map and building a workforce with the right skills to succeed in a digital world. Other suggestions include finding the right technology partner, and keeping up with industry trends. Leveraging financing and remanufactured equipment can aid with cash flow and budget requirements. As small businesses continue to adapt to consumer behavior and the whirlwind of ever-changing rules that have come with the coronavirus, digital transformation will continue to play a major role in the post-COVID world. According to the report, if half of the small businesses surveyed can reach the second-highest tier of the index by 2024, those companies could end up adding an additional $2.3 trillion to the eight markets’ gross domestic product (GDP), contributing to the global economic recovery. As we approach the six-month mark of the pandemic, just when and how the “new normal” will emerge is still uncertain. But there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel for small businesses — even if it’s faint green and contains zeroes and ones.

Job seekers, just say no to one-way video interviews

Bulgaria's Eleven Capital gets dividend from Kanbanize - SeeNews
2h agoVenture CapitalseenewsViews: 12
SOFIA (Bulgaria), February 3 (SeeNews) -Bulgarian investment firm Eleven Capital [BUL:11C] said on Wednesday that is has received a dividend of nearly 380,000 levs ($233,000/194,000 euro) from i -

Bulgaria's Eleven Capital gets dividend from Kanbanize - SeeNews

DevOps.com
Kanbanize Enables Instana to Accelerate Growth and Improve Value Delivery Across Distributed Engineering Teams
Sofia, Bulgaria, November 12, 2020 –  Kanbanize , a digital Kanban platform solution for Agile project management, and  Instana , a leading provider of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions for cloud-native and microservice applications, today announced that Instana’s global engineering team accelerated growth and achieved process stability through applied Kanban practices powered by Kanbanize. Recent Posts By Deborah Schalm
In search of a method to increase visibility across Instana’s more than 15 engineering teams in the U.S. and Europe, Instana was attracted to Kanban’s evolutionary process improvement approach to achieve organizational sustainability. The introduction of Kanban and Kanbanize gave Instana instant visibility into global engineering operations. Furthermore, it enabled the teams to achieve process stability, focus on value delivery, and institutionalize continuous improvement efforts. Instana also:
Transformed processes into pull systems which allowed teams to gain control over their workflow and helped stabilize demand fluctuations, resulting in improved process predictability. Managed to unburden teams from manual tasks and focus their resources on delivering customer value through process automation. Enabled the introduction of data-driven continuous improvement efforts and established necessary feedback loops with Kanbanize’s reporting and analytic capabilities. “If it is just about visibility, you might get away with any task tracker, but if you want to take it seriously, close the feedback loop and help teams make informed data-driven decisions, then Kanbanize is the obvious tool,” said Nils Wloka, Director of Engineering at Instana. Instana is currently evaluating the option to expand Kanban adoption along the entire value chain with a goal of achieving better fitness for purpose on an organizational level. You can read the complete Kanbanize and Instana case study  here . About Kanbanize
Kanbanize is the leading Kanban platform for efficient project management and delivery. It helps managers gain visibility across all projects, connects planning with execution, and guides the continuous optimization of the delivery workflows. Built with scale in mind, Kanbanize can easily expand from a single delivery team to a strategic portfolio. Learn more  here. About Instana
Instana is the leading provider of Observability and Application Performance Management solutions for Cloud-Native Microservice applications. The company’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated APM, ingests all observability metrics, traces every request and profiles all processes continuously and automatically, delivering the actionable information with full context to Dev+Ops to help them optimize their application performance and pipelines. Learn more  here .

Kanbanize Enables Instana to Accelerate Growth and Improve Value Delivery Across Distributed Engineering Teams

November 12, 2020 09:12 AM Eastern Standard Time
SOFIA, Bulgaria--( BUSINESS WIRE )-- Kanbanize , a digital Kanban platform solution for Agile project management, and Instana , a leading provider of Application Performance Monitoring (APM) and Observability solutions for cloud-native and microservice applications, today announced that Instana’s global engineering team accelerated growth and achieved process stability through applied Kanban practices powered by Kanbanize. In search of a method to increase visibility across Instana’s more than 15 engineering teams in the U.S. and Europe, Instana was attracted to Kanban’s evolutionary process improvement approach to achieve organizational sustainability. The introduction of Kanban and Kanbanize gave Instana instant visibility into global engineering operations. Furthermore, it enabled the teams to achieve process stability, focus on value delivery, and institutionalize continuous improvement efforts. Instana also:
Transformed processes into pull systems which allowed teams to gain control over their workflow and helped stabilize demand fluctuations, resulting in improved process predictability. Managed to unburden teams from manual tasks and focus their resources on delivering customer value through process automation. Enabled the introduction of data-driven continuous improvement efforts and established necessary feedback loops with Kanbanize’s reporting and analytic capabilities. “If it is just about visibility, you might get away with any task tracker, but if you want to take it seriously, close the feedback loop and help teams make informed data-driven decisions, then Kanbanize is the obvious tool,” said Nils Wloka, Director of Engineering at Instana. Instana is currently evaluating the option to expand Kanban adoption along the entire value chain with a goal of achieving better fitness for purpose on an organizational level. You can read the complete Kanbanize and Instana case study here . About Kanbanize
Kanbanize is the leading Kanban platform for efficient project management and delivery. It helps managers gain visibility across all projects, connects planning with execution, and guides the continuous optimization of the delivery workflows. Built with scale in mind, Kanbanize can easily expand from a single delivery team to a strategic portfolio. Learn more here. About Instana
Instana is the leading provider of Observability and Application Performance Management solutions for Cloud-Native Microservice applications. The company’s Enterprise Observability Platform, powered by automated APM, ingests all observability metrics, traces every request and profiles all processes continuously and automatically, delivering the actionable information with full context to Dev+Ops to help them optimize their application performance and pipelines. Learn more here . Contacts

GitHub operates as a developer platform that provides tools for version control, code review, project management, and continuous integration/continuous delivery or deployment (CI/CD) workflows. The services offered include artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted coding, security vulnerability detection, and cloud-based development environments. It was founded in 2008 and is based in San Francisco, California. In October 2018, GitHub was acquired by Microsoft at a valuation of $7.5B.

GitHub

This is a bi-directional integration between GitHub and Kanbanize and it provides a basic synchronization of GitHub to Kanbanize and vice-versa .

GitHub Integration with Kanbanize – Kanbanize Knowledge Base

Software

Johnson Controls

Seed

Kanbanize is visual management Kanban software that helps teams become more productive by applying lean principles to their work.

Date	Round	Amount	Investors	Valuation Valuations are submitted by companies, mined from state filings or news, provided by VentureSource, or based on a comparables valuation model.	Revenue	Sources
	Other Investors		Steve Blank	$XXM	0 FY undefined	1
	Seed	$XXM	Subscribe to see more	$XXM	0 FY undefined	0

Date
Round	Other Investors	Seed
Amount		$XXM
Investors	Steve Blank	Subscribe to see more
Valuation	$XXM	$XXM
Revenue	0 FY undefined	0 FY undefined
Sources	1	0

First funding	Last Funding	Investor	Rounds	Board Seats	Type	Location
		Eleven Ventures	1 Seed		Venture Capital	Bulgaria
		Steve Blank	Subscribe to see more		Angel Investor (Individual)	California

First funding
Last Funding
Investor	Eleven Ventures	Steve Blank
Rounds	1 Seed	Subscribe to see more
Board Seats
Type	Venture Capital	Angel Investor (Individual)
Location	Bulgaria	California

Date	10/3/2023
Investment Stage
Companies	Berriprocess Agility
Valuation	$XXM
Total Funding
Note	Acquired
Sources	1

How VCs Use CB Insights

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Platform Overview

Kanbanize

Total Raised

Investors Count

Funding, Valuation & Revenue

Kanbanize Investors

Kanbanize Acquisitions

1 Acquisition