The Google of Work Management

11/13/08

Collaborative work management—it’s not the sexiest topic, but it’s a big business. Seattle-area entrepreneur Brent Frei estimates that his newest startup, Smartsheet, is the “301st company in the space.” The basic idea is to make software that companies can use to manage team-based projects and keep track of things like workflow, file storage, discussion threads, alerts, and to-do lists. Most companies still use Excel spreadsheets, e-mail folders, and other similar programs to do task-tracking, which can be tedious and inflexible.
 
Today, Bellevue, WA-based Smartsheet is launching a new tool for small businesses—brokers, consultants, recruiters, and the like—to manage their own teams and services online. But the deeper story of the company goes back a ways, and it holds lessons for other companies in this economic climate in which streamlining management could be the key to survival. “Nobody has created the Google for team-task management,” Frei says. “Someone will figure this out, and when they do…that will really pull a lot of the power away from big corporations and put it in the hands of the productive people in the world.”
 
Read Gregory T. Huang's entire article on Xconomy.com