Whatis - your team's knowledge, available everywhere

Whatis

Whatis is the easiest way to manage your team's jargon, terminology, and context, right from Slack and Chrome.

About Whatis

Whatis was an enterprise knowledge management tool that made it easy to access company information in the tools you use everyday.

I co-founded and lead Sales and Operations for our company culminating in being acquired by Hightouch in 2022.

The Product

The app consisted of 3 main components: a web application, a Slack integration, and Google Chrome extension. Teams could either upload a CSV of knowledge, or create new entries via any of the user interfaces

Tech Stack: Python, GraphQL, Javascript, Heroku, MySQL

Here’s the Whatis Chrome Extension in action: https://www.loom.com/share/badaa4fcfeba4ac1845e286f6561298e?t=3

Why Did Companies Purchase Whatis?

In 2021, we were in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many companies were suddenly thrusted into remote environments. New and old employees alike suddenly found themselves communicating in new ways. It became very difficult for teams to understand all of their company-specific terms, acronyms, lingo, and more.

Whatis made it easy for teams to organize, categorize, and unlock team’s language. Aside from receiving the meaning of what a term means, Whatis would also surface who to go to for more information, integrate external data sources, and link to documentation.

Key Stats:

  • Key Customers: Databricks, Divvy, BetterUp, Simply Business, Prodigy Game, Marqeta, UK Government, and hundreds more.

  • Over 100,000 Whatis entries created

  • Raised $1.3mm from investors across the US and Europe

“We use a ton of terms and acronyms in our business and Whatis is a really easy way to integrate that within Slack, since 99% of our communication already happens there. It has helped us onboard new employees immensely.
”
— Jennie H. - Head of Employee Experience, Divvy

Conclusion:

Buiding Whatis was one of the most challenging and rewarding chapter of my career. Going from having an idea, to building an initial product, to closing our first enterprise customers, and raising venture capital, was a playbook that was invaluable to learn. Working with my co-founders Hugo Darwood and Mitchell Friedman was also an immense privilege.

Skills:

  • Product -Served as our de facto product manager, being the main point of contact with our customers and working with our engineering teams to build feature requests

  • Sales - Led all aspects of our sales process. From prospecting to onboarding.

  • Marketing and Design - Built our landing pages, created case studies, lead outreach and event marketing, refined our copywriting, positioning, and more

  • Leadership and Teamwork - Building an early-stage business will teach you these skills more than anything. We hired an initial team, and worked through co-founder dynamics that were very challenging at times.

  • Fundraising - I was part of the fundraising process and built a great network of investors and operators

Aaron Fried