What companies always pay for is the automation of business processes. However, startups always want to automate something complex 😉 Yet, you can automate even simple actions — if many people perform them frequently. Because the total savings would be substantial. And automating such tasks is easier 😉 Here’s what can be automated in this way — and make a profit from it.
THE ESSENCE OF THE PROJECT
Rollstack automates the insertion of current data into presentations and other types of documents.
This useful feature can be utilized for quicker preparation of financial results reports, operational performance indicators, marketing and sales figures, user audience information, and anything else—as long as the company collects the original data for this.
Nearly any data source can be connected to Rollstack, using a set of ready-made platform integration modules or via API.
The platform has a presentation builder where you can specify which data from connected sources needs to be inserted in the right place on the right slide.
Data in the presentation can be updated manually—by pressing the “Update Presentation” button, after which all the data blocks in the required spots of the presentation will be updated from the sources connected to it.
You can also set a schedule for automatic updating—then the data blocks will be updated without any extra button presses.
Presentations can be created from scratch every time, or you can use a previously created presentation as a template—to slightly edit it and quickly create a new presentation based on the old one.
Previous versions of presentations are automatically saved as a sequence of versions—whether the presentation itself was edited or only the data in it was updated. Each version can be viewed separately—comparing, for instance, last quarter’s reports with this quarter’s
Rollstack is an emerging platform aiming to streamline the data integration process within presentations and various documents. It offers different pricing tiers characterized by the number of users allowed to edit presentations, data source quantities, and methods of integration into corporate IT infrastructure.
The startup, still in its infancy, has managed to garner real customers and is experiencing a 50% monthly growth in client base, despite being a small team of seven individuals.
Having recently graduated from Y Combinator, Rollstack has raised $1.8 million in funding, supplementing their initial funding from the accelerator
WHAT’S INTERESTING
The pricing specifics are not publicly disclosed on their website, probably as the startup is still in the process of finalizing them. However, the value proposition is clear; by automating repetitive data aggregation tasks, Rollstack claims to save employees 5 hours per week, translating to about 12.5% of standard work hours. This time-saving feature not only translates to about $40,000 savings per employee per year but also alleviates burnout from monotonous, repetitive tasks.
Interestingly, the problem Rollstack is addressing is similar to what another startup, Mediakits, identified in 2021. Mediakits observed that influencers often found themselves in a cycle of manually copying and pasting updated data regarding their audience metrics into presentations for potential advertisers. Both startups underscore a growing necessity for automated solutions in data management, whether in corporate settings or the evolving digital marketing landscape. Through these platforms, the tedious task of manual data entry and updating is being revolutionized, freeing up valuable time and resources for more strategic initiatives.
Mediakits has developed a platform that bloggers can connect to the platforms they use—after which they can send advertisers a link to an always up-to-date presentation, where all metrics from different platforms are updated automatically. This initiative immediately raised $1.4 million in investments.
Moving in a direction similar to Rollstack is the startup Matik. However, their platform not only saves time on creating presentations through automatic data updates from various sources—but also personalizes the distributed presentations, automatically inserting contact names, their company names, and other information from CRM. They raised $23.1 million.
Automation of business processes is a well-known task and a large market. But what type of automation are companies willing to pay for? That which can save more of the employees’ time and, consequently, money for the company.
It seems that these should be some complex tasks, the execution of which requires a lot of time. But if they are performed rarely and by few—automation will not save much time in total.
However, if a large number of employees regularly perform simple and quick tasks—the “penny” savings on their automation, multiplied by the number of employees and the frequency of execution, results in very impressive absolute figures.
Rollstack and Matik are one type of example of such automation. But there are other less obvious options.
The startup liftOS noticed that employees constantly switch between different application windows and browser tabs while working on the computer. Each such switch is seconds. But it turned out that in the process of real work, people switch like this 1,200 times a day!
Therefore, liftOS has made a platform that allows switching between the most frequent windows faster—and promised to save 7 hours of working time per week due to this. Being still in beta in the spring, it managed to raise €1 million in investments for this.
Another unnoticed time-eater is the push notifications that constantly pop up on the screen and also distract seconds of attention.
Therefore, the startup Jigso made an assistant Sidekick, capable of intelligently filtering and aggregating push notifications—showing employees only the most important ones less often. And in the very first round of investments, they managed to raise $7.5 million for such an assistant.
Where to run
The general direction is clear—creating platforms for automating typical simple, but often performed tasks. The keyword here is “typical.”
Because some time ago there was hype around “Robotic Process Automation” (RPA). But these platforms promised to automate any sequences of actions regularly performed on the computer—imitating human actions.
But finding applications for them and implementation turned out to be quite difficult, and the price of universal mechanisms of smart automation is quite high. And employees want something simpler, and companies—cheaper 😉
Therefore, it’s better to make automation not “universal,” but “typical.” And developing “typical” is faster and easier 😉
In general, look around and observe—what typical actions do your colleagues and subordinates regularly perform? Can you save at least a penny of time on each execution? If such actions are performed by many and often—then in total it will result in significant savings that the company will be willing to pay for.
What types of actions could these be? How can they be automated faster and simpler?
About the company
Rollstack
Website: rollstack.com
Last round: $1.8M, 27.09.2023
Total investments: $1.85M, rounds: 2