Website: https://www.shiftrapp.com/
Founders: Adrian Dean and Ludek Dolejsky
Shiftr is a very modern start-up story. The founders discovered each other via Google and launched a simple but clever idea for an app despite only meeting each other a couple of times – mainly due to the fact Dean’s Canberra base was a little far from the Czech Republic, where Dolejsky was living.
The start-up’s app allows workers to swap shifts without lengthy phone calls and organisation.
What’s the benefit of being in Startmate?
It’s a big learning curve, having seen the calibre of our peers. Startmate has given us $50,000 – which is 50,000 $1 experiments we can make to run and iterate our ideas.
We want to get into a tight cycle of rapid change, while companies don’t change so quickly. We want bang for our buck in every way, such as getting a place rent-free in Sydney. A friend agreed to this if we arranged to move his stuff in, which I did. It saved us around $10,000.
So how did you meet Ludek?
I was in San Francisco when I first made contact, via a Google search. I had another idea called MyMyke, which was a distributed microphone app.
He’d created software for that so I contacted him. He’d developed something to just spy on friends, something fun, and I said let’s retool it. We worked on it for a month and then I shared a Pilsner with him when I went backpacking.
I then floated the idea of Shiftr maybe 18 months ago. My girlfriend couldn’t get out of work and had the whole hassle of calling around and getting a replacement. She had the threat of not getting work if she dropped out without getting someone to cover her.
I thought there was a real opportunity there to create an app that was easy for staff to use. I didn’t want to create a full rostering system, as it’s hard for businesses to change those big processes, but employers weren’t bridging to smartphone very well when swapping shifts, they’ll use Facebook or text.
How does it work?
Any employee can download the app and invite co-workers in. We include managers in this too, as they are on the front line, having to deal with this pain with tools lumped on them by IT departments; people who have never flipped a burger.
Employees jump in and can create a shift – it takes you about 10 seconds. You push ‘swap’ and it notifies everyone in workplace that they want to swap and other staff have the option to grab it. The manager gets to choose the winning employee.
How will you monetise it?
We are going to charge managers when they want to claim their workplace as official workplaces. We’ll add features such as group messaging and store ‘walls’. Obviously they get control over swapping too.
It doesn’t require everyone in the business sign up, but catching point is around 40% of a workplace. We trialled a McDonald’s store and it had a 60% take-up in the first few hours.
We’ll have a subscription model with a 30-day trial. The charge depends on the business, we’re looking at $30 to $40 a month.
We are looking at a flat site fee. We found workplaces want that, rather than pay $1 per employee or anything like that.
We’re actually a small part of these massive rostering systems. We are filling that pain point when someone calls up to say ‘I can’t make it’ because it costs a lot of time to coordinate.
Eventually, we’d like to be able to match people who are skilled casual workers with different workplaces. That’s the long-term vision – complete labour flexibility.
How did you persuade Ludek to move here?
Well, Australia has a certain allure to it. Every European thinks Australia is a beautiful place with beautiful people and beaches.
He has a tech consultancy company and felt he could take it as far as he could. This way, he gets to learn more and challenge himself.
I think we complement each other well. I’m not overly technical, while he’s not someone to sit in front of a client.
How many workplaces have signed up?
We started on one site with a trial. We had a terrible product but the look on the manager’s face was ‘wow, staff can see shifts in their phone’. He recommended it and it grew rapidly to eight workplaces in Canberra.
We’ve now got 18, with another three coming on board – I’ve had calls from businesses in Hobart and the Central Coast.
We feel a lot of these companies have this problem. This initial roll out works well with McDonald’s, but we’re also looking at Woolworths and Walmart – big brand names. We have interest from nurses and doctors too.
We have just had the app on the app store and have done no marketing, so people are obviously searching for it. Managers say ‘we need this.’
Next, we’ll target industry groups and thought leaders that are talking about absenteeism. We’re starting to ramp the marketing up.
We’re getting a lot of fanatical support from managers in McDonald’s –one guy got us into five different stores as he was raving about it.
What are your ambitions for the business?
Niki (Scevak) gave us a pep talk and said you need to accelerate to five to 50 to 100 stores quickly, otherwise you’ll lose out.
The longer term goal is to crack into the US market. We’ve had to be very careful when choosing our words – shifts works well across countries, where roster in US means sports roster.
I hope to get into the US by May. If we’re not hitting our targets, we’ll see if the value proposition is strong enough and if we can continue. We don’t want to be stuck with a stillborn company, earning enough to pay salary but not growing.
