Today Website Planet had the opportunity to speak with Shiva Prabhakaran, head of marketing & growth at Routine, a solution to merge all your calendars into one. a great add on to the
best project management tools.
Please Present Routine To Our Audience. What Services/Products Do You Offer, And What Makes You Stand Out From The Competition??
Routine is a productivity super app that combines the essential elements of your productivity triad – calendar, tasks, and notes. The app is powered by AI, making it one of the fastest, if not the fastest, in the market.
We also have tons of automation powered by Zapier to make Routine your go-to hub for running your life.
What’s Your Story? What Sparked The Idea, And How Has It Evolved So Far?
I joined Routine in July of 2021, just after we had graduated from the YC Winter 2021 batch. Through the countless hours spent discussing Routine with Julien Quintard (Founder/CEO), the motivation to build, to put it lightly, is evident.
Routine has one goal – help you save time and be your second brain.
Julien has been a productivity geek for a while now, from his time as a computer scientist to now as an entrepreneur, trying out numerous productivity tools and trying to get the most out of them.
Unfortunately, that list got pretty slim and, at some points, almost non-existent, so he decided to scratch his itch and build the solution himself. Hence, Routine was born.
WhatIs The Mission Of Routine?
Routine comes from the collective wisdom of having spoken to and studied thousands of entrepreneurs and professionals. In fact, Julien has spent hundreds of hours speaking to founders about the state of their productivity during his time as the Managing Director of Techstars.
Beyond that, our product team regularly reviews the latest research around productivity to create possible value adds to the Routine app. One example of this is the idea of context switching; research shows it can take up to 9.5 minutes to get back into a workflow after switching between digital apps; this led us to synergize your calendar and planner on Routine.
Long story short, Routine wants to be the most productive assistant you can have.
Who Are Your Typical Customers’ And What Are The Pain Points That You Help Them Solve?
Our customers are a diverse group. They range from CXOs of multinationals and startups looking to hyper-optimize their time and knowledge to students who want a clean app with sufficient features to get them through university.
And since Routine is currently free to use, we see more people from diverse backgrounds discovering new use cases, and value adds.
That said, we primarily cater to knowledge workers at every level of an organization’s hierarchy, and our marketing efforts reflect that.
Apart From Routine, What Other Tools Would You Suggest To Improve One’s Productivity?
Routine integrates with many tools through Zapier, which is one of the things that makes our app so much better. For example, some of our most used integrations are with Notion, an app we use daily.
We also use Front to manage external communication, as it is a hub for all the messages and emails we need to track. Front’s range of features makes it easy to bring the entire team together, synergize our communication capabilities, and significantly reduce the need for redundant email or chat chains.
What Toolkit Would You Suggest To Anyone Starting An Online Business Now?
From the standpoint of running your business day-to-day, we strongly recommend using Notion; we do many things ranging from queue management to documentation. The same goes for Front when it comes to communication.
Our internal communication is run on Discord, and there are not a lot of complaints at the moment, and it is easy to set up, so I strongly recommend that as well. We also use Loom for any async video-centric communication.
As far as marketing is concerned, we use Ahrefs, Majestic SEO, Grammarly, and Hemmingway for content generation. We use MailChimp for our external emails for now, but we are open to exploring alternatives.
On the design front, we use Figma & Invision for both our product designs and our marketing media.
What Trends Are Going To Shape The Future Of Your Industry?
The idea of building a second brain has taken off, and we don’t expect it to slow down anytime soon. Knowledge workers are particularly keen on PKM solutions both from product and philosophy/methodology standpoints.
There is also a need for a more holistic approach to productivity and knowledge management. Right now, people need to duct tape multiple tools to develop a coherent system for their productivity; this will not be the case going forward.
The rise of super apps like Routine has started, where you can perform multiple functions without switching apps. We don’t see this slowing down anytime soon.
Lastly, Any Exciting News Or Developments That You Would Like To Share About Routine?
Our team is working to bring our users the Routine iOS app for a more holistic user experience. The app will bring the core elements of the desktop app along with the convenience of using a mobile app, so we are very excited about that.
So do keep an eye out for that on our Twitter!
Finally, before I sign off, I would like to thank you for hosting us. I would be happy to do this again anytime.
