Despite the rise of social media, SMS and countless collaboration tools, email remains a constant in most people’s lives. In the last year alone, it's estimated three hundred and twenty billion emails were sent and received worldwide (and that number is still growing). Yet as software, email hasn’t really changed in years. Who to CC and BCC has become its own form of workplace etiquette, and for people who rely on it during their day-to-day, email is often considered a time waster.  

It was this frustration with email that led a French twenty-something to start Front – a software company dedicated to building a better inbox.

In this episode, host Ilana Strauss finds out why Front’s founders were so committed to tackling a tool many tech companies wanted to give up on, the path that led them to Silicon Valley, the health setbacks that forced them to re-think their company’s commitment to work-life balance, and how they discovered an untapped market of users.

You’ll hear from Front’s co-founder and CEO Mathilde Collin and head of product Nate Abbott, as well as Chris Schwass from Culture Amp, an employee engagement company that relies heavily on email to communicate with customers.

When It Clicked is an original podcast from ClickUp. For a transcript of this episode and other extras, check out When It Clicked - Front.  

If you work in sales, your CRMs, or customer relationship managers, run your life. And among the most notable CRMs, Salesforce is the biggest. Still, the process of using this necessary tool puts many sales people in a cold sweat on a routine basis. What’s more, if you’re among the roughly 20% of the population who identifies as neurodivergent, and living with a condition like ADHD, dyslexia, or somewhere on the autism spectrum, the daily tasks associated with CRMs become even more challenging. 

So when two engineers decided to find a fix for complicated CRMs, the program they created – Scratchpad – also ended up becoming a lifehack for the neurodiverse users, everywhere. 

In this episode, host Ilana Strauss finds out why Scratchpad’s founders decided to take on the challenge of simplifying Salesforce, how they connected with the neurodiverse community for help, and when they realized that designing products around the different ways people think made the outcomes exponentially better.     

You’ll hear from Scratchpad’s co-founder and CEO Pouyan Salehi, and Cyrus Karbassiyoon, the company’s co-founder and Chief Technical officer, as well as Tarun Malik, an account executive for TouchBistro, a point-of-sale system for restaurants. Malik has ADHD, and is one of many neurodiverse sales people regularly using and providing feedback to Scratchpad. 

When It Clicked is an original podcast from ClickUp. For a transcript of this episode and other extras, check out When It Clicked - Scratchpad.

Heinz ketchup, Kylie Cosmetics, Gymshark. What’s the invisible thread that connects them all? Shopify.

Today, Shopify powers more than 1.7 million merchants with enough combined sales to make it the second largest online retailer in the U.S. Yet getting here meant making some unconventional choices, and betting on a future its customers—and even some of its employees—couldn't see.

In this episode, host Ilana Strauss uncovers the story behind Shopify’s decision to do more than build “websites with shopping carts,” and how it pioneered a new class of direct-to-consumer entrepreneurs by creating the tools merchants needed, before they knew they needed them.

You’ll hear from Craig Miller, who joined Shopify in 2011 as its first Chief Marketing Officer and later became Chief Product Officer, Brandon Weimer, the co-founder of Brandini Toffee and one of the first two hundred merchants to use Shopify, and Catherine Erdly, a retail analyst specializing in ecommerce.

When It Clicked is an original podcast from ClickUp. For a transcript of this episode and other extras, check out When It Clicked - Shopify.