Why we created Weet, the story

A lot of people often asked me why we created Weet and what is the story behind.

The story began almost 12 months ago: The shelter in place order was just announced and we (my husband, my 2 boys and I) ended up working from home. A few weeks later, my 8 year old boy gave me a drawing: Usually, I enjoy getting drawings from my son, Adam. However, this one broke my heart: In his picture, Adam drew himself asking whether I am still in meetings, to which I replied “Shut up, I am on Zoom”. I looked at the clock, it was 6.45pm and I realized that I just spent my day in back to back video conferences, without being really effective. Although I don’t like to admit it, this was the situation almost every day. I suddenly realized that more than half of them could be cancelled without really impacting anything.

I had this feeling that we could work differently but I especially realized that we were in the asynchronous video space for several years, through Speach: A multi-million dollar company which offers a video knowledge sharing platform for big corporations like Colgate Palmolive, GE, Johnson & Johnson, and Merck.

I had this feeling that we could use this expertise to change the way we work.

First we built our own tool for us: My team is across time zones between the US West Coast, Texas, US East Coast, Netherlands, France, Ukraine, Libya, Australia, Kenya, Colombia… It worked so well: You know what? We reduced our number of meetings by 3 times!

But what was surprising for me is that I couldn’t imagine (before Weet) hiring someone, across time zones, sometimes on the other side of the planet, without ever meeting him or her in person and successfully creating a personal & close relationship. I really didn’t imagine that video messaging could close the distance like this.

Weet lets you easily record your screen and your face before instantly sharing the link and inviting people to interact on it when they are available, on their own time. The fact that we receive, several times in a day, a short video message with a warm & welcoming voice and face, is just magic! Finally, I completely organize my day differently: I stop working at 4.30pm/5pm and I get a lot done from 8 pm to 11 pm when my kids are sleeping. I really enjoy spending more quality time with my kids. We now get together daily to play board games and Adam manages to beat me at chess sometimes :-) Fun fact: Adam now asks me if I am on Weet; I can just pause my video and answer his questions.

Since then, we opened it in a Beta version and after receiving feedback from thousands of beta users, we said loudly: Zoom is dead! Stop the meeting madness! Live video meetings take time, are difficult to schedule and most are really unnecessary.

We are on a mission to change the way we communicate, work, and finally, the way we live. We truly believe in an asynchronous way of work, that is more respectful of each other’s time, based on team’s trust, flexibility and freedom. We should let people work when they are more receptive and creative. Not when the standard 9 am — 5 pm agenda dictates his or her work. At the end of the day, we achieve engagement and productivity.

Now that kids are returning to school and workers to the office, I can’t imagine returning to the old ways of work. This asynchronous way of working allows us to hire people all around the globe and stay connected. Our latest hiring is based in Amsterdam. Personally, this offers me and anyone in the company, the ability to work from any place in the world. I know that a teammate is looking to move to Costa Rica and another one to Ecuador…

I would like to say thank you to my awesome co-founder Jeremy and my awesome team. Thank you also to my investors for trusting me from the beginning and believing in our vision. The #futureofwork is asynchronous. Welcome in my world and join our #nomeeting revolution!

Let me know what you think! I would love to hear from you.