Butter enables a remote first world with an online collaborative workflow tool
The Danish-founded, yet fully remote, CreaTech startup Butter is building an “all-in-one” platform for planning and running virtual workshops. After experiencing suboptimal workshop sessions on generic platforms, such as Zoom and Teams, Co-founder and CEO Jakob Knutzen and his co-founders decided to build their own workflow tool that makes virtual workshops even better than physical ones.
Supporting facilitators by providing a full workflow for complex collaborative sessions
“Butter is a full workflow for complex collaborative sessions that supports facilitators in both setting up workshops, running them, and capturing the work to distribute afterwards. In other words, we allow people to both prepare, run and debrief an online workshop in one tool.”
“The problem Butter solves is essentially the technical overload that workshop facilitators face when they do online workshops. We differentiate ourselves by focusing on two things: First, Butter allows people to prep the session, run the session and debrief the session all in one tool. Secondly, Butter is focused on building energy and interactivity in sessions.”
“Zoom fatigue is a real thing. My co-founders and I experienced that ourselves. That was the reason we built Butter in the first place. So, another problem Butter solves is this inherent lack of energy in online sessions. With Butter’s delightful design, emoji reactions, sound effects and GIFs, facilitators can host engaging and interactive sessions with high energy and tools to collaborate effectively.”
Entering a remote first world
“In the midst of covid-19, we are seeing more and more international companies that are working across borders in a way they haven't done before. We even see companies go fully remote. At Butter, we believe that we are entering a remote first world and this only makes the need for human interaction and collaboration even more important. Our goal is to enable exactly that by bridging the pros of going digital.”
“Butter is just one example of a company that is fully remote. We’re proud to say that we are a global team of 20 people with 12 different nationalities spread across 11 countries in 4 continents. Of course, building remotely has a lot of challenges and the culture requires a high degree of specificity - but remote also enables flexibility and better access to talent.”
The pros and cons of starting and running a Danish-founded startup
“The tech ecosystem in Denmark is growing very quickly. It is at a much better place than just three years ago. We have great early stage soft funding but we’re lacking risk willing talent. The access to talent is definitely one of the biggest barriers, which is also why remote work and hiring outside Denmark is so important in the world we live in today. It is easy to set up a business in Denmark but Danish startups also need to look outside of Denmark for inspiration.”
