On a mission to have a meaningful and constructive impact on the world, Olaf and his team set out to make planning a breeze. While many startups today rely on external funding for their survival and growth, Soon is completely dependent on bootstrapping.

From 2016 founder of Soon Olaf Jacobson soon realized the difficulties and difficulties customers faced when using simple planning software. In an industry where there are many competitors, Soon is successful and has managed to keep its customers.

“There is a lot of planning software out there, but a lot of it is difficult to understand and some take a lot of training to work on,” added Olaf. “Soon is an easy-to-use collaborative planning solution that can seamlessly plan for your team.”

At the forefront of business development, Mr. Jacobson has seen the company grow in recent years, while the organization now has a strong position in the marketplace.

“Starting with a team of four in 2016, we did almost everything. We were a small team so it was easy to keep in touch with other departments. I mainly ran the sales aspect of the company, but also helped a bit with DevOps when needed. As a result, we are now able to grow our business and hire people to spread the work out as we grow. “

Who is your target market?

“Customer service is our niche. We are pretty much industry-independent. Currently, many of our customers are banks and financial institutions. eCommerce and other software companies are on the rise. They care about their customer service and are ready to invest in suitable planning software to manage their employees. We are not limited to a specific industry. In almost every industry there is a need for staff deployment planning and thus for a use case for our product. But usually customer service teams are the best fit for our business.

It’s really helpful for companies that have multiple teams working around the clock. ”

What was the inspiration for starting Soon?

“To be honest, we got into it. It wasn’t like we woke up one day and decided to develop planning software. We are very passionate about solving problems for our customers. It was at a meeting with one of our old customers; We realized that more than anything, they needed a planning solution. We worked on feedback from other customers and found that this is what our customers wanted – easy to use scheduling software! So we did one. On the way we improvised and finally we are where we are today. “

Can you tell us a little more about the product and how it works?

“We wanted to create a very robust product that anyone could use without any problems. With Soon you can plan flexibly in a number of ways. For example, if your team can take responsibility and you want to give them freedom, you can set up a self-planning system with open shifts. All you have to do is hire the people required and let the team run by themselves.

On the other hand, if your team is relatively young (e.g. you work with students) and you need to do some extra checks to make sure they all show up when you expect them to. You can create a schedule where you “invite” everyone to confirm that they have accepted their shift. This additional opt-in helps because both parties are involved.

In addition, you can plan for employees within shifts and manage their breaks. Imagine running a customer support center where employees have to work around the clock. With Soon, it’s easy to manage your shifts and get updates on meetings and other events throughout the day. In addition, you can manage your vacation or call in sick via the platform, and it is reflected in the system by automatically canceling shifts. ”

You can download the product for free on a 30 days free trial to test the product from their website. After that, you can choose between two different plans. The team plan would cost you 8 euros per user per month. And the business plan with more features would cost you 16 euros per user and month.

Disclaimer: Prices would rise at the end of October. So if you are looking for a great planning solution, now is the time.

Olaf and his team focused on solving customer problems that were critical to their growth.

“We always try to give our customers the best solution and solve their problem. We question stereotypical theories and develop solutions based on the needs of the customer. We’re still relatively new to workforce management, so we’re flexible. We don’t have old thoughts and fixed processes or theories; We approach every task with the aim of finding a solution for our customers. Our software is very flexible and agile. We can adapt it to your needs and integrate changes easily. That gives us an advantage over our competitors and makes us unique over other brands. “

“Feedback has played a critical role in the success of our business. We always take feedback from our customers and work to improve it. One of the feedback we received a lot was the integration of the platform with other apps. So we spent time in research and development to see how we could integrate our software with other apps.

We recently partnered with Google, so now you can Sync Google Calendar into the Soon software. It was a great integration as many customers requested this update and we were able to make it available to them. Our next goal is to work with Outlook and then maybe look at Slack or some other platforms. “

“Our work speaks for itself. We have invested very little in marketing and other sales processes. We mainly win our customers through recommendations that were great for our business. “

“Initially, we targeted corporate companies that really helped us generate income, which has largely contributed to our success. But now we are shifting our focus to smaller companies with a team of 5-50 employees. We are also open to working with different teams from different industries and are therefore excited to see what the future will bring. “

“Well, the industry is huge and there is a lot of planning software out there. However, when companies are looking for scheduling solutions, they are more likely to play it safe and choose companies that have been around for a long time. I would suggest that they take a risk with startups as we are more flexible and sometimes a better solution can be found than with a company that has been established for years. As a startup, we are working on solving the pain points for our customers and do not use a product just because it has been that way for many years. So I would suggest our customers to look at the product we offer and compare it to see the benefits and then make a decision. “