Company description
Yast is a time tracker application delivered as a SaaS app and is used by freelancers and up to medium sized businesses. While several time trackers consider them selves as easy to use, Yast has focused on the user experience and has received attention from several blogs for its user interface and experience.
The founding team is five engineers studying together at the university and decided to make "something" before graduating. The result was Yast.
The company strategy has been "Born Global". Headquarters are located in a small town of Norway called Sogndal, but the majority of the users are from the US.
Having spent most of the time in the startup phase working on the product, focus is now shifting more towards market communication, moneytizing and partnering.
Team
Team
Håvard Halvorsen- Head Interaction Designer
Hi there. I'm Håvard. While I was completing my Master in robotics, I handpicked an awesome crewcomposed of fellow students to help build a technological startup based on my latest idea, the timetracker Yast.
I'm the go-to guy in the team. Mostly I am a coder, but am pretty handy with Photoshop, andalways a bit of a visionary. I am also the CEO of nLink, our consultancy agency, which is housed rightnext to Yast in the stadium. I love Yast, and I'm constantly nagging Halvor withmy ideas. I just to make sure Yast is the number 1 time tracker on the market. I believe that life iswhat you make it to be. Most winter days, you can find me skiing downhill the fantastic mountainson the west coast of Norway, right next to the Yast office.
Jørn Nilsson – CTO
Hello, I´m Jørn. As the CTO, I make sure that all the new features are developed and implementedcorrectly. I also keep an eye on the day-to-day functionality. Since with a team like ours, thereare always plenty of opinions pulling us in different directions, it´s important to prioritize and stayfocused on what needs to be done. So my job consist of bringing all the ideas together, tear themapart, build them back up again, and get the job done. Fun stuff! If you can´t do anything about it,then put it aside until you can.. Go surfing instead.
Halvor Gregusson – CEO
Hi, I´m Halvor. I´m the CEO of Yast, and because our organizationmainly consists of developers, my work is all about organizing everythingelse. What it entails for me is learning every aspects of our business, identify and capture whatand who we need on-board to make our company a success. I am also the most public face of ourcompany and love to do presentations and pitches in front of a live audience.
And yes, I love our users. Several times, I have gotten into seriousnon-Yast-related conversations with users leaving us a feedback. I love to hear from them.Did you ever notice that when you turn off the engine of a sailboat, it´s all quiet except for “swoosh,swoosh” sound? That´s when you know you are sailing, and there´s nothing like it.
Jørgen Borgesen – Head programmer
I´m a programmer. No executive title, no fancy names. Just plain, old programmer.But if I have a slow day programming, I like to experiment with Yast’s design, and if it looks good,I pass it on to the team. Oh yes, back home and at the office, they call me”back flip Borgesen”because back flip is my signature snowboard trick. But you didn’t need to know that!
Øivind Loe – programmer
My name is Øivind. I´m Jørns programming”assistant”. Even though, my full-time job is a lead
developer at a local microchip company, I am committed to Yast. I focus on how the platformperforms with its various components. At Yast, I usually work with behind the scenes stuff, such asperformance optimizations and the external API, but not all of my work is hidden from the users. Iam the guy responsible for the timeline bar. When I'm not immersed in countless lines of sexy code,listening to rap-music, you can find me dancing the salsa.
http://yast.com
Business model
Freemium. A personal account without business features is free while a business account is a pay per month/per user.
Competitive advantage
- "Painfully, stupidly easy to use"
- Flexible project structure.
- A one page interface for all functionalities
Investors
Halvor Gregusson
