Question for startup founders out there: How many software subscriptions do you have for you and your team?
Chances are your team spends the day bouncing between Slack, email, HubSpot, Notion, LinkedIn, a few different project management tools, and whatever platform holds your code.
But as Metro Atlanta founders Kelly Flynn and Tim Chalk learned through their startup careers, the reality is that most startup teams only use a fraction of the features on each of those platforms. Most of the time, startup teams end up piecemealing together a workflow that is scattered across multiple platforms. And that ends up being an expensive way to get a startup up and running.
Flynn and Chalk thought there had to be a better way for startups to get all the resources they needed under one roof. So they set out to build Kiksasa, which they describe as a “SuperApp for the startup community.”
The Kiksasa platform is a mix of native applications and integrations with third-party applications. The notetaking, task management, knowledge sharing, and chat apps are all native applications. Its integrations are focused on “startup-friendly apps with significant free tiers including Miro, Figma, Replit, Pitch, and Box,” Flynn told Hypepotamus.
The Kiksasa hub can be organized and curated in a way that fits each individual’s needs.
Kiksasa was built intentionally with only the tools that founders absolutely need to build. This “minimum viable product” approach helps the Kiksasa team roll out new features quickly.
But importantly, Kiksasa goes a step further with a focus on networking and community to help founders on their product-building journey. Users can see what experts are available on the platform who could answer their technical and business questions. This helps founders expand their network without having to spend endless time at in-person events or doing the dreaded cold outreach on LinkedIn.
The team is focused on helping founders, so it has made the platform free for solo founders and small teams.
Building Products For Startups
Ultimately, the team sees the platform as a way of “leveling the playing field” within the startup ecosystem.
“Fundamentally, we realized that [people] have been building startups the exact same way, using the very same tools, for the last thirty years…since the modern incubator and accelerator movement came into play,” Flynn told Hypepotamus. “We’ve been doing the same thing over and over again, but we aren’t changing the numbers in terms of success rates. The statistics haven’t budged.”
The statistics she refers to are all too familiar to startup founders. Upwards of 90% of startups fail before reaching five years in business. Only 0.05% of all startups are able to secure venture capital. And those numbers are even smaller for women, minority, and non-traditional-founded companies.
Yes, there are a seemingly endless number of accelerators looking to help startup founders. But Flynn and Chalk continuously saw that those programs often did not equip founders. The team sees Kiksasa’s toolkit and community hub as a way to bridge that gap and ensure all founders have the resources they need.
Get To Know The Team
Chalk and Flynn met six years ago and founded the startup consulting firm Seirios Technologies together four years ago.
Chalk, a Georgia Tech graduate, bounced between startups and large enterprises like NCR throughout his career. He joined his first startup, Atlanta-based Firethorn, in 2006, and stayed on after the team was acquired by Qualcomm. He also worked at other payments-focused startups in town like ConnexPay and Vanco Payments. Flynn has worked in tech for twenty-five years, a career which has taken her to twenty countries around the world.
Flynn bootstrapped four startups in tech and environmental sciences before launching Kiksasa.
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Article was edited with additional information from the Kiksasa team
Photos provided by Kiksasa
