Interview With the CEO From the Social Media Platform Hoist

Posted by Jonas Klit Nielsen Mar 31st, 2010

Yesterday the Danish company Hoist won the MIT Global Startup Award held this year in Reykjavik on Iceland.

We have managed to get hold of a very busy CEO from Hoist, and asked him a few questions about the experience of winning the MIT Global Startup Award and what he thinks the future holds for Hoist. First, here are our insights on how we use the Hoist platform – at Mindjumpers, we have been using it for the last ten months.

Shortly about Hoist

Hoist is basically a browser-based working platform build on the idea of social networks. A similar product on the market is 37signals’ Basecamp, or in some ways the organisational tool Yammer. The future for organisations lies in making the organisation more social and innovative and that’s where a platform like Hoist comes into the picture.

As an organisation using Hoist, you can have different spaces – a sort of groups for different workflows, processes, teams or departments. For each of your spaces you build the space with different apps either pre-made or you can customize through an easy pull-and-drop method. Everyone in the organisation has their own personal profile and is assigned to different spaces relevant for their work.

How Mindjumpers uses Hoist

The best way to elaborate on the Hoist platform is probably by giving you a climbs of how we at Mindjumpers use the platform. First of all we use it for all internal communication. We have a space where all co-workers at Mindjumpers are involved. Here we post the general meetings for our staff and put up minutes from those meetings. This is also where we post general updates or put up information from management. In addition, we have different spaces for our teams to share ideas, put up tasks and handling all information on leads and clients.

We also use the platform for workflow and information sharing with our clients. For instance, we have different spaces for our clients, inviting relevant people from the client side to join the spaces. This provides a collaboration tool, where the client constantly can feel updated and give us feedback on development processes. It also keeps the email overload down and gives our clients a chance to follow up on the work, when it fits into their schedule.

A space we use the most is one called ‘Sharing Knowledge’, which is build like a closed community. We use it to share all the new knowledge we stumble upon with each other by posting a link and a description. Everything is attached with a possibility to leave a comment to the author of the post, which gives us a chance to develop small online brainstorms. So, the great thing about these social organisational tools is not only sharing, but also debating on knowledge.

We even use it as an external organisation tool, as we invite relevant people from our clients to join. This is not only done to share the knowledge we find valuable, but also to give them a chance to meet and interact with likeminded from other companies.

INTERVIEW WITH KASPER HULTHIN, HOIST CEO

What is MIT Global Startup Award?
The award is given as a part of the MIT global workshop where both entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial organisations and investors from all over the world meet. More than 50 startups submitted a pitch for the award.

What is your experience from the conference?
It was a bit cool, being this small basement based company from Denmark, to get all the acknowledgement from the community around the MIT global workshop, believing in what we do.

What does it mean for Hoist to win the award?
Most of all, it’s a giant pad on the back and a very important confirmation of what we are doing. We are doing it right, which the latest months of user submissions to our platform of course are a sign of.

What do you think is the most valuable thing for an organisation using the Hoist platform?
From what our users tell us, the platform provides a dynamic ability to fit each organisations’ unique processes into the platform and to be more efficient than organising things through email. At the same time, it provides both the organisation and the individual with a better overview of all the different tasks and workflows across everything you do.

Can you give us a glimpse of the future for Hoist?
We want Hoist to become your platform for work like Facebook has become the platform for your social life. This of course means that we still have a lot of work ahead, and that we can continue getting that valuable feedback from our users that we have received so far. In the end it’s that kind of input that’s building and improving the platform.