helloSkotty came about when I was doing a joint project for B Amsterdam and Teamily, the startup I did before this one. B Amsterdam (the biggest startup hub in Europe) is doing really well and they had asked me to help them out on their rent department. I was back-to-back in meetings every single day. I missed 10 to 15 calls on a regular basis and most of all that stressed me out big time.

I even lost a very very big client that told me that Barack Obama was probably easier to reach than me. Then I figured out that it's not that when someone calls me they want me on the phone NOW. If I could let them know when I would call them back was good enough. Expectation management basically.

So I kind of hacked the first version of helloSkotty myself. Using the standard reject SMS a little web link and some days and times that my callers could select. And people liked it a lot! I got requests to set others up too. Then I took it one step further and created a little bot that could read my agenda and plan the callback. Too bad my coding skills were not good enough... Back then (May this year) I had a casual coffee with Mehdi, Simon, and Ashley and they referred me to a dev shop in Montenegro. 

The shop turned the bot around in a jiffy, and then it got really cool.  Lot's of people that interacted with the first bot started challenging the bot, signing up for the waitlist and asked me if they could have one too... I have learned from my previous ventures that T shaped is the way to go, and even young Skotty pulling me out of the pet project into a startup, I knew I needed a rockstar team in order to succeed.

Just happened to be that my B Amsterdam neighbors (Simon, Ashley and Mehdi) were having lunch. We talked we sparked and we said 'Let's do this!' and that's how the team was born. After one small little lunch, me myself and I became the 4 of us:). 

 

And then very soon after I met Olof, at the time CFO hellofresh in the Netherlands.  We sat down, we talked I think for less than 5 minutes, and then I knew I wanted him to join.  So now the rockstar team is complete! 

 

A team that is 100% committed to our mission to:

 

MANAGE EVERY MISSED CALL WORLDWIDE!