It’s takes a certain type of person to get excited about a work productivity tool. Mark Nielsen and Patrick Carmitchel, unsatisfied with 37Signals‘ Basecamp, have decided to disrupt the productivity software industry (see their incredibly twee video above).
“We decided we’d rather not see the light of day for awhile than have to live with knowing that with just a little bit of creative, a pinch of logic and a dash of sexy, we could revive the productivity software world with a tool that would even make Apple cry.”
Previously unknown to the blogosphere, Nielsen and Carmitchel emailed us at 2am last night and emphasized that they were out for 37Signals’ blood (we’ll get more into why we actually listened in a later post). When reminded that the formidable former Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz was also in the collaboration tool space, joining the likes of Salesforce, Zoho, and Atlassian with his stealth startup Asana, they replied “It will be fun to see if [Dustin Moskovitz’s] deep pockets can stand up to a garage. Or vise-versa?”
The RULE.fm product itself looks like what would happen if Apple got serious about productivity software, with much emphasis on design aesthetics. Right now its basic function is a ramped up contact list manager with real time updates from your contacts pushed to you, a Yammer-like discussion area, a place for tasks, and a communal file sharing functionality. Nielsen describes it as “a place to know and understand everything that’s going on with in your organization” and hopes the company will eventually expand into wikis, customer retention management and accounting tools.
For those curious, the tour is live on the RULE.fm site right now, and the platform itself will go live on Tuesday August 3rd, making the productivity software industry just a little bit more badass.
