plai
Simple and powerful performance management platform for strategy execution
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Plai is a modern people and performance management tool for forward-thinking organizations. Plai helps teams stay in sync, grow and focus on what matters with OKRs, real-time feedback and praise, effortless performance/360° reviews, effective check-ins, and 1:1s.
Unlike alternative OKR platforms that focus on enterprise, Plai addresses the needs of small and medium businesses. With that in mind, we spent hours interviewing, discussing, and brainstorming in order to design a unified experience that would fully respond to those needs. The problem with the existing solutions was that they led to poor UX and had limited adoption.Our target audience needed a simple but functional solution. It had to be easy and intuitive to use, work out of the box, and thus have a much higher adoption rate by business teams. With this insight and goal in mind, we set out to build Plai as a solution to those customer needs.
01
With a limited budget and tight timeframe to launch the first version, validate demand, and be ready to raise the next investment round.
We undertook 20+ interviews with target users to identify their key pain points and problems. We then conducted a Design Sprint to prototype and test the application rapidly. Following that, we led an intensive period of fast 2-week sprints, with tangible deliverables after each sprint and course-correction where needed. What a moment of delight it was to see the result – the first version of the product with the OKR feature within it.
02
After the initial release, we still had to figure out and find the Product/market fit for Plai.
Finding Product/market fit involves hours of communication with users and testing hypotheses. That’s how we determined who the target audience should be, identified their key problems/needs, and established how to meet those needs. We developed a robust process of regularly talking to users, documenting their feedback, collecting and prioritizing requests, and updating our roadmap based on this feedback.
03
As the startup grew and we added more and more features, we needed to move fast and quickly grow the product.
Despite a constantly growing feature set, we didn't lose speed delivering new features. The end-users and customers were impressed with how fast we added new features and improved the product. It helped us to maintain their loyalty and achieve great retention overall.
To ensure Plai could solve real users’ needs and that development could meet the timeline, we successfully passed all stages of the product management cycle and used our product development approach.
With the idea in our hands, we checked its feasibility.
To make sure the product would serve its purpose, we gathered all info on competitors and conducted 50+ interviews with the target audience.
To find product/-market fit and structure things up, we broke the product strategy into steps of execution and put it all into the product roadmap.
We focused on delivering value first and implemented features that would solve users’ pains. That’s why for the MVP we chose only a single but vital feature - OKR.
We set up the feedback collection mechanism by checking how users interact, thereby capturing feedback and finding possible areas for improvement.
We are scaling the product by adding new features to satisfy users’ needs.
With the idea in our hands, we checked its feasibility.
To make sure the product would serve its purpose, we gathered all info on competitors and conducted 50+ interviews with the target audience.
To find product/-market fit and structure things up, we broke the product strategy into steps of execution and put it all into the product roadmap.
We focused on delivering value first and implemented features that would solve users’ pains. That’s why for the MVP we chose only a single but vital feature - OKR.
We set up the feedback collection mechanism by checking how users interact, thereby capturing feedback and finding possible areas for improvement.
We are scaling the product by adding new features to satisfy users’ needs.
Plai’s target audience is small and medium businesses that strive to align and deliver on strategic priorities easily across the team.
During the Discovery stage, we created a prototype of the App that visualized the scope and features, and helped grasp the full picture of the app’s design. After several iterations of testing and hypotheses validation, we improved the prototype.
It was an important step, since making changes to a prototype is much simpler and cheaper than to the final released version.
HERE ARE THE Main FEATURES
of the Plai app
Focus on what matters with Objectives and Key Results. OKR software to create alignment around measurable goals.
Conduct better 1:1 meetings. Collaborate on agenda, track notes, follow-up on action items, and always be prepared with a bank of 100+ questions and templates for your 1:1s.
Employee-centric performance and 360° feedback reviews. Run effective reviews that inspire growth and high performance. Adapted to fit your unique company needs.
Celebrate wins with public praise. Reward excellence and reinforce culture with public praise tied to company values
Receive recommendations on the next OKRs and feedback on the existing OKRs. Summarize the Performance Review for the user/ HR admin in 1 click.
OKRs on the go. Manage your OKRs wherever work takes you and see employee's’ goals to have the context for productive conversations.
If we learned anything, it’s that team alignment is significant. We couldn't have built a successful product without all following the same goal. As a result, we successfully launched on time and budget and started onboarding early users.
Such a fast pace helped Plai to get invited for the final interview to YCombinator, which is a significant indicator that we were doing it the right way. We may be biased, but it’s clear that we found the Product/Market fit for Plai. As a result, we successfully launched the paid plans and reached our revenue targets within the first year.
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