The startup that launched a 1000 startups... not really! Just a lot of people have since come into the HR/Vacation planning space thinking it was easy. Many came and went - WhosOff.com came and stayed
It has been quite a journey since 2006 and our initial offering of a free online staff leave planner. Getting early reviews from Techcrunch and Lifehacker boosted our numbers but it became clear very early on that the Free model was unsustainable. Taking a leap of faith, we moved to subscriptions and we were surprised (pleasantly!) that over 65% of the users wished to continue to use the service. Since then we have tried to keep our focus on providing a simple to use and competively priced tool to help office managers administer staff leave efficiently.
Very often we see comments like - "but what about Google Calendar...its Free?" - Have you tried managing your staff leave in Google Calendar ?
Even more often, we see comments like - "why would you pay for this, we can build our own system?" - To those we say, of course, if you have the time and expertise, why would nt you?.. but eventually you realise it is not really that simple.
And then we have our ex customers who have sought to jump on the band wagon and build their own Holiday Leave Planning or Employee Scheduling services and advertise their absence management services with slogans like :
"This idea is so obvious anybody could have done it.. but nobody did" -- Helllooo!.. you were using WhosOff.com for 5 years
"We wanted to move from a wall planner and so built our own system.. it was so great we wanted other people to benefit from it too" -- Helllooo! ..you were using WhosOff.com for 4 years .
"...is one of those apps that will replace a tired old paper or spreadsheet based system" - Hellloo!.. you too were using WhosOff.com for over 3 years !
Don't get us wrong, we are all very flattered (with the exception of complete rip off sites - which there have been numerous and end up going legal) and in fact we are sure, the competition brings a certain amount of traffic and customers to this HR/Leave planning space and some of those will end up using Whosoff.com instead of those websites that originally drew their attention to this particular absence management / HR issue. And it is interesting that where we go and the features we add - other services feel it necessary to do the same and follow in our path.
WhosOff.com remains one of the leaders in staff leave and holiday management - grown by great service and exceptional support. (The important things that our competitors find it difficult to copy!)
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Posted by Tony Bushell
on Wednesday, 14th May 2014
