It's Our 5th Anniversary (See How Far We've Come)

Wow, it’s already been 5 years since I first started working on this idea: Simplifying the way agencies handle their client reporting.

The date was May 1st, 2011. I had just recently sold my other company; it was a Web agency and guess what? I was the one who created reports for clients. Man, that was an evil pain each month. I’d pray that the client would tell me to stop creating reports, that he no longer needed it or better, that he found them useless and didn’t read them anyway.

Good or bad, this didn’t happened. Clients kept wanting their monthly reports, causing me to copy-paste in Excel and Word like a robot. Plus from a business point of view, the process was very profitable, since we could bill each hour we wasted creating reports. Cha-ching!

There was clearly something there! Agencies need to create reports for the good of their business: it’s an easy way to bill for value-added products and it’s also a great way to nurture a client relationship. Indeed, a report shows the value you bring to your client and it presents your work with full transparency.

However, the reporting process is a reeeeaaaaaaal pain for the one who does the job, which in this case, was me. Therefore, I was going to get the planet rid of that misery. That was my promise.

Which brought me to this: starting DashThis. This tool would help account managers and analysts save time and energy when creating their reports. Plus, they would get back the fun of doing reports! By automating the majority of the work, they would even have more time to do what they were good at: analysis, coming up with brilliant recommendations and creating tons of value for their clients. They could stop being a bored reporting monkey at the beginning of each month.

DashThis is a self-funded company and a hardcore bootstrapped one at that. The only way we could succeed is by having customers. Paying customers. Entirely satisfied happy paying customers. This was our mission: create a product the would delight our clients enough so that they wouldn’t see the cost as an expense, but rather as an investment that would bring them many times the return.

This means we had to launch fast, iterate often, learn constantly, and adapt quickly based on our customer feedbacks. Top customer service was, and still is, a top priority at all times.

So here it is: a quick jump in the past to help you see how DashThis has evolved for the even better!

First version of DashThis!

Revisited version of the V1

The first not-so-bad version of the website. Which today, seems so 2012!

4th version. It’s getting better right?

Now that’s a website my mom would be proud of me for!

We are getting good at it, I think. This website was doing a good job.

The current version. This one will soon be part of the past too. Our new branding is coming out soon!

The dashboards themselves have improved a lot during the journey. Here’s the very first version of the product 5 years ago.

And a nicely designed one a few months later.

Today, our reports are more complete and flexible, but we have to start somewhere, right?

*This is fake data for demo purpose!

In conclusion, I’m very thankful for the first clients who gave me the chance to change the way they do reporting. It’s not just a tool, but a way of improving business. We have learned a lot during these 5 years. Now, we are ready to tackle the next 5 years and be the reporting partner your agency deserve.

Thanks for being part of our success and happy anniversary to us!