Building Humaans

We’re product people. We get challenged by building quality software able to solve business problems.

Towards the end of last year, Karolis and I left Qubit to set up Zero (a shop designed to help businesses with product development and prototyping). Whilst there we discussed how frustrated we were with our HR system, and more broadly about the state of HR Tech and the opportunities that this presented.

We used a few HR tools and, from our perspective, the poor user experience and lack of design craft was evident. Even basic actions seemed hard to perform and were not intuitive.

Was this only our perception? As we’d approach any problem, we investigated and connected with People/HR leaders and practitioners at fast growing companies to learn from their experience. Turns out it was not!

The same problems emerged over and over, so we decided to define a solution and build a system we'd love to use to scale our own company.

The landscape

The state of the HR Tech is not bright. This space is not sexy, that's the reality. There isn't the same level of capital as in Fintech or Healthtech, and the problems to solve don't sound exciting enough to attract the best engineers and designers out there.

For us this is great. A large enough underserved market with lots of room to improve products and services to generate value. We could up the game.

Our research efforts highlighted that a lack of automation, poor reporting frameworks and analytics, and poor integrations are some of the top pain points. Ease of use and overall experience also emerged as key requirements. People are using the HR system not because it's useful or enjoyable, but because there is no other way to log some time off or that working from home day.

Good design is king to engage people. Think about Notion. Businesses are already paying for the ability to write docs, use spreadsheets, and collaborate (GSuite!). But still, new players like Notion, tackling the same challenges with care for the details, are able to grab people's attention – and a portion of your annual budget!

The path we're taking

As developers, we can’t waste time: it’s in our DNA. We need things to work, and fast. If they don’t, we re-engineer them from the ground up to make sure they do.

We love velocity and automation as they enable us to focus on creativity and strategy, and less on mechanical tasks.

Humaans is a product that reflects our nature but placed in a new context where efficiency gains can be made – People Operations and Human Resources. It's a solution that works out of the box; no complex on-boarding, no training, no more sending the 4th reminder about that expired passport.

Get your time back to focus on people and grow your business.

Focusing on the SMEs' needs

Reality is, if you have an HR system in place, you are most likely using only ~40% of its capabilities. This means you're paying top dollars for a product not designed around your needs.

We love small and medium-sized enterprises because of their freedom to experiment and innovate at speed. Because of their ability to generate high impact with low resources. We want to help you to achieve more. Long term.

To wrap things up

Humaans is our people management system (HRIS if you prefer), designed for companies that care. Powerful, fast, secure, and with a beautiful design. A tool your people will want to use, and made with distributed/remote teams in mind.

Our Private Beta is kicking off soon, and we'd love to have you on-board. To join visit Humaans.io or email me at giovanni@humaans.io.

You can also say hi on Twitter @HumaansHQ 👋