Working on a team often means tracking down communication through emails, chats, bookmarks, and other tools. That’s why the folks at Mammoth decided to create a tool to help centralize these communications. Having just graduated the AngelPad accelerator, Mammoth is looking to increase user engagement and tell the story of their customers’ success.
That’s why they’re thrilled to share this story written by self-proclaimed productivity junkie Tammie Vicente. Any entrepreneur knows that once they find a great collaboration tool for their team, they often invite their own household to adopt it. And that’s why Tammie’s personal use of Mammoth just might set off some ideas on how you can make your startup more productive using this collaboration platform. Tammie Vicente is the author of the testimonial below.
I’m a productivity app junkie. It’s a weird thing to be, but I definitely have a fascination with productivity apps. https://mammothhq.com/ I jumped on the Evernote bandwagon in 2008, almost 7 years ago at the tender age of 15, and haven’t left since. As a budding writer and a tech nerd, I thought there was something undeniably neat about being able to access your notes, files, pictures, and articles from everywhere. Still, Evernote can’t do everything, Since then, I’ve tried a whole host of productivity apps, from to-do lists like Remember the Milk and Wunderlist; to workflow solutions like Evernote and Springpad (RIP); to cloud solutions like Google and Microsoft’s cloud office suites; along with some specialty productivity apps — among them, Scrivener for writing, MindMeister for mind mapping, web whiteboard sites…
Most of the time, I’ll check out an app once and discard it for not being exactly right for my workflow. What prompted my discovery of Mammoth was the unfortunate shutdown of the note-taking web app called Springpad. I loved Springpad — it was an entrepreneurial startup based in Charlestown, MA. I loved that Jeff Chow and Jeff Janer, who I interviewed for a college project, created this cool, attractive, IT-intensive web app right here in the East Coast, as opposed to every other IT startup based in Silicon Valley or the surrounding area.
I tried every solution that Springpad vetted for its users, Memit and Intellinote among them — it just wasn’t the same. I needed a way to store and share thoughts, tasks, lists in a way that wasn’t cumbersome or excessively complicated.
And then I found Mammoth. I’m not sure how, exactly. I think I stumbled across Mammoth in a comment thread about the Springpad shutdown, and having nothing to lose, figured I would check it out. I haven’t looked back since.
I use it primarily for managing my household and sharing things with my girlfriend. We’re both twenty-somethings who often work late hours and travel for a good portion of the year, so it can sometimes be difficult to get on the same page about who’s going to pick up the toilet paper and what gift we should get for our mothers for Mother’s Day. Evernote’s shared notebook feature was just too cumbersome, too complicated. It would have been impossible to find anything. That’s why Mammoth was perfect. For us, it’s literally a chalkboard, like the one we have on our fridge, to share thoughts, dictate tasks, and coordinate so that we can spend less time haggling over when we’re going food shopping and more time enjoying one another’s company.
With Mammoth’s syncing features, and the ability to drag and drop everything from photos to documents into a running conversation, it’s the perfect stage for documenting wish lists, planning our holiday gifts, assigning chores, and, yes, sending and preserving those Buzzfeed articles that are the perfect balm for a low mood or a troubled day. Mammoth has the capabilities of a full-on word processor, formatting included. In fact, the app has features that I haven’t even explored yet. The ability to log into the website quickly and from any of my iOS and/or Windows devices (I’m flexible with my OS choices, you see), and throw in a thought or reminder that I should probably clean the litter since it’s been a week, is invaluable. The UI on portable devices (ie. an iPhone 5) isn’t complex — you just pick a “board”, and voila, grocery list. There’s no tagging, no separate notebooks, no convoluted architecture that tempts minds like mine to create 500,000 tags to capture each granular category; no many-tiered navigation bar that resembles a maze.
With Mammoth, you just click on the appropriate board, which in my case, is either my ‘Do Stuff in the Apartment’ board, or my wishlist board (don’t judge), type in my thought, drag in my document, copy in the link to that new bourbon I’ve wanted to try; and with a click or a key, the application saves it down and makes it available across all my devices.
Seriously, it’s great.
Although I’m only using Mammoth to manage links and my household chores right now, the possibilities are endless. As a writer, I love the thought of collaborating with other creative types, and Mammoth provides a great platform to brainstorm. Mammoth’s potential in the business workflow, as either a task tracker or a place to log ideas, is equally impressive. I could see myself and 4, 10, 50 people getting together to collaborate on a Mammoth board for a project — whether that project involves writing, tech, business, or all of the above.
It’s Mammoth’s simultaneous simplicity and versatility that makes this particular app such a crucial part of my daily life. In a second or two, I can see what I need to do, or write down a new idea for a project, or provide a status update, and anyone that I’m collaborating with can know about it instantly. There’s no labyrinth of categorizations to navigate in Mammoth’s interface, and let me tell you, the ease of use alone is a good reason to love this app.
Probably the only thing better than Mammoth’s sweet, slick, simple interface is its awesome support team. These guys will literally email you for your feedback. In fact, every member has access to a Mammoth support board that’s monitored by Mammoth’s small team, where you can ask them literally anything. I’ve already asked about the possibility of expanding storage space, and given them feedback via Skype.
When it comes down to it, I trust Mammoth to help me navigate the ins and outs of everyday life.
Image Credit: Flickr/Nikki Buitendijk