All About Us.. Sort Of

Look let's face it, these “about us” pages are really just a way of helping you ensure this website isn’t some group of wannabes and hackers looking to steal your info right…?

And we're not hackers or thieves, so that's good isn't it?

I’ll admit we "wannabe" a lot of things, but most of them are weirdly unrealistic ideals (no you CAN’T wield Thor’s hammer @roger ), and actually we take data privacy very seriously here.

But if you’re really interested in the tool, you may actually want to know a little about us.

That might include who we are as people, or perhaps why on earth we decided to built a SAAS product for a niche use case in an already crowded market full of professionals who have already created their own methods for dealing with technology's short comings (looking at you @andrew).

To be honest, I’d like an answer to that as well...

So here we are, if you want to learn the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth… well that would be a lot so you won’t get that here, but we’ll get you kicked off!

Thanks for being here.

🎉 Enjoy! 🎉
Emil Lamprecht
Co-Founder

Why a tool for qualitative data collection (user research and otherwise)?

Ok look, in our defense, we didn’t actually start building this for other people at first. The primary motivation for Yleos was a classic “scratch your own itch” situation.

A couple years ago we realised we needed a tool. We needed something super fast and lightweight that we could use for qualitative data collection and annotation for both field work and remote sessions.

There are a lot of tools out there that solved part of the problem, but they were usually huge, bloated software suits that tried to make sense of messy data collection.

What we really wanted was something that would help us flip that concept around, and give us clean data collection for easier sense making.

After much searching and testing we simply couldn't find a tool that did that; or at least one that did just that. We could only found tools that did everything, and usually cost a fortune as well.

So like many pros with a niche problem, we kind of semi-built our own solution. First just out of spread sheets and airtable, and then later with some friends as a little software tool.

We started using it and while we thought it could be cool as a product, it wasn't until some friends started using it that we really saw the potential for this thing to stand on it's own.

When we eventually realised how much time was being saved by this tool and our processes, and how easy it was to cut out the bias of "memory" that many researchers, journalists and students deal with (whether they realise it or not). So we began to realise that this tool could be genuinely useful to the public.

And so it began....

We set out to build something that might help people do things a little easier, a little faster, and with a lot less hassle.

Basically just a slightly less alpha version of what we already had.

To figure out how to make this tool a reality however, we needed help. We needed a team that knew what it meant to build lightweight, superbly engineered tech for a potentially picky audience, and so entered our superhero friends (but not Thor) at Silicon Rhino.

You see, Silicon Rhino as an organisation is known for building MVPs of high-growth and powerful startups. They’re effectively engineering rockstars, and since we happen to be friends, we all joined forces to make Yleos happen together.

I’ll dig more into who we all are as individual people below, but I want to finish explaining our motivations.

You see, when we sat down to figure out WHY we were building this tool, some very clear themes emerged.

These themes are now our mission and vision statements for the 'organisation' (a loosely held term by this rag tag group of wannabes), which I’ll share with you here (and no, the wording of these is not perfect, but it’s a start!)...


🎯 Our Mission...

Is to build tools that improve the use of and reference to conversations after they've happened.

You know, like basically making it way easier to ask "what did that person say?" 4 weeks after having a conversation and in seconds get the actual answer.

🔭 Our Vision...

  1. Is to empower people collecting or working with qualitative data to focus on the extraction of quality insights instead of the interview process.
  2. Is to become a financially self-sustainable SAAS company (we're bootstrapped, so this is a very important goal in making the product better)
  3. Is to standardise 'a' process for users of our tool in how they collect and manage interview (or other qualitative) data
  4. Is to enable qualitative data to be used and understood for it's importance in complex discovery and decision making
  5. Is to reduce the repetitive manual tasks required in using interview content (for research or otherwise)
  6. Is to lower the barrier to entry for acquiring and using qualitative data

Did I mention we bootstrapped this thing?

We realised this needed to be a 🌱grassroots tool for a 🌱grassroots need… held by a community who is hopefully patient, forgiving and eager to see the tool become what they need it to be. And that's you, right?

You see, for a small, out-of-pocket startup, we’ve got some big goals, and it’s going to take us a while to get there. But I should note that now that the tool is live, it wont be going away any time soon. You see, we built this for ourselves first, and as long as we're using it, it'll be around.

What’s been interesting recently is this whole 🦠COVID-19🦠 thing you may have heard about and the need for research to be increasingly remote. Something our tool, luckily, works really well for.

We had always designed our tool to support remote work and though our intention wasn’t to capitalise on a pandemic, we’re hoping that if you find yourself doing a lot of remote interviews, meetings, lecture recordings or otherwise, you’ll give our tool a try.

Who the hell are we?

Yleos was concepted, designed, built and is continually worked on by members of two partnering organisations...
But in reality it’s just a few of us who have really become addicted to this project and making it what it is. Here is the list of us crazies for you to stalk on LinkedIn:
Roger Planes, CPO and joint venture coordinator at Yleos
Roger Planes
"The Chaos Maker"
Chief Product Officer
Phil Hardy, CTO and super-man of engineering at Yleos
Phil Hardy
"The Fixer"
Chief Technology Officer
Mark Hartley, COO and business partnerships at Yleos
Mark Hartley
"Mr. Straight Faced"
Partnerships Director
Melissa Kramer, problem solver and empathy manager at Yleos
Melissa Kramer
"The Oh So Patient"
Head Of Solving Other People's Problems
Emil Lamprecht, CEO and strategist at Yleos
Emil Lamprecht
"The Over Doer"
Head of Everything Else

A Conclusion, Of Sorts

Well, we hope you enjoyed this slightly unorthodox approach to an about page. We want to build a company, but we also want to be honest and have a lot fun doing it.

If you’d like to support what we’re doing, please go give the tool a try, and even better, pay for it!

Use it for recording and taking notes during meetings, school lectures, journalism interviews, user research, or anything else where recording and annotating audio helps you stay true to your goals as a professional.

Give it a whirl, and if you like it, be sure to tell us why.

And if you don’t like it please please tell us why! No really, it helps a lot!

Thanks for reading, and see you inside!
❤️ Yleos Team❤️