Martin Olsen, an Australia native who came to Fargo to build his company eOneSolutions, has another project up his sleeve — a software as a service (SAAS) startup called PopDock.
PopDock, a data-aggregating software application that will be available for computer and as a mobile application, emerged from a need Olsen had with his own company. At a company with 23 employees, he had 24 different platforms he was regularly checking; things like QuickBooks for accounting, Mailchimp for marketing, and a variety of credit card logins. In order to check in on each platform he had to log in to them individually. It grew tiring, he said.
“I was logging in to all these things every day to do my job,” he said.
A few of the PopDock team
He and team at eOneSolutions began to build a solution internally — a platform that would condense all of these logins into one single application. What emerged was a product they decided they wanted to bring to market. They call it PopDock.
What PopDock provides is a single interface you can use to check a variety of other platforms. A platform for your platforms, if you will.
“It’s a solution for people like anyone that has a job, that need to see data from lots of different places,” Olsen explained. “What it does is it’s a single app that brings all the data together to do your job. ”
For Olsen, he uses it with eOneSolutions to check in on their various platforms like Quickbooks, their CRN system, their cloud timeshare system, their credit card gateways, and more.
“It’s one stop to see everything that’s going on in the business. On my laptop or in my cell phone,” he said. “So you don’t have to log in to 40 different apps.”
A screenshot of the application looking at the Zendesk platform.
Currently, PopDock connects to 52 different applications, Olsen said, with the hope of expanding to over a hundred in the near future. Some platforms they had to ask permission, he said, but others make their APIs (application programming interface) open source.
Users can choose any amount of platforms they’d like to connect to, and customize it to their needs. They will then get notifications from each of those platforms through PopDock, as well as login to any of those applications through PopDock.
“You choose what things you want to connect to…like QuickBooks and Zendesk. Facebook stats and Google analytics. You get access to all that data. You can build your own lists and make favorites,” Olsen said.
PopDock is currently in beta mode, Olsen said, and they are in talks with a few companies on how it can be implemented. Because of the versatility of the application, Olsen said he’s spoken with large companies like Bobcat, to small one-person companies like TotTudes, an Etsy business.
“We’re looking to bring it down to a day to day basis for what you need to do your job,” Olsen said.
Pricing will be around $10-20 per user per month. Learn more about PopDock here.
Come hear Martin present PopDock at 1 Million Cups Fargo this Wednesday, June 29, at the Stage at Island Park! Join us from 9:15 – 10:15 and bring a mug for the free coffee.
Photos courtesy of PopDock.
