From Nantes to the Bay Area: The Genesis of Weet

Najette Fellache, the founder, relocated to the Bay Area from Nantes, France, with the intention of expanding her already-successful company.

Speach, her six-year-old venture, had already secured significant contracts with major U.S. corporations, including GE, Tesla, Amazon, and Medtronics.

Speach and the Rise of Asynchronous Communication

Speach’s core offering centers around facilitating knowledge-sharing among colleagues through employee-created videos, often used to supplement written documentation.

This approach aims to accelerate learning, and its potential attracted $14 million in investment funding.

The increasing relevance of this technology was amplified by the widespread shift to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A Personal Insight Sparks a New Venture

An internal project within Speach began to captivate Fellache following her children’s sudden transition to remote schooling.

A drawing from her youngest son, expressing his struggle to reconcile her work commitments with family time, served as a pivotal moment of realization.

Weet: Born from Internal Innovation

Like many working parents, Fellache faced the challenge of balancing professional responsibilities with family needs.

Leveraging Speach’s engineering resources, she developed a tool enabling quick communication through short videos, accessible at the viewer’s convenience and available for future reference.

This internal solution proved so effective that it evolved into a standalone product, Weet, a new asynchronous video startup.

Weet was launched this week with a team of 10 employees, utilizing a portion of Speach’s earlier funding from investors Alven and Red River West (co-managed by Artémis, the Pinault family’s investment firm).

Navigating a Competitive Landscape

The asynchronous video communication market is becoming increasingly crowded.

Fellache recognizes the value of asynchronous meetings as a compelling alternative to traditional phone calls, real-time meetings, and email, where nuance can be lost.

Loom, a six-year-old enterprise collaboration platform, has already secured over $73 million in funding from investors like Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and Coatue.

SuperNormal, a Stockholm-based work communication platform, raised $2 million in seed funding led by EQT Ventures in December.

The Future of Remote Work and Weet’s Potential

Given the growing trend towards remote work, the market opportunity for asynchronous communication tools is substantial.

Fellache believes Weet is rapidly becoming a superior product compared to existing solutions.

Weet is currently available for free via a browser extension, with integrations for Slack and Microsoft Teams planned for next month.

Key Features and Functionality

Weet offers instant recording, screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, video filters, emoji reactions, commenting, and automatic transcription.

A premium version is under development, featuring enhanced features for organizing discussions.

For instance, a salesperson could easily access and share a compilation of video communications and auto-transcriptions related to a specific client.

Prioritizing Privacy and Security

Fellache emphasizes Weet’s commitment to data privacy, drawing upon Speach’s established expertise in working with privacy-conscious clients like Airbus and Colgate-Palmolive.

Weet employs the same rigorous standards and practices as its parent company and is already being utilized by units within Colgate-Palmolive.

A Conversational Approach to Video Communication

Weet differentiates itself through its conversational approach.

Unlike some competitors that focus on single-video publishing, Weet facilitates back-and-forth interactions, allowing teammates to create sections within the same video for feedback, screen sharing, audio comments, and reactions.

This fosters not only information exchange but also encourages broader engagement and strengthens team relationships.

Beyond Transactions: Building Connections

“It’s a discussion, not a transaction,” Fellache explains, highlighting the importance of open communication in today’s increasingly distributed work environments.

Effective communication is crucial for both company success and employee well-being, particularly as teams become more geographically dispersed.

Early Stage Event Information

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Attendees will learn directly from experienced founders and VCs about fundraising, recruiting, sales, product-market fit, PR, marketing, and brand building.

Each session includes dedicated time for audience questions and discussion.