The conference room table isn’t the ideal spot for that much-needed midday power nap. Still, snoozing through a board meeting happens to the best of us — just ask Zeck co-founders Edward Norton (yes, that Edward Norton) and brothers Robert and Jeffrey Wolfe (the brains behind Moosejaw and CrowdRise, later acquired by Walmart and GoFundMe).
With résumés like theirs, they’ve sat through more boring board meetings than they’d care to recall. But this allowed them to pinpoint exactly what makes these board meetings so blah: long, unfocused, and unreadable meeting decks. After witnessing a board member doze off during a meeting only to regain consciousness after a colleague gently wafted a Red Vine under his nose, the trio decided it was time to shake things up.
Together, they launched Zeck, an engaging, mobile-optimized board software that allows users to build concise, collaborative presentations and unlock maximum value from their board meetings. To bring this bold vision to life, Zeck’s small but mighty team relies on Slack to deliver the speed and agility needed to scale rapidly — all while providing the bedrock for its unparalleled company culture.
“We rely on Slack to drive multiplicative results,” said Brendan Walters, Zeck’s Head of Marketing. “Slack is the central nervous system facilitating our entire tech stack and the Rome to which all roads lead: marketing, sales, customer success, and dev ops. It enables us to take the input of 10 people and deliver the output of 50.”
“There are only a few rules at Zeck. The first one is speed. Slack creates an ongoing and iterative environment for the coordination of both internal and external projects and lets us move faster than the speed of communication.”
Zeck unlocks hyperspeed with Slack, scaling rapidly and boosting efficiency by 25%
Small, growing businesses like Zeck have speed on their side: Moving quickly allows them to scale with the agility needed to stay competitive. With Slack, Zeck hits its efficiency goals and bolsters its relationships both internally and with external partners.
“For a remote company like Zeck, where we want to go fast and make it fun, saying Slack has become invaluable is an understatement,” said Robert Wolfe, Zeck’s co-founder and CEO.
The Zeck sales team consists of 24 people and spans four time zones, making daily meetings a considerable challenge. But with Slack, the team stays aligned with real-time updates and quick changes for seamless accountability.
“The Zeck marketing team uses Slack to develop stronger partnerships, faster,” said co-founder Robert Wolfe. “Instant and less formal communication is vital to customer and partner communications. I’d estimate that communications via Slack contribute to developing customer and partner relationships roughly 25% faster.”
Zeck depends on Slack’s integrations to stay agile, speeding up day-to-day processes and the flow of information within the organization. “One person running operations for multiple departments can, through the use of integrations, automate all critical communications through Slack — and then go and focus on adding value by building something else, which probably also integrates into Slack,” said Wolfe. “Slack integrations allow for all of our complex business systems to all deliver critical information to the same place. We’ve used Slack from day one, and I’d estimate an increase in day-to-day efficiency to be at least 25%.”
Zeck also moves at speed by leveraging emerging AI tools, including using Slack AI to automate routine processes. The sales team has used Slack’s AI recap feature, which summarizes key information in the sales channel, to home in on opportunities for growth. Slack AI aggregates information like the number of demos, general trends, the number of no-shows, and demo performance, allowing the team to quickly pivot in response to real-time, data-driven feedback.
Zeck’s marketing department, which uses 11x AI digital workers to speed up routine tasks, is making the process even speedier by using Slack Connect to keep tabs on those digital workers — and collaborate with 11x’s human team members — in real time. When the digital workers collect responses from qualified leads, the marketing team receives instant, actionable notifications in their Slack Connect channel. As the company looks to add new AI agents to its ranks, Slack will serve as the perfect platform to deploy them.
“We believe, and we say it all the time, that communication solves all problems. If that’s true, how are you leveraging modern communication tools to impact that? For us, Slack is the way we do it.”
Slack Connect empowers speedy customer onboarding and makes each relationship personal
Collaboration isn’t just a nice-to-have at Zeck; it’s a key ingredient to the success of the company. That’s why the team uses Slack Connect to stay in touch with customers, optimizing collaboration and speeding up client onboarding processes.
Zeck’s customer success team uses private Slack channels via Connect to seamlessly scale onboarding and account management systems. Some of their customers, like startup accelerator Techstars, communicate with Zeck exclusively via Slack in their designated channel.
Rebecca Davis-Awan is Zeck’s Head of Customer Success. It’s her job to ensure that people love using Zeck — and Slack helps her reach that goal. Zeck’s onboarding form invites customers to join them on Slack, and she said customers enjoy the personal touch of having their own private Slack channels.
“They appreciate how quickly we respond and how they’re able to fire off questions as they arise rather than having to book a call or write out an entire email,” she said.
Davis-Awan also noted that customers who are active in Slack tend to onboard about twice as fast as others and run into fewer issues. That’s because Slack Connect provides instantaneous access to the Zeck team for quick guidance and support.
“Engagement with customers via Slack is so much better than email,” she said. “The immediacy, personal touch, and joy of Slack allows for positive relationship development and quick solutions to questions and technical issues.”
“Another rule at Zeck is to ‘Have as much fun as you possibly can.’ We care so deeply about culture, and we simply would not be able to foster and maintain our culture remotely without Slack.”
Zeck keeps company culture alive and thriving in Slack
At Zeck, having as much fun as possible is high on the list of company core values. And in a remote-first environment, using Slack to create space for employees to showcase their unique personalities and unparalleled sense of humor is easy. Custom emoji, GIFs, fun contests, witty banter — it all happens right in Slack.
“To say Slack contributes to the culture would imply that it’s additive. I actually think it’s a driving force behind the culture,” said Robert Wolfe.
Walters echoed that sentiment. “I don’t think it’s possible to have a prolific remote culture without Slack. When not on calls, what the team does in Slack is the living, breathing representation of everyone working together to build something, and to have fun doing it. The banter is legendary. So are the contests, the trivia, the character development, and the endless humor,” he said.
Slack is thrilled to be the digital playing field for Zeck’s verbal sparring. By maximizing operational speed and efficiency in Slack, Zeck isn’t just evolving the board deck but empowering teams to rethink what’s possible in every meeting — even if what’s possible means simply staying awake. 😉
