Meet Cycle, a French startup that is creating a collaboration tool for product managers where they can collect data from various tools, work on the next iterations of the product, and close the feedback loop with the most engaged customers.
The company raised a total of $6 million in two rounds of funding., including a recent round of funding led by bold start It closed at the end of last year. The startup is backed by eFounders, the European startup study focused on SaaS products. Base Case, The 20VC Fund, SV Angel, BoxGroup, Hummingbird Ventures and 60 angels also invested in the company – that's a long list of investors*.
Like many software-as-a-service products, Cycle first acts as a single source of truth. Many product teams rely heavily on products like Confluence, Notion, or Google Docs. But they also have to check GitHub issues, Intercom messages, and much more.
“The problem we are trying to solve is one that all product managers face. Product information is scattered across many different products»said Cycle founder and CEO Mehdi Boudoukhane. "As your business scales, you receive input from users, the sales team, the customer success team, and the marketing team."
And yet, in most cases, product management becomes a black box. Other teams in the company don't really know when something is going to ship or - even worse - if their feedback will have an impact one way or another.
Cycle has built integrations with popular startup products like HubSpot, Intercom, and Slack. Once everything is in Cycle, product teams can organize feedback so that everything related to a feature is bundled together.
Product managers then use Cycle to write their product requirements documents using a rich text editor that supports embedding. It is a collaborative editor that allows you to mention teammates.
“Designers produce visuals, developers code, and product managers produce documents,” Boudoukhane explains. The idea is that product managers can spend most of the day in Cycle: on average, product managers using Cycle spend 3 hours a day in the product. And product managers don't have to manually export their documents to other tools, as Cycle offers integrations with Linear, GitHub, or Notion.
The worst that can happen when you read reviews from customers who have decided to terminate their contracts with you is that they say that a feature is missing from your product, even though… the feature exists. They just didn't know her.
So when something is finally released, Cycle helps you close the loop with your customers and co-workers. For example, the sales team will receive a notification in HubSpot. "Sales teams can get in touch with customers who discussed the feature that was just shipped"Boudoukhane explains.
Having a clear line of communication with customers is a good way to prevent customer churn and keep them engaged with your product. According to Boudoukhane, some companies like Capitaine Train or Superhuman have done quite well.
Cycle competes with Productboard or even Jira. But with its lightweight and collaborative approach, Cycle expects everyone in the company to interact with its product in one way or another to give feedback and contribute, making it easier to build a product-led company.
