What is Moovila?

The podcast is HERE! 

 Here is the transcript of the podcast. 

Harry Brelsford  00:00

As a nation, nation still at IT Nation 2023 in Orlando, that's a whole nother podcast and a whole another blog. But I am with Mike Psenka from Moovila. I like that name. So what's what, what's what's, what do you do? What's your story? Sure. Thanks.

Mike Psenka  00:19

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. We have an autonomous project and work management platform, right? Click Manage. Yeah, I think you've got a fair bit of experience in that arena. Yeah, the world didn't need another one. You know, honestly, unless it did something different when we founded it, you know, there were you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting the project management platform. It's a really old industry. But we saw a real opportunity to bring AI and automation into that we knew it was gonna take a long time to do that development and that r&d work to bring it up to sort of the table stakes of what people need and project management. And this is we're here at this conference has been a great conference, because there's a lot of pain in the MSP space around project management and how that contaminated data and projects is really damaging their business intelligence and how they can grow and manage their business.

Harry Brelsford  01:10

What's, what's your project management paradigm? And let me set the table. Before we went online, you and I were talking about I do have an academic background where I studied project management. And that was back in the old CPM and pert days. I mean, I still dream that stuff. Yep. I actually prefer more of the scum, scum, Scrum, the agile, you kind of move the yellow stickies across from right to right, I actually like that better, because I'm not. I don't need the sophistication of resource balancing to build the trans Alaska pipeline. Right, right. It's just not that hard.

Mike Psenka  01:52

What's your paradigm. So we actually have a platform that accommodates both. And we have a lot of customers that will manage both and a hybrid model. So we have so and I don't know that a lot of folks here would need that. But we have customers that do full pert analysis. So when you think about sort of a feature set of robustness and sophistication, you think about a an Oracle Primavera or Microsoft Project, which has not super user friendly, but it turns out, so we, we sort of have all of that functionality, but wrap that in sort of like an apple easy interface, right. So it's a very simple to use easy GUI. But the other reason why all that functionality works is we automate a lot of it with AI. So the actual user of the software doesn't need to know all those, it's almost like they're sort of, as one customer said, putting on an Iron Man suit, it really sort of up levels, all of their accidental project managers where they're citizen PMS that aren't formally trained PMPs. And all of a sudden, this technology sort of elevates their performance. So they can manage accurate schedules, process, update those they can recast, forecast, get the resource analysis, and it's actually accurate and right. And it sort of points out how there can construct plans that have integrity from the start. And

Harry Brelsford  03:06

is this your view of the world that this is strictly for MSPs for their internal entity? Or can they provide project management services to their SMB clients? So

Mike Psenka  03:18

it's both actually and we have it was really funny, because when we came into this market, we were directly marketing to the MSPs. And this is sort of one, this is a very important market as Russell and manufacturing finance retail, yeah, they're vertical. Yeah, there are other verticals. And our technology is actually OEM by a leader Komatsu in the construction industry for construction management. But several of these MSPs and SMEs came to us and said, Look, we want to use this to manage customers or clients and create a new service for that, just like they manage nodes and process, the one of the best ways to think about our technology and the way they saw it was it sort of like RMM for projects. So you know, RMM, you went out and you were doing and managing it increased span of control, right, an engineer could now manage remotely, it could identify problems earlier. So you can resolve those problems with less cost less risk, and then it monitored 24/7. And so we've got the first platform in the world that does this autonomous monitoring, 24/7 remediation, diagnostics guided and it's supervised, right, so we're not it's not completely hands off. So the PMs and the organizations still have decisioning rights. But the software curates all of that information and guides them through that remediation update and recasting very, very quickly. You know, it's sort of click click speed to get that done. Something that normally would take them hours of reconciliation process happens in a click. And the reality is that happens a hell of a lot more accurately than it would ever happen if they had to do it manually. Because no one wants to do calendar math. It's not fun. No one wants to check schedules and send emails and check availability and send out new notifications. Having that automated means they can focus on qualitative work, and not the mind numbing painful fact checking about availability and is this data right? And what about the projects we have? What about in our pipeline? What about that stuff that we've got coming? You know, and they just can never get an accurate picture? Yeah.

Harry Brelsford  05:11

Let's talk about your company, your startup, or how old are you?

Mike Psenka  05:15

So 2016 was actually started incubating even before 2016. Yeah, so So the technology is mature and proven. But it did take like I said, it took a long time. Because think about project once again, project management software, you know, this has been around for decades and decades and decades, you can't roll out a new just like if someone were to put out a new car in 1920. Versus today, you might have the best engine in the world in that car. But if you don't have air conditioning, leather seats, all a massive number of features, I am not going to buy your car, I get it, you got the fastest engine in the world, and the most fuel efficient, but you don't have air conditioning, and another stereo, all that other functionality that people expect and need, and work and project management has to be there. So we had innovative technology. But we had to make sure that all of the things that experienced and inexperienced PMS would need in that feature set. And that's not trivial. Like I said, like, these tools have been around a long time and hundreds of millions of dollars have gone into developing all of those platforms over decades. So that was a big part of our journey in our cycle. We knew when we got into this space, we were going to have to do a lot of work to get those table stakes before they could see the real sizzle in the automation. Now,

Harry Brelsford  06:24

are you investor back? Or have you just been doing this organically?

Mike Psenka  06:27

So I funded the business from the very beginning. Okay, and then we've got so closely held investors have come in on this? Yeah, so it's not a venture backed fun. I've sort of issued venture capital because we haven't needed it. And because of past success, and what we've done in the past, we've been successful, we're a profitable business and growing. So we're excited about the path.

Harry Brelsford  06:49

Well, yeah, and it's no longer your company, you take your money, you just exactly right company, that's

Mike Psenka  06:54

exactly be your job. That's exactly right. And that's what I said, so, so I'm so grateful for the other folks that have invested to in that process, because in the early part of it, I told them, You got to believe in us and be patient in this process. We know that we have the most advanced technology in the world. The question is, is the market ready for it? And we didn't know that at the time years ago, I said, Hey, this could be six months, it could be six years, you know, you just could be 16 years, like me, this has to happen. The world has to evolve from managing work to programming work. The question is, are they ready, right? Is it an Apple Newton? Or is it an Apple iPad? Right? Is the market ready for it?

Harry Brelsford  07:28

That's a good point. What's next and 24? So you're at the it nation show here in late 23? What's up in 24, then maybe hitting some more industry events. And that's right, meeting more,

Mike Psenka  07:41

yeah, you'll be going all the way in the MSP space is critical to us. So let me go into the all the other major events and processes as well as the other. And we go to a lot of user groups and communities as well. We, we love we love this group and community because they're really smart. They're very technical. We're in other industries and some of the other industries are in in the users. Maybe don't geek out on the tech as much these guys love geeking out on tech and you have a very engineered geeky techie kind of solution to a painful problem. So they get it which is great for us because it's super easy. Just sort of talk to them. They see the value proposition or Yep, get it. That's our problem. We understand why you guys solve this painful problem and no one else can. So yeah, we love this space. Well,

Harry Brelsford  08:21

I appreciate your time. We're gonna we're gonna keep tracking you. Cool. Thanks

Mike Psenka  08:25

so much. Appreciate your time.