After $1.2M funding, Pie’s Pieter Walraven explains why the app is nothing like Slack

Pie founders Pieter Walraven (left) and Thijs Jacobs.

Pie makes a workplace chat app that doesn’t require much tech savvy from its users. The Singapore-based startup announced today that it has raised US$1.2 million in series A funding (hat-tip to TechCrunch) from GREE Ventures, Koh Boon Hwee, Wavemaker Partners, Dennis Goh, and Ivan Yeo of YSS Capital.

But how is an app that’s even more minimal than Slack going to compete? Pie co-founder and CPO Pieter Walraven says they’re in a whole different ballpark from the much-hyped Slack app. “Most people are not in tech, right?” he remarks. “For people in Silicon Valley, for tech savvy people, Slack is going to be the winner, but if you’re in the media, if you run a store, you don’t want to introduce a tool and force your employees to use it. So you have to rethink everything from the ground up, everything is different because you’re not focused on the tech vertical.”

Walraven tells Tech in Asia that he attributes the attention the company is getting from these parties to a combination of its product-focused approach and its philosophy on the people it hires. “In the [Silicon] Valley, I think most companies are very product focused, and obsessed with quality, detail, design,” he says. “We know from experience that this is quite rare in Singapore. So this was something [our investors] really liked.”

Pie’s focus on its product and attention to detail set it apart, the company says.

Walraven says that Pie hires people with a deep passion for the product itself. “They have worked on messaging apps before, they are very detail-driven, they have a passion for design,” he says. If a candidate is asked for their favorite app during the interview and they wax lyrical about things like the smoothness of a button or a small piece of animation, they are likely the right person for the job.

Designing for non-geeks

This is why Pie isn’t as focused on getting software engineers; that is, Walraven claims, sort of the company’s “secret sauce”. “We’re in this vertical that is forgotten or skipped by anyone who is in tech,” he says. “Most people in tech build for themselves, they build for startups, for tech companies. We’re actually in a completely different, very uncrowded space, which is the rest of the people, those who aren’t as tech savvy.”

Walraven’s gaming background at mobile games developer Playfish is kind of a callback to the challenges Pie wants to address with its product. In both cases, the user is supposed to have a simplified, streamlined experience, but what’s happening under the hood is another matter entirely. “The social games I used to develop at Playfish are used by housewives,” he says. “It’s incredibly hard to design for a non-tech savvy audience.”

Pie was one of the Asian companies invited by Apple to develop on the Apple Watch.

Pie is now looking to extend its reach with strategic partnerships, especially in the US. The company is already working with cloud storage provider Dropbox, offering some deep integration especially on iOS 8, allowing users to access their Dropbox files without leaving Pie’s app.

Walraven says the company is being well received because of its philosophy of simplicity and attention to detail. “There’s a bunch of legacy software guys who want newer stuff,” he explains. “But there’s also the cloud guys. Their product is getting commoditized – the cloud is now basically free. So how are you going to compete?”