Shortcut Software Explained

Shortcut
Type:Private
Industry:Software
Foundation:New York City
Hq Location City:New York City, New York
Hq Location Country:United States
Num Employees:80
Products:
  • Shortcut

Shortcut is project management software for software development teams developed by Shortcut Software, Inc, an American software company.[1] [2] [3] Until September 2021 it was known as Clubhouse.[4]

History

Shortcut, then known as Clubhouse, was founded in 2014, with the aim of “bringing more transparency and predictive models to the process of software engineering”.[5] After a year in beta, its flagship product, a project management platform called Clubhouse, was launched in 2016.

In December 2017, Clubhouse raised in Series A round of funding, led by Battery Ventures.[1] Previous to this, the company had raised across two rounds of seed funding from Resolute Ventures, Lerer Hippeau Ventures, BoxGroup, RRE Ventures, and Brooklyn Bridge Ventures.[1]

In January 2020, Clubhouse raised in Series B round of funding, led by Greylock Partners. The round also included previous investors Battery Ventures and Lerer Hippeau.[6]

On July 29, 2021, the company announced it would be changing its company and product name to Shortcut, effective mid-September, citing challenges in maintaining its prior brand following the growth of the Clubhouse chat app. It officially switched over to the new name on September 13, 2021.[4]

The company has no relationship with the invitation-only audio-chat app of the same name which launched on iOS in April 2020.[7] The identical names of the two apps regularly caused confusion after the chat app's launch. For example, in February 2021, after Elon Musk announced that he would make an appearance on the platform, Android users looking for the chat service review bombed Clubhouse Software's Android app, causing the company to pull the app temporarily.[8]

In April 2022, Shortcut was recognized as one of the best companies to work for in the U.S. by earning the Great Place to Work Certification. 97% of Shortcut employees said it was a great place to work, 40 points higher than the average U.S. company.[9]

Product

Shortcut

Shortcut is a commercial software product for project management and issue tracking. It includes features to track and plan user stories, plan software development sprints, visualize work in progress with kanban boards, and report on progress of work.[10] Shortcut is also free for up to 10 users.[11]

Shortcut has integrations with Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket and others. It is available through a web application and apps for iOS and Android.

Shortcut is written in Clojure, with a custom JavaScript front end.[12] Its features can also be accessed using a REST API. The Shortcut API (then called the Clubhouse API) was noted in 2019 as "one of the most talked about APIs" by ProgrammableWeb.[13]

Features

Shortcut offers a range of features to help teams work more efficiently and stay organized. Objectives, Docs, and Teams let users track tasks and goals, while Sprints help track progress and productivity.

Objectives

Objectives help align a team’s work with a company’s broader goals. Strategic objectives can be set and directly connected to the tasks and projects that support them. This approach provides organizations with a unified source of truth, fostering better collaboration across teams.[14]

Docs

In July 2022, Shortcut introduced Docs, a documentation system tightly integrated with the platform to help teams capture and share long-form documentation, such as design documents and product strategies, directly within their project management workflow.[15] Companies can use it to create and collaborate on documents in real time, with features like code blocks, syntax highlighting, customized lists, and multimedia.

Sprints

The Sprints feature enables users to set start and end dates, sending reminders to the team to stay on track with various projects.[16] Each Sprint includes detailed reports, such as burn-down charts and velocity tracking, providing a clear view of team performance.

Teams

Shortcut's Teams feature organizes work by assigning projects directly to specific teams. Team performance can be measured through team-specific reports and charts, offering a clear view of how well the team is progressing on their tasks.[16]

APIs

Shortcut also integrates with different platforms via the REST API for custom workflows.[16] This integration allows access, creation, updating, or deletion of data related to Shortcut projects.

Notes and References

  1. News: Clubhouse nets $10m Series A from Battery Ventures to make software development fun again . 12 December 2017 . . Crichton . Danny . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20171212180642/https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/clubhouse-nets-10m-series-a-from-battery-ventures-to-make-software-development-fun-again/ . 12 December 2017 . dmy-all .
  2. News: Four-year-old startup Clubhouse has a bold new plan to take on Atlassian's mega-popular Jira with a new project management tool . 30 October 2018 . . Chan . Rosalie . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20190305181513/https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/making-project-management-easier-for-developers/ . 5 March 2019 . dmy-all .
  3. News: Making project management easier… for developers . 5 March 2019 . . Rubinstein . David . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20190305181513/https://sdtimes.com/softwaredev/making-project-management-easier-for-developers/ . 5 March 2019 . dmy-all .
  4. Web site: Clubhouse is changing our name to Shortcut. Kurt. Schrader. The Clubhouse Blog. Clubhouse Software. July 29, 2021. August 3, 2021.
  5. News: ClubHouse Is Like Salesforce For The Engineering Team . 21 July 2015 . . Crook . Joran . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20150722034405/http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/21/clubhouse-is-like-salesforce-for-the-engineering-team/ . 22 July 2015 . dmy-all .
  6. Web site: This New York Startup Just Raised $25 Million To Challenge Atlassian. Konrad. Alex. Forbes. en. 2020-04-08. https://web.archive.org/web/20200308235101/https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/01/23/clubhouse-raises-25-million-to-challenge-atlassian/. 2020-03-08. live.
  7. Web site: Clubhouse voice chat leads a wave of spontaneous social apps. Josh. Constine. TechCrunch. April 18, 2020. July 2, 2020. Clubhouse, an audio-based social network [...] Don't confuse it with the similarly named Clubhouse.io.. https://web.archive.org/web/20200708033310/https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/18/clubhouse-app-chat-rooms/. July 8, 2020. live.
  8. Web site: Li. Abner. 2021-02-01. Android users look for Elon Musk/Clubhouse & get wrong app. 2021-02-02. 9to5Google. en-US.
  9. Web site: 2022-04-01. Working at Shortcut Software Company. 2024-09-30. Great Place To Work. en-US.
  10. Web site: Clubhouse: Product Features . clubhouse.io . 29 July 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190729161019/https://clubhouse.io/product/ . 29 July 2019 . live .
  11. Web site: Clubhouse announces new collaboration tool and free version of its project management platform . TechCrunch . 10 September 2019 . en-US . 2 July 2020 .
  12. clubhouse . 627127467170492417 . 31 July 2015 . @wycats We're Clojure/Datomic for the backend and a custom Javascript framework (built on top of JQuery) for the front-end..
  13. Web site: ProgrammableWeb's Most Clicked, Shared and Talked About APIs of 2019: Business and Productivity . Culbertson . Joy . 26 December 2019 . ProgrammableWeb . en . 2 July 2020 . https://web.archive.org/web/20191228020129/https://www.programmableweb.com/news/programmablewebs-most-clicked-shared-and-talked-about-apis-2019-business-and-productivity/brief/2019/12/26 . 28 December 2019 . live .
  14. Web site: Shortcut Reimagines Issue Tracking, Adding the Ability to Tie Work to Your Company Goals . 31 January 2024 . PRWeb . en . 14 October 2024 .
  15. Web site: Shortcut Adds Docs To Engineering Productivity Software . Warren . Justin . 12 July 2022 . Forbes . en . 14 October 2024 .
  16. Web site: Clubhouse Becomes Shortcut to Transform Software Project Management . Vizard . Mike . 22 September 2021 . DevOps . en . 14 October 2024 .