Qatalog exits stealth with $18.5 million to unify SaaS tools in the workplace

Companies are using 88 apps on average in 2020, according to recent data from Okta, a 6% year-on-year (YoY) increase. This figure jumps to over 200 apps for some of the bigger enterprises, which can lead to a lot of “chaos, wasted time, and frustration” — something the rapid shift to remote working has only magnified.

This is according to Qatalog, a London-based startup that is emerging from stealth today with a $15 million series A round, led by Atomico. The goal is to unify enterprise tools and projects, making it easier for workers to find the people and data they need across the myriad SaaS applications they use each day. The company had also raised a $3.5 million seed round led by Mosaic Ventures last October that it announced for the first time today.

Founded in 2019 by Tariq Rauf, a former global product lead at Amazon, Qatalog is setting out to build what it calls the “infrastructure for modern work,” joining the dots between company directories, documents, communications, workflows, and more. At launch, Qatalog integrates with Slack, Google Workspace, Salesforce, Zoom, GitHub, Trello, Asana, Dropbox, Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft OneDrive, and Box, and it’s adding more integrations by the week, according to Rauf.

How it looks

The Directory facet of Qatalog’s platform enables users to easily find any person, team, or live project in the company while displaying the connections between them — including projects that they’re working on and who they report to.

Above: Qatalog: Directory

A unified search function also allows people to search for information and files by keyword across all the tools they’ve connected to Qatalog.

Above: Qatalog: Search

Qatalog is also designed to reduce the constant barrage of emails, messages, and thread-scrolling by allowing users to automatically share updates to specific channels or with specific people across channels.

Above: Qatalog: Asynchronous and automated updates

Automation

A core component of Qatalog is its ability to “automate routine work,” making it easier to document, assign, and track internal processes such as managing vacation requests or onboarding new hires. Companies can, for example, leverage templates that will automatically email a new recruit and send them a DM on Slack, serving access to all the correct documents, instructions, and paperwork needed to get the ball rolling.

“This allows you to systematize standard operating procedures in the company,” Rauf told VentureBeat. “Things that would previously require manual emails, messages, and using documentation from multiple sources can now just be assigned to a user, tracked, and all the necessary documentation and actions across services be performed in one place.”

Above: Qatalog: Automating workflows

The company acknowledges that all the top enterprise tools of today, from Slack and Salesforce to Zoom and Box, are great for their intended purposes — Qatalog just wants to be the virtual workspace where everything comes together.

For example, you could start a Zoom call with a single click on someone’s Qatalog profile page, which dials you in to the call and invites the person to join you via a message sent to them on Slack. Or you can schedule a team meeting while viewing each member’s available time slots, with calendar invites sent to each participant that include a Zoom or Teams meeting link.

A little over a year after leaving Amazon to found Qatalog, Rauf has managed to secure the backing of some notable investors, including Salesforce Ventures, which joined Atomico in its series A round. An array of angels also participated, including iZettle CEO and cofounder Jacob de Geer.

The company said it will use its series A funds to grow its product and engineering teams and double down on platform development.