Revolutionizing Workflow — Why First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund Backed Comake

Meet the founders that are revolutionizing workflow with the modern file browser.

Originally published by Dorm Room Fund on September 25, 2017.

Dorm Room Fund is proud to announce our investment in Comake, a team that’s changing the way we access and interact with our digital content. Think of Comake like the next evolution of your MacOS Finder or Windows Explorer.

We’re all familiar with the uphill battle of file browsing. From trying to find the right file version in your email vs. your computer, or trying to find out why a file was changed and what it should change to, the entire ecosystem is a mess.

This information is stored in complex folder structures, and broken up across various tools and teams. As a result, the modern knowledge worker spends on average 20% of her productive hours searching for files and information. That’s one in every five employees spending their entire workday searching through the digital content within the company, and not actually producing anything new!

Comake provides a new kind of file-centric workflow that improves productivity and project outcomes by connecting your digital content across all of your accounts, devices, and people.

The Comake team has built a cloud-based software platform that brings the communication and collaboration happening around your files right back into the file browser. By creating a dynamic archive of your workflow and project history, Comake empowers users and teams to focus more on creating and innovating, rather than simply organizing, managing, and rewriting.

Inside the platform next to each file preview, Comake surfaces important and relevant information. More than just name, size, and date modified, the software understands the file’s role and relationships within the rest of your workflow and other digital content. Comake automatically links files, people, and context as you connect your existing storage and communication tools, and provides additional suggestions in an easy-to-understand interface replicating your computer’s file directory. Users can also save web links right alongside their files, further expanding the capacity of Comake’s modern file browser.

The team at Comake demonstrated many of the tangible and intangible qualities that we look for in DRF founders and companies. This expands well beyond excellence and leadership in their respective field, but more importantly, the team has demonstrated humility and hustle. We got to know Andres (CEO, Cornell BArch ’15, MS ’17) and Adler (Head of Product, Cornell BS ’18) while they were building their company in Cornell’s eLab Accelerator and saw them grow substantially over the past year, incorporating customer and mentor feedback time and time again to improve. The team they’ve built is impressive, with skills spanning from architecture, computer graphics, and visual art to experience design and computer science. DRF is proud to welcome them all to the family.

Since Comake’s inception, the team has built the Beta version of the software platform with a team of 6 dedicated engineers, have an admirable board of advisors, hired a core team of 3, and were featured on both Product Hunt Upcoming and Beta List, with a substantial pre-Beta following of over 750 subscribers waiting to use the platform.

At Dorm Room Fund we invest in companies that create viable, tested solutions to problems that need solving. We’re incredibly thrilled to have Comake join our community and to invest in a product that has the potential to redefine digital productivity. Comake is launching their Beta at the start of October, and we look forward to reviewing and discussing your DRF applications on their platform!

Struggling desperately with your workflow and need Comake? Visit their website to subscribe for their Beta, and follow them on Twitter to get updates! If you’re interested, you can reach out to team here: info@comake.io.

Dorm Room Fund is dedicated to supporting student founders across the country and helping them reach new heights. Working on a startup? Get in touch on twitter or here. If you’re interested in keeping up to date with DRF, signup for our newsletter here.

Originally published by Dorm Room Fund on September 25, 2017.