Christoffer Klemming | Waitwhile
CHRISTOFFER KLEMMING
Founder & CEO of Waitwhile, the fastest growing queue management platform built to eliminate wait times.
What Is Waitwhile? Tell Us About What You Do And What Your Mission Is.
Waitwhile is in the business of helping other businesses manage their lines and crowds. Yup. we work all day with the incredibly boring everyday problem of waiting in line.
But it’s a hairy problem to work on: humans spend about 1 Trillion hours every year in pointless lines. And we're quite good at tackling it; our technology has queued over 100M people and saved over 6,000 years of waiting in line. Our customers include IKEA, Louis Vuitton, Amazon, Patagonia, Tribeca Film Festival, Applebee's, SXSW and some of the largest hospitals and government agencies.
Every conceivable business has some form of line that can be improved and optimized. Whether it's a store, an office, a salon, a restaurant, a hospital, a tech support hub, a visitor center, a museum, an amusement park... you get it, any place where people wait, Waitwhile can help businesses streamline their crowds.
What Is Your Background? What Led You To Starting Your Own Company, And How Did You Choose This Space?
I’m an engineer from Stockholm who ended up in marketing at Google and spent a decade growing products like AdWords, Chromebooks, Chrome and Google Fiber.
After moving with Google to Silicon Valley and working there for a few years, I felt a strong urge to go off on my own and teamed up with my brother to build Waitwhile. There were a few underlying reasons we felt we wanted to tackle the very boring problem of lines:
People spend a god awful amount of time in lines and long lines are affecting virtually every industry - restaurants, retail, real estate, offices, hospitals, government, events, to name a few.
People have become less patient and wait times are a bigger consideration when choosing where to go, eat, play and visit. Searches related to wait times have been growing very fast over the past years, especially on phones.
It’s a really boring, everyday problem and so there is not much competition. Most businesses are still using pagers, buzzers, number slip systems and really outdated technologies for managing their lines.
We felt that there was an opportunity to build the definitive queue management platform to solve lines once and for all.
Who Are Your Co-Founders Or People Who You Work Very Closely With? How Do Their Skills Supplement Yours?
My brother Jonas is my Co-Founder and also our CTO. He is a very distinguished engineer and can build virtually anything and with extreme attention to rigor, documentation and security. But he wants little to do with the “dirty” things like selling and pitching, partnerships, marketing, raising money or paperwork. So I get to do most of that, which arguably isn’t in my wheelhouse either so we’re looking to hire some more qualified people to do some of that.
We both love obsessing over the product and customer use-cases. He does have a very keen eye for user experience and so we spend a lot of time bickering over that with our Head of UX, Andreas.
How Did You Choose The Name “Waitwhile”?
Waitwhile = Waiting made Worthwhile. Our goal is to make waiting feel like you’re not waiting at all and maybe even like productive time.
What Was The Fundraising Process Like For You? Tell Us About Your Investors And What You Use The Money You’ve Raised For.
My Co-Founder Jonas did two previous VC-funded startups and was lukewarm to the idea of raising VC for his 3rd startup - he wanted to do this on our own. We went about running Waitwhile fully bootstrapped, investing $30k of our own money back in 2017 and grew organically over the next 3 years. This forced us to build tight operations and automations to reduce the need of having a lot of employees. Plus, we had to develop a cheap, low-touch acquisition engine with a short time to profitability on new customers acquired.
As it turns out, this is a perfect recipe for attracting venture capital and once we hit our stride we could be very selective in who we chose to partner with. We wanted to take on VC with a few specific purposes in mind:
1. Expand to new international markets
2. Rapidly grow our technical team to solidify our product lead more
3. Improve our Enterprise offering and sales motion
We wanted a firm that could provide value on these objectives, outside of just capital.
There were a few firms that we met with that we felt fit the bill, but the one we liked the most was CRV. They were early investors in Twitter, Dropbox, DoorDash and a bunch of other cool companies. We quickly hit it off with the partner (Kristin Baker Spohn) and moved through the term sheet process in a few weeks. I know this isn’t the usual funding story, so we were lucky.
Can You Tell Us About Some Of Your Numbers? How Has Growth Been Over The Past Couple Of Years?
Growth has been pretty dramatic. We’re about to hit 100M guests served through Waitwhile and we’re adding another 8M+ each month. We have tens of thousands of lines under our management, growing 5X in the past 12 months. And over a thousand paying customer logos.
How Has COVID-19 Impacted Demand And Usage For Waitwhile Over This Last Year?
COVID-19 has been a tailwind for Waitwhile as social distancing and crowd control have become really important. It has provided activation energy for a lot of industries to replace their old ways of managing lines. Out with the stanchions, buzzers, number slip systems, paper lists and waiting rooms…. and in with fully remote, virtual lines that leverage the phones in people's pockets.
With remote waiting quickly becoming the new norm we don’t think there is any going back to the old ways after the pandemic. Virtual lines are so much more convenient for both the guests and the businesses, plus you get a lot of power-ups from the data.
Any New Product Features In The Works?
We just launched an integration partnership with Google where guests can now join their favorite lines directly from Google Maps.
Generally, we ship new features to Waitwhile almost daily in our quest to make Waitwhile the best possible wait management platform.
What Have Been Both Your Favorite And Least-liked Parts Of Your Entrepreneurial Journey? What Have Been Your Most Challenging And Most Exciting Moments For You And The Company?
Coming from a huge organization with a lot of decision makers, it’s been really fun to get to design and build our own product from scratch. I also really enjoyed picking up programming again after many years in marketing. Unfortunately, there is less time for that now that we’ve grown to a team of 25 and raised outside investment - and I now need to act more grown-up and take care of things like hiring and retention, benefits, insurance, taxes and office leases.
One memorable experience was when Tribeca Film Festival signed up to Waitwhile when our product was still in (very) early alpha version. They queued up over 80,000 people in the course of a few days and lots of things broke - but they were still really happy. We had to patch things up across many all-nighters and the technology went through speed maturation.
What Are Your Daily Routines? Walk Us Through Your Typical Workday Schedule.
I have two young kids, a 2-year old and a 4-year old, so a lot of the morning and evening routine centers around them. Here’s my typical schedule:
6.30am - The kids attack our beds and forces me and my wife to wake up
7am - Get up and make everyone breakfast and prep lunch boxes for preschool.
8.30am - Drop the kids off at their preschool.
9am - Daily planning where I review my most important things for the day
9.30am - Meetings with my key team members to make sure everyone is unblocked
10.30am - Meetings with customers, partners or new-hire interviews.
12pm - Lunch time!
12.45pm - More meetings with customers, partners or new-hire interviews.
2pm - Deep work time
4pm - Pick up kids from preschool
4.30-7.30pm - Dinner, play with kids, maybe exercise (bought a jogging stroller where I can run with both kids!) and put the kids down to bed
7.30pm-9pm - Hang out with wife and watch movies (we’re rewatching The Crown!)
9pm-10pm - Check emails and once a week a meeting with our tech team in India
10pm - Sleep!
What Are The Most Important Skills A Modern Day Entrepreneur Needs In Order To Be Successful? What Advice Do You Have For Entrepreneurs Who Are Just Starting Out?
1. A productivity system: I’m a big believer in productivity methodologies like GTD and the concept of getting tasks out of your head and into a trusted system. The task system, like Todoist or Omnifocus, will tell you what needs to be done any given day and where to spend your time. Your brain will learn to relax and focus on the task at hand, knowing that you won’t drop the ball on anything else.
2. Selling: Like most engineers, I’m naturally cynical to sales. But when running your own business, you need to sell what you do all the time: to prospects and customers, to new hires, to existing staff (so they don’t leave for greener pastures), to partners, to investors, to your spouse, family and friends for why you’re spending so much time on something of questionable value. As it turns out, selling can be pretty fun when you realize it doesn’t have to be “salesy”. As long as you’re passionate about what you’re building, people become smitten and you can talk about it in a very natural way. The Fog Creek guide on the most basic you need to know about sales is a really good starting point.
3. Managing attention: As someone who struggles with phone and news addiction, I know what an incredible time and energy sap it can be. Getting something off the ground takes an incredible amount of focus - and your precious attention is constantly being targeted by other companies. Learning to set healthy boundaries to your phone, social media, news, and other passive consumption patterns feels more critical than ever to become successful in any endeavor. Those that maintain good control of their attention have a tremendous edge over the rest of us. Ironically, I rely on technology to control my use of technology, including site blockers, screen timers and such. But often just leaving or turning off your phone does wonders.
Tell Us A Story Of Something That Happened To You, Something You Heard, Or Something You Saw, That Either Made You Laugh Or Taught You An Important Lesson.
My 4-year old Levi is a constant source of hilarity. He keeps referring to our company as “Wetwipe” (it’s Waitwhile, not some soggy wipes) and tells me that I shouldn’t work so much lest I get “square eyes” (which is him using our own scare tactic around his incessant iPad watching against me).
What Do You Do In Your Free Time?
Kids, skateboarding, jogging and creating music (here’s one of my albums on SoundCloud)
If You Can Have A One-Hour Meeting With Someone Famous Who Is Alive, Who Would It Be And Why?
I’d really like to meet Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe. He seems incredibly thoughtful, present and has an ability to see around corners on what’s next. We look to emulate what Stripe is doing when it comes to things like building company culture and successful remote collaboration, and creating platforms that others can build upon.
What Is Your Favorite Quote And Why Does It Resonate With You?
“So when life throws you a curveball, remember that you still have legs to walk with. And if you lose those legs, you still have an arm. If you lose that arm, you still have a heart. And if you lose your heart, you still have the entire universe.”
I picked this up from a Medium post by @BenEinstein about a man who lost a leg and it’s about being grateful with what you have, which is something I really struggle with but aspire to do.
What Does Success Mean To You?
I come from a family where overworking and burnout has been a recurring pattern, and I’ve had my own bouts with it. I’m hyper-vigilant about my stress levels as I think I’m constantly walking a fine line between work immersion and burnout. I also struggle with phone addiction and mild anxiety.
Success for me means being able to live a well-rounded life. One where I’m not constantly preoccupied with work, present with my kids and wife, having lots of strong friendships and not worried about the rest (money, health, world events...). And when I do work, I work on things that deeply engage me.
Christoffer Klemming’s Favorites Stack:
Books:
1. Getting Things Done by David Allen: It was game-changing for me about 10 years ago when I was coping with a mild burnout and wanted to change my way of working.
2. Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari: It made you feel for a fleeting moment that you understood the entire world and why things are the way they are.
3. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz: Just a delightful novel about life under a dictatorship in Dominican Republic and how it is to grow up as an overweight, fiction-loving kid in New Jersey.
Consumer Products:
1. Kindle Paperwhite - I look forward to going to bed so I can read for an hour in the dark.
2. Breville Barista Espresso - Perfect fancy espresso drinks.
3. Moccamaster - Perfect brewed coffee (yes, I’m very much into coffee)
Newsletters & Podcasts:
Hardcore History by Dan Carlin. Mind-blowingly good podcast about major historical events. The episodes on World War 1 called “Blueprint for Armageddon” is the best thing I’ve ever listened to.
Scott Galloway’s “No Mercy/No Malice” newsletter
Matt Levine’s “Moneystuff” newsletter
