Wrike CEO Andrew Filev predicts the death of email as a work tool
The founder and CEO of collaboration software company Wrike has said that he believes that in a decade from now people will have abandoned email as a productivity tool.
Wrike, which is in the process of creating 50 new jobs in Dublin, was set up by Filev in St Petersburg in Russia in 2006 and is now headquartered in Silicon Valley.
The Mountain View California-headquartered company makes software that empowers today’s digital workplace where workers are handling greater amounts of data in less time than before.
Speaking with Siliconrepublic.com, Filev said Wrike emerged when a software company he was running at the time was struggling to keep on top of deadlines.
‘There’s an art and a science to establishing offices. The science is looking at the numbers and where the talent is, the art is when you visit the place’
– ANDREW FILEV, WRIKE
“I started my first company when I was still in college and it grew super fast to about 100 engineers spread across the globe and working on 20 projects at any one time.”
He said the use of a range of different tools from Microsoft Project to Excel was adding to the confusion. “It was hard to keep track of multiple things that change every day. I realised that real life is complex and super fast and moving faster every year, so we needed a good tool to put us all on the same page.”
A time of renaissance for productive people
And so, Wrike evolved, and today its major customers include Google, HootSuite, AT&T, Adobe and Hawaiian Airlines.
“What I am really passionate about is a concept called the real-time enterprise. In the industrial economy, you could chart huge projects by planning ahead for six months. But this world is so volatile and things change every day, so there’s a lot of cross-team, cross-function work and a whole explosion of digital creative work, so we definitely need new ways to manage that work and do that work.
“So, for this new reality there needs to be a new set of cultures, processes and tools
“I personally believe that 10 years from now people will not be working in emails. New tools emerging like ours will help people to be much more productive and that helps them to bring that concept of real-time enterprise to action.”
The art and science of locating in Dublin
Asked why he chose Dublin as the location to spearhead Wrike’s global expansion, Filev said he fell in love with Dublin.
“There’s an art and a science to establishing offices. The science is looking at the numbers and where the talent is, the art is when you visit the place.
“I was here speaking at a conference organised by Google and I just fell in love with the place. There’s a great entrepreneurial spirit and we felt that it clicked with our own culture. That allows you to find people who naturally want to work at start-ups and help create something and we have been able to bring in people from companies like Salesforce and Oracle and they are excited by how they will change how people work.
“I appreciate Dublin for that entrepreneurial culture.”
