On the TechTO stage ×2
Career Switching & Birthing Start-Up Business | 7shifts
Watch on YouTube ↗TechTO Demo of the Month: 7shifts
Watch on YouTube ↗First seen on the TechTO stage in 2021. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Jordan ↗
In their words
I grew up working in quick-service restaurants for my dad, who ran some Quiznos locations. I saw this issue of him scheduling and managing staff, so I taught myself to write code to help solve his problem.
We said we're going to go focus on restaurants — and it was uncomfortable, because it meant isolating two-thirds of our existing customers.
The more you focus, actually the more there is to build.
We're focused primarily on the restaurant industry. We've got a ton of work to do.
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Quick answers
Who is Jordan Boesch?
The co-founder and CEO of 7shifts, a Saskatoon company that makes team-management software for restaurants. He founded it in 2014 with Andrée Carpentier and Johannes Lindenbaum.
How did 7shifts start?
As a side project to fix the schedule at his dad's Quiznos restaurants. He taught himself to code, ran it part-time for years while working other software jobs, and sold early versions by walking printed screenshots into restaurants.
What was the turning point for the company?
Focus. Boesch told the TechTO stage that 7shifts started serving all kinds of businesses, then made the uncomfortable call to cut two-thirds of its customers and build only for restaurants — after going through the Boost VC accelerator in San Francisco.