About
Hi! I’m Chuck, and I co-founded Scratch with my brother Rob. 👋
We run an agency called Rareview. Many of our team members work remotely, and our primary communication channels include email, Slack, and Notion. Each morning, team leaders would check their emails for updates from their staff, respond to inquiries on Slack, and schedule Zoom meetings to discuss project updates and daily plans. While this approach worked, we felt it consumed too much time. Then, the pandemic hit, and we were all forced to work from home, making it increasingly challenging to manage projects and teams effectively.
As someone who enjoys writing, I incorporated personal journaling into my daily routine. We decided to implement team journaling at our agency. We created a basic calendar in Notion and asked each team member to write a journal entry every morning before starting work. The entries revolved around three simple questions:
- How are you feeling today? 🌤️
- What are you planning to accomplish today? 🏃♀️
- Do you face any obstacles or blockers? 🛑
Each entry used an icon to represent the writer’s mood 😁, indicated their focus for the day 🧘♂️, and listed the projects 💼 they were working on. The purpose of these entries was to minimize the number of meetings and Slack messages we had each morning. Instead, by reading the journal entries, we could instantly understand how our colleagues were feeling, their level of motivation, their daily goals, and areas where they might need assistance.
It took some time to get everyone on board, but once we all embraced the practice and shared our honest thoughts, something amazing happened—productivity increased! Employee and manager satisfaction also improved.
Realizing the potential, we knew we had to transform it into an app for others to benefit from.
We took the concept of team journaling and aimed to enhance it. We introduced daily check-ins with prompts about your location, the weather (as it can impact mood), plans for the day, and your current attitude. We added progress updates deliberately left open-ended—share your thoughts on your performance and productivity using conversation text—it’s not a task manager (there are already countless tools for that). We also developed a feature called “Raise your hand,” enabling coworkers to seek assistance from one another. And to make it engaging, we gamified it—earning points for active participation. Our goal is to convert these points into tangible rewards that companies can offer their employees. We hope Scratch serves as a platform to gauge, encourage, and drive productivity and motivation.
Given the prevalence of remote work, the loss of face-to-face interactions in the office, and the absence of informal conversations, we designed Scratch to reintroduce the human element to remote collaboration.
Here’s a brief overview of what sets Scratch apart: 🔥
- Sharing morning journals
- Reviewing daily progress and updates
- Simplifying team check-ins
- Rewarding team collaboration and engagement
- Encouraging questions and dialogue
Self-funded, a long but rewarding road
We have not sought any external investments to date. While we did receive a few offers, that was not our objective. Scratch is a passion project. It’s personal. We believe it can benefit companies everywhere, regardless of their size. Therefore, we embarked on this journey independently.
We invested a six-figure sum in designing and building our iOS app. We have an ambitious roadmap and will chip away as we go. We understand the app isn’t flawless, but as perfectionists do, we’ll work hard to refine it.
We are dedicated to investing our own money and time into Scratch. We are confident that it will grow and become a valuable tool for companies worldwide, just like it has been for the great people at Rareview.
A heartfelt 💜 thank you
On behalf of both Rob and myself, we would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to you. In today’s competitive app landscape, it’s challenging to stand out, especially when larger players have substantial funding and development resources. However, we have chosen a different path. While we may not be as speedy as some, we believe we can and will compete. Our drive does not come from monetary motives alone. We genuinely care about the products we create. And without people like you using Scratch, none of this would be possible.
So, a BIG THANK YOU 🙏 to everyone who has downloaded Scratch or plans to do so in the future. Your support means the world to us, and we appreciate you more than words can express. If you’d be so kind as to leave us a review in the app store and/or to say a kind word on social media that would mean the world to us.
Here’s 🍻 to a productive day!
Chuck
Brother and Co-Founder