In most offices, coming to a consensus on a decision can be a time wasting and often futile process – thoughts are often shared in convoluted Email threads, some voices go unheard, and responses are often wishy-washy to the point of being totally useless.
Portland-based startup Zapproved has created a decision system that removes this ambiguity by forcing users to make up their minds. The site allows members to send out proposals via Email, each of which includes a description of the project and large, bold buttons asking if the recipient ‘Approves’ or ‘Denies’ the idea. It’s a simple concept, but it’s one that could easily help companies cut back on meetings and frivolous email exchanges by streamlining the decision-making process.
Sending out a Zapproved message is simple: members login to the site, enter a list of the Email addresses they’d like to contact, and fill out their message with details regarding the proposal in question. After sending out the Proposal, members can watch as their responses stream in using the Zaprooved admin panel. Zapproved is $12 per month per user, with discounts available for larger groups. However, only users that wish to send out proposals need to be registered with the site – recipients don’t have to create an account or pay any fees.
While Zapproved should help with making decisions, it isn’t perfect – there’s an option for users to “leave a comment” if they don’t feel like ‘Approving’ or ‘Denying’ something, which sort of defeats the point (I also wonder if people might just grow accustomed to ignoring the messages, much as they have with other decision making threads). That said, it’s a simple enough service that I may wind up using it next time there’s a decision to be made at TechCrunch headquarters.
I’d say another risk is that both proponents and opponents of a certain goal start their own polls, with different wording. IT’s easy to come up with an example:
* Should we try to save the earth? (YAY)
* Should we put big breaks on the economy for some unproven ecologystudies (NAY!).
Zapproved {seesmic_video:{”url_thumbnail”:{”value”:”http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/VqflcmvhzD_th1.jpg”}”title”:{”value”:”Zapproved ”}”videoUri”:{”value”:”http://www.seesmic.com/video/KOBFWEl9iT”}}}
I love this simple tool, cool.
This actually sounds like a step backwards for human developers. After all, part of the difference between being human versus being a computer, is that humans can say more than yes/no based on a summation of some factors. If whoever is conducting the survey wants to just classify ideas as negative or positive, he should just build a simulator, and run it on his desktop. If he’s sending them out to get input, a yes/no answer is pretty crummy input.
… the site is for chimps. Stupid chimps.
u gotta be kidding. This is news-worthy? This is a business?
Totally lame, and totally misses the point on decision making.
Ok, so this is the type of nonsense that gets funded? Are You Serious?
Deny
This is the worst app I’ve seen generate news – contrary to what it actually is – and I was one of the many who read the headlines / article – signed up and got disappointed.
It doesn’t look like these guys are vc funded.
Useless for dealing with small numbers of well organized efficient types.
Hugely useful in dealing with indecisive jerks, like those who have to approve a press release, a corporate event, or agree to a kitchen remodel schedule, because it forces an unambiguous decision and makes clear to everyone who hasn’t yet cast their vote. As a small business owner a decision today is worth more and costs me less than a decision tomorrow. And the audit trail heads off future arguments.
See the money trail? This one is a winner.
FAIL
Kind of expensive for what it is, but an interesting idea. Efficient for the simpler decisions, but not as much so for more complex decision-making.
Fail
Um. MS Outlook has voting buttons that already do this exact same thing.
agree. how is this service any different or useful than what MS already uses???
The Tech industry must be in even more trouble than we thought if TC is reduced to writing about this and calling it innovation. Maybe it’s time for a Silicon Valley bailout.
This is worse than a solution looking for a problem: It’s snake-oil looking for a dupe. Well known snake oil at that so your dupe better have been born on Mars, yesterday.
As Jen said: Outlook does this already. I’m sure Lotus does too. Even if they didn’t you could just ask people to reply with yes/no answers and you’d get the same result: a lot of arguing.
Because if you were in a position to enforce a yes/no answer you’re probably in a position to just decide on the issue unilaterally and be done with it.
Not to mention it’s shoddy communication anyway: a plain yes answer may have merit but a no without a reason is not getting you anywhere. Yes a lot of arguing is for argument’s sake but a lot of objections are reasonable and some can be addressed unless of course you were stupid enough to insist on a yes/no answer.
OK. That’s enough. I want the last 5 minutes of my life back. Who do I sue?
Chris
As per another comment above, the site is for stupid chimps…
@Christos –good intentions… trying to understand the reasons behind this post. Just a waste of time.
I wrote a similar application in the time it took you to read this comment.
Exactly…. I can’t believe this gets covered…
Its an online poll… big deal…
Wow….I cannot believe that you do not see the benefit here. I have a heck of a time tracking our software developer when I have approved something in test to be moved to production and it never happens and a week later they tell me they did not get the email. Well now there is a tool to archive all the responses and it also nags the approver if they do not get it done by the date. I am going to use this when I am working on government contracts. Now I have something I can show them that they approved that scaffold engineering without having to go through hundreds (maybe thousands) of emails for the project. Wonderful project management tool. Sign up for the free time before you criticize! Outlook is really a poor project management tool. So much for having project management professionals on here.
Oh yeah….the person that wrote an app but did not publish it. BS on that comment. You do not sound real creative.