#192 - Alessandra Knight, CEO of Katch - "To make the biggest impact we should blow up our calendar"

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to let us all create a bigger impact, by spending less time in meetings. My guest is Alessandra Knight, Co-Founder and CEO of Katch.

Alessandra studied anthropology and has always had a passion for learning about different people and cultures. She values people-first thinking. And this landed her at Dots - a mobile game studio, where she quickly moved up to an operations-lead-slash-strategic-advisor role for the executive team. Her role was geared towards optimizing time for herself and her colleagues. Soon, she started seeing how hard true, uninterrupted focus time was to come by.

This sparked a project within Dots to search for a way to give the team more time to do work and less time in meetings.

And this became the big idea behind Katch. Katch is on a mission to create a world where people make the time to connect with who they want, on topics that matter, at times that work best for them. It's giving all of us the ability to live our lives versus being controlled by our calendars.

And that inspired me, and hence I invited Alessandra to my podcast. We explore what's broken in the way we manage our time or have our time managed for us - and how that erodes the impact we can make. The traditional ways to manage calendars is flawed - since it doesn't take our mindset, energy levels, and priorities into account. Alessandra shares the big idea behind her company and how she'll use technology to give us back uninterrupted focus.

She also shares some of her big lessons learned building her SaaS business, and what is important to succeed beyond having a remarkable solution.

Here are some of her quotes:

Our life is a spontaneous train of events. We never know how the next hour and whatnot will be scheduled. We're creating a product to work hand in hand with spontaneity and believe that being able to have these conversations ad-hoc, when you're in that right headspace to connect with someone, is important.

Being able to focus on what's most important in the moment, being more productive, and still having time to do what matters most.

During this interview, you will learn three things:

1. That it's very possible to disrupt a market that's been around for decades and is dominated by extremely large tech-giants
2. Why passion for the product is not enough, the passion needs to be about how the product helps impact the lives of others
3. That we always try and move forward in our paths - but sometimes we have to move laterally to get where we need going - and that's OK
4. Why openness, passion, and diversity are key ingredients to create a SaaS business that's able to create remarkable momentum.

For more information about the guest from this week:

• Alessandra Knight
• Website Katch