Interview with Clarizen CEO, Avinoam Nogrodski

The mid-market market for project management software is becoming more competitive. Clarizen (click to read my review of their product) is another player. To find out what makes Clarizen stand out from the rest, I spoke with Avinoam Nowogrodski, an Israeli software developer.
Clarizen’s CEO and co-founder. Tell me more about Clarizen.
Clarizen is a global leader in collaborative online project management software. This software allows businesses to manage all their projects and resources from one place. Clarizen’s online tools for project management facilitate team collaboration and project execution. Data is always up to date and aligned to business objectives. No complex software or hardware installations are required due to Clarizen’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) structure, resulting in immediate business impact as teams and projects get up and running instantly. Clarizen’s intuitive user interface and innovative email integration capabilities allow for quick and easy adoption by users. This keeps everyone on the right track with current project data.
Our product was released in beta form late last year, and version 2 was launched this April. We currently have around 40 employees and hundreds more customers. The average customer has between 5-8 and 30 seats. Our customers are mostly located in the US, but some are also based in The Netherlands, the UK, and Taiwan. We have also started doing business in Japan. Customers are extremely satisfied and have provided suggestions and requests for how to move forward.
Management by email! How does that work?
Clarizen took advantage of the fact that most people use email to communicate on a daily basis. Clarizen GUI is invisible to the user. We created a new way to use Outlook to communicate with users about their projects. This allows users to create tasks in an email by writing an e-mail and making it a Clarizen task. It is associated with a specific project by clicking a button in Outlook. It can be managed and controlled, and the recipient can also report on completion via email. They will be notified if they fail to complete the task within the deadline.
Is it compatible with any other?
We are proud to announce that we are the first vendor in the world to integrate project management with computer-aided designing. The integrated environment allows distributed design and engineering teams (including suppliers and customers) to track and manage the project’s progress in their CAD tools. This ensures that teams are synchronized in terms schedule, progress, and accountability. Solidworks integration was created to allow designers to access Solidworks for their project tasks.
Clarizen is different from other project management software tools.
Clarizen is an online space for project management. We are approaching it with a completely new approach. After all, project management is something people have done since the beginning. The question is not how to do project management, but what you do. Everyone does it, but not everyone uses a tool. Mid-sized companies often have management request a tool. However, users are often reluctant to use it because it is too much for their role.
Clarizen is focused on the large market between team collaboration, PPM, and PPM. This market is only available to professionals and has a small market. Clarizen fills the gap. We are primarily focusing on managing a distributed team of project managers, which is where most project management pain lies.
Mid-sized businesses are the most trouble. They are not small enough for them to operate without tools, but they don’t have the resources and mindset of larger companies to plan beyond having a Gantt chart. They also need to follow up on execution. Clarizen gives them the ability execute the