June 13, 2023
Conclude’s CEO and co-founder, Haavard Nord, is an innovator and builder of things. He is best known for inventing Qt, an industry standard framework, now used by more than a million developers to create apps, and everything else from home appliances to supercars.
In 1994, Haavard co-founded Trolltech, which developed the Qt technology and the company went on to become one of the most promising Norwegian startups in the 90s and 00s.
Nokia acquired Qt in 2008 and after exiting, Haavard sat on several boards and continued to build and invest in companies including investment and funding platform, Owners Room.
However, it was tackling the “cross-team collaboration problem” many global businesses face that captured his attention next. Knowing there had to be a better way, he went back to his programming roots after almost 20 years and produced an earlier version of what is now Conclude.
Lars Knoll is appointed as CTO
In August 2022, Conclude announced that Lars Knoll had joined the company as CTO. But this wasn’t the first time the pair had worked together. Lars was formerly CTO and Chief Architect at Qt, and was instrumental in helping to scale the company.
As well as their close working history, Lars is also known as the creator of the open source code that became WebKit, an engine that powers most web browsers today – including Safari and Chrome.
In a company LinkedIn post, Haavard said of the key appointment: “I am thrilled that Lars has joined Conclude. He brings significant technical expertise to the company and will be a great asset as we continue to scale.
“His appointment enables us to keep improving our product and provide even greater value to organizations looking for more clarity and structure inside their business messaging apps.”
Conclude launches two AI integrations
Just before Easter 2023 Conclude put the finishing touches on its Open AI Email Summarization and AI-driven Email Translation features. Speaking to Norwegian tech publication Digi, Haavard explained: “We saw a need to structure internal communication in companies, and messaging apps are central to that.”
In the same interview, Lars added: “The pandemic caused a boom for tools like Slack and [Microsoft] Teams… At the same time, these systems often do not communicate well with other systems. The goal is to build a bridge between the different IT tools used.”
Breaking down information silos
Conclude aims to be a leading productivity tool and break down information silos in companies by using no-code workflow apps that structure conversations inside messaging apps (currently, Slack).
Emails from support tickets, issues, and customer-facing incidents can be sent directly to a dedicated Slack activity channel where they can be summarized with OpenAI (then a new ticket is opened) or translated using an AI-driven language menu inside Slack. Conclude then synchronizes information between channels and popular tools like Jira.
As well as structuring and capturing information in one place, everything is recorded and archived in the Conclude Dashboard, so information remains searchable once an activity (issue, incident or ticket) is concluded.
A solution for modern companies
Although silos can happen in any company, when you add in globalization, and remote or hybrid working models with distributed teams, many companies struggle to keep internal information flowing.
Both Haavard and Lars have experience building international companies and recognize the pain points that exist in organizations where oftentimes one department uses Slack (such as IT), and the rest of the company uses Microsoft Teams.
“Various systems in companies do not ‘speak’ to other systems,” explains Haavard.
“What happens is a mismatch of information and the creation of silos and digital walls. When communication slips through the cracks, it creates massive inefficiencies. Conclude is here to solve that.”
