Aura Intel

Visibility That Scales With You

As companies grow and evolve, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand what’s actually happening in an organization. Bringing on employees and adding new tools tends to worsen visibility– and trigger micromanagement.

Problem: As leaders of a fast-running startup, Setareh and her CEO team couldn’t get a clear sense of what employees were actively working on each week. Beyond broad standup updates and quick Slack messages, it was hard to get their finger on the pulse, especially cross-functionally:

"As Engineering, we had no idea what sales and customer support was doing."

Setareh Lotfi

CTO

Solution: Using Windmill’s Recaps routine, Setareh and her CEO have gained valuable, data-backed insight into what their teams are doing on a weekly basis. From engineers to sales reps, Windy’s reports maximized Aura’s efficiency and clarified what was blocking the org from reaching their goals:

Instead of going through several different Slack channels or going through my Linear, it’s been just amazing to get a one-pager of what the team is up to.

For my CEO, being able to actually see how many calls have been booked… was very helpful for him…he gets the full-on view of the [sales orgs] performance, so he can actually understand how he can coach them better.

Make Better Managers

When employees get promoted into managerial roles, they often lack hands-on management experience. Existing HR tools don’t provide them with meaningful support – rather, these systems act as a framework for a one-sized-fits all, antiquated definition of a ‘manager.’

Problem: Before starting as the CTO at Aura, Setareh did not have much experience as a manager, or with soft-skills in general:

"I feel like in a startup environment, I'm not getting management coaching in a lot of spaces…especially as an engineer, you're not really exposed to this."

Setareh Lotfi

CTO

Solution: With Windy, Setareh has found an ‘AI Manager Mentor.’ Windy enables her to better support her team, keep tabs on their priorities, obstacles, and feedback, and neatly summarize weekly activity:

As a very, very first-time manager, I learned management…in more of a corporate structure…now, running a startup—the experience has been practically changing for me…it’s been just amazing.

"I couldn't ask for a better mentor than my AI mentor… Going into a startup and being able to put people management on autopilot—that would be my full-on takeaway."

Setareh Lotfi

CTO

Boost Team Recognition & Morale

With disparate tech stacks, it’s too easy for managers to miss team wins and acknowledge individual employee contributions. In other words, leaders often miss the chance to recognize their employees when it’s due.

Problem: With constantly shifting priorities, new hires, and a stream of Slacks flowing a-mile-a-minute, it was nearly impossible for Setareh to notice and celebrate team wins across the engineering team.

Solution: Through Windmill’s Priorities routine and shoutouts feature, Setarah can easily surface and celebrate employee achievements (without digging through systems to find them, or forcing employees to announce them themselves):

"One time, I got a notification about this project that I forgot was even finished, and no one said anything [about it] during the standup. Windy had picked it up, and it was one of our new hires [who had completed the project]. He had just started around four weeks prior, and we were very impressed that he was able to get this done…right out of college. I give credit to Windy for picking up the signal there."

Setareh Lotfi

CTO

There’s a shout-out section that we really love being integrated in one of our Slack channels…It’s great to be able to celebrate the wins like that.

Transform Team Standup’s and 1:1s

We’ve all felt it: the frustration of sitting down for another weekly team meeting where nothing actually gets discussed. Without thoughtful agendas, standups and 1:1s can quickly become ambiguous and inefficient, ultimately wasting everyone’s time instead of helping teams progress.

Problem: Amongst the many responsibilities of a startup CTO, Setareh was struggling to make team standups a productive use of time. Plus, she found that the conversation often wasn’t based on actual activity:

"As an engineer, one of the things that has always been my pet peeve is, on a stand-up, people come in and everyone's trying to look productive. So they are just adding lots of different things that don't really add up at the end of a day."

Setareh Lotfi

CTO

Solution: Setareh cut down internal meeting time using Windmill’s reports, which give her with a clear sense of team priorities, blockers, and activity. Now, both team meetings and 1:1s are streamlined, data-driven, and efficient – and they don’t require Setareh to dig through information and construct an agenda:

We do these midweek reviews with a couple of the engineering leads… we actually just open up the reports and get a summarized version of what’s going on.

On a one-on-one these days, I can actually pull up my Windy bot on Slack and just go through the report. I don’t have to write notes and go back…and figure out what has been done and what’s been accomplished.