betwixt.us | building rapport in the cloud for greater productivity
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Building stronger teams
through the magic of our slackbot, zanie!

zanie by image is a virtual host that helps your modern, distributed team build the kinds of relationships that maximize engagement, productivity and innovation.

About

Team building in the cloud

image amplifies the effectiveness of teams, both remote and co-located.

Technology is a beautiful thing: it couldn’t care less about geography, which is why we are able to cultivate a diverse workforce that spans the globe.

Not only that, but the very same technology that bridges vast physical distances can also bridge the emotional distance that makes us feel far apart.

We give teams a way to bond no matter where they’re working.

Because it’s what’s betwixt us that matters.

How it works

We get teams talking

image is the digital equivalent of the world’s best dinner party host: fun to engage with, a natural at sparking good conversation, and great at making people comfortable sharing, bantering and uncovering the magic that lies betwixt them.

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LIVES WHERE TEAMS WORK

Designed to integrate with collaboration platforms, starting with Slack

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UP & RUNNING IN NO TIME

Set up your teams and invite members with just a few clicks.

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INTUITIVE & LOW FRICTION

Team members engage on their own time - asynchronicity at its best!

  • Our carefully selected questions are delivered via direct message by our friendly bot zanie, once a week.
  • These curated questions are designed to get the conversation going. Simply answer to join in on the discussion with team around the topic.
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BUILDS TRUST & CAMARADERIE

Time-bound conversations keep the dialogue going and on topic, and encourage participation.

  • Just like IRL, conversations are ephemeral and are not saved or stored.
  • No lurking! To foster trust, only team-members who have answered a question will be invited to a group discussion
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GO TEAM!

The result is a stronger, more engaged, more productive & more innovative workforce.

  • Works in service of existing corporate goals including culture-building, diversity training, leadership development and knowledge sharing among others.
  • Continuous machine learning to optimoze employee engagement efforts.

Benefits

“My idea ofa good company is thea company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I calla good company.”

Jane Austen, with a twist

A company of clever, well-informed people who have a great deal of conversation is a company that captivates, motivates and innovates.

Good conversation helps us think and rethink, charge up and wind down, evolve and invent. It is food for thought, fuel for creativity, and fertile soil for our kaleidoscopic diversity - diversity of experience, of backgrounds, of interests, of perspective, of culture, of skills, of ethnicity, of gender, of age, of beliefs, of thought and so much more.

But don’t take our word for it. Ask Google. Or Harvard. Or MIT. Or McKinsey. Or The World Economic Forum.

Science

Engaging and intuitive on the outside, deeply scientific on the inside

They say good conversation is an art, but for the legion of us who aren’t artists there’s nothing more intimidating than a blank canvas.

And digital dialoguing is even trickier: differences in schedules, work styles, roles, geographies, cultures and processes add what is termed virtual distance to the physical distance that separates us.

That’s where image comes in - we’re a digital conversation engine that harnesses the technology we already use to create more authentic connection and communication between individuals on a team.

We developed a 4-D framework based on a deep understanding of the principles of psychology, sociology, human behavior and philosophy. Our model takes into account:

  1. The imperative of progression & reciprocity to the development of interpersonal trust (if you’re curious, check out the basics of Social Penetration Theory)
  2. The value of incremental, frequent & consistent interaction on good habit formation (dip your toe in behavioral psychology)
  3. The impact of varying complexity & levels of effort (here’s an introduction to the link between motivation and success)
  4. The importance of establishing the building blocks of trust (go ahead, geek out on Aristotle’s thoughts on rhetoric)

We take the thinky stuff seriously and we're very proud to be collaborating with Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.

Team

A bunch of playful, unafraid co-conspirators who never want to stop having fun

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Jumana Abu-Ghazaleh

Chief Instigator
Jumana Abu-Ghazaleh
Chief instigator  

Jumana Abu-Ghazaleh is our Founder and CEO. She’s got mad credentials, but her “uncanny ability to stick her finger in the wound,” as one CEO once put it, is what makes her the right person to pioneer ‘the feely internet’.

  • Jumana earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a degree in Literature and Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College.
  • As Director of Strategy, she helped open the NY office of Leo Burnett and secured 3 pieces of business in the first 6 months. She is the recipient of multiple marketing industry awards for her brand strategy work for the likes of American Express, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, Bank of America and Hilton Hotels.

As featured in: image   image   image

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Adeeb Abu-Ghazaleh

chief geek
Adeeb Abu-Ghazaleh
Chief Geek  

Adeeb Abu-Ghazaleh is a tech geek with a big beating heart. He’s the guy who makes sure the technology solution we’re building delights our users rather than getting in their way.

  • An Engineer by trade, he built a startup in 1996 to deliver technology infrastructure for banks, airlines and governments in the underserved Arab market.
  • In 2010, he co-founded Service Hero, the first multi-national Customer Service Index in the Middle East, in partnership with the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

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Shaina Stigler

Chief Empathy Officer
Shaina Stigler
Chief Empathy Officer  

Shaina Stigler is a funny lady who is formally trained in comedy. She has applied the tenets of improv to the worlds of marketing, innovation and HR. She has been recognized for creating deeply empathic user experiences, like transporting New York City commuters back in time to the 1980’s.

  • Team-building Improv Trainer for companies including Dannon, OpenBox & The Flamingo Group.
  • 6+ years of experience coordinating client, agency and vendor relationships across geographies, time zones and disciplines.

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Samar Sousou

Creative Visionary
Samar Sousou
Creative Visionary  

Samar Sousou’s artistry is about possibility. Her designs transform the complex into the intuitive, the challenging into the motivating, and the intellectual into the emotional.

  • Sam brings empathy and vulnerability to her design aesthetic, as demonstrated in the health record she developed based on the needs of mothers, doctors, hospitals and advertisers.
  • She believes that design is only as good as the research that inspired it.

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Priscilla Hsu

Team Sherpa
Priscilla Hsu
Team Sherpa  

Priscilla Hsu is an actual rock climber who is guiding us up a very big mountain. She keeps us focused on the destination, makes sure we have the equipment we need to get there, and ensures we are prepared for inevitable changes in altitude along the way.

  • Armed with a degree in the humanities and experience in organizational development, Priscilla is uniquely qualified to keep our product on track and on time.
  • She thinks that the best organizational systems and processes are designed around the people who use them.

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Bernie

People Pup
Bernie
People Pup

Bernie is a puppy of the people. An extrovert, he frequently checks in with the team and explores alternative ways to boost morale...and get treats.

  • Bernie is 3/8 lab, 1/4 basset hound, 1/4 American staffordshire terrier, and 1/8 Weimaraner. Or as we like to say: 1/2 dog, 1/2 otter and 1/2 bat.
  • Bernie looks like that thing when two people dress up as a horse and 1 person is controlling the front and the other is controlling the back.

As featured in the dogist

FAQ

  • Is it easy to use?

    We’re so glad you asked! The installation process could not be more simple: Visit us here and you’re only a few clicks away from integrating zanie into your Slack team.

  • Why should I care?

    It’s pretty simple yet sometimes difficult to explain, but it goes like this:
    Questions → Conversation → Trust building → Emotional Connection → Better work, together.

    Teams that are emotionally connected to each other, work better together. Emotional connection can only be achieved through conversations that help people get to know each other. So we believe that good conversation is paramount to building the trust that leads to innovative, productive and ultimately fulfilling work. And good conversation starts with great questions.

  • Where do your questions come from?

    So many before of us have done such great work in this arena that we didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. Our conversation starters draw on and adapt tried and tested questions developed by Myers Briggs, the Big 5, entrepreneurial trait assessments, gamer profiles, recruiting resources, career development and relationship-building models.

  • What makes you different?

    Our head and our heart. First, our head: or our proprietary scientific 4D model facilitates both personal growth and strong bond development within small groups. Our unique conversational approach was specifically designed to help users build trust naturally, progressively, efficiently and sustainably.

    Our heart: we begin every day, every decision, every design from a place of empathy. That is our path to discovery. We listen, deeply - to each other, to our users, to our clients and to our investors. We consider ourselves a perpetual work in progress: continually learning, iterating and improving.

  • When can I play with it?

    Now! Visit us here to start uncovering the magic betwixt you and your teammates today!

  • Is image for small companies or big companies?

    As long as your organization has teams, image can help! Research HERE and HERE shows that trust-building and positive team dynamics are best developed in smaller groups. It’s tough to engage in meaningful dialogue with a crowd! That’s why larger groups naturally splinter into smaller ones that are more conducive to conversation. Various studies indicate that the magic number for optimal group interaction is 7. But don’t worry if your team, department or company is larger than that: zanie can subdivide any group into clusters of 7 or fewer which means that you can build a culture of trust no matter the size of your organization.

  • Is it safe?

    We are helping to build trust in digitally-enabled relationships and we understand that this starts with earning your trust. We don’t police your discussions and any conversations that take place in a group, stay in the group. We don’t divulge any content you share with us to your company or managers, though we do provide them with a high-level view of team engagement behaviors and patterns.

    Your data is yours. All of your data in encrypted both at the storage level and at the data level and any personally identifiable information is automatically anonymized.

    We protect your information as it is being transmitted between our servers and slack.com with SSL encryption.

    We don’t share any personally identifiable information with third parties.

    Because we use Slack’s OAuth user authentication and tokenization mechanism, we do not request, use, or store any of your passwords.

  • On a scale of love to obsessed, how much will my team like it?

    We might be slightly biased, but as we’ve used our product with our own team, we have seen our trust of each other shoot through the roof. zanie helped to enrich communication between the culturally, professionally and personally diverse members of our team. Needless to say, we’re obsessed with it, and we think your team will love uncovering all that lies betwixt you, too.

Contact

Interested in what we’re doing? Let us know!
We’re as curious about you as you are about us.



Gratitude

It takes a village to change the internet

Every one of these brilliant individuals has helped us get to where we are today. We are grateful for their talent, their work and their support.