Category: Startups’ Toolbox

Slack Poll: Rebuilding Open Agora

What is Open Agora for Slack? Open Agora is a Slack poll application. The first version was built in 2015! Back then, Slack was a startup’s tool, and you could build so-called “slash commands” these commands enabled to expend the capabilities of Slack in any way imaginable. At that time we were not a company… Continue reading Slack Poll: Rebuilding Open Agora

Crash Course on Microsoft Teams

Microsoft Teams 101 Currently, in Orlando, is taking place Ignite, the annual tech conference hosted by Microsoft. We take this opportunity to present our vision of Microsoft Teams. This is a complete chat and online meetings solution. Using this platform, you can chat with anyone inside or outside your organization. The main goal of Teams… Continue reading Crash Course on Microsoft Teams

Instant Agora: The new product of Open Agora

Instant Agora: balanced poll solution Instant Agora is a poll and survey tool for everyone, that you can use to make the group decision process easier. One of its main characteristics is to allow (and to promote) the expression of balanced opinions. Participants may rank the different options rather than just picking some of them.… Continue reading Instant Agora: The new product of Open Agora

Let’s Encrypt: Advanced configuration

This is our second article in the series startups’ tools. Let’s encrypt deeper into the configuration and use of Certbot, the primary tool to get and manage SSL certificates. We assume that you have already had a look at our previous article. Certificates for other services There are other services which use SSL certificates, like… Continue reading Let’s Encrypt: Advanced configuration

Let’s Encrypt: SSL for everyone

This article is the first one in a series called startups’ tools. We will talk about SSL and Let’s Encrypt. Most startups are tech oriented companies which heavily relies on computer softwares and infrastructures. However they are not always specialists for every technical aspects. Since, at Open Agora we have invested time into some essential… Continue reading Let’s Encrypt: SSL for everyone

Valve: Key Organizational Aspects

In our previous article we presented Valve as a successful horizontal organization. We sketched what these organizations are and some elements of Valve’s way of working. Now we get to the specifics and discuss about some key elements of their organization. What is the life of a Cabal? We have already seen that Valve is… Continue reading Valve: Key Organizational Aspects

Valve: a Successful Horizontal Company

Valve is a very successful company: founded in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, it first started by editing video games. In 2003 it initiated an online videogames distribution system called Steam. Today, Steam is a huge business. In 2015 it reached 125 million players (FR), and more than 14 000 games in 2017.… Continue reading Valve: a Successful Horizontal Company