DALLAS — CEO of Hardly Dash Allison Braund-Harris has mastered the art of remote work.
"If there’s one thing that we’ve learned during the pandemic, it’s how to work remotely.” Braund-Harris said.
She is a lover of the freedom remote work brings but realizes it comes with a fare share of challenges. Problems like information overload, lack of notification priority, and common zoom hiccups are what led her to create a more effective kind of remote work.
Hardly Dash is a device that syncs to your computer. It prioritizes notifications, and bridges the gap between different remote work apps. It simplifies common actions like screen sharing and muting.
“There is a lot of intense brain work that we have to do all day. With the coding and with also just running a team remotely,” Braund-Harris said. "It takes a lot of concentration.”
After her weekly zoom with her remote team, it’s typical for her to garden as a means to clear her head. It’s used as a place to help develop ideas.
“It’s also just nice to see hard work grow. I don’t know if I’m communicating that well but it’s just like a visual way you can see what you’re creating, growing. It’s very much like entrepreneurship and I don’t think I really connected that together until now,” Braund-Harris said.
The idea was developed after her and the CTO of Hardly Dash set out on a year-long trek around the world last year. It was quickly cut short because of the pandemic.
“A part of what kept us from going a little crazy from our canceled trip around the world, we had a lot of plans to travel to all seven continents over a year… and they all got canceled. But at the same time we’re able to build something bigger for ourselves and for other people,” Braund-Harris said.
She has high hopes as she prepares to pitch for SXSW’s virtual conference.
"We’re hoping to get funding,” Braund-Harris said. "Building a hardware product is really capital intensive. It takes a lot of money to get to a place with even a small manufacturer. So we’ve self funded this up to this point with our retirement funds. It’s because we’re passionate about this and we really think that we’re solving a big problem. But in order to make this whole vision a reality. We have to have investors in order to get to that big manufacturing firm that’s going to change a lot.”
As she reflects on how far she’s come, she’s determined to see her passion through.