Hello folks,
In case you weren’t able to attend Claris’s webinar earlier today, here are some key messages we heard.
Claris presentation
Brad Freitag (CEO) kicked it off with a few framing points: Claris views their core purpose and value as helping more organizations solve hard problems with technology. Freitag noted that the keys to their success are developers, products, recruiting, having a free tier, and their mission to enable and engage.
“Without you [the dev], we deliver nothing.”
– Brad Freitag, CEO of Claris
Brad also underscored that he is navigating Claris through a product transition and is intent on avoiding the mistake of a hard cutover that alienates existing customers and developers. Claris stresses that they want to honor the investments in learning and time that Claris developers have made. They continue to dedicate resources to Pro (FileMaker), as evidenced by the most recent release of 19.6 with features like transactions and improvements in scripting.
Robert Holsey’s (Chief Product Owner) section was filled with highlights around Studio’s capabilities. We saw:
- Various built-in views including Gantt charts and galleries
- The ability to create custom connectors
- A plan to launch updates to Studio every 2-3 weeks
Gianine Campbell (Marketing Manager) came in at the end to share how Claris intends on continuing to support the community by participating in community-led events around the world. She also said that they don’t yet have anything to announce about a Claris Engage for 2023.
Check out this slide Gianine shared! How many Proofies can you spot in the photos?
Finally, we heard that Claris is working on increasing the size of the developer community through training offerings, improvements to the learning path, and reducing adoption friction with things like the free tier program that is about to be released. (We can’t wait!) Free tier is already in test phases and will be “more widely available in the coming months.” You can sign up for the free tier waiting list here.
After the presentation, there was a brief Q&A session featuring Brad, Peter, Robert, and Rosemary.
Our takeaways
Things to be excited about:
- The platform is a set of tools used together to solve the right problems.
- The Claris Platform is Pro/Server, Connect, and Studio
- Studio is an expansion of capability, not a replacement for Pro, especially not today
- We are in the middle of an inflection point, the curvy part of an S-curve growth plan
- Studio feature releases are going to continue to pick up steam
- More devs x more dev capability is at the heart of Claris’ strategy
- Free tier!
Big picture
We are going through seismic changes in the tech industry. Cheap money and the go-go, frothy investments in shiny new ideas that may not go anywhere are giving way to a new focus on creating measurable results for businesses. The deep legacy and history of the Claris platform, and its accelerating focus on expanding and modernizing its capabilities are strengths that we can lean on.
We are an impatient lot; we always think things should move faster than they do. But the core of what we do–delivering apps, systems, solutions, strategies to companies radically focused on being awesome–seems very much secure with our investments in the Claris platform.