AlignMeeting Manages Meetings

AlignMeeting co-founders Margaret Donnelly and Ric Pratte. Photo by Scott Murphy.

Former NH Gov. Craig Benson ordered a table the height of a bar and famously had everyone stand around it during meetings. Benson believed meetings would be less relaxed and more focused without the chairs. Whether that proved effective is debatable, but the theory behind it isn’t: Meetings consume more time than necessary to accomplish less than they intend.

There are numerous apps and software available to plan meetings, but making meetings effective is another matter. That is where AlignMeeting in Nashua hopes to make a difference. Co-founders Ric Pratte and Margaret Donnelly created AlignMeeting to help people better manage meetings and make them more effective, from pre-planning to the meeting itself and follow up.

“There are a lot of meeting tools that facilitate communication, but they don’t help drive a better meeting,” says Donnelly, chief marketing officer and one of three founders of AlignMeeting, along with Pratte, CEO, and Steven Carbone, CTO. (They have invested $150,000 of their own money in the company.)

Pratte says they have found many people don’t use proper protocols for organizing and conducting a meeting and simply jump into meetings and spin their wheels. “The effectiveness of a meeting speaks to a business’s culture,” says Pratte. “If meetings are sloppy, their business in general tends to reflect that.”

AlignMeeting automates those protocols for effective meetings and does most of the legwork, including prompting users to add a goal and an agenda to meeting invitations. It also sends out the invitations. During the meeting, there is a virtual whiteboard displayed on users’ computer screens, or on an overhead projector in a board room, that includes action items and allows attendees to add points of discussion and pertinent images, documents and links from their own device. At the meeting’s conclusion, everything contributed at the meeting is compiled and emailed to those in attendance, along with any specific action items being assigned. The software saves meeting histories and allows projects to be tracked as action items are completed.

Pratte says the software can be used in a physical meeting room or for online meetings, adding that late arrivals or log-ins can quickly catch up without disrupting, as the meeting’s content is displayed through its runtime. AlignMeeting also allows for a more accurate depiction of the meeting’s discussion, according to Donnelly. “When you’re taking notes for yourself, it generally reflects your opinion of the meeting,” she says. “This allows everyone to see what actually happened.”

Aligning with Action
Prior to forming AlignMeeting, Pratte and Donnelly founded JitterJam in Bedford, a Social CRM (customer relationship management) start up that was sold in 2011 to Meltwater Group. The serial entrepreneurs launched AlignRevenue in 2014 with a specific focus on sales meetings.

But the company’s name was quickly changed to AlignMeeting after sales teams beta-testing the software expressed interest in a broader scope. The company spent last winter retooling to focus on team experience and tracking the progress of projects. “I don’t think there’s anyone in business who hasn’t been in an ineffective meeting,” Donnelly says.

AlignMeeting is already winning accolades. The business relocated from AlphaLoft in Manchester to the Flatley Innovation Center at the Nashua Technology Park in January 2015 after receiving free rent for a year as the runner-up in the 2014 Flatley Challenge. And it placed second at the NH High Tech Council’s 2015 TechOut competition this past December, receiving $30,000. AlignMeeting was also one of four finalists selected for Manchester Young Professionals Network’s 2016 StartUp Challenge in May.

AlignMeeting is beta testing with more than 100 companies worldwide, with plans of ultimately launching the product under a freemium model. Users of the base software will be allowed access at no cost, with plans to develop a premium model at a monthly fee of $20 per user. Premium offerings may include integrating action items into other platforms, tracking meeting histories over a longer period of time and increased support options. Pratte says the goal is to convert 20 percent of free users to the premium model once that version is launched. For more information, visit alignmeeting.com.