The Pansieve team: Galex Yen, Sethu Raman, Tomer Verona and Ping Wang.
The Pansieve team: Galex Yen, Sethu Raman, Tomer Verona and Ping Wang.

When it comes to gathering operational data, many businesses haven’t changed much from the past. Filling out business forms — from time cards to field reports — has been a mostly pen and paper task, and continues to be today.

logoBut the founders behind Pansieve Inc. think there’s room for improvement and innovation. Four Microsoft vets with experience in Microsoft’s database platform, SQL Server, came together last year to start a company that helps businesses gather data on customized digital forms on mobile devices.

The startup’s first product is Cuecard, which allows companies to deploy digital forms quickly.

“Cuecard is the next step in the evolution of business forms,” CEO Sethu Raman said. “It equips your business with the ability to gather more data at lower cost, the agility to adapt it to your changing needs, along with the capability to harvest insights from it.”

We caught up with Raman to find out more about Pansieve for the latest edition of Startup Spotlight.

cuecard122Explain what you do so our parents can understand it: cuecard helps businesses create applications on mobile devices without having to write code.

Inspiration hit us when … We see how mobile devices transform people’s personal lives by providing contextual interactions. We want the same with businesses.

VC, Angel or Bootstrap: We are raising an angel round to help execute on our next milestone and execute on our go to market strategy.

Our ‘secret sauce’ is: Our experience in building enterprise systems. We were senior, principal engineers in Microsoft’s database platform, SQL Server. It is with this background that we have built a solution that easily integrates with enterprise line of business applications. Finally, we’ve engineered a solution lets business people “build” mobile solutions that seamlessly integrate with these backends without having to write any code.

cuecard1The smartest move we’ve made so far: Participating in the Techstars program.

The biggest mistake we’ve made so far: Not getting product market fit before building a solution. It took us a while to find a product that solved a real problem and provided value to real customers.

Would you rather have Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg or Bezos in your corner: Bezos. We are constantly inspired by his emphasize on customer satisfaction and continuous innovation to push the limits.

Our world domination strategy starts when: cuecard is in every enterprise.

Rivals should fear us because: We are always on the customer’s side, we have strong technical talent and our solution will always focus on the user first.

We are truly unique because: We are experienced, smart, agile, and we do things faster and better.

The biggest hurdle we’ve overcome is: Getting all the conflicting advice and still standing true to our heart.

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to other entrepreneurs just starting out: Practice yoga and reach as many potential customers early on.

techstars-casinoEditor’s note: This month, GeekWire will be featuring the 11 startups participating in TechStars Seattle. This marks the tenth of those profiles.  Make sure to check out TechStars Demo Day on Oct. 24th, and GeekWire Startup Day on Oct. 25th, both part of Seattle Startup Week. You will also get a chance to meet the Pansieve team at the Demo Day after party, a fantastic opportunity to hang out with hundreds of Seattle entrepreneurs, investors and members of the Seattle startup ecosystem.

Past TechStars Seattle Startup Spotlights:

ResolutionTube helps technicians fix broken machines with a mobile app

Sparktrend tells you where to buy those Pinterest-inspired outfits

Inside Social helps brands measure social media ROI

Vetted matches big companies with independent consultants

Codementor offers real-time, screen-sharing coding support for developers

Perfect helps you edit, share videos filmed with Google Glass

Shippable helps developers speed up software deployment

Designlab teaches you web design skills with interactive lessons, in-browser tools

Ex-Amazonians helping teachers create and sell online courses with Everpath

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.