Client Spotlight: Andrew Dolinski, Co-Founder and CEO of Jetdocs

There is no ‘typical’ when it comes to founders who are scaling their startups at the Accelerator Centre. From new grads turning a capstone project into a business to experienced founders working on their next startup, the Accelerator Centre offers the programming and mentorship necessary to move from idea to actuality.

This combination of expertise and community attracted Andrew Dolinski to apply to the Accelerator Centre. Dolinski is no stranger to the startup world, having supported scaling startups in the Canadian tech ecosystem.

After exiting his last startup, Dolinski partnered with Alex Kovalev in 2020 to launch Jetdocs, a collaborative ticketing and workflow software that helps companies streamline their operations and keep internal teams moving. In 2021, after completing the Y Combinator accelerator program, Dolinski and his team continued to build the startup, including joining the AC:Studio program at the Accelerator Centre.

Connecting teams

Dolinski says he was entrepreneurial from an early age, starting small projects and businesses. After graduating from Queens University, he worked in the Treasury department at Magna, a global automotive parts manufacturer. At that time, he was living with his brother in Toronto, and the pair constantly worked on potential startup ideas.

“It’s the classic startup story where I was sleeping on the floor of his 500 square-foot apartment in Toronto, tinkering away with different ideas.

After some early success, one of those ideas was finding a way to solve the challenges of sharing information between departments in an organization. It was a problem that Dolinski’s co-founder, Alex Kovalev, had also seen. Kovalev had worked at several high-profile companies, including TopHat, Ritual and Twitter.

Something else was happening across businesses at the same time as Dolinski and Kovalev were digging into the challenges they were seeing with information sharing. Organizations were rapidly adopting platforms like Microsoft Teams and Slack to improve communication within teams and across silos. This adoption gave Dolinski an idea.

“Our thesis was that these platforms are the next wave of identity across an organization, and if we build on top of that software, then we automatically have access to those users. That’s how Jetdocs was born,” Dolinski says.

The co-founders took their idea and applied to the prestigious Y Combinator program, whose alums include Faire, Vidyard, and Humi. After successfully completing the program, Jetdocs raised its first venture funding to help grow the company. Several years after starting Jetdocs, the mission remains the same—help customers streamline operations, break down silos and keep everything on track.

“Our overall vision and the problem we're solving has remained steadily constant. However, the way that we're tackling that problem has incrementally changed in terms of what users expect and the types of workflows we tackle,” he says.

The Right Information at the Right Time

Jetdocs sits on top of Microsoft Teams or Slack and integrates into virtually any SaaS platform that supports Webhooks (or connectors such as Zapier or Pipedream). It allows a team member who may be customer-facing to easily interact with a hardware engineer or Ops employee.

Dolinski says organizations often try to have multiple teams use the same platform, even though that vertical platform may only be specialized for a specific function.

“Jira for example is designed for software engineers, but some companies really manipulate it and use it for multiple functions, such as marketing or finance. There also seems to be a breakdown in productivity when users focus too much on task management systems. They serve as a tracker; however, work gets done elsewhere. The whole idea of Jetdocs is that we give you the interface to collect the information, route it to the right person and handle approvals directly inside of our platform without needing to go somewhere else,” Dolinski says.

While Jetdocs uses Zapier for some integrations, Dolinski says the Jetdocs platform stands out because it does more than simply connect two systems.

“Where Jetdocs really differentiates is that we are the interface that the user is interacting in. They're submitting and responding to tickets through our templates. They're using our dashboards, workflows and analytics to get work done. Users are looking for next-gen interfaces that are one streamlined package. ” he says.

Keeping Things on Track with the Accelerator Centre

Dolinski says there is always more to learn as a founder. Participating in the AC:Studio program gives startups access to up to $100,000 in seed funding grants from FedDev Ontario, one-to-one mentorship with our team of in-house and specialist mentors, sales training, and more.

“There are strong benefits that we got from the Accelerator Center. One of those was the sales class that we participated in early on in our journey,” he says.

Building feedback loops with customers was another lesson Dolinski says has helped them refine their product.

“What's really interesting is that in the early life cycle, the feedback loop is almost an infinity symbol. It is unbelievable how much feedback you get from your customers. What I learned was that discovery questions are so overlooked. The questions you ask elicit different answers, which then feed back into what problems you're solving. The key is knowing what to ask to get the most valuable responses,” he says.

As Jetdocs continues to scale, Dolinski says the company is focused on fine-tuning its go-to-market strategy. He adds that the company is in the perfect position to capitalize on its progress and expand its reach.

“I think moving into this next fiscal year, we are in a very good position. I think the complexity of workflows that we can service is now greater than ever,” Dolinski says.