Hi WFW VC Teardowns,
I’d like to introduce Shiftly, a straightforward scheduling and shift-management platform for small hospitality businesses still coordinating rosters through spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, and last-minute texts.
Owners and managers typically spend 3–6 hours per week building schedules, confirming staff availability, resolving shift swaps, and communicating last-minute changes. These inefficient manual processes lead to missed shifts, over/under-staffing, and labour cost overruns.
Shiftly streamlines the entire workflow in one app. Businesses that adopt Shiftly reduce weekly scheduling time by 70–85%, eliminate cross-tool confusion, and save an average of $350–$600 per month in labour-planning inefficiencies.
We currently serve cafés, restaurants, and bars with 5–40 staff across New Zealand and early customers in Australia. We’re raising a $750k NZD pre-seed to deepen our payroll integrations and expand our go-to-market across Australia.
Given your interest in clear, problem-driven SaaS products, we’d appreciate your perspective.
Best regards,
Mara Te Rangi
Founder & CEO, Shiftly
www.shiftlyapp.co.nz
Problem:
Small hospitality businesses (cafés, restaurants, bars) still run staff scheduling through spreadsheets, WhatsApp, and group texts. This causes:
- Constant confusion about who is rostered
- Missed shifts and last-minute scrambles
- Reliance on managers manually coordinating swaps
- Poor visibility into labour costs
- Fragmented communication across multiple channels
Owners lose 3–6 hours each week to manual scheduling and shift coordination.
Solution:
Shiftly is a simple scheduling and shift-management tool purpose-built for 5–40 person hospitality teams.
Key features:
- Drag-and-drop weekly roster
- Staff confirm shifts in-app
- One-tap shift swaps (manager approval optional)
- Automatic reminders and notifications
- Labour-cost forecasting to prevent over-staffing
- One-tap export to Xero/MYOB
Impact:
Shiftly customers reduce scheduling time by 70–85% and save $350–$600/month in labour-planning inefficiencies through fewer mistakes and better shift coverage.
Competitive Advantages:
- Extremely simple UX tailored to non-technical hospitality managers
- Local market focus (NZ/AU) where larger global tools are less embedded
- Native Xero/MYOB alignment for payroll workflows
- Strong founder-market fit from years of hospitality experience
Market Opportunity:
- NZ hospitality SMB software market: ~$35–50M
- AU: ~$150–200M
- Global expansion possible but dominated by Deputy, Tanda, When I Work, etc.
Shiftly’s near-term focus: ANZ hospitality SMBs underserved by global tools.
Traction:
- 92 paying businesses (mostly cafés, bars, small restaurants)
- $18.5k MRR
- Monthly churn: ~3.2% (typical for SMB hospitality)
- 30% of customers acquired through referrals
- Early AU traction: 14 customers in Victoria
Raise:
$750k NZD pre-seed to:
- Expand to Australia
- Deepen Xero/MYOB integrations
- Add labour-cost forecasting premium tier
- Hire small sales + customer success team
Team:
- Mara Te Rangi (CEO): Former café manager (10 years), deep practical experience.
- Chris Wong (CTO): Ex-PayHero engineer; built internal scheduling systems.
- Ava Patel (Customer Success): Hospitality operations trainer.
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