Founder Stories: Kakul Srivastava On How Tomfoolery Will Make Our Work More Social And Fun


Mobile messaging and mobile communications tools have grown like a weed on the consumer side — but what about in a work context? With more and more people buying better and better smartphones, taking them into work, where employers are beginning to pay for them and the services, are the conditions ripe for a breakout on the enterprise side?

To hear Kakul Srivastava break it down, it appears the answer is “yes.” Srivastava and her team at Tomfoolery (which just this week was acquired by Yahoo) are on a mission to create fun and social software for people at work, based on the belief that our work and personal lives are intertwined. To that end, her company built software for workers to be more social and transparent. She has a deep reservoir of experience to draw from, with long-term stints at some of the big Valley companies. During that time, she realized she had to “unlearn” what she’d been exposed to in larger companies, as those large institutions had more processes, methods, and rules around working, which she believes impacts speed and creativity.

Srivastava also shares a personal part of her journey, as the mom to two little kids, of how she’s able to balance being a caring mom and startup founder all wrapped up into one person. To hear Srivastava share her attitudes in her own words is inspiring, and I’d encourage folks who want to dip their toes into the water of startup founding (especially those ones with kids and families) to perhaps some draw some knowledge from what she has to share.


Editor’s Note: Michael Abbott is a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, previously Twitter’s VP of Engineering, and a founder himself. Mike also writes a blog called uncapitalized. You can follow him on Twitter @mabb0tt.