CASE STUDY:

Dovetail is a customer insights hub, or user research repository and analysis platform. The company is on a mission is to enable the world to create better products and services through deep customer understanding.

Headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Dovetail was founded in 2017 by Benjamin Humphrey and Bradley Ayers. Since then, Dovetail has grown to 45,000+ users, from small design agencies to universities to Fortune 100 companies globally.

As an early stage tech startup headquartered in Sydney, Australia, Dovetail’s founders hired initial team members from their local network but came to realise they had unintentionally created an all-male engineering team. Although they were still a small team, with only seven in engineering, they wanted to proactively address this imbalance early, so they adopted the Project F Startup & Scaleup Tookit.

Challenges

They completed a pay scale for tech roles and levels using a template and relevant market data provided by Project F.

Once Dovetail’s had the Startup Toolkit they got to work on straight away implementing the many resources and using the templates, guides and policies to build a solid foundation from which to further expand their business and create a workplace to be proud of and were all people could thrive.

Solutions

The Results

  • Product & Design teams achieved gender balance

  • Equal paid parental leave was implemented

  • Clearly defined engineering role levels were implemented

  • Interview processes were redesigned to remove bias

  • A 10% increase in women in their software engineering team

This is just the beginning of Dovetail’s diversity and inclusion journey. As they continue to use the Project F Startup Program startup toolkit and accreditation mark, they will see more women applying to join them, and over time, their teams will reach balanced levels, leading to meaningful business benefits.

According to our research, these benefits include better problem solving, willingness to experiment, and heightened creativity. When you’re building technology products, these are high-impact skills and characteristics.

  • “Project F's Startup Toolkit allows us to use a well-researched and tested framework to turn good intention into action without having to reinvent the wheel. It’s extremely practical and is well suited to smaller companies like Dovetail.”

    Bradley, CTO/Co-Founder, Dovetail

  • “Project F's Startup Program is a centerpiece in our approach to equality and diversity at Dovetail. It gives us the tools to develop a shared language to unify and strengthen our resolve to make Dovetail a place where diversity is celebrated and equality is the default.”

    Jack, Engineering Team Lead, Dovetail

  • “This has been an incredible framework to support Dovetail with building an inclusive environment for women. We not only want to hire a gender diverse team but we also want to see women develop and grow at Dovetail and this program has helped us to be proactive from the very early stages.”

    Beth, People & Talent Lead, Dovetail

Ready to start work on closing the gender gap in your tech and leadership teams?