Shortcut Software
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Headquarters | New York , United States |
| Products | Shortcut (project management software), Korey (AI product management assistant) |
Number of employees | (2022) |
| Website | shortcut |
Shortcut is a project management solution designed specifically for software development teams, developed by Shortcut Software, Inc., a U.S.-based technology firm. Prior to September 2021, this platform operated under the name Clubhouse.
History
Established in 2014 with the aim of improving transparency and predictive capabilities within software engineering, Shortcut officially released its main project management tool in 2016 after spending a year in beta testing.
In December 2017, the company completed a $10 million Series A funding round led by Battery Ventures, following earlier seed investments totaling $4 million from firms such as Resolute Ventures and Lerer Hippeau Ventures.
By January 2020, Shortcut secured $25 million through a Series B funding round spearheaded by Greylock Partners, with continued backing from Battery Ventures and Lerer Hippeau.
On July 29, 2021, the organization revealed its decision to rebrand from Clubhouse to Shortcut to eliminate confusion with the similarly named Clubhouse audio chat application. This rebranding was implemented on September 13, 2021.
Shortcut Software has no affiliation with the Clubhouse audio platform launched in April 2020. The similarity in names led to notable user misunderstandings, including instances where Android users searching for the chat app mistakenly installed Shortcut’s Android application, which resulted in its temporary removal from the store.
In April 2022, Shortcut attained Great Place to Work Certification, with an impressive 97% of employees endorsing it as an outstanding workplace—surpassing the national average by 40 percentage points.
Shortcut
Shortcut is a commercial software solution focused on project management and issue tracking. It supports managing and planning user stories, organizing Scrum sprints, visualizing workflows through kanban boards, sharing product roadmaps, and generating progress reports. A free plan is available for teams of up to 10 members.
The platform integrates seamlessly with tools like Slack, GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, among others, and is accessible via a web interface. Its architecture consists of a Clojure backend coupled with a customized JavaScript frontend. Additionally, Shortcut exposes its capabilities through a REST API that was recognized in 2019 as one of the most discussed APIs by ProgrammableWeb.
Korey
In September 2025, Shortcut introduced Korey, an AI-driven product management assistant designed specifically for software engineering processes. Korey works in conjunction with Shortcut and GitHub Issues to automate the generation of project elements such as user stories, detailed specifications, and subtasks. It provides real-time updates on status, sprint summaries, and responds to natural language inquiries regarding project progress.
Industry experts consider Korey emblematic of the increasing integration of artificial intelligence into software project management. Analyses emphasize its contribution to AI-driven orchestration of product workflows, potential acceleration of planning phases, enhancement of schedule compliance, and embedding AI agents directly within engineering operations.
Features
Shortcut incorporates functionalities aimed at boosting team productivity and coordination. Tools like Objectives, Docs, and Teams facilitate tracking of goals and tasks, while Sprints oversee workflow progress and efficiency.
Objectives
Objectives serve to align team activities with organizational aims through two categories: Strategic and Tactical. Strategic Objectives include key results that measure outcomes; Tactical Objectives are connected directly to relevant tasks and projects. This integrated framework promotes collaboration across different teams.
Docs
Introduced in July 2022, Docs is a built-in documentation platform designed to assist teams in capturing and sharing extensive content such as design specifications and product strategies seamlessly within the project workflow. It enables real-time collaboration and includes capabilities like code snippets, syntax highlighting, customizable lists, and support for multimedia elements.
Sprints
Sprints enable users to define start and end dates accompanied by reminders to maintain project momentum. Comprehensive reporting features, including burn-down charts and velocity metrics, provide clear insights into team productivity and progress.
Teams
The Teams functionality allows for the assignment of projects to designated groups, accompanied by tailored reports and visual charts that track team progress and performance metrics.
Roadmaps
Shortcut offers two distinct roadmap visualizations: a timeline-based Roadmap that arranges Epics sequentially over time, and a team-oriented Roadmap that categorizes Epics by teams. Each Epic includes information on its current status, planned completion date, and relevant commentary for status updates.
Custom Fields
Custom Fields facilitate the categorization of Stories by attributes such as Priority, Severity, Technical Domain, Skill Set, and Product Area through structured and searchable fields. Enhanced Custom Fields provide the flexibility to modify field names, icons, descriptions, and values to better suit specific needs.
Backlogs
The Backlog functions as a centralized hub within Shortcut for organizing, managing, and prioritizing tasks before they enter the active workflow. Stories can be seamlessly moved from the Backlog directly into Sprints when ready for implementation.
APIs
Shortcut supports REST API integrations that empower users to create bespoke workflows by enabling access to project data for retrieval, creation, modification, or deletion across different platforms.