We interviewed Mr. Shota Ono, COO of Miniique Co., Ltd., about the background behind introducing Repsona and his experience using it.

Please tell us about your work and your role.

Mr. Ono:
Miniique Co., Ltd. develops cloud-based software designed to simplify the operations of veterinary hospitals, with the mission of “creating a society where both humans and pets can live happily.”

Miniique is cloud-based software that streamlines veterinary clinic operations.

Our CEO, Kurokawa, is a veterinarian. The company’s founding was inspired by a tragic animal hoarding case he witnessed while working at a public health center.

It was a house buried under more than 50 cm of waste and manure. Inside were dozens of malnourished Yorkshire Terriers. Among them, one had already passed away in the bathtub—covered with countless scratch marks from a desperate attempt to escape. That painful experience made Kurokawa determined to eliminate such suffering and create an environment where all animals, regardless of location or owner, can receive proper medical care.

That conviction led to the birth of Miniique.

As for me, I’ve worked as a web director, front-end engineer, and consultant, as well as a manager at a production company and later as a freelancer. I was invited by Kurokawa, a high school friend, to join the founding of Miniique.

At Miniique, I manage product-related projects and tasks, oversee design reviews, handle recruitment and HR, and support company operations. I’ve been serving as COO since our second year, helping the company establish and grow its business foundation.

What kind of work do you use Repsona for?

Mr. Ono:
We mainly use it for Miniique’s product development.
Our development team includes two front-end engineers, one back-end engineer, one designer, and several part-time collaborators.

What challenges did you face before using Repsona?

Mr. Ono:
I’ve used many project and task management tools before. I used Wrike—it’s a solid product, but expensive. More importantly, it lacked Repsona’s unique “ball” concept, which turned out to be crucial for us.

While Wrike allows assigning one person in charge and adding participants, it doesn’t clearly show who actually has the ball right now. I wanted that visibility—and even considered building something myself—until I found Repsona. When I tried it, it immediately clicked.

Repsona introduces the unique concept of a “ball.”

Before Repsona, we managed tasks individually through Slack messages. As the team grew, it became difficult to track who was responsible for what. Tasks were often forgotten or left hanging after someone said they’d “take care of it.”
After introducing Repsona, those omissions and handoff errors have been greatly reduced.

Why did you choose Repsona?

Mr. Ono:
One of our main selection criteria was having a Gantt Chart feature. After comparing various options, Repsona stood out—it can be started for free, supports Japanese, has no user limit, and offers unlimited usage on the free plan. That made it ideal for early-stage teams.

The “ball” feature was also a decisive factor. No other tool has it.
Whenever we launch new projects, we discuss which collaboration tools to use, and Repsona often comes up as one that team members are already familiar with and prefer. That familiarity also made adoption smoother.

How has your experience with Repsona been?

Mr. Ono:
While other tools may provide similar effects, Repsona makes everything easier to understand and prevents work from slipping through the cracks. Thanks to the “ball” feature, we can quickly identify bottlenecks by simply looking at the ball view—where tasks are stuck and who has them. That’s something unique to Repsona.

Since it launched in 2019, it’s still a relatively young service, so I initially expected some missing features. But in practice, it already does almost everything we need. The UI is clean and well-organized—lists, Gantt charts, and Kanban views are all available, and each team member can view tasks in the way that suits them best.
We plan to make even more use of Gantt charts and tags moving forward.

What do you expect from Repsona in the future?

Mr. Ono:
The inbox feature is very convenient, but I think it could be even better if notifications were grouped more intuitively. For example, Gmail displays messages in threads, while Repsona’s notifications arrive individually. It would be great if they could be organized by task.

I’d also like to see an “AND” search option when searching for tasks. Currently, the search uses “OR,” but as the number of tasks grows, being able to narrow down results more precisely would be helpful.

Another thing—Repsona allows reactions to comments, similar to tags. In Miniique’s workflow, we use reactions frequently, so sometimes when we tag a task, the reaction “Got it!” appears. It would be great if tags and reactions were handled separately.

We’ve submitted many of these improvement requests, but since updates are released regularly, I’m confident these refinements will continue!

v2.58.0 Added support for inbox threading.
v2.61.0 Separated tags and reactions, and added support for pictogram reactions.
v2.62.0 Added support for OR and exclude search.