What if the right workflow engine could completely transform how your business handles compliance, onboarding, and mission-critical operations? For Vinay Patankar, Co-founder and CEO of Process Street, that question wasn’t theoretical; it was personal.
In this episode of SaaS That App, Vinay joins the hosts Aaron Marchbanks and Justin Edwards to unpack how an early obsession with computers, a failed video startup, and a global packaging trip led him to build one of the most trusted workflow platforms for high-stakes industries.
This is the story of how Process Street became indispensable to teams where not following the process carries a high price.
From Counter-Strike to Cisco
Vinay’s technical journey began early. Growing up in Australia with a father who was both an IT engineer and a trainer meant his house was basically a mini data center. He learned to build PCs from scratch, manage networks, and by age 16, he had already earned Cisco certifications.
His path, though, veered into business and finance. As he puts it, “I wasn't a fan of school, and I wasn’t excited about doing exams for the rest of my life.” But he loved the intersection of business and technology, which led him through roles in accounting, tech recruiting, and eventually the world of online entrepreneurship.
That world opened up in an unexpected place: a hostel. Vinay spent a year backpacking and met people running businesses from beaches for the same income he made in a Sydney office. It clicked. He launched Shopify stores, built small content websites, learned SEO and monetization, and suddenly found himself making four times his old salary on ten hours of work a week. It was time to take bigger swings.
The Startup That Failed and Became a Blueprint
Vinay’s first big bet wasn’t Process Street. It was a collaborative mobile video app called Vitoto. The idea was ahead of its time: five friends at a sporting event could shoot videos from different angles, and the app would stitch them into one polished clip.
Sound familiar? TikTok ultimately won this race, but a whole wave of mobile video experiments paved the way. Unfortunately, Vitoto was burning money on every user. The company collapsed. But the lessons didn’t go to waste.
The biggest insight: you need the right founding team and enough runway. If your team can’t financially or emotionally weather 18-36 months of iteration, even the best ideas won’t reach product-market fit. This became part of Process Street’s DNA.
A Tool Built From Pain
Oddly enough, the spark for Process Street came from a different business entirely: Vinay’s bootstrapped marketing company. He had scaled it to 20 remote employees. However, managing operations across time zones became a nightmare.
He’d write SOPs in Google Docs, send them to team members in India and the Philippines, and wake up at 5 AM only to discover tasks weren’t followed correctly.
The result? A gap between what to do (checklists) and how to do it (SOPs). The solution? Combine them.
Process Street became the first lightweight, user-friendly platform where every checklist task included built-in instructions: videos, screenshots, forms, conditional logic, approvals, and more. In other words, a workflow engine that doesn’t just track work, but teaches you how to do it. Vinay put the MVP online and woke up the next morning to thousands of signups.
The Moment of Realization
Process Street grew fast among SMBs, agencies, and remote teams. But something interesting emerged in the data: The healthiest, most loyal, highest-value customers were using Process Street for high-stakes work.
Not efficiency, convenience, or better organization...high stakes. Hospitals, nuclear power plants, financial institutions handling billions, and organizations where a mistake costs real money or lives. These teams were using Process Street as a compliance engine. Every step mattered. Every action needed traceability. Every process had to be followed.
That changed everything. Process Street went vertical and leaned hard into compliance-heavy industries.
From Workflow Tool to Compliance Operations Platform
Today, Process Street has evolved into a complete compliance operations platform, with three key components:
- Workflows
A powerful, no-code workflow builder with conditional logic, approvals, SLAs, automated documentation, and governance.
- Docs
A version-controlled, audit-friendly document management system designed for policies, security plans, disaster recovery, SOC2 evidence, and more.
- Cora: The AI Compliance Copilot
This is where things get futuristic. Quote monitors external regulations, internal documents, workflow SLAs, policy updates, and industry standards. Then it tells you when something breaks.
For example, if ISO changes a requirement from 48 hours to 24 hours, Cora finds every policy, workflow, SLA, and onboarding tied to that rule, and flags what must change.
Final Thoughts
Process Street didn’t set out to become the workflow engine behind nuclear plants, hospitals, and financial institutions. However, by obsessing over accountability, structure, and real-world operational pain, Vinay and his team built a platform that high-stakes organizations trust to keep people safe, compliant, and aligned.
It wasn’t luck, viral launch, or even the idea. It was listening to usage patterns, embracing vertical markets, and building a product where what to do and how to do it finally work together. And that’s exactly why Process Street has become the go-to workflow engine for teams where the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Vinay’s Background
Vinay Patankar is the Co-founder and CEO of Process Street, a workflow management and compliance operations platform serving regulated industries worldwide. With a background spanning remote team management, digital entrepreneurship, and SaaS product development, Vinay has built one of the most widely adopted process automation tools, trusted by organizations across healthcare and nuclear power plants. Recognized by AWS for innovation in compliance automation, he brings deep expertise in translating complex operational challenges into scalable, human-centered solutions.
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