There are modern solutions for almost any problem a company might run into. But team building has largely been relegated to the realm of gut instinct and consultants. Teamatics aims to change that. The startup bills itself as “the only solution for developing human capital and improving team performance which offers the ability to align individual personalities, talents, values, and interests to the needs and culture of your team.”
Heading up the Las Vegas-based company is Chief Technology Officer Duane Edwards, Chief Research Officer Maria Terekhina, and CEO Jamison West. For regular ChannelE2E readers, West’s name is a familiar one. A former MSP, West sold his previous business, explored a potential Microsoft-related cloud strategy and then took a brief timeout.
“I kind of did a little bit of a life reset,” he tells ChannelE2E.
West has been part of the IT channel for decades, operating his own MSP, Arterian, for 21 years. In that time he made four acquisitions before eventually selling his company to the larger MSP, Aldridge. He then relaunched Arterian as a subsidiary of Aldridge focused on Microsoft Cloud Services.
Still, West was itching to do something outside of the IT services market. At the end of February 2017, he decided to leave the company and move to Las Vegas and contemplate next potential moves.
It was during this period he started talking to Edwards. “He reached out to me at the beginning of the year,” West recalls, saying Edwards invited him out for coffee to tell him about a new idea he’d been working on. “It wasn’t a pitch. He had no idea that I was going to be leaving my company. He was just reaching out to people to talk about his idea.”
The Team Building Solution
That idea was Teamatics. A company that West says is built around the idea that an organization’s number one resource is its people.
Finding employees who fit the culture of a company is difficult for most entrepreneurs. Many will seek out personality assessments like the Myers-Briggs test to find the right people. But that rarely goes far enough, asserts West. “It only really addresses personality,” he says.
The concept around Teamatics was a platform that not only had a robust personality assessment but could also look at a person’s talents and values. For example, competition versus collaboration. They’re both very positive traits, says West, but people have different preferences in the work environment. Teamatics’ platform brings all of those factors together to make sure everyone’s interests are aligned which is a boon for employers and employees alike, says West.
Don’t Call It Recruitment
It’s not just a recruiting tool though, according to West. “We want to change the way teams form,” he says.
For example, if a manager needs to build a team to complete a specific task, Teamatics can help them predict where there might be personality conflicts, or demonstrate where the core values of the team are. It can also match specific talents to a certain task.
According to West, most companies are alright at hiring people based on their talents. They’re less adept at assessing things like personality and values. “And those end up being the thing that can destroy a team,” he says.
The Rigamarole
It’s been a dramatic time for West and his co-founders. West is genuinely excited by the prospect of solving a new problem. But it hasn’t been without some setbacks. “You have to kind of check yourself a little bit,” he asserts, saying it’s easy to get carried away when you’re excited to share what you’ve built.
Like every entrepreneur, the team has had to deal with the legal responsibilities, administrative realities, and potential disaster scenarios that anyone building a business has to navigate. “I think the rigmarole of being sucked back into reality and having to take your head out of the clouds, that stuff is a slog,” says West.
But that hasn’t slowed West’s zeal. “In typical entrepreneur from, I’m a rather impatient person and it’s hard to curb my passion and enthusiasm sometimes to get through that stuff,” he says.
Looking ahead, West sees their biggest challenge as building market share. “We have absolute faith in our product. We’re extremely excited about it. But how do we get the message out there?” he says.
“It has to be able to hit a certain threshold to stay viable,” he says. “I don’t fear that we’re going to be able to hit that at all. But we’d love to see this accelerate.”
With Teamatics officially launching today, West says he’s looking forward to sharing what he and his partners have built. “We’ve got some really great ideas out there,” he says.
