Teamleader
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Teamleader
Informatics services and software
public limited liability company
Belgium
Premium support and combination of services and local integrations.
Niels Vanden Buverie, partner manager
Yoshi Janssens
Jeroen De Wit, Mathias De Loore, Willem Delbare.
Duco Sickinghe.
Summary
Teamleader offers a software as a service product. They built an online cloudsoftware that combines CRM, project planning and an invoicing tool together with local integrations. The only thing you need is a VAT-number to make a contact and you’re already set up to start doing business. More so, it tracks your businesses with different clients, tracks your sales, automatically makes invoices, etc. It’s also a software in the cloud which means you can get to your records everywhere and on every device connected to the internet.
Background
On the corporate market a fully integrated tool already exists. They are often very sophisticated and very expensive. On the SME market the tools for CRM, project planning and invoicing are separated. Teamleader wanted to build a product which combines all of this without being hard to work with or being expensive. That’s why the Teamleader founders made a product which is easy to use, cheap and full of support dummies. The software Teamleader built is priced low, but is very scalable. Teamleader as a product has the intention of being a virtual team leader within the organization. Because of the integration and combination of functions, the software allows different company divisions to work together in one online tool.
Jeroen and co were working in a webdesign agency called RGBScape and their clients were also SME’s. A lot of them started asking for a tool which combined CRM, project planning and invoicing. That’s when Jeroen and co started working on the software. It didn’t take long before they started the Teamleader company.
Mission
The start of Teamleader was financed through bootstrapping. They made websites with RGBScape but didn’t remit salaries, the money was for the development of the Teamleader software. After a while they went to a first investment round which yielded 1 million euro. This was used to finance the growth in Flanders. A second investment round yielded 2,5 million euro and was used to support the international growth.
Teamleader is committed to offering a superior product that connects with customers by combining intuitive software and relevant insight designed for growing businesses. Teamleader’s enthusiasm for customer success and easy and intelligent solution helps customers, entrepreneurs and teams build, organize and collaborate their businesses so they thrive.
Vision
Teamleader understands the factors growing businesses face in reaching goals. We enable our customers to focus on what matters most with affordable and easy-to- use software.
Values
Approachable as a company. Efficient in organization and tool. Devoted, thought leadership (leadership role in integrations), provide the necessary information and provide an intuitive tool.
Business Model
Teamleader is a B2B oriented SaaS company which renewed a combination of older business models. They combine the business models of a CRM software, Project planning software and invoicing software. Teamleader added some more features to this combined product such as local integrations (e.g. Bpost) and extensive support lines (e.g. webinars, instructive videos, etc.).
Teamleader has one way to gather a revenue: selling licenses to their cloud software. The price starts from €25 per month and heightens with the more users and extra features.
Jeroen had a lot of contact with Steve Stevens from Ghentrepreneur and got advice from him and Duco. They also enhance the Teamleader product through a feedback platform for the customers, which is integrated in the software.
After the first investment round, the rapid growth followed.
Growth
In the beginning Teamleader grew organically, later they grew via investments. Now they grow with 200 customers a month. They work with milestones and Teamleader wants to achieve a 200% growth each year. Now they have 2000 customers in total and at the end of 2016 they want to have 5000 customers.
Their marketing is mainly done through online channels.
Customers
Teamleader focuses on companies with 2 – 50 employees and service related businesses.
Competitors
There is no real competition for the full software package, but there is competition on the different modules separately. However, no one offers this combination. For this reason, the competition is indirect.
For example, Salesforce is a known CRM software which can be competition for the CRM module in the Teamleader package, but not for the whole Teamleader package. Same goes for Pipedrive or Teamsupport.
For the invoicing module, the indirect competition comes from cloud invoicing software like Freshbooks or Moneypenny. Same for the competition from Freshdesk or Workfront with the project management module of Teamleader.
Till now there are no companies who copied their business model. There are some companies popping up which do online invoicing.
Niels says that the market is changing from a product towards a platform, which gives Teamleader a lead because their product already is a platform.
Conclusion
The most important opportunity for Teamleader is their international growth throughout Europe. The treat for Teamleader is that the organization and the people have to keep evolving with their growth.
Jeroen once stated that the right people on the right place is Teamleader’s most important asset. You also have to get feedback and take it with you for improvement. It’s important to know that the customers can help create the vision of a company. Make sure to have a good culture so people act the same and the right way and have a certain mentality.
In the beginning they needed the RGBScape websites for the financing of Teamleader’s development; it wasn’t easy to start, but once launched it is easily scalable.
In a couple of years Teamleader wants to be local on a global scale and certainly in Europe (be present in countries all over the world with team of local origin in each country). They want to be the biggest in Europe in their subdomain. “Think local, act global” is well known sentence amongst the Teamleader teams.
Posted on 02/05/2016