Find out why we’ve changed our company name and what this means for the future.
A year ago we launched Team-Tracker. We had an idea for a hybrid working product but no idea if it had “Product-market fit’ or would gather traction.
Getting market fit is actually really hard. Read any blogs on startups or new businesses and you will quickly get a sense of how many fail.
So many companies launch with a huge fan-fare only to disappear a year later. Often these companies are backed with huge investments.
During my own design career, I’ve witnessed companies spend £100,000s of pounds on branding, sometimes without even having a single customer. There is of course huge value in branding but to spend that much money when there isn't even a single customer, felt at best risky, at worst negligent.
Our view of branding was that it was one of many decisions that carried risk, but as long we made a sensible brand name and logo we didn’t think it would be a deciding factor in whether we gathered traction in the market.
So, we created Team Tracker. We felt the name conveyed what it said on the tin and had nice alliteration. From speaking to friends and family it seemed like an inoffensive name to choose. Want to know where your team are planning to work this week? Use Team Tracker.
But… and it's a big but…
We hadn't considered the negative connotations associated with the word “tracking.”
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and now when we review the brand now it still causes us to think “how did we not consider that?”
I think, in our defence, we were so invested in our ideas of empowering team members that the negative connotations of the name just never entered our heads. At the time it was just one of a million decisions being made at the same time.
If this sounds like I’m reaching for excuses, I probably am 😊.
I think it's first worth understanding where we have come from. We launched the product in April 2021. By the end of our first month we had no sign-ups but by the end of June we had our first two paying customers.
This genuinely felt amazing. Not only did it give us validation of the idea but it gave us direct feedback about the product.
We could work out their pain points, address issues and introduce new features whilst gaining critique.
Personally, I can’t emphasise how much of a mind shift it is to start having people paying and using your product. It's incredibly obvious but for me it feels that it should be your number one goal as a startup.
Not to make money, but to get the validation that your product is something worth paying for. It generates a sense of accountability as you want to reward customers for choosing your product ... you want to make things better for them.
Each feature we added was like a key that unlocked new customers and signups. It's not an exact science and I do think a huge part of any business is timing and luck but our growth was exceeding our projections. But for every ten customers, we’d get some feedback on the name.
“Love the product but when I tell my team about it they think it's about tracking them.”
Your heart sinks, at first you try to dismiss it but that gnawing realisation that this may be a problem starts to sink in.
At one point I even did a demo for an American company that, misunderstanding what the product was for, wanted a tool that automatically tracked employees' location. When I explained Team Tracker was about empowering users not Tracking them the demo ended quite abruptly 😳.
We’ve known for a while we wanted to change the name but it's a constant challenge to acquire new customers, manage features, talk to customers and plan ahead. However, we’ve now reached a point where we’ve been able to catch a breath and make that change before we get too big.
No… it's still exactly the same great product; it's pretty much even the same logo (we didn’t want to lose what we had built up).
We just made a tweak and dropped “Tracker” for “Today”
Now, there are no misgivings or interpretations, we have a brand with no niggling doubts and we’ve established product-market fit in 13 countries with 5,000 amazing customers.
So if your company is asking questions such as “Where is my Team-Today?” then you know where to come. (I should have made a career in marketing slogans!)
Thanks for stopping by and reading.
Don’t forget Team-Today is free for up to 10 users. Book desks, manage offices space and set Team whereabouts all within Microsoft Teams.
