Cork-based software company Teamwork is set to nearly double its staff between now and Christmas, according to its vice president of growth and marketing.
The firm currently employs about 50 people and hopes to add 40 more by the end of this year, according to Donal Cahalane. Teamwork had 14 employees when Cahalane joined one year ago.
“We literally can’t hire people fast enough,” he said.
Teamwork's project management software is the power behind productivity in some of the world's larges companies, including Disney, PayPal and EBay.
The company, which has no salespeople, investors or bank managers, does several million dollars a month in revenue.
Cahalane spoke at the AIB start-up night in Cork this week, which coincided with his one-year anniversary at the company. He says he joined because it was "an amazing Irish company that nobody knew about".
The company made headlines last year when it bought “Teamwork.com” for $675,000, making it the most expensive domain name ever purchased in Ireland.
It was a bargain, considering the original asking price was $11 million, inflated considerably from the $8 the seller paid for it seven years before.
The company recouped its investment in a month and a half, and it makes customers think Teamwork is a huge multinational, says Cahalane. Seventy per cent of customers are in the United States, and they often assume Teamwork has suboffices across the globe.
“We don’t even have a suboffice in Dublin. We’re 100 per cent in Cork, on the north side of Cork,” he says. “When you have an amazing product, you can go where the customer is by staying exactly where you are.”
Cahalane says they receive offers to buy the company eight or nine times a year, but they plan to stay put and work on scaling the business while retaining its culture.
“We’ve no interest. We love coming to work. We’re lucky that we’re a company that makes money, that has great customers and incredible employees.”
Cahalane says there is an “obsession” among start-ups to raise money.
“It can give you the money to fund your terrible ideas. When you start a business…it’s your baby, and you’re convinced your baby is the most beautiful baby in the world. No one wants to tell you that your baby is ugly.”
He says money distracts start-ups from what is really important: learning from your customers, which is something Teamwork takes seriously.
“We have a rule where if five customers out of 350,000 worldwide ask us for something, it has to be seriously considered.”
