Software engineer Brad Simantel is the first to say that the origin of his startup is selfish interest.
He wanted to sit in less meetings.
“I was interested in working on a startup project, for all the reasons one is interested in that,” he said about his move into entrepreneurship. “I had jobs where I was in four, five hours of very rote meetings every week. It always seemed that maybe it didn’t need to be an hour-long meeting with a white board and half the people are tuned out.”
Add in the new reality of remote work and distributed teams, and those meetings that weren’t great to begin with are “really not great over Zoom,” he said.
So, he set out to design a tool that would help distributed development teams to continue to communicate but do so without real-time meetings. The result is Teaminal.
The startup is still a side project for Simantel, who recently completed one of the Portland Incubator Experiment programs. He has a handful of early users but he is looking for more.
The technology/product: Teaminal is an agile meeting tool for distributed teams. For teams following the agile software development model the tool helps with all the different meetings: standups, retro, sprint planning and backlog refinement, all in one place. The tool isn’t meant to replicate in-person meetings but allow distributed teams to work asynchronously.
How it makes money: The product is sold as software-as-a-service and priced based on team size. The tool is free for teams up to 15 people.
Size of the market: There are 21 million software engineers globally. Roughly 72% of engineering teams use some form of agile development, according to a 2021 CertiProf Agile Adoption Report.
Competition: Teaminal bundles several functions that are standalone tools elsewhere. For startups there are apps like Retrium, EasyRetro and Parabol. Those are focused on synchronous, real-time experience.
Competitive Advantage: Teaminal allows all meetings in one place instead of spread across two or three different apps. Plus, the product is designed for asynchronous collaboration, which allows teams to work in ways that best support their members. As remote work allows more globally distributed teams this is an important factor.
Business/technology it could disrupt: The startup’s asynchronous focus makes it a next generation tool for developers.
Managers and their background: Brad Simantel is a solo founder with more than 10 years in software engineering. He has been in the Portland tech community since 2013 and worked at local firms like Elemental Technologies and Cloudability. At both, he was there through their acquisitions.
Investors: none
Capital sought: none at this time. Simantel is planning to bootstrap the company and anticipates being able to build the company profitably without investors.
Ideal outcome: Simantel is building the company to be a standalone profitable business for the long term.
Closer Look
Company: Teaminal
Headquarters: Portland
Founded: 2022
Website: teaminal.com
