An interview with Thorsten Trapp, CTO and co-founder, tyntec.
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): You've grown from a bootstrapped company to an international company with 150 employees. How do you make that work?
Trap: tyntec has six offices worldwide, some of them are large, like our German locations, which is where the majority of our teams are located. Diversified offices and cultures work well for us. When staff from other offices arrive, they plant themselves in a Fatboy (big beanbags that we have in the offices) or at a desk and jump into work mode without missing a beat.
TEP: How do you keep communication flowing among employees in different locations?
Trapp: 'tyntechies' know no boundaries and use a bunch of communication tools for day-to-day activities ranging from emails, desktop and mobile IM applications to traditional telecom. We have and a fancy video conferencing system so we are able to bring the whole company together virtually. Text messaging is great and it's a favorite throughout our organization — we use it quite a bit.
To collaborate, organize, and keep inventory of what's happening internally we use an internal portal and additionally a separate ticketing system to make sure we're on top of issues. Using tribal knowledge and handling multiple revisions can be problematic in multiple offices and the combination of portal and ticketing system keep us connected and in check.
TEP: What about tyntec's technical staff? If they're distributed among locations, how do you work together on technology projects?
Trapp: A majority of the technical team resides in Dortmund, but other relevant teams are in Munich, so there is cross-over involved. I, as do many other people, travel a lot between the two German offices to support and align the business and tech objectives. Our team leads provide the necessary context for the members of the project team, so that everyone understands why we are working on the topics, and to ensure that the information exchange and alignment at the team level is taking place.
We manage processes and projects through our internal role-based portal so that respective team members can collaborate regardless of time zones and locations. Role-based access works well for us because it partitions the details of a project to team members until its ready for a bigger audience. We also use a digital kanban board so that staff outside of the project can easily see overviews of what we're working on, the status of the project, challenges we're facing, and when we expect completion. This helps bring transparency across our organization and invites collaboration beyond finite teams.
TEP: Managing across international borders means you have employees in different legal regimes. How do you handle these differences?
Trapp: Having an exceptional HR team helps! We take a middle-of-the-road approach to this by paying attention to the laws in staffed countries and applying best business practices. We involve local consultants on some levels to help with special requirements surrounding things like taxes, retirement, and payroll.
TEP: Same goes for your technology. Telecommunications and other systems vary greatly from country to country. How do you handle these differences?
Trapp: Great question since our business model is based on our expertise in bringing together the separated worlds of telecom and Web. We do that by providing a single point of access to our partners, making it easy for them to integrate SMS, voice and mobile numbers into traditional telecom. Before we can do that, we need to bridge that divide ourselves first.
We use phones — SMS and voice on mobile devices and voice via traditional telecom, although in our case it's apt to include access to a conference call system with lots of numbers for local/international access.
TEP: Any advice you'd pass along to other CTOs about managing across international borders?
Trapp: Be flexible. Bring a healthy dose of autonomy and accountability into the relationship with your team — empower them to make decisions but follow-up. Wear good sneakers and carry a lightweight bag.
Read this Harvard Business Review article, "10 Rules for managing global innovation."
Thorsten is a 20+ year telco vet who developed tyntec’s core platform architecture, which powers messaging capabilities for many of Silicon Valley’s top tech brands. Building the company from the ground up in 2002, Thorsten has deep knowledge into what it takes to lead a company and grow international presence.
