Happy One Year Anniversary
Tenger Ways wasn’t officially introduced to the world until January 2023, but we had landed our first client a few months prior, in October 2022. As we’re approaching the one-year anniversary of starting our company, I’ve been reflecting on the journey – the highs, the lows, and the many lessons we’ve learned.
Starting anything is hard. Starting a technology consulting company is hard. Starting a technology consulting company in the middle of an economic downturn, while companies are laying off employees en masse, is especially hard.
When I look back on the year, despite the many zero-to-one challenges of getting anything off the ground, my overwhelming feeling is one of gratitude and optimism.
In this post, I express my gratitude to our clients, partners, friends and family for the crucial roles they’ve played in our journey, as well as share some personal reflections and explain why I’m optimistic for year two.
First, immense gratitude for our clients
Far and away the biggest source of gratitude must go to our first set of clients who placed their trust in us during our first year. All our technology experience and expertise, elegant frameworks and methodologies, and extremely talented and highly skilled staff mean absolutely nothing without someone willing to take a chance on a new company.
Our first-year clients span diverse industries (FinTech, FinServ, Insurance, BioTech, Gov, SaaS) and each came to us with a unique challenge they wanted help with- from streamlining Salesforce implementations and building strategic roadmaps for M&A, to building cloud networks for core technology systems. Despite their distinct needs and sectors, they all understood that making investments in internal systems was crucial to their growth. In other words, these companies don’t see IT as a cost center where they try to reduce cost in a race to the bottom; instead, they all want to use technology as a strategic advantage to improve their overall business effectiveness.
Maybe we just got lucky, but every single one of our clients was incredible to work with. We loved being invited in to learn their inner workings and what makes them unique. They were all good, earnest people. We are thrilled to have worked alongside them and will be forever grateful for our first set of clients.
To our partners as well
One of the highlights of the first year was identifying outstanding technology organizations like Hubbl, Elements, and Kitepipe to partner with. Each of our partners share our passion for using technology to create better, stronger companies. They bring enhanced problem-solving capacity, diverse perspectives and more innovation to our work. We’re excited to continue to serve and delight our combined clients together.
And we can’t forget our family and friends
As far as I know, no one has written a playbook for how to start a people-first technology consulting company in the digital age. But luckily, I’ve had several mentors who all started successful firms in the past decade and who took time to give me plenty of practical insights and guidance. Special thanks to the founders from Liatrio, Interna, Duffle Bag Consulting, and Kitepipe. I’m also grateful to both my family and Daniel’s – we got nothing but encouragement while we worked nights, weekends and through all sorts of challenges on this entrepreneurial journey.
Hidden accomplishments
Beyond the obvious client work, I’m proud of the foundation we’re building for our long-term success. We've developed comprehensive offerings that span the full spectrum of digital delivery. From planning and strategy to execution and operations, we are fully equipped to meet our clients wherever they stand with their IT challenges. Our extensive framework reflects our commitment to offering better, client-centered solutions, drawing from our own experiences as operators.
This year has also unveiled a hidden gem – the eagerness of highly talented individuals to join our team. We've been vocal about our commitment to promote healthier, more effective ways of working. Our unique vision and values have resonated with numerous skilled individuals eager to join our mission and helped us build a deep bench of talent.
We have also contributed to thought leadership and community building, marking our presence at conferences, speaking events, and sharing our unique insights through various platforms.
Lessons Learned
All entrepreneurial journeys come with unexpected learnings. My biggest surprise learning is how proud I am to have started a service company. To put this in context, I first need to confess something. Before I started Tenger Ways, I had some doubts as to whether starting a consulting company was the best path for my career. I had spent my entire career in Enterprise B2B SaaS building software products, and I was worried about turning my back on my identity as a product person and software engineer. But I’ve learned two things that have evolved my thinking.
First, service organizations need product skills. One of the reasons I was hesitant to start a consulting business is I’ve had bad experiences with consultants in the past. The business model for traditional consulting organizations uses human capital for leverage and encourages dependency – the more consultants get a client to depend on their services, the more they get paid. As an operator I never fully trusted the consultants I hired because our incentives weren’t aligned. I hired them for a short term, specific need and didn’t trust they weren’t trying to upsell me just to keep the business relationship going because that’s how they get paid.
This common behavior deeply bothers me and goes against everything I believe as a product person. Unlike consulting, product thinking is intuitively and constantly working yourself out of a job. It’s writing code to do what a human would have done before. I am proud to bring product thinking to the world of consulting. My goal for Tenger Ways is not to get clients to engage with us forever. On the contrary, I wrote last year about how I want to be the anti-consultant and how the ultimate definition of success is when a client no longer needs us.
The second thing I learned which makes me proud to have started a service organization, is a strong belief that in the age of AI, Services Organizations will become even more valuable. ChatGPT can answer any of your technology questions and even walk you through step by step how to build and deploy applications. Many of our clients don’t need us – they could learn what we’re doing and do the work themselves. But just like I can easily find an online tutorial about how to paint my house, I’m still going to hire painters. Every single time. Because I have better things to do with my time. And our clients do too. They could learn how to run their IT better, but they have better things to do. In the age of AI, knowledge will be abundant but finding people you can truly trust to serve your needs, in your best interest, will be scarce. Our clients want to work with people they trust, AI can’t and won’t replace that anytime soon.
What's Next as We Look to Year 2
Our vision for Tenger Ways remains the same. Companies of all types and sizes need help navigating the digital world and they want a trusted partner to help them. We started the company with a simple thesis – most companies aren’t happy with their internal tools and systems and they don’t know how, or simply don’t have the time or bandwidth to fix them. And we believe that applying a product mindset and modern software development practices to internal systems is the best way to do that.
Each client engagement we did in our first year has been unique, but the success criteria was the same:
Is the client happy?
Would they use us again if a different need comes up?
Would they recommend us to a friend?
I strongly believe if we are doing these 3 things, we’re doing something right. Every single one of our client engagements in our first year has led to a success story and a referenceable client.
The problem we set out to solve – improving internal systems and tools – has not been solved yet. When I meet with people – from admins and engineers to VPs and C-level technology leaders – very few people are happy with their tools and I believe there’s tremendous opportunity to build on the success of the first year and expand our impact by working with more great organizations.
Conclusion
In reflecting on a year of service and growth, I’m filled with gratitude and optimism to continue our mission to elevate technologists and bring joy back into the workplace as we head into our second year.
If you are reading this, THANK YOU for supporting us and being part of the journey. Follow us on social media (LinkedIn, X) to stay connected as we continue grow Tenger Ways into the leading technology consulting company focused on modern practices for internal tools.
