This week we are talking with startup Teamgate which has recently attracted 400 000 EUR investment.

So what is Teamgate? How does it work?

Teamgate is an intelligent web-based sales CRM. Designed and created to organize, simplify, and enhance the entire sales process, from lead-sourcing to deal closure, Teamgate helps to effortlessly manage every aspect of the sales pipeline process.

At a time when sales professionals had become bogged down in a never-ending series of tasks associated with the sales process, Teamgate came along to reduce and regulate the workload. The introduction of Teamgate lets salespeople concentrate on the task of selling, more efficiently, and more productively.

Teamgate CRM also offers the user the ability to measure, analyze, and track every stage of the sales journey in real time. Take a more in-depth look right here: https://www.teamgate.com/

What are your competitors and competitive advantages?

The world is full of CRM competitors, some bad, some good, and some which are even worth looking up to. Despite the plethora of competition, Teamgate has already managed to firmly establish its place in an ever-expanding market. In fact, the Teamgate CRM has already managed to surpass and outshine many of its longer established and more recognized competitors.

The fact that Teamgate has been voted the most user-friendly CRM on the market two years in a row says a lot about the company’s commitment to creating a product which can bring real, and significant value to the customer.

Teamgate will continue striving towards further simplifying the entire sales process and offering more value to the customer. The Teamgate CRM software advantage over its competitors has already been firmly established.

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product?

I’ve always had the obsession to try improve things. To make the things around me function better and more efficiently. Teamgate CRM was a child of this obsession, coupled with the genuine belief that, ‘I can do this thing’.

I’m very lucky to have the ability to be able to visualize ideas clearly in my mind. I want to improve things which have already been invented, things which already exist. But not just to improve them for the sake of improvement, I want to make them better and to function more efficiently. Teamgate as a CRM is part of that lifelong process.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

Teamgate was born back in 2012. Initially, the idea was launched as Since then there has been a lot of evolution and a lot of water under a lot of bridges. The Teamgate CRM you see today has come a very long way.

The main challenges we faced were that we had limited experience with both cloud-computing and SaaS in general. Along with that, as Teamgate grew and expanded we found ourselves short-handed when it came to marketing and selling software products, both in Lithuania and abroad.

Overcoming these challenges were vitally important for our continued growth, but there have been many other challenges in the past, and we have been happy to meet them head-on as they arose.

What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?

Teamgate Sales CRM is designed for progressive small and medium sized businesses across all industries, whose objective is to simplify and streamline their sales process, and who wish to benefit from the power of intelligent sales analytics.

Although the company’s origins are in Lithuania, English is the main language of communication throughout the Teamgate experience, offering the possibility of expansion right across the English-speaking world.

What are the main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

Most startups find that ‘people’ is one of the main challenges they face collectively – at Teamgate we’re no different.

Finding the right people, with the right expertise to help you grow the business is a major challenge. Of course, the personnel we have on board could learn these necessary skills for themselves, but that involves a lot of time and a great deal of expenditure. However, the people we do have are willing to put in long hours, and make great sacrifices for us to reach our goals. Plus, external advisors can fill the knowledge gap until such a time as we are ready to hire our own team of specialists.

Another challenge we face is that of introducing our CRM into international markets. Getting to know and understand the cultures of our target markets can be quite a challenge. For example, the demands and work culture of our US customers differs greatly from those of our native Lithuanian market. To overcome this we have enlisted the aid of advisors and specialists from other target market countries.

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

Teamgate’s main investor is Blue Bridge Baltic who have been behind us since 2013. We are also very happy that this year we attracted new investment from Open Circle Capital VC. This took us some time, as we were occupied on preparing the fundamentals of future scaling and investments. In addition, we have been receiving more attention from different markets and new VC’s. With that in mind, we believe that soon we will have more news to update the situation.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

Marijus Andrijauskas, the Teamgate founder and CEO, is backed by co-founders, Liudas Šumskas (CTO), and Chris Gulbinovic (Marketer), along with a dedicated team of specialists, across sales, marketing, development, and customer support departments, who work closely together as a tightly-knit component of the entire Teamgate organization.

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?

It’s nice to be able to report that business is going from strength to strength. Our expanding international recognition is largely behind this growth, and we are now seeing leads originating from more than 100 countries, and customers based in almost the same number. The vast majority of our customers are based in the US and the future is looking positive.

Future plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?

At Teamgate we like to think of ourselves as being perfectionists. We constantly strive to make our product even better by honing and improving our most important, and customer-centric features. We would also hope to make the Teamgate solution even smarter and more user-friendly by incorporating intelligent AI features, and more time-saving automations.

Forging strong partnerships with some of the biggest players from other industries, and opening offices in the US are also high-priorities among our goals and KPIs.

Thank you for your answers!