One-On-One with Teambix

Teambix is a staff sharing platform, helping you "lend" or share your professional staff team with other companies for extra revenues. The concept matured in mid-2018 in the mind of founder and CEO, Remmone Modisakeng, but owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, the recently relaunched platform is an appearingly novel business model to help companies with excess workforce make extra money.

Remmone Modisakeng, founder and CEO of Teambix

When did the idea of Teambix come to your mind?

The concept was birthed in July 2018. We couldn’t raise funding for our previous app concept because our concept was “too risky”, and we didn’t have the required skills to develop it.

In the process of raising seed capital, we met a potential investor who instead of giving us a cash investment, presented some of his company’s projects for us to make some revenues. We got multiple projects from him and his network between 2017 and mid-2018 and to our surprise we made over R1.4m turnover just from the projects, which gave birth to the concept of Teambix.

What was the time frame between coming up with the idea and taking the first step in implementation?

In July 2018 we started learning how to code in the direction of the platform. By September that year, we onboarded an experienced developer to consult us in heading the right direction. We soft-launched the first version of the Teambix platform in May 2020.

What problem are you trying to solve? Or what is the market opportunity you have identified?

Cash flow, accessing working capital and the expensive nature of top talent are real factors impeding the growth of many startups. Mid-to-large sized enterprises have a challenge of overstaffing and underutilized teams.

So, we help both startups and enterprises. Startups can gain affordable access to top tier talent, while bigger enterprises can “lend” their team to other companies to make extra income.

Take me through the user journey of the platform. I'm a user arriving for the first time on Teambix, what actions on the platform must I take to achieve the desired outcome?

User: Team

1. Sign up
   
2. Complete profile with a video intro pitching your team
   
3. Submit required documents for vetting process
   
4. Bid for available projects that you qualify for
   
5. Get selected by project owner
   
6. Access Project Owner chats and wait for milestones and initial funds to appear on the project wallet.
   
7. Once funds uploaded, complete milestones as per agreement with project owner
   
8. Request a release of payment per completed milestone into your bank acc
   
9. Once project completed, rate the project owner.
   

User: Project Owner

1. Sign up
   
2. Access listed team profiles
   
3. Post a project with your budget for teams to bid. (Or you can hire a team directly from the home page)
   
4. Select the best team for your project
   
5. Setup milestones with due dates
   
6. Top up the project wallet with initial funds
   
7. Release payment from wallet for each completed milestone.
   
8. Once project completed, rate and write a review on the team.
   

Tell me more about your ideal user and how they can benefit or make the most of this platform.

Team Ideal User:

• Seed stage startup looking for funds while building an investment case.
  Benefit: Access to potential revenue-generating projects and building of financial track record for further investments

• Sinking stage startup with cash flow challenges
  Benefit: Access to potential extra revenue and collaborations with other companies

• Enterprises with overstaffed or underutilised teams
  Benefit: Maximising talent and sustaining jobs with the extra revenue

Project Owner Ideal User:

• Companies with frequent backlogs or looking for a cheap way to expand services
  Benefit: Access to individual/collective talent that is supported by a structure

• High earning individuals with funds and projects that want to pursue, but with limited time.
  Benefit: Access to individual/collective talent that is supported by a structure

Platform differentiation: how do you differ from two of your closest or biggest competitors?

We focus on talent under a company structure. This approach opens opportunities to access talent that is supported by a structure as well as possible access to the structure’s network. Our bidding system also allows us to empower the project owner to choose the best team. In contrast, most of our competitors focus on independent freelancers/workers.

What is the vision of Teambix, how big do you believe it can get?

Our vision is to unlock every company’s underutilized resources in the whole world.

Seeing that freelancing platforms made a global impact. I believe Teambix could possibly compete on a global scale, helping companies participate in the “gig economy”. As a result, contributing towards the future of work, collaboration and diversification of companies.

What is the next step you would like to achieve in reaching your vision?

The next step is to announce Teambix on every known tech media platforms, also via incubators and investor networks (Looking at investor referrals for all their startup “rejects”).