Teamwork makes the Dream work.

How did I become co-founder of an email analytics platform? Funny enough, it hasn't got much to do with email analytics. I'll try to explain:

Every tech company knows how hard it is to find good people, but what does that mean? After 15 years programming I'd say "a developer with at least a medium baseline level of skill who is also a nice person." Doesn't sound like much to ask, does it? It's also so generic that I think a lot of Human Resources people and recruiters might start feeling a little nervous, but time and again this has been my guiding light in finding the right projects to work on, and the right people to join me on them when the time came.

There's a kind of secret benefit that gets smuggled in when you hire "good" technical people. Almost as if by magic a good vibe starts to swirl into being from the aether. There's a kind of ease to the most inspirational colleagues I've had. They aren't haunted by a fear of not being good enough, or stressed by a goal they don't feel able to reach. They're comfortable in their skin and with their skills. They know they can deliver what is needed of them because when they need it, they ask for help. They're confident in their team. They give and receive support freely and without ego. When you've got this atmosphere with a group of people it perpetuates itself, it works like strong but invisible scaffolding.

One of the realities of the freelance life is change. Projects come to an end, a carefully tended team atmosphere evaporates, a shared language and understanding is paid short tribute over a few beers and a goodbye speech; we take our leave of one another and the cycle begins again. It was out of one particularly large exodus that SEINō came into being. Kevin, Jan and I had come to the conclusion of our projects and left a department behind where Jeroen and Sandy still worked - off to, if not greener pastures (it had been a particularly fun place to work, a great team, a nice vibe) at least hopefully pastures almost as green. Slowly over the coming months Kevin's idea, which had been nagging at him for years, started to take shape. A team, ready made, who knew one another, worked well together, had a proven track record of delivering high quality work and having a good time while they did it were out there at large...

I can't speak for the rest but for me it was an instant yes when I heard who would be involved in SEINō. That the idea, the experience of how unserved e-mail marketing professionals have been - and how to solve that, was a great one was the icing on the cake. Doing great things requires great people and, for me at least, that's why SEINō exists. I've learned the hard way how difficult is to find people you're willing to work, let alone are happy to work with - and when it seemed like we were all about to go our separate ways a few years ago the chance to immediately get the band back together was too good to turn down.

And here we are two years later. Last week at the e-mail marketing automation summit we got to see how what we've built in that time resonates with professionals in the industry. Kevin's talk was very well received and will be the subject of a future post.

The road to this point has been slow and steady progress and there is clearly much more work to be done to build SEINō up to where we see it, a ubiquitous tool that every email professional adds to their stack as naturally as Google Analytics. It's a challenge we're not only ready to meet, but one we're looking forward to working towards. Together.