Productivity apps are aplenty on the web, and sometimes, I feel that web has only project management apps. Most of these apps are shameless rip-offs from the industry giants. In an ocean full of these copycats, it’s really difficult to take your idea forward and be successful.
TeamGantt does an excellent job at best, and has received critical acclaim all across. Here at Web.AppStorm, they have bagged a prestigious score of 9 out of 10, and we loved their simple approach to Gantt charts.
Today, we’ve had the opportunity to interview Nathan Gilmore, co-Founder of TeamGantt. Keep reading to find out the story behind TeamGannt, how it was developed, and what’s in store for the future.
Thanks for taking the time to do an interview with us. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and TeamGantt?
Sure thing. Thanks for having me. John Correlli and I are the two Co-Founders of TeamGantt. We have actually known each other for a long time. We went to the same school, same Church, played soccer together, and worked together before starting TeamGantt. We needed a way to easily schedule and track our projects online. We couldn’t find anything to do it, so we decided to build it. It’s now used by all types of companies including freelancers, creative agencies, startups, and teams from large fortune 500 companies.
What’s your work environment like at TeamGantt, and what keeps you motivated every day?
We are a small company, just myself and John. We both work from home and know that we have a lot of people depending on us to continually make TeamGantt better. We really enjoy what we do, so it’s easy to stay motivated.
Author’s Note: Nathan showed me this video when I wanted to see how they keep pressure off bay and from where I stand, their method just works 
It seems that the majority of productivity apps today are to-do apps, much like the industry leader Basecamp. What inspired you to work on Gantt Charts?
We have found that a lot of people need more than just a basic to-do list. Gantt charts are great for getting a look at the big picture and estimating how long a project a project will take. It also helps answer questions like “What happens if this one task is delayed?” or “Do we have enough people to take on this new project?”. You can really get a good visual on how long things will take and who you need to get it done.
Why did you choose to make TeamGantt a web app instead of a native app?
Oh Boy! That’s gorgeous.
The web makes so much sense for something like this. People rarely do projects by themselves. MS Project isn’t web based and that drives people nuts. Now with TeamGantt, people can create a project and easily invite others to it. It gives a central location to have a project schedule, documents and conversations. This way anyone can have access to the latest project information from anywhere with an internet connection.
Without giving too much away, can you tell us a bit about TeamGantt’s underlying technology?
John actually built it all from scratch without the use of any particular frameworks. It’s a PHP app that uses MySQL for the database and lots of AJAX for the UI. We host with Rackspace since they are a leader in hosting and have been very happy with them.
Running a startup can be a nightmare in the beginning. How did you keep up under the pressure, and how does it feel to be running a successful startup?
I think it’s a couple of things. The most important thing is to have a good Co-Founder who you can trust and who complements your skill set. It also takes a lot of patience. We were working nights and weekends to get the company started. When you only get to work a few hours here and there it takes a while. We were busy with full time jobs, families, and being active in our church. We had to learn how to be super focused and productive when we did have time to work on TeamGantt in the early days.
We were able to reach profitability and go full-time with the company last year. That was a very exciting time. We did this without investors, which is kind of unique these days. It took a lot of hard work, patience, and time, but now we have a company that answers to customers and not investors. It’s really been fun to take a company from nothing to a rapidly growing company with thousands who have used it to plan their projects.
Which apps keep you productive throughout the day at TeamGantt?
That’s one hell of a productive setup
TeamGantt of course We plan all of our projects with it and use it every day. We also use LiveChat to keep provide quick answers to support questions. I’m also a big fan of Evernote for tracking all kinds of notes and thoughts as well as Rdio for music. I’m always in Photoshop for designing new features. John spends a lot of time in Dreamweaver while coding. We use Braintree for our payment processing.
At this time of age everyone seems to have a mobile app. Do you’ve any plans of launching a dedicated mobile/ iPad app in the future?
We will likely do something to make things more accessible for mobile users. It may be tough to replicate the entire gantt chart experience and do it well on mobile, but we will at least provide some checklist type views so that users can see what they have in progress and make updates while on the go.
Being a self-proclaimed Windows fanboy myself, among a number of Mac using colleagues, I have to ask: do you primarily use Windows or a Mac for your work?
We are both Mac guys. Just bought the new MacBook Airs when they came out with the new updates a little while ago.
Do you have plans to make any new apps, or are you cooking up new features for TeamGantt right now?
We are going to stay focused on TeamGantt. We have a new resource view that we are working on now. We also have plans for an API and working on some integrations with other apps.
Thanks, Nathan!
We’d like to extend our heart-filled thanks to Nathan Gilmore for taking time out from his extremely busy schedule to answer our questions. If you haven’t tried TeamGantt yet, I’d strongly recommend you to check out our writer Justin’s great review before signing up.