On July 14th 2022, we took a trip down memory lane and talked about the Strategic partnership between RomSoft and Office Timeline: how it started, how it progressed over the years, and what the future holds. Tim Stumbles, CEO and co-founder of Office Timeline, has joined us for this conversation via MS Teams. The discussion was moderated by Diana Niculaes, Content Manager Office Timeline.
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Tim Stumbles is co-founder and CEO at Office Timeline, a US-based bootstrap startup that entered a strategic partnership with RomSoft in 2012 to develop their product. Office Timeline is a simple but powerful add-in for PowerPoint that helps business professionals quickly turn complex project data into clear, eye-catching visuals that executives and stakeholders will easily understand.
Key conclusions
Here are some of the most important ideas that sunk in:
- The first 30 minutes conversation between RomSoft and Office Timeline cofounders was the one that set the tone of mutual trust, friendship and empathy, that continues to rule this partnership ten years later, and Tim gets goosebumps every time he talks about it.
- Office Timeline is not a software business, it’s a people business, just like RomSoft. That’s why it was so important for it to remain bootstrapped and independent. The secret ingredient is this: successful partnerships absolutely depend on people, not lengthy contracts, vertical hierarchies or bureaucratic procedures.
- Development was just the first step. Shortly, the team was adding support, SEO, marketing and sales departments, with the target that Iasi becomes the designated Office Timeline center of excellence.
- The vendor of the legendary rubber chickens that Tim and the team brought to us as a gift for their first visit is still in business, so we’ll definitely have the chance to restock the next time Tim and Eddy will make it to Iasi.
What is Community Talks
After two years of remote work, we feel the need to, once in a while, get together and learn about inspiring stories from our line of work or from our community that are relevant to us.
With this idea in mind, we created this program that we called Community Talks. It is part of our larger dicussion about tech storytelling and how to have better conversations in our everyday work.
Once a month, we want to invite somebody from outside RomSoft to share with us an inspiring story, or just to have an interesting conversation, be it in the technical area or anything else that we have a shared interest. Our guests will play the role of the Guide to any good story, helping us navigate through difficult challenges, acquire new skills and understand where the opportunities lie in this rapidly changing world.