MEMBER OF THE WEEK: Tamanguu

From now on, we are going to introduce one member of the association every week. This week it is tamanguu, a web application that supports managers and business people in building and maintaininge strong relationships with their network.

It‘s no secret that good relationships and a strong network directly influence or even determine business success. Maintaining relationships with important business partners or those who are to become business partners is therefore crucial.

tamanguu co-founder and CEO Dr. Johannes Ripken has closely experienced and explored in 15 years music industry and as a founder that the maintenance of business relationships is not only essential, but also a huge challenge.

After an intensive time of development and a closed beta phase, the company now opens the tool for all interested people with a free Open Beta. 

Hi Johannes, thank you for taking the time and answering our questions to shine some light on Tamanguu.

Why have you had the idea for a networking management tool? Was there a special reason for seting up Tamanguu, like losing the overview of your own contacts?

Before tamanguu, I was working in the music industry for 10 years. I experienced having a strong network as crucial to succeed. Actually, you can have an amazing artist in your portfolio and fail as you don’t have great business relationships. Thanks to the digitalisation, there is more competition and you quickly lose the overview due to a grown network and the variety of communication channels.

Why did you choose “tamanguu” as a name for your application? Has the word “tamanguu” a deeper meaning?

tamanguu is an acronym of TAlent, MAnagement and GUU, which derives from Somali language for “to win” or “success” and further from “yuujou”, which means “friendship” in Japanese.

You have just started the open beta phase for tamanguu, so that everyone can thoroughly test it. What will be the experience of the testers? How can tamanguu truly changes people’s lives from now?

The users of tamanguu will have a digital assistant for their business relationship management. tamanguu accompanies the process of building and maintaining these relationships with a system and continuity. We have created a system of automated reminders and action recommendations, which help the user to stay in touch with important contacts and therefore not to forget any important contact or email. It is not only about not to miss opportunities, but even fostering them through interaction.

Going further into details:  How work the management of my contacts and my network with tamanguu? What could be a person-focused workflow recommended by tamanguu? Let’s go through a typical case step by step.

Initially, you import your contacts (eg. from Apple, Google, Microsoft), select your important contacts and connect your email account. tamanguu will strongly focus your attention on these contacts and provides a helpful overview of the communication. Automated action recommendations based on your communication assists your relationship building. For example, when the last contact has been a while ago, or the contact didn’t answer on your last email, or a multi-step workflow after personal meetings. Your logged conversations and synchronised emails trigger new recommendations when it’s time.

What’s next for tamanguu? When will you have the final release? Do you plan to expand with more features?

We have just launched our Open Beta after an intense time of developing and closed beta testing. Ideally, the market launch will be in the end of this year. However, this will depend on the development and feedback in the next months. The center of tamanguu is the system of action recommendations and the data which triggers them. So, new features focus on the quality of action recommendations.

Besides tamanguu, what tools, resources, other apps etc. do you use daily?

For team collaboration, we work with Slack, Jira, Confluence and Microsoft OneDrive. Video calls are made with Skype or Whereby (formerly: Appear.in). Our newsletter and free Business Networking Master Class is processed with Mailchimp. And certainly, for maintaining the business relationships, we benefit from tamanguu ourselves :).

Johannes, as a seniour founder who has walked quite a distance as entrepreneur already, what’s your tip for our community to start their own venture?

Thank you for your time and good look with the Open Beta of Tamanguu.

Further information and access to the Tamanguu Open Beta can be found here.