In total, Airtame has about 90 employees, most of them located in Copenhagen, Denmark, where our headquarters is. In the beginning, the Copenhagen office took care of all areas such as marketing, product development, and sales, while the North American team – at that time a lot smaller – was mostly focused on sales, support, and demo calls. However, as the North American team expands and diversifies, so does their focus areas.  

Currently, our North American team consists of 15 members, the majority of them placed in a WeWork coworking space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They’re as much the backbone of the Airtame experience as our headquarters in Copenhagen. Here’s why.

Who are they?

It all started with one lone sales manager, Daniel Schiffer, all by himself in a WeWork office in South Station, Boston. He’s our Head of Sales in the North American region, and he’s since then built a super-team.

Right now, it’s an almost even split between salespeople and support, and we regard the unit primarily as a commercial team with limited development. Most of the product development happens at our headquarters in Copenhagen, though this is changing, with one of our senior software engineers relocating to the States, and new marketing hires on the horizon.

Our North American efforts are almost purely customer-facing, meaning that we’re here in the right region and time zone to take care of all requests and support right when it happens, and we leave hardware and firmware to the dedicated teams in Copenhagen.

How does the team function?

The sales representatives are split territorially and each covers a specific region. If they’re not in the office taking lots of calls, writing emails or doing web demos, you can often find them traveling so they’re on-site with resellers, meeting face to face with end customers and occasionally with distributors too.

They also attend Pro-AV tradeshows, both heavy-hitters and the more local ones. The team will go themselves or match up with someone complimentary to the work we do. Most of the events are Education sector focused, as this is our current market focus within North America.

Then there’s the other half of the team, the customer success side. They’re broken up into customer support and tech support.

Both support teams are focused on making sure that leads and current customers get their problems solved straight away. Seeing as some challenges are fairly complex and need attention right away, it’s fantastic for us to have a team in the same time zones as the challenges arise, ready to address problems as they come in with no delay.

A simple thing like working in a WeWork shared coworking space is actually one of the things that makes the team run so smoothly. WeWork takes care of all things logistical so the North American team doesn’t have to worry about any practical issue. Oh, and if they need to work from another location because they’re on-the-go, that’s fine too. If you’re a part of the WeWork family, every WeWork office is your home.

Differences and similarities between our two offices

Obviously, the two offices differ in size on the personnel side of things. In Copenhagen, we’re also focusing on product development and marketing efforts, and that’s deliberate. Such a big market as North America deserves a local, attentive team that is able to hear exactly what people need and what they need from a product like ours. In real-time. No delay.

With a local team, we’re able to dig in and be more nuanced about the process and we get to visit and travel and see people when they need someone from Airtame. We wouldn’t be able to grow as much without the focus on what’s going on specifically in this market.

One thing that always stays the same across offices, though, is the company culture. The North American office is their own little ecosystem, which has its own culture, but every Airtame employee no matter where they’re situated taps into our overall company values. Even as we’re scaling, we work hard to maintain a thriving company culture.  

The value of the North American team

While still relatively small in size, our North American branch has made a significant impact in the region.

Up until now, we’ve focused hyper-locally on a state-by-state level, building a customer base and attending local tradeshows. This year, we align those efforts into something bigger, exhibiting at professional tradeshows such as InfoComm, the largest pro-AV event in all of North America, and ISTE, the leading global edtech conference.

It’s a complete no-brainer for us; we have to show up at these events. It’s where the industry’s leading members meet, where trends are displayed for the first time, and obviously where we can find our current and future customers.  

Read about the trends we discovered at Integrated Systems Europe 2019. Integrated Systems Europe is InfoComm’s sister event in Europe and we had a strong presence there this year. Take a look at our learnings from exhibiting at such a big event.  

In North America, we experience many customers that handle larger organizations with several locations, such as a large-scale enterprise with many branches or a school district with numerous schools represented.

Being in relatively close proximity, we can help out, thus meaning they don’t have to waste any time trying a setup that doesn’t work or wait for answers to their many questions.

Check out how simple an Airtame business rollout is and the equivalent for an education setup.

Support when and where you need it

We didn’t open up an office in New York because we wanted to or because it sounds cool on paper. No, it was because it was a necessity for our business to grow and for it to continue growing. We call it value for our customers rather than pure entrepreneurial spirit.

We encourage open communication and a sense of community. If you’re a customer with us, we’ve got your back no matter where you’re located.

Have you got any questions about the North American market? Give us call. Plus, we’re hiring! Swing over to our hiring page for more info

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