Chattanooga's Ambition is helping businesses grow
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — In January 2016 we told the story of Chattanooga tech start-up Ambition.
Co-founders Travis Truett, Jared Houghton, and Brian Trautschold were in their late twenty's. The company had been around for a couple of years. They had seven employees, and had raised some capital.
Ambition has now been in business about four and a half years. They're making a profit, and the founders say last year the company's revenue grew by 360%.
"There's certainly a place in the market, and we've built a product that meets those needs," Jared Houghton said. "It's a pretty cool feeling that what we've built here is used by some of the biggest companies in the world, and that wasn't necessarily the case two years ago when we talked to you."
The list of companies using Ambition continues to grow, and at the same time they have some customers that have been with them since the beginning.
Chad Eichelberger, President and COO of Reliance Partners in Chattanooga, has used Ambition at three different companies.
"Chad was actually the first person who ever bought Ambition at Access America," Mr. Houghton said.
A few years ago Ambition marketed itself as Fantasy Football for the office, but the platform has grown and they provide a broader set of metrics for their clients.
Reliance is a insurance brokerage firm for the transportation industry. They primarily use Ambition to track how many phone calls their sales staff makes and how long their on the phone .
"When you look at our top performing sales people they're generally at the very top in metrics," Mr. Eichelberger said. "We feel like the metrics are the reasons that success happens."
Over the last two years Reliance Partners has grown from fifteen employees to about sixty and the sales have grown as well
"We're selling millions of new premium each and every month," Ashley Hammonds, VP of Sales at Reliance Partners said. "Ambition helps us do it."
As Ambition's customers grow Ambition grows as well. In 2016, the company hit one million dollars in annual revenue for the first time.
It's still a relatively young company, and the founders are pretty young as well at about thirty years old.
They say being an entrepreneurs and co-founders of a tech start up has been very challenging. They've worked a lot of long days and nights, but building this company has also been very rewarding.
"We're incredibly lucky to be waking up every day and coming to a company that we started and that we believe in and that we love," Ambition co-founder Travis Truett said. "We know that everything we do is making a material impact to it. I wouldn't trade that for anything. With that said, it's really hard."
