How TechBehemoths Finds You The Best IT Provider In 1 Hour: Q/A with Founder Marcel Sobieski

Website Planet interviewed Marcel Sobieski, founder of Mobiteam GmbH, to talk about their newest endeavour after the latest four startup exits in 2017, 2018 and 2020 – TechBehemoths, the fastest growing marketplace connecting projects with tech service providers from all around the world.

How they grew to hosting 47,000 tech service providers from 140 countries, covering 510 services from logo design to enterprise and blockchain projects

What you will learn in this interview:

• How TechBehemoths simplifies the search for reputable and efficient IT companies
• How they manage to outpace competitors spending heavily on paid ratings and reviews
• How the recent advancements in ML, AI, and GPT technologies will revolutionize partner searches, but with human decision-making remaining crucial

What problems are you solving for your customers and audience?

TechBehemoths is the ideal place for any tech service provider to display their services, portfolio and achievements to get additional exposure and visibility for their business, which will ultimately bring them leads and business inquiries from the platform.

Our philosophy of working exclusively based on meritocracy and full transparency makes TechBehemoths the place to be for anyone looking for a reputable and trustworthy tech service provider. We help anyone in their search for a service provider, offering multiple free tools and filters to narrow their search results and match their requirements at a high level. Every review, portfolio or project inquiry is first managed by our team, to comply with our rules and regulations and more importantly – to be legit, honest and transparent.

This is why we have the appreciation of both the service providers and those looking for one. As they know about our unwavering and uncompromising care for transparency and meritocracy.

TechBehemoths is for anyone who wants to find the right tech team for their project. And is for anyone who wants to display their services and attract new clients.

TechBehemoths helps anyone in their search for the right service provider with one of the most thorough filter options available on the market. It is a functionality inspired from Chrono24, the world’s leading online marketplace for luxury watches. Within 3 minutes anyone can shrink their search results from 47,000 companies to only 4, based on tens of criteria, i.e. location, HQ, team size, hourly rate, provided services, reviews, portfolio or even received awards.

This way, there is no other platform in the world that allows someone within minutes, at no charge, without misleading information and in a fully transparent way to get access the right teams, matching their needs and requirements.

Which types of companies benefit the most from what you offer?

As of today, there are 47,000 companies listed on TechBehemoths. Their distribution by team size is displayed below. We can say that 40% of our companies are up to 10 people and 35% from 10 to 50 team members.

Our data shows that only in 2023-2024 we have connected more than 4,500 projects with our registered service providers. The biggest winners are the companies with the highest profile score, as they are ranked at no charge on the platform and obtain the leads based on their match with a client’s requirements.

We managed to collect over 50,000 reviews, which is one of the key factors in determining a company to work with. Of course, more thorough due diligence will continue afterwards, nonetheless, accurate and real reviews are one of the things that set us apart from the competition.

What makes them eventually choose you over your competitors?

We love how one of our clients, Lonnie McRorey from Framework Science, wrote about this:

“TechBehemoths champions a meritocratic and transparent platform. This dedication to trust and reliability empowers both IT service providers seeking greater visibility and businesses in need of the perfect technical partner. Say goodbye to opaque directories and cumbersome search processes. TechBehemoths’ user-friendly interface streamlines the journey, unveiling comprehensive company profiles, insightful statistics, and curated recommendations tailored to specific needs.

But TechBehemoths goes beyond matchmaking. It delves deep into industry trends, equipping businesses with valuable knowledge through insightful surveys and reports that illuminate the ever-evolving digital landscape. Additionally, its annual awards celebrate the very best in the IT sphere, recognizing outstanding companies for their commitment to trust, transparency, and flawless delivery, setting a coveted benchmark for the entire industry.”

Most of our competitors are old players who are slow and not innovative. They have a strong presence online, but at times they lack credibility, as most of the things, ratings or reviews are paid. Whereas we focus exactly on the opposite – to bring trust and excellent user experience. A flawless experience on the platform with an outstanding end result.

As we are the newest players in this business, we can improve everything the others are missing and infuse the latest technology and functionality to make someone’s activity easy and efficient.

The feedback we got from our visitors is incredibly positive. The adoption is very high and the growth is stable at 5% MoM.

One of our most popular functionalities is a wizard of 10 questions, which once answered, will select from 5 to 10 service providers that match in minor details someone’s project requirements and needs. It takes about 5 minutes to complete it, it is 100% free and there is no obligation to hire or pay anyone. We initially called it “Valet” and now are thinking of a more intuitive alternative to it. Maybe your readers can suggest one to us 🙂

Since you started, what helped you grow and retain your audience?

For us, growth and retention are going hand in hand, yet, slightly parallel. Different tactics are used for each. Sometimes, they’re strongly bound together, other times, you don’t want to retain all users. Only some parts of it.

For instance, for growth, we rely on several important pillars. One of them being content marketing and its distribution. Considering the industry’s specific requirements – authentic, professional, and reliable content is something that can bring results in the long run. If implemented properly.

For audience retention, on the other hand, content plays only a small role, compared to other tools and tactics we use. It is very situational, and it depends a lot on what part of the audience you want to retain. Among the directions used for retention, we can mention the constantly progressing TechBehemoths awards, which in 2023 was the biggest event so far. We had 50 participating countries (from 30 in 2021) 3500 nominees and only 1500 winning companies.

In the end, the keyword that brings together audience growth and retention at TechBehemoths is organic. It takes more time but is the most authentic way to get industry recognition among both clients and partners. A huge part of our growth is due to our excellent results, both for those looking for a tech team and for the tech service providers. Their satisfaction and measured in a high retention rate and use of the platform every week.

What tools are you using to run your business and daily activities?

I will talk about the management and operations side rather than the technical side.

We are using Asana as a project management tool. We find it one of the best tools existing today for teams and their daily activities. We are able to monitor all the processes in the application, see the progress, Gantt charts, assignments, tasks, due dates and much more. It is an app that is vital for us.

For quick chats, we use Slack, which is easy to use and has everything you need for a fast text, voice and video chat. Shame the free version doesn’t have a longer history available.

We are big fans of Google’s ecosystem. Therefore we use most of their services at every moment throughout the day, from Gmail to Calendar, Slides and Spreadsheets. GA, DataStudio, Search Console, Semrush and Similarweb for data and analytics. None of the apps alone are enough or completely accurate. But to complete each other, they are all perfect.

Elastic Email for our many, many daily emails, weekly and monthly emails that we sent.

What perspective do you have about where your industry is headed?

Several years ago the need for such platforms wasn’t so vital as today. A few years ago most of the agencies were relying on advertisements, mouth to mouth marketing, the operational costs were lower and there wasn’t a constant need to get new projects.

Nowadays things have changed dramatically. There are so many small and medium tech service providers offering great services that can not get the needed exposure to perform. They are throwing money all over the place to get some clicks in the hope of converting a lead.

The operations became a lot more expensive, which is why new projects are needed constantly in the pipeline. All these companies need reliable places to advertise their services. For this reason, future platforms like TechBehemoths are more active than ever.

At the same time, also for clients – they are confused by the existence of so many other platforms, of different quality and experience. The market has to offer a few but trustful and reliable resources, just like TechBehemoths, where anyone can feel safe and comfortable in finding their next technical team.

We think the next few years will revolutionize the way we are searching for partners, influenced and fueled by ML, AI and GPT technologies. Nonetheless, the last mile in deciding with whom to work will always be made by a human. And only a reliable and transparent marketplace will make it.

The new players will challenge the existing market and therefore create a healthy and competitive environment from which everyone will benefit tremendously.

What’s in the roadmap for your future?

Our first milestone is to be in the top 10 globally. All the metrics show that this is already achieved in 2023. Our new goal now is to be in the Top 5 platform that connects projects with tech service providers.

Taking into consideration the growth pace, the internal and external metrics and data, this can happen by Q3-2025. TechBehemoths is one of the market leaders for business development, new functionality implementation, trust and efficiency. And our philosophy is to keep that, without compromising anything. We value our excellent reputation and won’t jeopardize it by any means.

Our ultimate goal is to become the benchmark and market leader in this field and be the one-stop place for finding the right technical teams for any project. And for that, I am grateful to our devoted team that is dedicated 120% to the project and brings the best out of them.