Matt Paige With HatchWorks

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Atlanta Business Radio brought to you by onpay Atlanta’s new standard in payroll. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:24] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Atlanta Business Radio, and this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor on pay. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories today on the Atlanta Business Radio. We have Matt Page with hatch works. Welcome, Matt.

Matt Paige: [00:00:41] Hey, how’s it going? Thanks for having me today.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] It’s going great. I’m excited to learn about hatch works. Tell us what you’re up to.

Matt Paige: [00:00:48] Yeah. So Hatch Works is a software development company locally here in Atlanta. We’ve been around since twenty sixteen and we really believe intelligently built solutions improve the way that people work and live. So really focused on building full lifecycle web applications that are native to the cloud and data intelligence solutions so doing from full software development. Defining it, building it, running it. Yeah, with everything going on today, the push, the digital, the customer experience and customer demands is just evolving with everything from COVID to all the other great technology products out there. I’m really looking to help our customers evolve. And in that way and making that that push to move to digital

Lee Kantor: [00:01:37] Now is hatch works. Did it start as Hatch works, developing their own software and applications for themselves? Or was it always built to help other people create what their their company needs?

Matt Paige: [00:01:50] Yeah, it’s always started helping our our customers, and that’s the biggest piece. It’s interesting. Our founder, Brandon Powell, knew he wanted to start a company. He didn’t quite know what product to build, so decided to go serve other other customers and clients in their industries. Another area we want to get into down the road is developing some of our own products from all of the great stuff we’re learning, but wholly focused right now and just serving our customers and giving them and building them the best, the best products we can.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:20] Now, can you talk about that kind of the early days? Was it always geared towards enterprise level or was that something that just grew over time?

Matt Paige: [00:02:29] No, not not initially and truthfully. In the beginning days, it’s almost more of a friends and family and connections to give you your first bit of business. But we’ve really grown a lot in the health care space, the financial services space communications, just with past experience there. So those are kind of the main verticals we played in and then, as we’ve evolved, started to work with a lot of bigger clients. So your AT&T is your Cox’s fleet core locally here in Atlanta and some big health care players like Anthem and others.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:06] Now, how did that come about, because dealing with companies of that size, there’s a lot of complexity in a sale like that. Was that again, friends and family type thing? Or are you kind of earned your way up the ladder based on your previous work?

Matt Paige: [00:03:19] Yeah. Starting to earn our way up to building some really great case studies in the place that we can show off and represent with our customers, and it’s definitely a different, different animal. There’s more decision makers in the process. The sales cycles a bit longer in different, and sometimes you don’t have the full autonomy to build the full end solution. A lot of the times you’re working very, very tightly with the organization that we may be working with, whether it’s on the product side or the the technology side, which is really neat, helping our our clients evolve and how they think about software development, how they think about product development. And a big piece is that that discovery and design element, right? You don’t want to just be, you know, a hammer trying to hammer and nail all the time. You got to make sure you have the right solution for the problem at hand.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:14] Now, do you sometimes go into an opportunity fixing something and then it evolves into kind of a wholesale rebuild? Or are you always going in there to start like from a clean slate?

Matt Paige: [00:04:27] Yeah, that’s a great question. And it’s interesting. We do both, right? So we’ll do brand new product development. The customer just has an idea or a problem they have. And we also do complete modernization projects or redesign projects as well. I’d say a lot of a shift towards more the modernization and redesigns as of late because we have so many customers, especially as you move up in the enterprise space, they have a lot of existing legacy products. A lot of integrations in the customer experience isn’t great. So they want to, you know, bring it up to snuff in a lot of ways. We’ve seen a big shift in that way. We’re doing a lot of redesigns, a lot of modernization projects

Lee Kantor: [00:05:10] Now in your work in strategy and business development. Can you share some advice for folks that are transitioning into maybe targeting enterprise level customers? How do you kind of go about opening the door to building the relationship and then taking the project to the finish line and getting all that buy in from all the, you know, the bureaucracy that usually comes with an enterprise sale to you, move from the champion to all the people that have to sign off on the decision of this magnitude.

Matt Paige: [00:05:38] Yeah, you hit on it once you’re moving in that enterprise level, especially in bigger deal sizes as well. It’s really about that relationship. You’re not going to win them over with just some marketing. It’s it’s showing thought leadership right that you uniquely understand their industry, their pain points, their problems is really a better entry point, but really building that relationship and building that trust as well. And a lot of times we look to build that in the sales cycle, sometimes some initial smaller engagements just to help in terms of discovery or some design. And really, it’s about building that trust, building the trust within your main stakeholders, as well as the the broader organization. So it’s it’s a definite shift when you start to move up into more of an enterprise type type sale there.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:27] Now how do you manage the kind of sometimes the inertia to make a decision or a change when you’re working with someone and you think you’ve answered all their questions and then someone is, I don’t want to say sabotaging it, but maybe just kind of putting it on the back burner. How do you kind of keep it going, even though it might seem like there’s no interest, but you’re like one person or two people away from making the deal happen?

Matt Paige: [00:06:51] Yeah, I think the key thing is a knowing up front who were the key decision makers and really having that tight relationship with them, who actually owns the budget. And it’s also, you know, that person that may be bringing up this point or seeming like they’re undermining it, they probably have a valid reason. They’re bringing it up, right? So taking it into consideration, making sure that they’re also heard and understood as a big part of it. All right, because there probably is a valuable reason they’re bringing it up. So really, bringing them almost into the conversation sometimes can can help with that decision making process.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:27] Now how are you finding the Atlanta kind of software ecosystem? It seems like we’ve had some big wins lately. Can you talk about how that is as a collaborative community?

Matt Paige: [00:07:40] Yeah, Atlanta has just been great. You look at MailChimp recently, the acquisition there, then to it, there’s just a lot of great instances, especially when you look at fintech in the financial services space in Atlanta. So it’s been a great place for us to grow up and evolve. And it’s just, I think the sky’s the limit for. And you know, what else is unique is with our move to remote and COVID, we also have a near offering because we have an office in Costa Rica. It’s completely transformed in a lot of ways how we do things, we do it in an integrated model. So what folks developers here in Atlanta, as well as in Latin America. And it just provides a more cost effective option for a lot of our customers without sacrificing the quality. But Atlanta has just been great for us. We’re a lot of us are born and raised in Atlanta here as well and just a great community to be a part of.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:44] Now how are you finding Atlanta’s reputation nationwide when it comes to software?

Matt Paige: [00:08:49] Yeah, it’s interesting. Even from like 2016 when we started, it’s just it’s completely evolving. It’s being known as more of a technology hotbed. Especially with know you think of newer startups and kind of venture backed endeavors. A lot of that is just increased in big ways, and there’s a lot of huge staple companies here as well. Like I mentioned earlier, a lot of big enterprises in the technology space that we work with as well. Now continue to evolve.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:21] Now, from a talent standpoint, now as we go remote, you know, some of the trade offs are now the world is your oyster when it comes to talent is. Are you finding that other cities in the southeast are kind of following the lead of Atlanta? And maybe, you know, the Carolinas in terms of becoming this kind of tech hotbed in terms of finding talent that are kind of OK with moving down here and living here, where the cost of living is may be better than it would be in, you know, obviously San Francisco or Boston or somewhere like that. But now you have the world, so then you know, you can live in Wichita and work here in Atlanta now. So how do you kind of see the southeast as a as a whole

Matt Paige: [00:10:06] Like the southeast is a great spot to be. You mentioned cost of living and all of that, but yeah, it’s just this remote environment that we’re in is completely changed everything. And I think we’ve proven that we can do it. You know, we almost needed the push to get us there, but leveraging all kinds of tools like Miro and other collaboration tools that we leverage just making it easy to collaborate with our customers. But it’s it’s definitely changed. The game in the talent market is it’s hot right now. There’s a huge it’s almost like an arms race for talent. And the key thing is making sure that you’re you’re retaining your your core people, right, that you’re providing a great experience for your employees. And we do that through our culture that we really promote and really try to live by, by sharing stories about how we promote it, about living by it every day. But that’s a big piece. You know, the talent market is very hot right now, especially Atlanta, and I think it’s only going to continue to grow in that way.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:13] And that’s why it’s so important to have kind of the ecosystem we have that takes a person from the university into these growing businesses. And there’s a lot of density. So if something, if they move to a startup that doesn’t work, there’s a place for them to land. They don’t have to move.

Matt Paige: [00:11:30] Oh yeah, definitely. And we’ve the university system here is just great. Go dogs, by the way, and our founders actually at University of Georgia grad and our CTOs at Georgia Tech grad. So it’s kind of the battle there. But we’ve also started some internship programs just with local universities here. But there’s just such a hotbed of talent and so much opportunity here in the southeast and especially in Atlanta.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:57] So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

Matt Paige: [00:12:01] Yes. Just really excited to get to talk to you today. I’m just helping, you know, talk about how we how we solve problems for our customers, the type of things we do and just really excited about serving our customers and our clients really kind of an outcomes focused company. That’s where we like to start with our customers is what outcomes do they want to achieve? It’s not just about how much velocity you have in a sprint, it’s what business goals are we driving? We’re going to make sure we’re building solutions that are usable, feasible and viable for our customers and their business

Lee Kantor: [00:12:41] And that it’ll help them get. Like you said, the outcome they desire, not something that they thought they wanted that that it may not achieve that. You know, a lot of times people have ideas, but you know, when you start vetting them, it may not be the right thing that they should be working on. And to have a trusted partner like hatch works kind of help them through that to get that outcome that they really, really want. Not the one they think they want. That’s that’s huge.

Matt Paige: [00:13:07] And that’s the biggest thing. We start with the problem in mind, not necessarily the solution. We put a lot of focus in the discovery and strategic side of it and the design for that very reason, right? We don’t want to build a solution in the customer, come back and say, Well, that’s that’s not solving my problem or there’s another problem I didn’t even know I had or we want to get in front of that up front before you’re actually developing any form of software. So doing that through prototypes, you know, clickable prototypes, design, discovery workshops and sessions. So that’s a huge part of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:43] Yeah, that old saying measure twice cut once it applies to software as well.

Matt Paige: [00:13:47] Oh yeah, most definitely. Yeah, that’s right.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:50] Now, if somebody wants to learn more about your offerings, what you can do for them and or if the talent and looking for a place to land, what is the website?

Matt Paige: [00:14:01] Yeah, that’s QCOM is the website. And yeah, from both sides. Whether you’re have a need in your customer or you’re a great engineer, we’re always looking to expand our team. We actually have several open roles on the engineering side, the product side of things. So definitely check that out as well. See, that’s where you can find us.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:22] Good stuff, Matt. Thank you so much for sharing your story today, man.

Matt Paige: [00:14:25] Thanks. I appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:26] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see all next time on Atlanta Business Radio.