Chattanooga-based digital sales software provider grows with new funding, keeps its Tennessee roots
Summary
The dream of building what is now one of Chattanoogas fastest-growing software companies began more than a decade and a half ago when Travis Truett, Jared Houghton and Brian Trautschold were business students at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Despite some initial success and purchase offers, the trio realized they could use their growing expertise with analytical software technology to build an even more useful and fun information system to better measure and reward sales workers at different companies. With the initial backing of the Lamp Post Group in Chattanooga, the firm quickly grew to a dozen employees when the trio was selected to participate in the highly coveted Y Combinator, a small business accelerator program in San Francisco in 2014. Like fantasy football leagues, the Ambition gamification software looks at the performance of different sales teams across an array of metrics within the company, allowing them to compete for limited "seasons," with rewards for the winners. Ted Alling, a former CEO of Access America and partner in Lamp Post Group who was worked with Ambition since its start, said the company "is a huge win for the Chattanooga startup ecosystem.