A word with Matt Rissell, founder of TSheets

Matt Rissell is a longtime entrepreneur and the CEO of TSheets, an employee time-tracking system that he developed with a friend a decade ago and has turned into a company that employs 45 people in Eagle and creates the top-rated app in Intuit’s Quickbooks app store.

TSheets grew out of a problem that Rissell noticed as the owner of Idaho’s four Cartridge World stores in 2005. As employees filled out their own timesheets and submitted them, he saw that even the most honest among them invariably added extra time to their timesheets, usually in 15-minute increments.

After searching unsuccessfully for an automated timekeeping system, Rissell asked a friend who was working at Hewlett Packard, Brandon Zehm, if he could create one. Zehm did. The new system was basic, Rissell says now, but his accountant loved it, and TSheets was born.

Rissell, who grew up in Grand Junction, Colo., is also past chairman of the Idaho Technology Council’s software alliance, and he wants to help other technology businesses in Idaho flourish. Idaho Business Review spent some time with Rissell learning about TSheets and what Boise’s tech environment needs to thrive. The interview has been edited for length and content.

Why did you start TSheets in Boise?

When I graduated from Mesa University in Grand Junction in 1999, Boise was the fastest-growing city in the country. There were five Fortune 500 companies with headquarters here in Boise. Also, I love the mountains, and I didn’t want to move to Denver. There are way too many people there.

When did you realize that with TSheets you had a product you could sell?

I had never intended for this software to be a company or product, but my bookkeeper was star-struck with it. She said, ‘Can you sell this?’ I called Brandon and asked him, ‘Can we sell this?’ He said, ‘Oh yeah,’ and that’s how TSheets got started.

I was very busy with Cartridge World, he was busy with his job, so I funded it, he did the tech work in the background, and we packaged up the basic version and tried to sell it. We picked up a couple of hundred Cartridge World stores right off the bat. It was 10 or 20 bucks a month for as many employees as you wanted. Then, I sold Cartridge World in 2007, and in the beginning of 2008 we raised a modest amount of capital, and started building TSheets full-time.

Meanwhile, you were working with the Idaho Technology Council?

I was chairman of the Idaho Technology Council’s Software Alliance. Our mission was to increase the number and quality of software companies and developers and engineers in Idaho, because I am a big believer that the future of Boise is going to be tech. One of the futures.

So where is Boise as a software town?

We’re not even on the radar yet, but I will say it’s an emerging market. Utah has made huge gains, and they’re ahead of us, specifically in tech and the amount of money invested in local universities. But Boise State University and (President) Bob Kustra are making big investments into the computer science program at Boise State.

Boise has a phenomenal quality of life, and it’s got the right foundation for an extraordinary tech community. You have a few successful companies like HP and Micron where a lot of the executives are starting to stay locally and get involved locally. There are some pillars in the tech community making a huge difference, like Rich Raimondi, George Mulhern, and Von Hansen, who is now the vice- chairman of the ITC. They’re staying, they’re investing, and if we can continue to get more people to do that, we’ve got the right ingredients.

What is the Idaho Technology Council doing to promote Idaho tech?

ITC has been very inclusive of all organizations; they try to play to eastern Idaho, the agri-tech sector, and southern Idaho. ITC President Jay Larsen is doing an excellent job and is making a huge difference.

They’ve created a single voice for the community. Now there seems to be a center to the tech community, where before it was a little fragmented.

What can the ITC do to make the economy stronger?

It’s hard to sell locally if you’re a tech company in Idaho; there are local companies who don’t want to buy an Idaho tech product. There are also some companies that do, like Idaho Athletic Club; they support local business anytime they can. But we have thousands of companies in 47 countries and we don’t even try to sell locally. A lot of times, people will sign up and become a customer, and then say, ‘I can’t believe you’re in Eagle, Idaho.’

Why would there be a bias against Boise?

When it comes to tech, I can’t answer that. We tried to sell locally; that was go-to-market strategy failure No. 2.

What was No. 1?

Our first go-to-market failure was in 2008 when we launched. We took the advice of a marketing company that we had no business taking their advice, which was, we think we can make time-tracking sexy and viral by making it super-cheap. That launch failed miserably. And then go-to-market failure No. 3 was, I went back to my roots and said, ‘Look, let’s forget all that, I’m going to get a stable full of thoroughbred sales people, give them calling lists, and have them dial for dollars.’ We sold, but it wasn’t effective enough that there could ever be a return, and we started running out of money.

How did you recover?

Brandon and I were at a breaking point. We lay on the grass, stared at the sky, and said, ‘What do we do? Do we even do time-tracking? Do we have a future?’ We were down to like five employees, and some of them were taking part-time jobs so we could make payroll. So we slept on that, came back in the next morning, and we both still believed. And that has become a theme for everything we do. And now we’re growing at over 150 percent every year, and I have VCs all over the world contacting me trying to invest in our company.

How can Boise entrepreneurs like you help others succeed?

Bridging the gap to capital is one way. ITC events are starting to get national attention; the Develop Idaho Hall of Fame had a bunch of investment bankers come in. Mentoring is another big one. And keeping the pillars in the community as they exit from the big companies, keeping them involved.

Good ideas with good leaders and entrepreneurs get funded whether you’re in Boise or Madison, Wisc. or Silicon Valley. Sometimes if you’re in those big tech communities, the access to capital is easier, but that said, if you’re a good entrepreneur, you can find money.