Trek10’s story is centered around being 100% focused on AWS from Day One. In 2011, Shane Fimbel (CEO) was fresh off of building a physical Data Center for AWS. Meanwhile, Andy Warzon (CTO) was blazing trails as an early AWS pioneer all the way back to 2008 as he was building a high-flying technology company, focused on used book reselling (how ironic).
Their collective experiences fostered a deep belief that “AWS was the future of enterprise IT.” Even in the early days, they sensed that the pace of innovation being pushed out by AWS was happening far faster than enterprise adoption - a powerful trend that continues today. Combining these experiences with a deep financial operator, Jim Abercrombie (President), was the last step in preparation to hatch a plan. What was the need? A next-generation service provider - a team focused not just on the theoretical advantages of the AWS, but a team of builders. Those that could get their hands dirty with the technology, operate on a 24/7 basis, grind on certification, push the envelope of AWS service integration, break things - ALL with the client-first mindset.
Trek10 has been busy ever since, turning that plan into a reality. Building a world-class team, obtaining numerous AWS competencies, and providing clients with a diversity of expertise that has allowed them to take full advantage of the AWS cloud is what has driven Trek10 to become a company loaded with leaders and industry firsts.
Trek10 has been a cash flow positive, high-growth company from its inception. As we have moved from start-up to scale-up, Trek10 has seen consistent year-on-year revenue growth ranging between 40-80%. We have achieved this by pursuing a diversified client base, long-term relationships with our clients, and keeping a global mindset, with a hometown attitude. As a rule of thumb, no one client ever represents more than 10% of Trek10’s revenue at any time.
Trek10 works with a wide range of clients—from high-growth, venture-backed startups to Fortune 200 companies across many different industries. With over hundreds of net new inquiries every year for new projects, not including requests from our current clients, we select new clients and projects carefully. It’s important to us that the value we bring will significantly exceed any of our fee structures.
High level client summary:
Trek10 client personas:
A healthy culture is a huge focus at Trek10. While culture is influenced by each and every new person we hire, it’s built on the foundation of our core values and core purpose. We believe if your core is strong then you don’t need lots of processes, procedures, and rules in place. In general, if we take care of our clients and each other, then the rest will take care of itself. Our culture is best described as open, empathetic, and fast-paced.
Our Values are integrated into the way we think and the way we operate.
At Trek10, you can expect:
As deep AWS experts, you can expect us to be opinionated about the patterns, strategies, and best practices to enable your environment. With that said, our opinions will also come with a high degree of empathy as we will work very hard to seek to understand where you are in your AWS journey. We will actively engage you and your team in identifying and building the best solution and owning projects, end-to-end. Our reputation has been built on timely delivery and a high degree of integrity and professionalism.
We are best suited to:
We don’t do the following:
At Trek10 we pride ourselves on never being satisfied with the State of the Art and continuously pushing our knowledge and expertise. From simply reading in-depth AWS White Papers, to monthly, company-wide Lunch and Learn sessions on various technical subjects and attendance at industry conferences or local meetups, we are always learning more. With our new Trek10 Launch program, we have dialed in our “growth from within” mentality. Our candidates work their way through training and come to Trek10 as AWS-certified Solutions Architects. During their internship, they are paired with a senior mentor in the company to learn from. That peer relationship carries on even after the transition into a full-time hire. Additionally, Trek10 likes to give back and engages in charitable work that leverages our skills, including conducting mock technical interviews for local students preparing to enter the workforce, and working with not for profits to better our community.
The vast majority of our team works full-time as we aim to deliver continuous and innovative solutions to our clients. However, we also recognize the importance of balancing time for our employees to continue learning, to provide thought leadership in our industry, and one of our core values, #GivingBack to our community.
We have designed the organization with a Remote First mindset. Today about 50% of our employees are based in Indiana working primarily from our offices in South Bend and Indianapolis, while the other 50% of our team lives and works remotely across the United States. We are firm believers in building Density of People with Density of Purpose. To honor this belief, we feel strongly that to build a team of world-class experts, we need to meet “talent where they are” and work to build our culture around supporting unique talents and skills whether at our headquarters or remote.
With new applications coming in daily, we’ve interviewed more than 1,500 candidates to find the Trek10 team we work with today.
As we narrow down our pool of candidates through a resume screen that includes a series of upfront questions about what their skills and experience are coming in, we advance those who pass that to our vetting process using these steps:
When hiring developers, we focus on finding people who (1) would program even if it wasn’t their job, (2) can learn and apply new, or foreign, concepts quickly under pressure, (3) have a firm grasp of computer science fundamentals and (4) have a demonstrated ability to seek to understand the client, their issues, and frame the solution with the client in mind.
Generally, this is not something we do unless it's required for an official security background clearance or other specific circumstances. With Trek10’s team of experts, you'll have interactions with many different team members before we actually begin work on your project. Delivery success is the overall goal, and we take great care in selecting a team based on the specific skills needed to achieve that. It’s our simple belief that more can be accomplished with a diverse and expansive team knowledge base.
We appreciate and value every opportunity to interact with current and prospective clients. Naturally, we need to learn about each other, you will have some questions and obviously, we will have some questions as well. Typically at the end of our time together, we will mutually decide if it makes sense to go on to the next step or not. If we determine there is a good initial fit, we can move things forward to assess the technology needs a bit deeper and provide a clear future to both parties around timing, budget clarity, vision, and direction of the engagement.
Sure thing. We believe checking references is an important part of the buying process. If needed, we would be happy to send over references after we determine that we’re a good fit for you and your project.
Yes. Usually, we like to learn about you first to see if there is a good fit and make sure we do not have any conflicts with existing client obligations, which would be extremely rare. Once the fit is determined, we will look to sign a mutual NDA (we typically use ours) but are comfortable with evaluating yours.
In most cases, we are not likely to respond to an RFP. While an RFP is certainly a good information gathering and sharing exercise, typically the process can result in a lack of overall context for the potential engagement and fail to capture the precise requirements needed to mutually align the parties involved. In our experience, requirements gathering and definition is a highly interactive process and needs a great deal of care to make sure capabilities, timing, and expectations are in great alignment. Certainly, we understand that in some cases RFPs are an absolute and we would welcome a conversation to learn more about your specific needs in the buying cycle. So, let’s chat :)
Where we are confident in our ability to fully understand the scope of a given project or through our Structured Engagements, Trek10 offers clients the ability to buy with confidence through fixed-fee arrangements.
With the exception of Trek10’s Background Materials, all materials written, developed, and produced are considered works made for hire through our Master Services Agreement, we will ensure to assign ownership of all work product and deliverables to you upon completion and payment.
Trek10’s Background Materials include those that are (1) used or developed by or for Trek10 prior to providing the services to Client, or (2) developed by or for Trek10 outside of the scope of the applicable Statement of Work including (a) all updates, modifications, improvements, enhancements and derivative works thereof; and (b) any idea, concept, technique, and know-how discovered, created, or developed by Trek10 during the performance of Services that are of general application and that are not based on or derived from Confidential Information of Client.
Absolutely. Trek10 is in growth mode and continuously landing new clients, scoping new engagements, or onboarding new clients.
