We’re on our fourth Chartteam Spotlight y’all and it’s about time I show you how the product-side of Chartbeat lives. After all, what’s a tech startup without the various individuals who make our products all that they can be?

Meet Andrew Oddo, a member of the Chartcorps – Chartbeat’s front-line and your go-to source for educational support about our products. Andrew comes from a rather untraditional background. Many years ago, he once thought he’d become a musician, but he put those dreams aside to study Marketing and Finance at Boston College. He still keeps the music alive by stashing a guitar at the office for those late night office jams. Andrew spent a couple years in the wonderful world of finance before jumping into the startup pool with Chartbeat.

What cool things are you working on these days?

There’s a huge education initiative at Chartbeat and within Chartcorps right now, as we look to roll out the next version of Chartbeat Publishing.  We’re trying to create the right materials to show our clients how to get the most out of this fiery thing!  As part of that, our team has broken down the publishing product function-by-function to understand how and why people are using Chartbeat the way they are, and how we can educate our customers so they can use it even more effectively.  It’s been a cool way for me to understand the narrative of Chartbeat’s story with our users in mind: how did the product come to be, and where is it going?

What challenges are you facing as we continue to grow?

My biggest challenge is figuring out how to capture all the knowledge from the wise men who came before me at Chartbeat, and how to leave behind time capsules of knowledge for those who will need to learn about our products in the future (as clients or as Chartteam members).

Sometimes it feels like we’re moving just as fast as the data pours in, and it becomes a race against the very thing we created.  How do we learn more so that we can serve our clients needs on a better level?  How do we adequately take their feedback and channel it to all of our sharp engineers, designers, data scientists, and product owners so that they can create a better product for our clients’ needs?  It’s a race against the pings themselves!

What have you learned working here?

How the rubber meets the road, and where I can be a part of that.  I think we’ve all learned this one way or another, but the Chartcorps is in a funny position because we have our hands in many parts of the product, and certainly the client support side of things as well.  When you’re put in a situation like this, sometimes your biggest responsibility is to simply make sure the car keeps moving forward – even if it’s not quite within your “title” (whatever that is these days?!) – to do what you need to do to make that happen.  This position has taught me quite a bit about organizational structure and how efficient and awesome teams are built.  It’s also taught me about what it means to own many little responsibilities, to help keep things going forward.

What do you think one of the best Chartbeat perks are?

The culture of unlimited learning really is the best perk to me.  It’s really an awesome thing to be a part of. There are a ton of talented people here, many of whom have specialized skills that make them, to me, the best at what they do out of anyone I know.  And when they take time off from being great at what they do, they’re willing to teach someone else a little bit of their talents…they don’t have to…they just do.  We have group coding classes, “Startbeat” meetings where we learn about how startups work, guest speakers, lunch n’ learns, learning over beers, learning about beers, learning to make beers, learning to learn.  It’s a lot of learning, a lot of fun.

So you see, we’re a hardworkin’ crew here at Chartbeat and our varied backgrounds power this startup every single day. If you’re intrigued, keep an eye on our Jobs page for forthcoming opportunities to join the Chartteam.