We're often asked; How did TEAMS.gg come about? Why did you start it? How did you meet? How long did it take? Who are you!? All fair questions. It's been quite the journey to get to where we are now. To get back to the beginning we have to go back 10 years...
In 2010, I was on the look out for new teammates for an upcoming local LAN event (iSeries, now known as Insomnia). The best way to find new players back then was on forums and in IRC. A few people were interested in being a part of our 'mix-team' but one of them eventually took the spot. That was, my now co-founder, Tom.
We met for the first time a few weeks later at LAN. I don't remember where we placed, but I can assure you we weren't going pro any time soon! After the tournament finished, we hung out (probably at the iSeries pub quiz) and I was introduced to one of Tom's friends... our other co-founder, Stu.
We've been close friends ever since. We played in multiple teams together, travelled the world together (for gaming events and holidays) and two of us even lived together for a few years!
Not only are we friends and gaming buddies, but between us, we have the ideal combination of skills. One designer, one frontend developer & one backend developer. Together we could build anything, it was just a case of finding something that we were all passionate about. Passionate enough that we would dedicate our spare time and spend over a year creating it.
People are doing WHAT in the comments!?
Between 2012-2014 I made YouTube videos with my friends about esports and gaming events. We travelled around (off our own back) and interviewed players and talent on various subjects.
Years later, in 2018, I checked in on our channel and found that one video had over 150,000 more views than the rest. (That was A LOT of views for us, we were no Pewdiepie...)
That video was called ‘How to find a CS:GO Team’. When I looked into the analytics I realised that if you Googled ‘How to find a CS:GO Team’, our video popped up on the first page. Brilliant, but not only that - The most fascinating thing was that 100s of people who had found the video, then proceeded to post comments, telling anyone who might listen, “I want to be in a team!”
Commenters would leave their age, how many hours they’d played, what skill they were, their ambitions, where they were from and finally, a link to their Steam profile so passers-by could contact and play with them.
At that moment, I contacted Stu and Tom - "There must be a better way... we need to create a way for people to find teammates!"
This was the new side-project we'd been looking for. We set to work, figuring out what would be the best experience for players like us and the millions of other players who are looking for teammates.
TEAMS.gg was born.
Now, not only are we a tight-knit group of friends and former teammates who are passionate about competitive gaming but we're also co-founders - dedicated to building quality tools for players just like us, and we couldn't be more excited.