Sometime in late 2024 — before Moody’s acquired Numerated — one of my team members asked if I could give them a mid-year review. Totally fair request. I care a lot about feedback, personal growth, and making sure my team feels seen and supported.
The problem?
We didn’t have an HR system. Not even close.
So I did what most startup managers do — spun up a messy Google Form, chased down peers and cross-functional partners for their input, manually pulled it all into a Google Doc, and tried to synthesize something meaningful.
It worked. Kind of. But I remember thinking:
Why is this so hard?
The Problem
Most startups don’t have the budget or bandwidth for a bloated HR system. Even the companies that do often end up with tools that are confusing, overbuilt, and painful to use.
As a result, feedback either doesn’t happen — or when it does, it’s rushed and surface-level.
And that’s a shame, because:
- Giving feedback shouldn’t be hard.
- It’s one of the most powerful ways to help someone grow.
- Employees value it deeply when it’s meaningful.
I wanted to make it easy to create a one-off review system that actually worked for startups and small teams.
What’s Broken Today
Here’s what I see over and over again in smaller companies:
- No clear starting point
- Confusion between qualitative vs. quantitative review formats
- No structured peer feedback
- Zero synthesis — just a pile of raw text
- Too much time spent for too little value
And all of that creates friction. People procrastinate. Managers avoid it. And team members miss out on the kind of feedback that could help them level up.
What Makes Teemzo Different
Teemzo is built around simplicity and clarity.
We ask just three straightforward questions:
- What does this person do well?
- What can they improve upon?
- Any other feedback?
When you collect those answers from 3–5 peers, cross-functional collaborators, and the employee themselves, you get incredibly valuable insights.
Then, using AI, we aggregate that feedback into a clean, structured summary that the manager can:
- Edit freely
- Use as-is
- Or completely ignore and write their own
It’s fast. It’s focused. And most importantly, it’s useful.
What Teemzo Looks Like Today
Here’s how it works:
- You invite an employee and their manager to the platform.
- The employee completes a quick self-review.
- They can invite peers to give input.
- The manager reviews all feedback, adds their own comments, and clicks a button to generate an AI-powered summary.
- They edit (or skip editing) and submit the final review.
And that’s it. The review gets saved in the system for future reference. No mess. No endless Google Docs. No HR bloat.
Who It’s For
Teemzo is built for:
- Startups and small businesses
- Teams that want to give meaningful, growth-oriented feedback
- Leaders who care about their people but don’t want to spend $10k+ on an enterprise HR tool
If that sounds like you, this might be what you’ve been looking for.
What It Means to Me
I’ve been building MVPs for 15+ years — some shipped, some didn’t. Teemzo is the first one that feels like it directly helps people grow.
As someone who’s passionate about feedback, growth mindset, and continuous learning, launching something that makes real feedback easier… it’s a win for me. And hopefully a win for a lot of teams out there too.
We’re live. It’s simple. It works. And it’s just the beginning.
If you’re curious or want to try it for your team, reach out or give it a spin.