European consultant matchmaker Comatch lands in US
European consultant matchmaker Comatch has landed in the United States. From its New York City office, the firm aims to build a presence in the world's largest management consulting market.
Similar to how the internet has reforged dating and modern romance, connected platforms are altering the way businesses find the consultant of their dreams. Whereas previously the widget factory owner would flip through his Rolodex for the phone number of a consulting firm he had previously used, advances in technology now allow for consultants with the exact skillset needed for a project to get recruited for a job, cutting out the expensive consulting firm middleman. Businesses get the skillset they need at lower cost, the contract consultant usually is paid more than they would at a firm, and the tech platform gets a cut for making everything come together.
Comatch is currently one of the leading consultant matchmaking companies on the scene. Founded in Berlin in 2015 by former McKinsey consultants Christoph Hardt and Jan Schächtele, Comatch combines innovative technology with a self-described “revolutionary approach to vetting, categorizing, and assembling top-tier talent.” The firm has rapidly spread from its headquarters in Berlin, with additional offices in Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna, Dubai, Copenhagen, Zurich, and London. This heady growth saw Comatch named one of Germany’s top 10 fastest-growing digital startups in its third year in business.
The compnay has now set its sights on the voluminous opportunities of the US. The country has a large freelance workforce, of which a large portion traffics in advisory work, providing companies like Comatch with plenty of human capital for its expanding matchmaking empires.
Though the company has already been accepting client work in the US, the new physical office space gives Comatch an ideal access point to service clients while helping increase its US-based pool of consulting talent. The firm currently has a global pool of 7,500 multidisciplinary consultants, serving a wide range of corporations, consultancies, startups, and SMEs.
“The team and I are really excited about the start of the US office,” Sven Merten, Comatch’s US director and head of the company’s US. efforts, said. “The move has been well calculated and follows our pattern of systematic expansion across Europe. We have been focused on developing our US business for most of 2018 to make sure that the opportunity is real, before we went ahead and opened a physical presence.”
The matching firm is entering a US market with some strong incumbents, among them Catalant, Upwork, and Talmix. “There are a number of direct, as well as indirect competitors, and they have done a great job to open clients' minds to the idea of new ways to access expertise, beyond the traditional channels,” Merten said. “That said, there is still enormous potential for improvement across the entire market and there are still entire client groups that have not even started to rethink their approach to expertise access - yet, they will have to do exactly that, if they want to stay competitive.”
Comatch expects to find success stateside because of its excellent talent pool, and swift and accurate matching technology, setting the company apart from the pack. “By using proprietary algorithms alongside our highly trained consultant-relation teams, we match the ideal expert to a client’s unique needs within an unprecedented 48 hours. In turn, this eases the burden on our clients as they can quickly review a mere handful of the most qualified consultants to choose from,” Merten said.
