For the last two years a small team of us has been very quiet. That was deliberate.
Some of you will know us from Codeweavers. Over 20 years we built Codeweavers from the tech department of a finance broker into a business whose products were used by much of the industry, working with retailers and lenders across the UK and Europe. It was the best job I've had, and the thing I'm proudest of isn't the software. It’s the people I worked with, both at Codeweavers and at the retailers, lenders and OEMs who trusted us with their customers.
After we sold Codeweavers, I took some time out. I spent it with my family, caught up on chores and finally got round to personal projects I’d put off for years. But it also gave me time to think, and it confirmed something I’d always suspected: I love working. More than that, I missed the people I’d worked with at Codeweavers. So I picked up the phone to see whether any of them felt the same way.
Unfinished business
Over all those years, one conversation came up again and again, in showrooms, at events and over a coffee.
It usually went like this: a retailer would show me how a single deal actually gets done. One system for stock. Another for customers. A spreadsheet for part exchange. A separate portal for finance. Paperwork for compliance. The same details typed in three or four times, by people who would much rather be talking to the customer in front of them.
Every one of those systems did its own job. Nobody had joined them up.
I remember Shaun, our Sales Director at Codeweavers, spending days with one retailer mapping out their processes. When he reported back, he’d found they had to touch 37 different systems to complete a single deal.
Why we started again
Once we started talking, we kept coming back to that conversation. The technology to fix it had been around for years. What was missing was someone willing to start from a blank page, armed with everything we’d learned the hard way.
So we got the old team back together. Craig Judson leads product and technology, Ben Gooding and Will Young lead our front-end and back-end development, and Tom Wollert joined them as a senior developer. And we started building.
What Twilltac is
Twilltac is about connections. The systems and data that automotive businesses rely on have grown up in silos, each doing its own job and few of them talking to each other. Twilltac's goal is to make it easy to join them up, so information flows between them instead of being typed in again and again.
Twilltac is for everyone in the automotive space, not just one part of it. It isn’t about replacing the systems people already rely on. It works alongside them. Businesses can plug in the pieces they need, such as our compliance product, and connect them to what they already have. The aim is simple: less re-keying, fewer gaps, and a clearer picture of how the business is doing.
One of my favourite things about Twilltac is that I can set up something as complex as our Finance Renewal solution in minutes, not days or weeks, and I’m not a technical person. For me, that shows better than anything how much simpler connecting systems across the industry can be.
Why we kept quiet
We could have started shouting about this two years ago. We chose not to. The industry has heard plenty of promises, and we didn't want to add to them. We wanted to build it properly, and only talk about it once there was something real to show.
We have been working with lenders, retailers and software partners who have helped us shape it, and I'm hugely grateful to them.
What happens next
Over the next few weeks we'll be sharing more here and on LinkedIn: the problems we set out to solve, a proper look at the product, and the people and partners we're working with.
If any of this sounds familiar, I'd genuinely like to hear from you. That goes double if we've worked together before. Whether you want to see a demo, tell us we've got something wrong, or just catch up, reach out to me on LinkedIn or give me a call. I still have the same phone number.
It's great to be back.
Roland Schaack Twilltac