Why this Ordway team member finds joy in problem solving and collaboration

When it comes to building a dynamic team at a burgeoning startup, D.C.-based software startup Ordway, located in the Farragut North neighborhood, is taking a hands-on, collaborative approach to create an environment that welcomes solving big problems.

Since its inception in 2018, the company has worked to find a way to solve a pain point in the subscription management and order-to-revenue industry by creating a platform that automates inefficient manual processes for invoicing, payment collection and revenue recognition. The platform is a user-friendly tool that helps its customers to understand the health of their businesses.

The two-year-old startup is gaining momentum after recently securing $10 million in Series A funding and has its sights set on doubling its staff this year. At present, the company has 29 “Ordmates” — a nickname for Ordway employees — and currently has 14 available positions it’s looking to fill with talented prospects.

For Christina Chang, director of product management at Ordway, a culture of collaboration and problem solving are the reasons she knew she found the right home at the quickly growing startup.

“It gets me excited to work on interesting problems while being able to develop and build solutions that can solve these problems,” Chang said. “We don’t shy away from having big goals and big ambitions at Ordway.”

Chang recently joined Ordway’s team with minor experience in this sector, but has leaned on her project management background to assist in making the company’s automated billing and revenue platform a force to be reckoned with. Before joining Ordway, Chang worked at another D.C.-based company where she built an ecommerce website from the ground up. Chang said her experience in working on other B2B internal tools in the inventory management space equipped her with the confidence and skills she needs in achieving her goal of making Ordway’s platform a go-to billing and revenue resource.

“We want to be a leader in our space,” she said. “There’s a lot of competitors in the space but we feel like we’re in a good position to make a difference. It’s about building the product in a way that’s user friendly, and building the right products and the right features that will really address our customers’ needs.”

Chang recently sat down with Technical.ly to share what a day looks like for her.

###

Tell us about your role as the director of product management.

In my role, I’m responsible for managing the application and the products. I identify product requirements, write out specifications and work with the engineering team to figure out timing and timelines. This role is cross-functional, so I’m constantly working with every team within the company.

A lot of the job is planning out what’s to come and creating a product roadmap and a vision for our system and platform.

There’s a lot of juggling different product areas. Currently, I’m working on reporting and integrations with third-party applications that connect with our platform. One goal I’m focusing on is making the platform’s reporting easy to use. If a client needs to see a part of their data, we work on how to make it available to them.

What does a typical work day look like for you? 

No two days are identical at Ordway, but the days always start the same. Every day we have our early morning standup meetings with the engineering team. Because many of our engineers are remote some are in D.C., some in Brazil, and some in India. Because of the time difference, we do standup meetings first thing in the morning. Everyone gives an update on what they’re working on. A good portion of my time is spent in meetings talking to people, talking to different teams, talking to clients. I get to work with every person on every team in the organization ranging from engineering, to the QA team, to the sales and client success team.

I’m always working on no fewer than two or three things at once. Prioritization and managing my time are daily challenges, but that’s natural for a company at our stage.

What is the culture like at Ordway?

It’s a fast paced, collegial, collaborative environment. Everyone here is smart, motivated and engaged in their work. Everyone is interested in solving big problems in their space.

There’s a lot of flexibility here. If there’s a certain skill or opportunity we want to explore, Ordway is very open to us doing that. There’s a lot of opportunities to wear different hats. Oftentimes, we go beyond our job descriptions to get something done.

What does the future look like for the company?

We’re growing fast already given that we’re a young company. It’s an exciting time to be at Ordway right now. We’re doing big things. We’re improving our platform every day. I’m looking forward to being on this exciting ride of being a part of the company’s growth and seeing where it will take us.

Explore jobs at Ordway