I’m James Luffman, former founder of Solcast, husband of TeamHive founder Kimberly Luffman, and Executive Director at TeamHive where I focus on product and technology. My professional life started in meteorology and data science – building models, coding algorithms, and then crossing over into executive roles in the weather industry. Then, Solcast began as one of those “surely this is possible if I just hack on it a bit longer” prototypes: using satellite data and algorithms to track and predict solar irradiance and power production. That prototype evolved into the Solcast API, then into a business with real customers, then a global solar data infrastructure used by grid operators, utilities, developers and software systems worldwide. We grew the team, scaled the platform, and eventually took Solcast all the way through to a successful exit.
Partnering Kimberly on TeamHive from idea to business
I actually first heard the seeds of what would become TeamHive on date nights with Kimberly. Over the 12 years since she started Brave Insights, a common theme over dinner has been this question: how could she use technology and science to scale her impact with leaders, organisations, and especially teams, far beyond what she could do one workshop or coaching engagement at a time? She had developed and refined a powerful way of working with teams inside Brave Insights with real customers, and then validated it with researchers at the University of Newcastle. My role has been to help take that intellectual and practical work and help encode it into a product – so that teams and organisations anywhere in the world can access it, not just the ones lucky enough to work with her in person. On a personal note, it's great to be supporting and partnering Kimberly on another family venture, especially since she gave me the prod to take Solcast from prototype to business – and eventually the courage to quit a senior job to go do a startup thing in the front room of the house while we had two very young children!
The magic and tragedy of teams
The idea of the magic of effective teams and the tragedy of ineffective teams is not abstract for me; it’s personal. Twice in my career I’ve been lucky enough to be part of truly exceptional teams: once at Weatherzone around 2008–2010, and then at Solcast around 2018–2023. A few times I've also been in ineffective teams. The difference in terms of productivity, business value creation (and vibes) is easily 5-10x. Looking back, I found myself wondering: even a 2–3x on the effectiveness of teams globally, the potential is huge. At the same time, I was watching Kimberly’s team coaching work with executive teams and boards – seeing how much leverage there was in helping a single team shift how it functions. When she started using the first prototypes of TeamHive to measure how teams were actually working, and then using that data in team coaching, what she already understood became clear to me. A well‑designed, research backed team diagnostic could not only supercharge coaching; it could allow teams to understand and develop themselves, with or without a consultant in the room.
Why I care deeply about the best data
TeamHive is actually the fourth differentiated data product I’ve had a hand in creating. The first was Opticast at Weatherzone – a high‑resolution weather forecasting system that, more than 15 years on, is still quietly powering key parts of the Australian economy with granular, accurate weather data. The second was Solcast itself, which today underpins electricity systems around the world with satellite‑derived solar irradiance and power data. The third was a Solcast side project we called Cumulus (others call it Oracle), which tracked rain globally outside standard radar coverage every five minutes using satellite data. The common thread in all of these was this: there were already thousands of weather apps and websites. What interested me was building a truly unique, upstream data asset – something primary that others could plug into to solve a wide variety of problems. When I looked over Kimberly’s shoulder at what she was creating with TeamHive, I recognised the same pattern in a different domain. There were thousands of consultants and dozens of survey providers – but mostly focused on leadership, culture, or engagement, not on teams as the fundamental unit of performance. The few tools that tried to measure teams tended to lack scale, lacked rigorous research backing, or weren’t really aligned with the leading evidence on team effectiveness and high‑performing teams. TeamHive, with the PLUS model (Purpose, Learning, Unity, Shared Leadership) and the work with the University of Newcastle, was a chance to build a differentiated, research‑grounded “team data” asset that could stand alongside those earlier weather and solar platforms.
Let the people have their data
At Solcast, one of the keys to the model was this principle: anyone, anywhere, should be able to use our data and tools easily – for free at small scale – in their own work, side project, or hobby. At the very same time, the largest enterprise customers in the world needed to be able to use that exact same system at massive scale. We worked hard to avoid endless customisation so that we could focus on improving the core asset, and everyone benefited from those improvements. The philosophy of TeamHive is very similar. Whilst the TeamHive platform has been built with powerful and intricate features designed to enable Consultants and Enterprises to help manage many teams, it also operates very simply and at reasonable cost for single teams and smaller organisations.
And, importantly, there is a free version, which means any leader or team member, in any organisation, anywhere, can try TeamHive for themselves, totally free. To get a view on how their team is performing and functioning. It takes about ten minutes, and you can try it right now if you like, here:
