Business

The 2019 year summary

Dear Appuniters,

2019 was quite a year! It's the first time I write such a summary, but as the CEO, I know that change is the only constant. The past year was a year of transition in mindset.

It was a tough time but we learned that experiment is a way to improve, that mindset is crucial, and we want to work on it. We shifted to unknowns and questioned the status quo.

It was a time of rebuilding fundaments. We redefined our vision and mission. We have sought core values. We decided to go with meritocracy as a way to make decisions.

I have had the privilege to work with the most passionate and intelligent people I have ever met. Without you, nothing that I have just mentioned couldn’t be possible. Thank you for the many conversations we had!

What we achieved in 2019:

  • We have started a leadership program. We learned that leadership has many faces and the most important one is serving people,
  • Our approach to leadership is to holistically support team members in their growth. There is a lot to improve, but each journey starts with a single step,
  • Started working with new recognized clients (e.g. Allegro, CafeX), increased teams for existing clients (Helium Health, Zumba),
  • We continued investing in knowledge sharing, not only internally, but also outside the Appunite; we resurrected the iOS meetup where we invite well-known personalities from the world of iOS/Swift and we strenghten our brand as an Elixir development team in the region,
  • Our team grew by 20 new Appuniters, it's a 25% increase,
  • We learned that it's important to look for people with the same values when recruiting,
  • We extended our technical stack by investing in Flutter platform, and we can boast of projects made in this technology,
  • We opened a new role - marketing/growth hacking,
  • We get to know how marketing should work with people and sales, which isn't so obvious. Finding the right processes took us a while. We aren't there yet but we still striving to get better,
  • You need to work hard to find a proper purpose for a team, it's pretty easy to misalign and focus on wrong things when you do work in a dynamic environment. Establishing purpose is important, ensuring that everybody understands that is even more,
  • We built up a lot of knowledge on agile, we started to look at what is the right value for consumers. That redefined a way of work with most of our customers and helped us feel more motivated and engaged,
  • We have much more experience in how to look at complex systems and how not to make them chaotic! We learned that small improvements are the key to complex systems. We know that elements in the system are dependent on each other, and the system itself,
  • We decided to make the office bigger and more comfortable. It was not a management decision, but we decided in a meritocratic way on what we should choose, and what to do next,
  • We continued to organize epic parties, we supported it by introducing budget for integration for teams (it supported many Jager sponsored). Boszkowo is a great place for organizing a retreat party. We finished our year with great Xmas party in Cucina!

What we have been recognized for in 2019:

  • Clutch Top B2B companies in Poland
  • Clutch Global 1000 companies
  • Diamenty Forbesa 2020

Thank you for the many conversations we had in 2019. This year feels special because of the 10th anniversary of our software development company. Looking back at what we achieved last year, it's clear to me that the sky is the limit. Whooo! I strive to learn new things with you, dear Appuniters. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do!

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