Better late than ever! after a nice end of the year and the start of a very promising one we got to write down the review on 2019 that we wanted to share.
To begin with we must say that it was an incredible year, intense, full of projects, challenges, learning experiences and some great new connections.
At a professional level we started the year on a very great note, we managed to close on some pretty interesting projects and meet a new international client. This new customer is a startup based in Los Angeles, California. With this project we saw great growth potential. We enlarged our pool of knowledge gaining experience in new technologies, and improving our skills in those that we were used to work with. Such as ReactJS and Python.
On top of this client from California, we manage to sign with other based in Texas and Miami. These clients made us grow as a company, increasing our numbers and team mates. As a result, we increased the type of skills that we have to offer and the ability to provide a larger variety for staff augmentation.
Having had international clients for some time now, we believe it is important to visit them. We have been traveling to do so at least four times a year for more than 4 years. We believe that even though technology allows us to be connected it was not the same, we felt like we needed to build a more human connection. Therefore we thought about visiting them to grab a coffee and chat. Over the years we substantiate traveling across the world to establish trustworthy and tangible relationship that we are always seeking with our clients. This has resulted in long term relationships that have lasted independently of the longevity of the project that brought us together.
As for the company itself we went under some deep makeover. We are always thinking and rethinking what we want, how we want to be seen and especially how each other wants to grow and improve.
The makeover began by rethinking our image, we thought our logo seemed old and that we needed something modern that we could connect more. (soon we will have a blog post on that process). The redesign was a whole challenge we have had that logo for what feels like forever. We knew that we wanted to change but we didn’t know how much we wanted to change. Changes are always, always difficult, and here we all take part in them.
We decided that we were going to keep the colors, but we wanted a whole different image (logo, website and so on).
After we agreed on a new logo , we of course had to re-desig the website. This brought us to rethink everything!! our mission, our vision, how we wanted to display what we do and so on.
After many brainstorming sessions, lots of sketching up ideas and writing down some concepts, we all agreed that we wanted a clean and simple image. That we felt was representative of us as a team. We wanted to show more of what we do and how we do it.
In order to showcase all those changes we realized that we had to bring our social media back to life. In all honesty he had abandoned it for some time. As we write this we are creating a calendar and some post ideas to re organize and rethink the way we communicate.
On the other hand besides all those strictly professional changes and improvements we also wanted to strengthen our internal communication and connections. We all manage to grow professionally and personally. You may be wondering how we did it or, how do I know that this happened.
2019 was a good year, personally and I think for everyone at Cavepot. How do I know? well…. order to know what everyone was up to an specially how everyone was feeling, we began to host some after-office events and some social gatherings.
The truth is that since we grew as a company the communication system that we have had started to be ineffective. Some information was getting lost in the process and it just was not working for us. We had identified some challenges. For example discussing salaries, something that no one wanted to be responsible for but that we all cared deeply about , of course. Since we are a horizontal company no one is really responsible for it, it’s more like we all are. But in order to all be on the same page we needed to have at least one meeting a month where everyone would be at the main office. In those meetings we would talk about those things that no one wanted to talk about and those things that we all did. This meetings ended up being amazing, some of the best things we have done, have come out of them.
We managed to not only discuss our salaries, but also we decided what they were going to be. This was based on what we each thought we should earn, in relationship to our capabilities, skills, etc. It was a very interesting way to innovate and to raise everyone’s self trust and confidence. I mean… It is quite amazing to decide how much money you will be earning based on your own effort and set of skills. We are so happy with the way it turned out to be that we wrote a post about the whole process. check it out.
Nowadays I think we can all say that we are proud to be a member of this big team that not only cares about work, but how you feel and what you want to do with your life. We are proud of what we have done with the company and all the projects and ideas that we have done. Now we can say that we are ready for this 2020, that seems to be coming loaded with new projects and challenges. All the integrants of Cavepot wants to move in the same direction, with the same intentions, having monthly check up meetings, more afters, more trips and more clients!. Oh and also of course more chill out and after-office experiences to strengthen our relationships and the relationships with those we love, because of course these activities include our families and partners.
Have a happy beginning of the year, and stay tuned for more!
Thanks for reading us.
