2016 Recap: Monterail in Deloitte Technology Fast 50 in Central Europe

Obviously, January is a month for setting new goals and making big plans for the following year. At Monterail, it’s also time for retrospections and summaries. We’re looking closer at last year’s goals, challenges, successes and failures, trying to find some conclusions as well as lessons for upcoming months. You know the concept.

Here, we outline the most significant changes, updates, and news from Monterail’s life. Hope you enjoy it!

1. We were recognized by Deloitte as one of the fastest growing tech companies in Central Europe!

This one was really exciting for us. Monterail recorded 556% revenue growth over the past four years (2012-2015) and so was included in 2016 Technology Fast 50 ranking. It is the first time we were mentioned in this very ranking, and we couldn’t be happier!

There is no silver bullet to achieve such numbers, of course. We’d say it was the result of aligning the right people with the right technology, in the right place. Our success is not represented by the number of registered users. We are the software development company, and our only asset is our team.

The last few years provided instant growth for us: our team now has 66 employees (starting with 24 people on board in 2012). We moved to a beautiful (and smart) office in the heart of Wroclaw. We started collaboration with new startups and businesses. Therefore, we had to establish a business development team, as it was no longer a one-man job… Ok, let’s not spoil the next few points.

2. We do web AND mobile applications now.

It felt just natural. The great thing about the Monterail team is that almost everything we do starts from an idea of one. Or a few. In this case, it turned out that our people have some solid experience in building apps for mobile. It made perfect sense to add mobile development to our services, as, you know, we are a software company. And some of our customers were thrilled to have a mobile app built by the people they already know.

We added Ionic and React Native to our stack to build smart apps for multiple platforms.

Fun fact: The first mobile app we’d done at Monterail was announced as a winner of 2016 Atlanta Mobile Awards in B2B/enterprise category. The application is Cooleaf, and you can find in App Store and Google Play. It took us 6 weeks to make it from zero to hero. Once again, 6 weeks to build an award-winning app for Android and iOS.

3. We have established an IoT development team.

It started with building our own smart office system, then we published a few IoT blog posts that gained some decent recognition within the IoT community. In one of them, we explain how we use IoT to craft our own beer - Monterale. I mean, how cool is that?!

All of these things combined brought us some new partnership opportunities. Some of them really crossed the lines of our imagination! Sorry, we cannot share more details with you right now, but we will definitely keep you informed on our blog. 

4. Our team has grown!

We’re into investing in the people we currently have within our organization. At the same time, we’re constantly looking for new talents - perfect fits to join our troop. Our employee number growth is not exponential as we focus on hiring the best people, and making it a natural process when new team members show up.

In 2016, after a 6-year presence on the market, we hired our first marketing specialist (!), and our first HR person (!!). Additionally, we’ve got 27 new members of the development team, who are great assets to our Frontend and Backend depts.

It turned out, our working space is getting… cozier… Faster than we assumed ;) And it’s awesome to have new Monterailians!

5. We’ve got a marketing team now.

After 6 years, it turns out that it’s difficult to expand the company further with no professional marketing background… We’ve got a tech-savvy team with lots of marketing feelings and initiatives, but it had been difficult to establish effective processes around that. It was just about time to find someone who will make it happen.

As you may know from our recent blog post, it took us a while to find a marketing person to join our team. That was an interesting lesson! We’ve got currently 2 marketing experts on board, and who knows what the future will bring ;)

6. Our JavaScript stack - updated!

The tech industry is a specific one. It’s extremely dynamic and so it’s important to stay up-to-date with the “latest and greatest” technologies. The fact is, the JavaScript landscape has changed significantly, and it was high time to rethink our stack. We’ve been doing SPAs (Single-page applications) since 2011. Using Angular for those purposes since 2013. Dark times, to be honest.

We decided to hold an open discussion with the team, consider pros and cons of frameworks available on the market. We fell for React, Angular 2 and Vue.js. It actually turned out we’ve got some real Vue.js evangelists. More on that in the next point...

7. VueConf idea was born.

If you’re into Vue.js, you probably know the news. We decided to organize first official worldwide conference focused on this very technology - VueConf!

This is something new to us and very exciting. Especially that we’re supported by Evan You (the creator of Vue.js) himself! We already have some amazing speakers onboard from companies such as GitLab and Sainsbury's.

If you’d like to stay updated with the list of speakers and be the first to book your ticket, subscribe to Vue.js Newsletter. Yes, it’s our team behind this one ;)

We’re starting tickets sales in February - stay tuned!

8. Our gaming room was officially opened.

We know, it’s not SUCH a big deal. I mean, for our team it kinda is, as this is the reason some of us stay in the office after hours playing life-and-death foosball games. There is a very serious scoring board as well. We’ve also got some snooker fans, and, of course, there are video games.

Some Monterailians play football offline too. Crazy, I know. Last year we established our own team - KS Monterail, and joined an amateur league in Wroclaw. The season has just started, and we’re looking forward to winning our first game in the history of KS Monterail. Let’s say that for now we’re on a cold streak… But we’re getting there!

2017 will be INTENSE

We have some very ambitious plans for 2017 and we just can’t wait to tell you a bit more of the story… This is what you may expect from Monterail in upcoming months:

• More IoT! Projects, case studies and guides. Just wait for it.
• Great design and redesign projects from our designers.
• VueConf - first official Vue.js conference held in Wroclaw.
• More blog content from our experts!
• New case studies!

...and a lot more. We really hope you will be with us this year!

All the best from the Monterail Team for 2017!

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