Yesterday we met with very good friends of ours, Lee and Lauren, for a long overdue catch up & lunch. Lee’s an important part of my story. He’s someone that I’ve known for nearly 20 years, have worked with practically the whole time up until recently, started a couple of successful businesses with, and perhaps most importantly is always someone that has reeeaaallly tried to ground me. Lee’s also the proud owner of one of the most talented minds that I have had the pleasure of working and growing with for so long.
Whilst we’re currently separated in our professional paths we did briefly discuss what me and Karolina are getting up to in a little more detail than most people know right now. He also mentioned another old acquaintance who had recently just successfully closed a funding round for his new business.
Being able to share more about what we’re currently doing (and just generally talk shop again) got me thinking too about what we’ve already done. Self-reflection is not something that I typically had time to do before, my life was so hectic that there was no chance to take stock of what has been achieved, what was learned, and really anything at all.
Looking a little more personally to start with, here’s some things we’re proud of and happy about:
- Karolina studied hard to join me as a Microsoft MCP;
- We’ve managed to travel a lot more and have a tonne of downtime in nature;
- I’ve learned Go, not only to write more concise code but reduce energy consumption;
- We’re offsetting all of our carbon footprint for home & travel;
- We were fortunate enough to contribute nearly £25,000 in value to charities we care about in 2022; and
- I had enough time to perfect the art of photographing doggos (to be shared!)
On the business side of things, let’s take a look at Cedita:
- We grew from 76 customers in 2021, to nearly 500 customers in 2022;
- We were humbled to be recognised as a company that’s Best For The World - Workers by B Lab;
- We continue to receive consistent 100% Happiness ratings for our Support and Delivery;
- Our server footprint was significantly reduced with our (currently) partial move to Azure;
- Over 2000(!) trees planted to help offset what we can’t reduce; and
- We have started to work with even more local businesses.
Even with all of that we started 2023 even stronger and genuinely have no plans to slow down.
Whilst we’re yet to announce exactly what we’re doing this year and beyond, we have been working internally and with a few key launch partners to flesh out our plans. We do know that we’re going to start hiring for and investing heavily in newer technology than we’d previously consider using. We are also going to develop more local communities for businesses (including us) to support each other and promote growth, alongside bolstering our support to and dependence on our strategic Partners.
Finally, we commit here today to continue being the best people that we possibly can in tech (including not being in it for the money) as well as continuously learning from our past mistakes.
Very soon we’ll start writing about the values that we’re putting in to our new venture as well as how we’re going to achieve them. Stay tuned, it will be worth the wait.
