> we have paid off the mortgage on our premises and are decidedly boring
We too like to call us boring :) This kind of boring is so good.
> We incorporated in 2000. 25 years later, we are still trading, which is nice. We will never fiddle with unicorns or set the world on fire, we just want to get along comfortably and be able to sleep at night.
On one hand 25 years in business is a mind-blowing achievement. But at the same time, just "nice" is the right way to see it. Being comfortable and sleep well at night is exactly what we all want. You don't need to set the world on fire to be proud of what you do!
For us it was a performance issue. We load tested DBs and servers with our real app and found out Heroku (notoriously known for being stuck in 2010) performed better then some more recent competitor.
I don’t give employees (and stable freelancers/contractors) the minimum I can get away with; I give them a fair share of the profits on top of their regular salary.
I’m not sure how common this model is in Europe, but it has certainly helped me keep my best employee with me throughout the entire journey and feel much less alone in my decisions—especially at the beginning, when things are harder.
But employees get a part of the cake too! If profits are high, we all celebrate together! During 2025, 7% of the profits have been shared with our employees (and stable freelancers). In 2024 it was 6%.
Not just huge companies.. lots of web agencies [1] and mid-sized businesses use us to manage their web presence, mostly for the same reason: building custom sites quickly without the hassle of maintaining software. We’re not really optimized for huge websites (or customers).
Run an LMS product. https://academyofmine.com Working on a big pivot for next year. Funny but the pivot is to go more headless but for learning platform. Would follow your journey going forward.
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