You probably heard about the SWOT analysis, defining your company strengths, weaknesses, and all that fancy management stuff...
To be honest, we didn't care much about that back then in 2010, when we were starting. There were more important tasks, like getting new clients and overdelivering our services.
But a decade of working with all sorts of companies gave me a rough idea.
Tricky request
For example, one day, I got approached by a nice guy from a promising startup. They were looking to outsource some development.
The usual stuff, but I was thinking that this is going to be a tough client to get. Banking and finances are often strictly regulated and dominated by large international corporations. So I assumed they are looking for some big ass development agency.
But there was a catch. They had one weird criterium for choosing their partners. They needed us to test the software with 20 different banks.
Yah that means to go to the 20 banks, open the accounts there, and maintain access to those accounts.
Being flexible
I didn't realize it back then, but that's not something you can ask your employee to do in the big agency. Employment law and regulations could be nightmares.
On the other side, it was not a big deal for us to invest some time into opening a couple of bank accounts on my name and my business partners.
Long story short, we got this client, and we are still working for them after the 4 years.
Lessons learned
Later I realized we got this deal for a couple of reasons.
We were willing to go the extra mile since a contract for even just one or two developers is important for us.
We offered in-depth interviews with our devs for maximum transparency, while larger agencies just sent CV with a take it or leave it attitude.
But most importantly, we offered the flexibility of the middle-sized company operated by owners.
So the flexibility is one of our strengths I guess :-)
P.S. The next story is about what I learned from a private talk with a self-made Czech billionaire and how that influenced our business.
