It’s easy to start a company, relatively speaking. What’s much harder is to build it into something that lasts.

Building something that lasts requires you to relentlessly change and improve. For years, Steamclock was tiny and unknown – originally just two folks in a basement. Over time though, we put in the work to grow into one of the top product studios in the world. While our team is still fairly small (we’re now 16 strong) our business is increasingly growing – in recent years, by 20% annually. Rather than any big breakthrough, this growth has always been driven by the same thing: great people making small improvements that add up.

In the early days of Steamclock, while our co-founder Nigel focused on the role of CTO, I tried to do every non-technical role at once: project management, sales, operations, client management, engineering management, everything. Meanwhile I also worked on new products, with the hope of also spinning out a product company. It worked at first, and I learned a lot, but it eventually held us back.

Recognizing that I was a bottleneck, we’ve since built up an amazing team of leaders. This has been both in team-wide roles like PM, sales, and operations, but also in terms of levelling up our designers and developers to be leaders in their own right. We have an average employee tenure of over 5 years, which is pretty darn good for a business like ours. As I’ve moved further from day-to-day operations into a strategic role, and have started work on what’s next for me, hires like Nick Wilkinson have helped us not just grow, but get better at what matters to the business: delivering great software.

Nick originally joined us to head up our new projects, having previously been a Director at a larger product studio, and also having worked for NASA – you should definitely ask him for stories about this, they’re awesome. Ever since, he’s been staying curious, investing in people, creating great experiences, and acting with clarity. That is to say, he totally gets what Steamclock is all about, and as such has been taking on larger and larger leadership roles here.

This year, it’s time for Nick to take the largest leadership role of all, as our Managing Director. With the support of our CTO Nigel, as well as the excellent Jenn Cooper and myself continuing on the Board, Nick’s going to keep doing what he’s been doing for some time: driving Steamclock forward, growing the culture we’ve built, and also putting his own spin on it.

It’s said that things must either change or die. I feel incredibly fortunate that we’ve built a culture and team here that has thoughtfully changed and lived for 14 years so far, and I’m stoked to see Nick grow it into the next chapter.