{"id":2476,"date":"2017-06-16T13:37:19","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T13:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/?p=2476"},"modified":"2024-11-28T14:14:20","modified_gmt":"2024-11-28T14:14:20","slug":"ib-2-0-scaling-company","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/ib-2-0-scaling-company\/","title":{"rendered":"IB 2.0\u200a\u2014\u200ahow we are scaling our company"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"graf graf--p\">Like probably many other companies, we\u2019ve already hit 2 walls so far when scaling IntelligentBee: one at 8 people, one at 15 and we\u2019re currently facing another wall hitting: the one at 30 people.<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">After struggling for more than half a year with this, we thought it\u2019s time to do something about it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">We don\u2019t pretend we know exactly what would be the outcome of this, but we sure know what we want to achieve: sustainable scaling. Or, if we <em class=\"markup--em markup--p-em\">must<\/em> have a clearer objective, let\u2019s say we want to hit 100 people. I know it doesn\u2019t sound very much like a business objective, but it kinda makes sense as we\u2019re a services company\u200a. Therefore our main output depends very much on people\u2019s knowledge, expertise and skillset.<\/p>\n<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_68_1 counter-hierarchy ez-toc-counter ez-toc-grey ez-toc-container-direction\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title \" >Table of Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a href=\"#\" class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" aria-label=\"Toggle Table of Content\"><span class=\"ez-toc-js-icon-con\"><span class=\"\"><span class=\"eztoc-hide\" style=\"display:none;\">Toggle<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-icon-toggle-span\"><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" class=\"list-377408\" width=\"20px\" height=\"20px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" fill=\"none\"><path d=\"M6 6H4v2h2V6zm14 0H8v2h12V6zM4 11h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2zM4 16h2v2H4v-2zm16 0H8v2h12v-2z\" fill=\"currentColor\"><\/path><\/svg><svg style=\"fill: #999;color:#999\" class=\"arrow-unsorted-368013\" xmlns=\"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg\" width=\"10px\" height=\"10px\" viewBox=\"0 0 24 24\" version=\"1.2\" baseProfile=\"tiny\"><path d=\"M18.2 9.3l-6.2-6.3-6.2 6.3c-.2.2-.3.4-.3.7s.1.5.3.7c.2.2.4.3.7.3h11c.3 0 .5-.1.7-.3.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7zM5.8 14.7l6.2 6.3 6.2-6.3c.2-.2.3-.5.3-.7s-.1-.5-.3-.7c-.2-.2-.4-.3-.7-.3h-11c-.3 0-.5.1-.7.3-.2.2-.3.5-.3.7s.1.5.3.7z\"\/><\/svg><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class='ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1 ' ><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/ib-2-0-scaling-company\/#Initial_data\" title=\"Initial data\">Initial data<\/a><\/li><li class='ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-2'><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/ib-2-0-scaling-company\/#The_quest_scaling\" title=\"The quest: scaling\">The quest: scaling<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h2 class=\"graf graf--h3\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Initial_data\"><\/span>Initial data<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">We\u2019re IntelligentBee, an online development services company, 6 years old. We do mainly web applications and recently we decided we want to tackle mobile apps.<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">I\u2019m Costi, Founder and CEO. I have a technical background backed up by some business studies and experience. A <em class=\"markup--em markup--p-em\">geek turned on the dark side of management<\/em> like some people like to call it\u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"graf graf--h3\"><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_quest_scaling\"><\/span>The quest: scaling<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h2>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">Statistically, our scaling was around 40% growth rate per year since we started. This might sound awesome\u200a and it actually is: things were crazy all these years. We\u2019ve gathered lots of achievements and learning under our belt\u200a. Looking ahead I can\u2019t see how we\u2019re going to scale this company further using the same approach, tools and structure.<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">So, the quest is mainly about\u00a0: how we\u2019re scaling our company. I\u2019m sure there would be lots of bumps along the way and therefore lots of learning involved. I\u2019m thinking about writing down all about it and create what\u2019s called a <em class=\"markup--em markup--p-em\">growth log<\/em> for IntelligentBee.<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">That being said, I do now know what my next posts would be about specifically, but they will sure be about one of the three main topics: something we\u2019ve learned, something we screwed up or something we got right.<\/p>\n<h3>IB 2.0<\/h3>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">We called all this process IB 2.0. IB stands for IntelligentBee. 2.0 stands for a completely new \u201cversion\u201d of ourselves as a company as we understand that if you have a black-box and you don\u2019t change the Input but in the same time you\u2019re expecting (somehow) the Output to change, you\u2019re either a fool (or a sorcerer). We\u2019re neither (eh, maybe we actually don\u2019t want to be the first\u2026 remains to see if we are or not) so we decided to change the Input.<\/p>\n<h3>The Input<\/h3>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">What do I mean by the Input\u00a0?<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">For us, the Input is how we\u2019re doing things in our company. There are specific ways of doing things suitable for each growth stage you\u2019re in. For us, the way we\u2019re currently doing things starts to lose it\u2019s effectiveness and certainly it\u2019s not a recipe for success having our plans in mind. It\u2019s simple: how we\u2019re doing things now got us to roughly 30 people, if we\u2019re continuing like that\u200a\u2014\u200awe\u2019re going to stay at 30. If we need to grow to 100, we need to \u201cchange gears\u201d\u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p class=\"graf graf--p\">So, stay tuned if you would like to see how we\u2019re getting there, what we\u2019re going to learn and what we\u2019re going to break. We hope to get there in a couple of years, but hey\u200a\u2014\u200ayou never know! What we do know is 2 things: 1. we\u2019re gonna get there and 2. it\u2019s going to be quite a ride!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like probably many other companies, we\u2019ve already hit 2 walls so far when scaling IntelligentBee: one at 8 people, one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2486,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[266,268,320,369,674,1236,1287],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133343,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2476\/revisions\/133343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2486"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2476"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intelligentbee.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}