Pragmatic Coder’s Co-CEOs’ plans for 2020
In this interview, Marcin Dziedzic and Wiktor Żołnowski talk about their professional plans for 2020.
What would you like to achieve as the Co-CEO of Pragmatic Coders?
Marcin Dziedzic: First, I want to build an independent management team at Pragmatic Coders. We are constantly grinding our organizational structure. On the one hand, we want a flat structure. Conversely, it should be flexible enough for decisions to be made quickly. I know we still have a lot of work to do in this area. But each quarter, we are getting closer and closer to the moment when the organization will be able to operate efficiently without the contribution of the founders. Over the years, I would like to build more companies like Pragmatic Coders – for a change product companies.
Wiktor Żołnowski: I run Pragmatic Coders together with Marcin Dziedzic. We complement each other very much in many ways. Having identified company values and goals, we can now communicate without words. For a long time, neither of us has taken a decision that the other has questioned.
My short-term goal is to strengthen the autonomy of the team leaders. I want the company to grow by 20-30 people in 2020 and in the following years to about 100 people. This will not happen if Marcin and I control this growth ourselves.
The goal is not the size of the software house itself but its ability to generate business value. It would be great to achieve our goal of co-creating 10 unicorns over a decade. I would like to leave such a mark on history.
My vision for Pragmatic Coders has always been to build independent programming product teams. Teams that we would like to employ to produce ambitious products ourselves. I imagine that we will come up with an idea, perhaps with the first hypotheses, and our teams Pragmatic Coders teams will go ahead and implement these ideas.
What is the development strategy of Pragmatic Coders in 2020?
Marcin Dziedzic: The plan is simple: we will focus on a group of clients for whom we can provide the greatest business value. These companies are often small startups after the seed financing round. They have finished the market research phase and are moving to the business scaling phase. They may have created an MVP and tested the business model with us and are now in the process of scaling the product and building a permanent IT base. This is our biggest strength. There is no doubt that we are one of the few companies on the market that can bring great value in this rapidly changing environment.
Wiktor Żołnowski: As for markets, we have narrowed down our area of operation. We used to be scattered worldwide, but we now try to work with companies in similar time zones. This is because we really want to understand the client’s domain and business, which requires frequent communication. Regarding new markets, Scandinavia and Singapore have recently appeared on our radar, and one of our clients is from Dubai.
As for new services, we have officially launched a site-reliability engineering (SRE) service this year. This is a result of the needs of our current customers and what we see on the market. At Pragmatic Coders, we have amazing competence in the area of SRE, and the team is constantly growing.
How will you measure success in 2020?
Marcin Dziedzic: I will measure success by being able to run a spin-off whose IT Pragmatic Coders will provide services.
Wiktor Żołnowski: If Marcin and I don’t have to make any operational decisions in Pragmatic Coders during the last quarter of 2020, I think the year was successful 🙂
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