Another year has passed and just like the previous years, if we have to pick one word, it would be growth. Growth always brings its own challenges and opportunities, but we get to look back on every previous chapter with a sense of accomplishment. A feeling that we've grown, and we've contributed towards our vision.
Over the course of 2022, we expanded our team by thirteen new employees. It has been a pleasure to witness each “new” Specnite’s growth throughout the year and we’re looking forward to welcoming even more team members in 2023.
In February we moved from Bellville to Century City. Increasing our team’s floor space from 400 sqm to 1200 sqm. We’ll definitely be here for a while.
We added more plants, ping pong, foosball, and a pool table. Our team also decided to bring their skateboards to speed up moving through the bigger office.
Between all of the hustle and bustle, you need to make time to reflect and refresh.
We started to host one team and one company event every quarter.
This year’s department events include cooking classes, go-carting, wine trams, painting, hiking, escape rooms, and much more.
Our company events included wine tasting and a quiz night, our annual company getaway, Specno’s 4th birthday, and our year-end function.
These events:
➡ serves as a reward for incredibly hard work
➡ helps to keep tightly-knit teams
➡️ foster good work relationships across different teams
➡ give the teams a chance to de-stress and reconnect
Specno took to Monkey Valley Resort in Noordhoek for the weekend. This bi-annual employee perk allowed for refocusing, rest, relaxation, and rejuvenation. We had the opportunity to spend an entire day strategizing on how we plan to reach bigger and better goals in the second part of the year. The rest of the weekend was spent on building and strengthening the team through shared experiences such as game nights, team meals, beach Olympics, and yoga.
In October Specno turned 4 years old. Like true South Africans we had a braai to celebrate. It was an eventful evening filled with special people, delicious food and refreshments, Halloween-themed decor, and of course, cake!
Throughout the year we completed a few outreach projects. Our aim is to help those in the community around us and to make others aware of how they can help too.
Some of 2022’s projects included a sandwich drive, shoe drive, helping out at a soup kitchen, spending 67 minutes on Nelson Mandela Day - helping Ladles of Love break the Guinness World Record, and collecting toiletries, kettles, and irons for the Sisters Incorporated community house.
One of our focuses for the year was to be more community orientated. We started building a network and created platforms that involved all of the different role players in the tech community. The aim of our events is to bring the tech industry closer together and to provide some great networking opportunities.
We launched The Founders Den (a network to help early-stage entrepreneurs build and scale their tech-enabled businesses), and also hosted events for developers, designers, and product owners. Keep updated on Founders Den.
We pride ourselves in providing a 5-star service to our clients. As a result, we started receiving numerous 5-star reviews and got rated as the top app development company in South Africa by Clutch.
Our team has been working super hard to continuously improve every service we offer, and it has been paying off as the team continues to hit record-breaking sales each month.
Between all of our growth and achievements lay super hard work, difficult times, and lessons learned. It’s not always easy. Here are some lessons learned, highlighted by our founders.
We’ve already got big plans for 2023, some of which we’ve already announced and others that we can’t wait to announce but we’ll rather not spill the beans just yet.
This year, Specno’s first Specnite, Dane, moved abroad with the intention to help us build a footprint in Europe. He’ll be living in Amsterdam for the next chapter of Specno's growth.
We’ve been very busy lately learning to understand the European market and how to enter it. We have big plans that will continue being rolled out in 2023.
We have seen some incredible growth over the last 12 months and it's thanks to an amazing team being empowered to achieve greatness.
Cheers to the highs and the lows and everything in between!
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For the latest updates, see our post on reflecting on 2023.
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