We Are One.

I’m not usually one for the self-congratulatory article but I woke up yesterday and had the sudden realisation that it’s been exactly one year since we launched We Are Star. It felt remiss to not write an article if for no other reason than to remind myself how far we’ve come in a year.

We launched We Are Star with a vision to be a company that was not just an agency and not just a software company. Our vision was to be a company that people like to work with, and equally as importantly, a business that people liked to work for.

Growth is interesting. If a year ago, you’d told me that we’d have a team here in London and a dedicated We Are Star delivery centre in India, along with our extensive partner network, I would have said ‘Of course we will!’ Because that was always the plan.

But now I look back, I realise how lofty those ambitions were and how optimistic those goals were. To have achieved what we have in the past year is really quite staggering, even if I do say so myself.

So then I started thinking about those other ambitions. To be a company our clients like working with, and a company our clients like working for. 

Well, obviously I can’t speak for those folks. But I’ll let these two facts speak for themselves:

We have retained all but one client we’ve worked with. It says a lot about the quality of the team that clients have continued to come back to us. That’s a near 100% retention rate.

Here’s another fact: so far, no one in our team has left us! As for the new hires, they all seem to be settling in, including our ever-expanding Indian contingent.

Another thing we’ve always said we’d do (and that we’ve done meticulously) is focus on continual improvement. Making at least one small improvement every week means we’ve now made 52 changes, actually probably double that – around 100 changes since the start – that continue to improve the business and the experience for our clients. From better coding standards, more robust contracts, improved QA, faster support system and new processes and procedures.

Every new client gets the ongoing benefit of the continued lessons we learn.

So yeah, sorry folks, it might be a bit of self-back slapping, self-congratulatory vainglory. But if you could allow me on this occasion because I am proud to work with some of the most incredible people and am genuinely happy that creating a company with such a happy culture seems to be attracting clients and team members who are all a true pleasure to work with.

No doubt, there will be challenges along the way but right now, let me bask in this present ray of sunshine before the phone starts and the slew of conference calls, negotiations and day-to-day business challenges kick in.

Life in the fast lane, eh!