Love and limits for a four-year-old
It’s been over four years since I founded Druid with a bunch of great guys. There has been growth, ups and downs, more growth, breakthroughs, mistakes, success, failures and learnings. Definitely good times with great people! As the year is nearing its end, it’s a good opportunity to stop for a moment, take a look back to review what we’ve achieved and learned, and to plan the next steps.
Lesson 1: One man show (14 developers + me) leads to a mess 🙂
Solution: Get more non-developer resources and take your time to learn how to delegate.
Lesson 2: A “few men’s show” doesn’t work either.
Solution: Come up with new ideas, experiment, fail, learn and iterate. Set up structures, roles and processes, create a support organization and identify the bottlenecks. This is what we’ve been building for the last 1.5 years.
Our latest experiment is the newly released team structure. It seems to be working very well! There are still many things to improve, but the big picture and the foundations for the future are now laid. The organization is not dependent on any single person anymore, yet every single person is needed.
As one of Druid’s founders and the builder of its growth, I feel my job as the CEO is done. Now that the company has reached its current state, I’m more than happy to hand my baby over to new hands. As of January 1, 2017, our current Vice President Mikko Hämäläinen will be the acting CEO of Druid. I will be the Chairman of the Board, and I’ll also continue to be responsible for sales and partnerships at Druid.
Our defiant four-year-old needs not only love but some additional limits as well to be able to blossom. It also needs an optimal leader in order to do so. With a new leader comes a new phase. It will be a phase of scaling our business and keeping up the good work on required improvements. There’s plenty of stuff to do with fixing our processes and creating sufficient support functions. We want them to be as awesome as our culture and technical expertise! I trust that Mikko is the right person to drive these developments and our day-to-day operations with his efficient and systematic approach.
I want to thank all my fellow Druids, our customers and partners for the past four years – the most amazing years of my career so far. It has been a pleasure to take this journey with you guys.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2017!
Mika
PS. Goals can be manifold. To me, the ultimate goal in some sense was a Druid champagne. This part of my legacy is reality now! So yes, you can consider my job done here 😉