Our first ten years

A little over ten years ago I was in my thirteenth year of working as an IT freelancer. I'd worked in all sorts of roles - developer, systems analyst, test manager, project manager - during that time, for a variety of blue-chip companies. I'd also been running a hobby company, Meantime Internet Technologies, since 1996.

In the summer of 2004, I was working on a project for JPMorganChase, based in New York. I'd fly out to New York once every few weeks but for the most part I was working from my home office. My youngest daughter had just been born, we were doing the house up and life was good. And then one of Meantime's clients asked me to do a large project for them.

It was a tremendous opportunity, the chance I'd been waiting for, to give up the day job and run Meantime as a 'proper' company. In my excitement, what I didn't think about was the fact that I had no experience of running a real business, as opposed to the limited company that was my vehicle for freelancing.

So, in October, when my contract with JPMC came to an end, I declined their offer of a renewal and started to work for myself. At this stage, I'd already hired Steve to do the coding and the next step was to rent some office space, which we did, just next door where we are today. Pretty soon there were four of us working on the project and I found that I was enjoying myself hugely, doing things the way I knew they should be done, and watching the software take shape and come to life.

But alongside that pleasure in doing the work, I had the first inklings of the issues that go with running a business, not least the significant issue of finding more work and new clients. By the summer of 2006, I found myself waking in the middle of the night and lying there, worrying, unable to get back to sleep.

A difficult couple of years followed. We did pick up work, although there were some lean times, too, but we also learned the hard way about the difficulty of recruiting people who saw business the way that we did, people who cared about doing things to a high standard, for whom putting the customer first was second nature. So, people came and went but, crucially, the good ones stayed. And somewhere along the way, we seemed to get the hang of recruiting, because we haven't put a foot wrong for several years, up to and hopefully including our latest recruit, Adam.

I've been thinking recently about what I've learned along the way and I think it boils down to two things. Firstly, do what you know to be right, even when it means making a loss. You can't keep making a loss, of course, but meeting the expectations both of your client and yourself is the most important outcome of any project. (If you can't make a profit while doing that, then your pricing structure is wrong.)
Secondly, you need the right people around you. Both Steve and Hannelie have been with me right from the start and Meantime wouldn't be the company it is, today, without them. But it feels like Lou and Martin have been there almost as long and they've helped set that standard for everyone whose joined and stayed subsequently. What we've built over the last ten years is a culture that revolves around our four Cs: Clients, Code, Colleagues and Company.

It hasn't always been easy - God knows I've had to learn an awful lot along the way - but looking back over the last ten years, I'm incredibly proud of what we've achieved as a team. There have been problems, of course - you can't avoid them - but, crucially, we've always put them right. And we've shown what I've always believed to be true, that software can be delivered to specification, on time and on budget.

But I've also learned how much fun you can have along the way, and that's down to both my colleagues and clients. Because of them, I can really enjoy my work. So, thank you to all our clients, and thank you Steve, Hannelie, Louise, Martin, Danny, Paul, Jack, and Ronald, and welcome aboard Adam. Onwards and upwards!