2018 has been a year of prospects for Simpleweb. From people to projects, investments to hacks, we’ve gathered some fun facts and highlights from another brilliant year.
Kicking things off with one of the most important parts of Simpleweb, our team, 2018 has seen some exciting new team members, attracted (at least in part) by happiness officer Georgie’s daily homemade lunches (all 4,000 of them).
Studio One’s new faces this year include project managers Simon and Adele, developers Mike and Kate and content manager Alice, not to mention new CEO Mikey who we know will make 2019 our best yet!
2018 was also the year that Simpleweb setup sister company Studio Block to start solving some of the most complex and fascinating problems relating to blockchain technology, distributed ledgers, and decentralised applications. The Block team have since thrived, setting up brand new venture Tap, which allows its users to take back control of their personal data.
Our portfolio of startup investees has grown too, with £350,000 invested in six new startups including Landmrk, Giki Social Enterprise, Invite Agents (who are currently crowdfunding), Influencer Plus, Gift My Bet and Envolve Technology.
Meanwhile early investees have flourished, with both W2 Global Data and OLIO closing their Series A funding rounds. OLIO co-founder Tessa even found some time to share some of her best tips and tricks for their $6million raise (which also happens to be our most read blog of the year!).
Of course, all these amazing startups means a tonne of new releases, as worked on by our talented tech team. Notably, this year has seen the release of the Giki app both on Apple and Android. The app, which eases shoppers ethical and environmental decision-making dilemmas in the supermarket, has since (along with OLIO) been featured in Vogue.
Also in the spotlight, Landmrk’s mixed reality tech was used by Ariana Grande and Island Records to mark her new album launch, OLIO was featured as one of Google Europe and the Financial Times’ top 100 European business leading digital change, with co-founders Tessa and Saasha also winning the prestigious UN’s ‘Momentum for Change’ Climate Action award, ending the year on a high.
Project highlights
We were also proud to have completed projects for the likes of Open Bionics, to build their new website that would sell the World’s first customisable 3D printed bionic prostheses’, along with Zeetta Networks, to demonstrate the power of blockchain for the global telecoms industry. We also worked with the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) to build a search engine for finding accountants and accountancy firms.
As well as external projects, we worked on plenty of exciting internal projects that have helped our team to continually learn and expand on their skillset too. In this year alone, Ollie and Mike built The Bridge, Alice investigated the applications of machine learning to tackle data ethics, Andy B and Cristiano built PDM (personal development manager) to take the admin out of managing our personal development budgets.
Craig also took the reins on Pitch Perfect – a tool to automate the collection of feedback from the team during Playground pitching sessions. Last, but not least, Mark pitched for Pimple – which helps businesses to tackle the after effects of GDPR.
We were also excited to open source our React Native generator tool Romulus, which has saved us days worth of developer time in setup for every new React Native app build.
Fun along the way
Gathering the creative community in the way we do best, we hosted our most diverse hack night ever in 2018, welcoming developers, designers and creatives to join us for an evening of hacking and prototyping exciting products and solutions to a distracted world.
That’s not to mention the fun we’ve had during other team activities, particularly our team trip to Berlin which had project manager Simon running a street games workshop and the rest of us running round brandishing feather dusters and party balloons!
Finally, if you feel like this blog is not festive enough for the time of year, you’ll be pleased to know that developer Kate has built you your very own festive tree to decorate below. Share your designs with us on Twitter @simpleweb!
See the Pen Tree Decorator by Kate Howard (@KateH2) on CodePen.
It’s fair to say that 2018 has been a corker, and we’re super excited for what should be a show stopping 2019! In the meantime, rest, be merry and catch us again in the New Year!
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If you’d like to discuss your startup or project, get in touch with Simpleweb today.
