On Tuesday, February 28th, I’ll be participating in TriNet’s PeopleForceX panel in San Francisco alongside other Bay Area business leaders — TriNet CTO Jeff Hayward and COYUCHI President & CEO Eileen Mockus. Together, we’ll explore the shift from reactive to proactive thinking around implementing technology in business, and how fast-paced digitalization can impact growth and innovation.
This in-person event, which includes the panel and networking, is free to attend. If you’re in the Bay Area, sign up here – I’d love to see you there.
Having spent another year making the web better alongside our clients and partners, we’ll be disconnecting our screens and recharging our batteries so that we can bring our best, again, in 2023.
As we bring 2022 to a close, 10up will shut down for the holidays on Friday, December 23, and reopen on Tuesday, January 3.
With gratitude to the clients, friends, partners, and colleagues who made another successful year possible, we wish you a festive and relaxing season.
When I founded 10up, building a remote company at scale was somewhat of a novelty. Our agency has been featured in case studies, books, ebooks, interviews, and articles about remote work culture, including a Forbes list of notable remote work companies. I have guest lectured at universities like Stanford and the University of Michigan on the subject. Where we were once early pioneers of a new model, companies around the globe have come to embrace remote work.
Now, more than 10 years in, we’re called to revisit how we think about remote work in the context of client service, continued pioneering of working models, and cultivating a happy, healthy, high-performing workplace.
For instance, one thing we’ve realized is that when you already work remotely or stay at home during time off, a day off doesn’t always feel like a day off. When your home and office are the same place, and “entering the office” is only few taps away on that computer in your pocket, finding a healthy work/life balance can be a challenge.
While evaluating potential improvements to the 10up workforce experience, we found ourselves asking, “Client service is our number one value — can we make meaningful changes for our team without diminishing our customer experience?”
The Webby Awards honors excellence on the Internet. It is the most widely accepted industry award recognizing websites, online video and advertising, apps, Internet games, and podcasts. For its 25th year, a record-breaking 13,500 projects from around the world were entered into the competition.
We were honored to discover that seven projects supported by 10up in 2020 have been recognized by The Webby Awards — including three listing 10up as the creator, and four others listing clients and partners.
This February, 10up celebrates its 10th anniversary. That’s ten years since I sat down alone in a small home office in Rhode Island, and decided I was ready to start this business.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 30% of businesses reach the 10-year mark. It’s a milestone that has us looking back at our journey from a company of one to a team of more than 230 talented specialists, and looking ahead to the next 10 years.
To kick start some of this reflection, we asked the team if anyone wanted to share what 10up means to them today. Here are just a few clips from those who volunteered to record their thoughts.
This past month, the White House re-launched its website, once again, powered by WordPress. To quote Fast Company, “Biden’s team revamped it in 6 weeks… an unprecedented feat for a government website.” 10up was highlighted in the article as the development partner supporting the new WhiteHouse.gov.
In response to COVID-19, many people are working from home for the first time. Recently, I shared insights from my experience working at home and leading a remote agency with one of our clients, T-Mobile. My tips are featured alongside some other perspectives in their story, Pants or No Pants? That Is the Question! For the record, I am team “yes, pants.”
This February, 10up wrapped its ninth year with much to celebrate. The company saw continued team and financial growth, with our most significant expansions across our European division, productized Managed Services offerings, and strategic Audience & Revenue consulting services. We also doubled down on our contributions to a broader open web community, and team culture.
The result: We continued to expand our client roster with some of our most impressive wins to date. In 2019, we welcomed some of the most respected brands and organizations in the world into our portfolio, and expanded existing relationships with industry leading clients like Google and Microsoft.
Consistent Revenue And Team Growth
10up’s eighth anniversary celebrated significant financial and team growth, which continued into our ninth year. We achieved 18% revenue growth and gained 48 new clients across verticals including healthcare, publishing, government, high tech, architecture, and financial services. We’re especially pleased by the increased diversification of that revenue across pillar accounts, which we see as vital to a healthy, sustainable workplace in the services sector. While in 2018, 20% of our revenue came from a single client, 2019 included five seven-figure clients, with the largest accounting for only 9% of company-wide revenue.
The growth of our client portfolio along with our commitment to exceptional client delivery drove the expansion of Team10up to 200 full-timers. This includes two full-time, in-house recruiters and 10uppers spread across six continents and twenty-four countries (tell Antarctica we’re hiring). The executive team also expanded, as we welcomed our first full time Chief Financial Officer, Chuck Barlett, and made three internal promotions:
From New York City, to rural South Africa, to a dozen countries across Europe, our distributed workforce model empowers us to bring in the best strategists, designers, and engineers, wherever they may live—because the best talent isn’t found in a single zip code.
Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss our forward-looking remote work culture with Toggl.
My interview is featured in their new ebook How Remote-Friendly Organizations Can Embrace a Client Roster That’s Not Limited by Office Location, along with insights from other remote work cultures, including Buffer, Gitlab, and Doist. The ebook provides a blueprint for building a successful business while working remotely, including establishing customer expectations, choosing the right tools, and navigating cultural differences.
Jake Goldman
