How did we make it from 4 partners to 500 projects?
By: Rodri Canessa
Tags: Software Development, Tff En, Software Factories, UX

This year, on April 20th to be exact, we celebrated our fifth year being Fuzzy at The Fuzzy Fish. Although we could start this article by explaining how four visionary young people began a revolution in a garage, we are here to reflect on our growth over this period while being coherent with our reality. We aim to share our experience of a steady expansion from a perspective that will be close to any entrepreneur, businessman, or professional that may be heading down the same road.

As any other business that is born in Argentina and then expands to the rest of the world, we had to deal with our own problems and cyclical crisis. Moreover, this year we adapted to the new normal imposed by the pandemic. And it is in this context of preventive social isolation in Argentina that we have celebrated our first five years in business along with our first 500 projects. From 2015 to 2020, growing is all we have done, and we believe it is time to highlight some key points in relation to this.

How did we get here?

Dreaming big and growing at our own pace

Even though we are dreamers by nature, we never imagine a limit to our company and are always in a constant search for expansion or a way to broaden our horizons, we are also conscious. Knowing that the potential is enormous, we decided not to jump abruptly so as to avoid putting our solid steps at risk. We believe the right path — at least right for us — is the steady, gradual growth, always aiming at doing a great job. And this is how we made it, how Fuzzy grew even more than we had expected.

Everything started in a co-working space, where the first additions and projects arrived. We moved into our own office very soon, and more professionals together with increasingly challenging projects arose. Before long, the time came for us to move out again since there was not enough room. And that is how we got to our home, the office you see in the pictures, the place that bears our stamp and our culture.

Building an identity

All this may lead us to think of another key factor for talking about our development as a company, in regards to size and also quality: the building of an identity. Over time, we realized that an idea of what it meant “to be a Fuzzy” had originated — our own business culture. Therefore, we started to work on that and became more conscious of what it meant. Then we aimed at the professionals coming to us not only when looking for a job but also to be part of something bigger. And that is decidedly what we pass on to the companies that worked with us in the past, those currently working, and the ones that will work with us in the future.

Each time a new client comes to our office — well, you know, before March this year — or whenever a professional comes for an interview, we walk around the office, where they will be able to see our teams working. We succeed in displaying our good working environment; in fact, our meeting room is not even isolated. You can breathe in the Fuzzy culture everywhere in the office. This has been of great importance to make all those who joined us and took different roles feel comfortable — and in that way they can also help the future members feel at home.

Aiming at variety

As every company, we started out as something different than what we are today. Always making our way was precisely what allowed us to find our strengths and spot our weaknesses. We had always been a software development company but the addition of multidisciplinary profiles in recent years led us also to become specialists in UX (user experience).

We started to incorporate designers at the same time programmers and layout editors who specialized in different technologies were added into the team. Next, we integrated specialists in business and marketing then brought in experts in communication and advertisement. One of the reasons that explain our growth is the fact that we all learn from each other. In Fuzzy, nobody settles for what they know or only does what they have been required to do. We attempt to gain knowledge and, mainly, learn from each other. For that reason, in our team you will find developers who know what it means to understand the user as well as communicators that understand how to work with code.

In Fuzzy, nobody settles for what they know or only does what they have been required to do.

Learning from our mistakes

Another key point of our process has to do with making mistakes. All those who say they never made a mistake are either lying or trying to show something they are not. It is important for us to be transparent — both at internal and external levels — even when we are wrong. This honesty led us to build strong bonds with companies that have been working with us since the beginning.

And this also becomes a virtue behind closed doors as it allows us to generate a comfortable work environment and helps our specialists do their best. The only way to let perfection become our north is to recognize our mistakes, accept them as a natural part of the process, and always think about the best solutions.

Slowing down? Never

At Fuzzy nobody stays still, and that is the reason why we made it to 500 projects in five years. Not only do we have large development, UX, and communication teams, but we also rapidly adapted to the work-from-home modality. Thanks to the identity we have built and even when working from home, we feel close to each other and part of something bigger. This is what being a Fuzzy means, and we keep on growing over the years.