Today Red Orbit is celebrating its 10 years. What started more than 15 years ago as a way of killing time by two students and became a garage company 10 year ago (in fact our first “office” was in the basement) is today’s Red Orbit. 18 superheroes living and breathing on 300 square metres in the “attic” with a wonderful view to Šmarna gora hill, 18 addicts from coffee, table football, tasty food and good results.
The first 10 years were full of ups and downs, mistakes and lessons learned, defeats and victories (from the Best Business Idea and Startup Slovenia to Digiday Retail Award, Golden Punchcard Award and finalist for Google Premier Partner Awards). From the first moments, when there was money for nothing else than two computers and when we hadn’t the slightest idea how to attract any customer all the way to the extreme growth in recent years and international success. I certainly don’t regret it. Some things could have been done differently, we could take some other way but then we probably wouldn’t learn what we did. We had to grow up and personally experience our own mistakes to become who we are. And we shall continue to make mistakes because otherwise we shall not grow.
Victory for all of us
All this could not be achieved without a number of great people who helped us/me on this path. In the first place Boštjan who is being patient with me all the time and is a silent motor of Red Orbit who slowly but persistently pushes us forward. In this time he got grey hair and I am not sure if it is his wife or me to be blamed for this. I am afraid in fact it is me. 😕 In the second place, there are our lovely spouses. Erika, who kicked me and Boštjan in the ass to finally set up Red Orbit, and Katja, who is always faithfully there for me.
Then, there are you Red Orbit people. Without you Red Orbit would not be such as it is. Everybody leaves its mark on it and together we have created something which is way more than just a job. I cannot speak on your behalf but for me Red Orbit is neither a job nor a company. It is a way of life. It is an environment which enables us to do things which we couldn’t do alone. I love y’all.
After all, it is you, our subscribers and all who follow and support us through social media, at the events and elsewhere. Your support, understanding and encouragement makes it possible that we can do it, gives us strength and at the same time set challenges and new goals which we want to attain again and again. Thank you to believe in us.
The only permanent feature is change
A decade is a long period and in such time only a few things do not change. And it is no different with us. In these ten years a lot has changed and happened:
- the volume of business enlarged 33-times,
- on average we grew by 37% yearly,
- from the group of 2 students we evolved into a team of 18 experts,
- we have become one of the largest Google Premier Partner agencies in the Central Europe,
- we are present in more than 100 countries all over the world,
- we organised and participated in more than 150 events and educated more than 4,000 people,
- we wrote more than 275 blog posts,
- 10 children were born to us: Filip, Vita, Mina, Mala, Ela, Aljaž, Mark, Ula, Neža and Maša.
Net profit in the value of €615,000?!
If you asked me whether I am satisfied with what we achieved I would uttered an unconvincing “Yes”. Yes, I am satisfied with what we did but I wish a lot more. When Boštjan and I wrote our first business plan 10 years ago and set our goals, these were much more ambitious. “In the fifth year we expect €3.2 million revenues from operations and net profit of €615,000. Lower profit in the last year is mainly the result of expanding abroad.” OMG, we were so wrong. 🙂 I am angry with myself that I didn’t have the guts to do more. But “past is past”, the important is what is to come. And we ain’t gonna stand still.
Our goals for 2017
Besides being even better and increasing our revenues we set to ourselves a few more interesting goals:
- All Red Orbit people, regardless of when they joined us, will get 30 days of leave. This means 1 week of holidays every two months.
- By the end of the year we shall all work on laptops and become 100% mobile.
- inOrbit 17 will be even larger and better. We are on the right path. 🙂
- We shall start writing an English blog. Done.
- We shall develop an internal bot, which is going to help us at work and to have fun. Its name is RObot and we already have fun with the first version. 🙂
Celebrate with us our first 10 years
Celebrate with us on inOrbit and our Halfway party in Sputnik.
Thursday, 9 March 2017 from 9 p.m. onwards in Sputnik at Halfway to the moon party.
Thank you all for these exceptional 10 years.