It hasn’t even been four months since our journey out of beta and into real-world business began. There were endless workdays, sleepless nights and everything else fathomable in between. However, it is thanks to our incredible customers — and when we say incredible, we really mean it — that we have enjoyed our success. And that has brought us to the number 2,000.

2,000 is the number of you who have found our services so valuable, that you act not only with your eloquent Tweets, friendly Facebook comments, and powerful testimonials, but by also going so far as to invest in our future. We can now celebrate another milestone achieved. Every penny our company earns is being reinvested into further developing and growing our service. There wasn’t even a handful of employees with ManageWP a few months ago, yet look at us now! We’re quickly approaching 20 incredibly dedicated and passionate employees.

However, our path wasn’t laid out for us. We are very much making it up as we go. Thankfully, we have learned many valuable lessons along the way. We want to take this time to reflect on how we got here.

Providing A Great Service

Sure, it’s a cliché, but it’s a pretty darn good one to rely upon — provide a great service, and the people will come. If you want to have customers, you have to produce something that people actually want. WordPress already has it’s fair share of high-quality theme, plugin, and service providers, so standing out in amongst such a passionate crowd is not easy. The way you stand out, as renowned marketer Seth Godin would say, is by shipping something incredible. We shipped. We created ManageWP in the hopes that our service meets — and we hope  in many ways exceeds — the demands of people who use WordPress on a daily basis.

It started off very much as a personal project, and it was impossible to imagine how far it would go. After we realized that there was a strong demand for such a service, we couldn’t help but dive in head first. So we invested all of our resources into building the highest-quality service that we could provide. We let our customers do the marketing for us.

The Power of the WordPress Community

ManageWP has had the opportunity to interact with our customers on many levels. We read your Tweets, Facebook posts, and emails on a daily basis. We make sure to respond to every inquiry, because it is only with your feedback that we can have our company grow to meet and exceed expectations. Now we are continuing to invest in ways to interact with our customers even more.

However, it can’t quite compare to having the privilege to talk with our customers face to face. WordCamp Phoenix 2012 was our opportunity to do exactly that. It was an incredible experience to stand amongst hundreds of people who all came together for the very same thing: WordPress. But WordCamps are also very much about giving a platform for the community to talk and to grow.

The real treat was having the opportunity to see our very ManageWP customers in person. The chance to interact with them, to get their feedback on where we can improve, and to hear their praises of our service — these are the kinds of experiences that make our hard work worth it. It’s an amazing feeling to have an impact on someone who you’ve never met before, and it happened on more than one occasion.

It’s an indescribable feeling.

It has also shown us that having a presence at WordCamps and other relevant events is important to maintaining great connections with our customers, all the while supporting the growth of the WordPress community.

Teamwork

Having customers, of course, is important, but having a passionate and dedicated team is crucial for any project that has hopes to prosper. Thankfully, that’s exactly what we have. One of the great things about working at a startup is that the people you work with on a daily basis starts to feel like family.

Here, everyone has to work together to ensure that we are making progress towards our goals. But it can be difficult for us as well. Some of our employees are from places far away. We now have staff from Israel, United Kingdom, Serbia, and the United States; it’s very much a global effort, and it also shows how much the business world has broken its boundaries.

Yet those physical boundaries do exist. So that’s why it was such an incredible and life-changing experience for our entire team to meet in the beautiful city of Belgrade. Having everyone meet for the first time at our company headquarters was something truly special. It was an experience that really gave all of our hard work a deeper meaning.

The friendly atmosphere, amazing food, and delicious drinks didn’t hurt either.

The Journey Has Just Begun

It was mentioned that we are making our story up as we go along, and it’s the truth. ManageWP is an incredible service with an incredible team behind it. Still, we continue to find ourselves at crossroads. Every decision we make is one that we hope will continue to grow our service and continue to help our customers in new and innovative ways.

Photos: Our own and EnterSerbia