Zure 2024

We recently received a public endorsement from a top 15 company in Finland. I wrote it ad verbatim below, except I'm dropping the customer name.

You annoy me surprisingly little. I'm used to being annoyed. I am an asshole, but I'm finding it difficult to be one with your people.

Big boss

That's pretty much the best endorsement we have ever received. As kids would say, "No cap. Slay."

Two years ago, I sat down to write a blog post of Zure's 2022. I had promised Suvi, our head of marketing, to deliver. I failed. I failed for a year straight. Then I sat down, started writing the post, and failed for one more year. But now! Now, I'm on a roll!

If you feel like nobody got time to read a novella right now, here's the short take: I'm content at where we are. I feel our people are working hard to create a workplace worth the name, and I feel that we're better than a year ago. I'm proud of the people I get to work with, and so goddamn grateful they seem to want to work with me.

Want to read on? Know where we've messed up during the past few years, and where we succeeded? I'll put some pics every now and then to fool your brain to think this is a good text.

2023

Beginning of the 2023 was a catastrophe. Our customer CIO called us that 90% of his budget got slashed. I was sad for him, since it didn't sound like the beginning of an easy year. He said that he needs to send our team of 6 home. I figured we'd find work, "we always have".

The past is no guarantee of the future success. There are no shortcuts. There's just work.

So, as you might guess, the shitshow known as the IT market of Finland didn't agree with us finding new work. In March 2023, I called in all the leads to our largest meeting room. There we were, about 15 of us, with the seniors' paintings following our actions dubiously, when I slammed my fist on the table (metaphorically), and said that "We got to start selling!"

Pause, context: I believe a company can be good at one thing, if they are very lucky. I think every choice has a cost, and therefore I don't think a company can execute at a same level in all functions. I also think some companies are led "sales-first", and some companies are led "delivery-first", or maybe "quality-first", or even maybe "people-first". Whatever is the case, we've never been a "sales-first" kind of company.

If I was asked about the strengths of Zure, I'd go "we're pretty good at delivering average plus quality, but on sales we have a lot to learn."

Back to the war room, where I was asking for a rapid increase in sales activities. I was asking for a thing we had no proper process, structure, or culture for. This was an uncomfortable ask to many of us. Later, I received feedback that my people would have preferred me approaching this in a softer way. Unfortunately, I was in founder mode, as the next month April was looking like we'd have 20 to 25 people out of 75 without a project. I felt strongly that something needed to be done.

We drastically increased the outbound activities, and through sweat and luck, found new customers and work. In August 2023 we were healthily employed again. Thanks about this goes to our leads, who went above and beyond their roles. The outcome was that the first half of 2023 was strongly on the red, and the second half was healthy, bringing the year of 2023 to a resounding profitability of 1%.

This is no surprise to many reading this - in 2023, our industry was in deep trouble in Finland, especially regarding custom development market. Many companies had layoffs, and competitiveness was also visible in the industry hourly rates. At the same time salaries were in need to be raised due to inflation. We raised our salaries by ~4% in 2023, which of course didn't help with the profit, but on the other hand, helped with keeping up the quality of work because people could eat every day. Eating helps with the energy levels.

2023 December, I looked back at the year, and was happy. I was proud of how we'd survived, without doing any layoffs or other meaningful measures. I'd told the whole company earlier in March that we'd rather do 0% profit than any layoffs. In 2023, our goal in Finland was survival, not growth. I was glad that we didn't even have to dip into our long-term savings, as the year ended up a wash profit-wise.

Belgium and Denmark both grew profitably in 2023. They hired a few people, and had work. In Denmark one of the companies we worked through to a customer, went bankrupt, and that wiped 60% of the profits from Denmark for 2023, but in actual money that was only about 60-70k€ (a lot of money, but not really a threat to our continued existence). Kenneth, our Denmark founder, naturally wasn't happy about that, but at the end it didn't affect Zure as a whole. Together we progress.

2024

As we transitioned from 2023 to 2024, we went back to growth mode. For the last two years the market in Europe and especially in Finland has been unstable and unpredictable. As a result, most companies take their sweet time on deciding on investments, if they ever do. This has impacted everybody in this industry. On the other hand, in this kind of soft market with layoffs and uncertainty, some senior people start thinking of their own futures. In October 2023, this started to feel more like an opportunity, than a threat. Therefore we started hiring, and in 2024 we have grown by 18 people (+21% headcount).

The issues of 2023 were evident, and in the beginning of 2024 we did a "reorg" in Finland. The purpose of this reorg was to improve a few things, namely

1. Structure our sales approach (=create a dedicated sales team)
2. Clarify function ownerships (=less context switching)
3. Decision-making efficiency (=less committees)
4. Clear my calendar by reducing my direct reports from 20 to 10

We spent the Q1/2024 planning the reorg internally, via bi-weekly meetings, and the new organization blueprint came into force in April 2024. I've been positively surprised how well we did on that planning, as our people unanimously think the reorg has been a success. Not perfect, but a clear improvement.

In Finland, besides reorganizing, we've invested in data, AI, and cyber security capabilities:

• Our data practice ~doubled in size in 2024, where ~80% of work relates to Microsoft Fabric, with which we've been in production since the summer of 2023
• On generative AI, we've executed over 30 projects, building concrete solutions for customer service, HR, sales, field engineering, finances, IT, and the like, as both simple RAG implementations and also, especially after summer 2024, agentic solutions
• On cyber security, we've tripled the size of our purely Azure focused, senior cyber security consultants from 2 to 6

For Belgium and Denmark, well, 2024 has been a year of success.  Both have accelerated growth with culture-fit new workmates. Both have added new customers, although in Denmark the demand is more visible, as evidenced by the fact that all Zure countries work for Danish customers. Looking at Zure Group, it is promising that there's a slowly growing trend of collaboration between different countries.

Personally, I got some more time in my calendar due to a lower number of direct reports, and this year I spent that time to work on possible expansions to new countries. As a result, we'll launch operations in a new country on Friday the 13th of December, so at the end of this week. Couldn't be happier about the founders :) Launch post upcoming on Friday.

And as the grande finale, the thing I'm the most happy about. If opening a new country comes in the second place, the first place goes to the feeling I have about going to work every day. I feel we're getting closer to what we were before covid. I feel we've found our approach to working in this new world: our office is lively every day, we see our colleagues when meaningful, yet people work remotely in the way that works for them. Zure is not a remote only company, as some situations call for whiteboarding and eye-to-eye discussion, but at the same time we've refrained from creating strict rules in a situation that is very personal to many.

Our eNPS is better than in years. Updated end of November 2024, it was 83, with a response rate of 87%. It is at least over 5 years and at half our size when we last saw 80+ eNPS, and I was already thinking it might be impossible (for us) to reach that at 100 people. I feel deep satisfaction about this.

As a side note, in 2023 and especially in 2024 we have received more M&A approaches than ever before. I'm talking of several approaches a month (to whom I mostly don't reply, as there's just no time - sorry). I'm not sure if it is because IT companies aren't doing well, and therefore it is the buyer's market, or is it because we've reached this size of 100 people, and there's less of our kind of independent companies out there for buyers to target? If someone knows, I'm eager to learn more, but as before, this still stands: Zure is not for sale.

Anecdote: A friend asked me, as we have no proper board or governance in the company, who do I report numbers and findings and strategies and plans to? He didn't know how does a company work if CEO doesn't report to the board. I told him that all he needs to do is inverse his thinking - I'm reporting findings and strategies and plans to our people. The people who work at Zure. Who create their own work environment daily. To me, that feels quite logical.

To all, we wish you a happy life. Until next time.

Appendix I: More about us

For more information on our past, see Zure 2021 and Zure 2020: The First Decade.

Appendix II: Graphs & Numbers

Zure Finland

Zure Group, including Finland, Belgium and Denmark. The numbers below are not consolidated.