Some days ago, I was interviewed by Keith Cline and shared different ideas about the way companies evolve and the opportunities that arise then, Arionkoder’s present and future, current scenarios in the US such as the Great Resignation and our role in the tech ecosystem. From how our company is set apart from other companies by our engagement model and culture, to why now is the ideal time to join us as we evolve and the many opportunities for growth at this stage of the company, we had a great time together and want to share it with you.
Find some of our thoughts – and how we’re doing things differently – in this video and its transcript below.
Find the transcript here:
K: Martin, thanks so much for joining us.
M: Well, Keith, thank you for having me. All right. It’s a pleasure.
K: All right, so we’re gonna talk about Arionkoder, which I’m really excited about. And I love the tagline. It’s crafting the future product by product. So let’s talk about the company and what you guys do.
M: Fantastic question Keith! Craft the future, exactly that. We understand that our future, the human future, is packed with challenges that no one can easily solve alone. And we see the technology as a fundamental tool to solve or to help solve those problems. And technology itself doesn’t cut to everything. So we need to embed product development, product solutions, where we think of the human aspect of the product solutions, more than anything else. So if we put human technology and results, not the other way around, some products are designed by technologists. So human aspects are later combinated. So we are really focused on the human aspect and trying to solve their problems. And we’ll see later which technical solutions we embed in those products.
K: Arionkoder is a fast growing company. So talk about the different service lines that your company offers.
M: We have two lines of services. It’s a little bit more complex, but you can narrow it down to two lines of choices, right? One is the standard plain Staff Augmentation thing that we can cover later how we do it, how we try to differentiate ourselves from the pack, but also the product development, or what we call Imagine and Make.
K: So what’s the, like, the key benefits in terms of working with Arionkoder? And like, how does it differ from other services firms?
M: Sure, yeah. That’s a great question, Keith. Because everybody has the same thing, right? And it’s really difficult to differentiate ourselves from somebody else. Because at the end of the day, there is a huge demand. And it’s a lot of providers claiming to do the same things, right? So if I put myself in the buyer’s shoes, it’s really difficult to make a decision, right? So I could answer that question in three parts, maybe the past, the present and the future. And the past is something that we already discussed a little bit, where we come from, right? How we understand these things. We not only understand or we believe we understand how the customers… what they need, in terms of services. But also we understand Latin America as anybody else, because we live. And we, as we were consultants, we needed to understand what each country had to offer in terms of IT. So we exactly know, because we spent 10 years doing this, which the, you know, the pros and cons of each country. So the present, we try to leverage everything that we learned from the past. And we build, we believe we build a strong model in terms of engagement. It’s all about engagement. I’ve seen and I coach companies that they were saying, we are doing great, because whatever the customer asks, we do, right? If they want two engineers, we put the two engineers and that’s it. So how many times did you go to your customer? None. How many times did you ask what else you can do with your customer? None. So that’s kind of a narrow mind, in my point of view, right? So we tried to build an engagement context through starting with a Tribe Lead. We have this role, Tribe Lead, that we didn’t invent it, which we kind of adapted from Spotify, or those kinds of companies. So this Tribe Lead is kind of our customer advocate within Arionkoder. So this person’s single goal is to make sure that first we understand the customer, in and out. Second, we service them as best as we can. And thirdly, we can come up with innovative solutions for them that otherwise we could not. That’s one of the things that we can do. And the other thing is leveraging the entire Latin America because we have a distributed model since the beginning, because we knew we couldn’t grow at the pace we were planning to grow if we set foot only in one location or two locations, so we needed to leverage as many countries in Latin America, and in the future, maybe in other locations as possible. So we created this distributed model, which is really costly in terms of investment and effort, but it’s working for us, because we can grow fast, we can live, we can handle cost, so we can, you know, be cost effective, conditionally cost effective. And also, we can find the right talent at the right time. So that’s, I guess it’s the present. And the future is that we believe that in order to be relevant, and we, in order to be here for 50 years down the road, we need to continue investing in what we call leapfrogging, right? Today it’s Machine Learning and AI. And we are investing heavily on that, maybe, and we also invest in low-code, no-code, but not just for the sake of doing things. But trying to understand how to leverage that better, particularly in life sciences it’s a huge thing, you know, Machine Learning and AI. But we’re also understanding what else we need to do. And we are going to partner maybe with the Colleges, in terms… to talk about biology, maybe we’re going to be investing in synthetic biology in the near future, because that’s the way we see how we are trying to always understand, which is the next wave and stay current.
K: So as far as plans ahead, what are your plans as far as higher concerns?
M: Sure, well, we have a very aggressive plan, that we are going to try to meet till 2025. And then we will see and see how, you know, if you accomplish a plan around, we understand that we need to grow, we need to double our size. And by the end of this year, we are going to be 100 people, but we will continue to double our size till 2025. That will lead us to 100 people, because although we want to remain, say, boutique, you know, 10,000 people in this in this context is really small anyways, but we need some, the power of numbers to do some things, right? To accomplish something. So we need to reach that target as soon as possible. So we’re going to be very aggressive. And we are deploying a very large sales team in the US. And we are going to continue growing not only in Latin America, but also in the US, and also in other parts of the world. Keith, to put it simple, we are going to grow as fast as possible if our customers let us and we’re going to grow where our customers need.
K: So as far as once someone joins the team, what’s the culture like working at Arionkoder?
M: Well, it’s amazing that question because we… creating this distributed environment, it’s really complex, right? It’s the same that you come to office. Now, not everybody goes to the office, right? Because of the pandemic. But it’s easier to manage all the people in one building, right? You can do things, you can celebrate, you can do after-offices, you can… it’s a different thing, right? But having a distributed environment presents us with simple challenges like oh, great, we want to do a happy hour. How do we do it? Because how do we send beers to people sitting in, I don’t know, in Córdoba, Argentina or in Dominican Republic, or somewhere else, right? Or even in Boston? How do we do that? At the same time, right? So we invest a lot in… we have a fairly, well, we call People and Culture team. We don’t call it HR, we don’t call it Recruitment. We don’t call it that because we believe People and Culture are equally important. So we invest a lot in one-on-ones, invest a lot in team meetings, invest a lot in virtual and local happenings meaning now I have been invited to, I don’t know from which area, which country, lunch. So people from that particular community will be making lunch for everybody else. So we try to build that thing. And also, that’s a human part, right? But also we are grouped in guilds, or chapters, so we can leverage technology as well. So every engineer that comes to our company will be assigned to a guild, depending on the knowledge that they have. So we invest also in growing their knowledge, technical knowledge as well. So they will benefit from not only what we do in terms of training, but also from the collective.
K: Now, people have options as far as their career is concerned, which is a good thing. So why is now the ideal time to join Arionkoder?
M: That’s a great another great question because I don’t know if it was by chance, or by design. Myself, I’ve been involved in the early stages of every company since I started working. And I can tell you it’s completely different the sensation of the things that you can get and know and understand and grow, and the things you can do and get of growing, when you join a company that’s really starting. Like, there’s everything to do, there’s opportunities everywhere, I need all the help that I can get. I need clever minds to help me achieve my vision, right? While maybe in 2025, we’re going to be a 1000 people company, you know, opportunities start to, you know, diminish, to fail, because many things are being done already. So why join Arionkoder is because we are in the making, you know? Everything. So if you’re a fast-paced person that likes to be asked questions, be asked to participate and wants to develop your own take on the things that we want to do, this is this is your place. And in addition to that, our purpose is to craft the future.
K: Well, if you are interested in exploring opportunities at Arionkoder, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz, which has all their job listings there. Go to venturefizz.com/arionkoder and you’ll see all their jobs. Martin, thanks so much for taking the time to walk us through all the great things happening at the company.
M: Thank you Keith for having me again, and have a great weekend. Great. All right.
K: Well, I hope you enjoyed this video. At VentureFizz, our mission is to share the stories of companies, their people and culture. So if you’re interested in more interviews with founders and executives in the tech industry, make sure you click on the subscribe button. Thanks so much for watching.
Want to be a part of our community of changemakers and create the career you love? See our Job Openings here!