Kentico six years later: growing and moving

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This month, Kentico celebrates 6 years on the market. Even after 6 years, we still keep growing which allowed us to enhance our team with 20 new employees and move to a new office. Although I'm mostly thinking about future, it's a good opportunity to stop for a while and look back.
When I started Kentico in 2004, I wanted to create a great CMS for ASP.NET. I didn't have any particular plan of how many employees we should have or how the company will grow. I didn't have any exit strategy and I don't have any even now. I just knew that if I want to build the CMS I have to start somewhere and release something before I run out of money. So I rented a small room in the office of my friend's company and started developing Kentico CMS 1.0.

Our first office

When talking about the start - I'm often asked about what the word "Kentico" means. In fact, I chose a random word that wasn't used by anybody to avoid any conflicts. The name as well as our original logo was mainly inspired by brands Kenvelo and Texaco. I shouldn't say that, but I created the logo using Visio during one night - that's what you do if you bootstrap your business ;)

12 months later, Kentico was already profitable and had a stable stream of revenue, so I hired three developers. Martin Hejtmanek, our current CTO, was one of them (yes, Martin will celebrate 5 years in Kentico in July:). And we moved to our first office - a small house where I also lived with my wife, so we had one room and the other two rooms were offices.

Our second office with Martin at the desk

Two years later, the house was not big enough, so we moved to our first real office in a former factory building. At this time, we also created a dedicated support team (in fact, Martin Dobsicek was our first support engineer) and hired the first sales person (Wayne Jasek).

Our third office - technical support room

This spring, we hired 20 new employees and we had to move again. Last month, we moved to the new office that finally has all the infrastructure we need. You can find a few photos below. 

Corridor Every development team has their own office
 New call center  Relax place
 Reception  Reception again
 Dining room  Meeting room

So now we have 62 employees. Kentico CMS is developed by 30+ people who work on versions 5.5 R2 and 6.0 right now. I'm sure you will see the impact of this growth on the functionality of version 6.0 that will bring lots of improvements and new features.

During all those years, we never took a loan or venture capital. We reinvested the revenues into improving the product, support, marketing and creating more solid company processes. It allowed us to grow from the bootstrapped business into a fully professional company with customers in 84 countries.

At the end of this post, I'd like to say thank you to all of our clients and partners who took this road with us and gave us their trust. We look forward to helping you create more great websites!
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Petr Palas

I'm the founder and CEO of Kentico. I write about Kentico, WCM, CXM, digital marketing and related technologies.

Comments

Brian McKeiver commented on

You guys rock, congratz

Martin Medina commented on

I just want to say CONGRATULATIONS for all the Kentico Team
you are doing a great job, i have been using kentico for about 3 years we have an intranet site built with kentico,your support its great, keep up with this excellent work
THANKS
Martin Medina
CLARIMEX MEXICO

PraDeep Patel(IPS Academy Indore) commented on

Hello Sir!
Many2 congratulations!
To be in ahead

PraDeep Patel commented on

Congratulations! for doing world in your hand

Javier commented on

Great Job! It always inspires me to read postings like this. Kentico is great and I love the support.

Petr Palas commented on

Thank you, Alvaro, it's great to have partners like Babel :)

Alvaro commented on

Congratulations Petr.

I remember the first version of the CMS and the support that you gave directly for us.

Good Look.!!!
Alvaro

Petr Palas commented on

Thanks to Dave and Nicolas for your kind words.

To Nikolas: I'm not a big fan of open-source either, so we designed our offices so that every development team (7 people) has their own office. This reduces the noise and allows them to cooperate at the same time. The only open-space-like office is the call center that is designed for 24 people, but they will rarely meet all at once as they work on shifts.

Nicolas commented on

Hi Petr,

Congratulations for yur success with Kentico CMS, that is a great product.
On the photos of your new offices, I can see a lot of open-space areas for workers. I've never been a big fan of open-space and indeed it is recognized by many studies as bad for people's productivity, enjoyment at work and even health.

What is your opinion on this?

Thanks and keep up with the excellent work.

Nicolas

Dave Diehl commented on

Nice digs!!

Not surprised at the growth. When you've got a better mousetrap, people will come knocking at the door...

Congrats!