In times of uncertainty, collaborate.
Until recently, most businesses were following their strategies set out for this year. Right now, most companies have seen their plans invalidated by the global pandemic we are in at the moment.
This setback for the global economy means we all need to review our goals and focus on what really matters. Companies are starting to drastically cut costs by firing people with skills that were in high demand just a while ago and are now left without opportunities.
As a data-driven company, we know how important it is to make product decisions based on feedback and market needs. That’s why we revamped our UVP to respond better to post- Corona times and highlight our platform approach.
At the beginning of the year, our strategy was client-oriented. We were focused on the automation angle of Stormly. At the same time, it required from us quite some resources to keep building the solutions on the platform. As a bootstrapped company, which is independent of external VCs, we didn’t have a budget to “burn”, so we operated and still operate fully remote.
This meant sustainable growth, but also that we need to be creative in terms of future product plans.
Later in the year, when the pandemic happened, we sat down and thought about what we can do to adjust our strategy to the current situation. At the same time, with a dose of anxiety, we were watching as one “top” brand after another announced firings and froze the development and data teams. No wonder, these departments are definitely cost heavy and burn most of the investment budgets.
However, the people whose skills were the most wanted and valued just a few weeks ago, are now looking for new opportunities.
This made us think; how can we adjust to this new situation and support the community, while at the same time maintaining our business?
Then we remembered that in the early days of Stormly, we discussed that it would be amazing if we could bring together a community of professionals, who would contribute to building the best solutions in the field of data analysis.
We came back to that idea and looked at the product from a different angle. Instead of building Templates ourselves, we could focus on creating a developer platform and educating the community of professionals on how to use it.
This way, Developers and Data Scientists can learn how to use Stormly’s AI-based building blocks (https://www.stormly.com/developer) to create ready-to-use templates, customized for specific industries or business cases. Each template can be shared, reused, and improved by others. In addition, data scientists can bring their own building blocks onto the platform, in the form of custom plugins.
As a result, the community can build and offer the models and solutions in an easy to use package for end-users in other companies. Think of it like Salesforce, but for analytics and data science.
On the other hand, companies that planned building tailor-made solutions from scratch and were forced to drastically cut on development and data teams will now be able to create what they planned, thanks to Stormly’s platform and building blocks. What used to take months or years to build, can now be done within days or weeks.
The next step for us will be to enable our community to monetize their ready to use Templates, directly through the platform. To get here, we will collaborate with the community to get to know more about their expectations and feedback on monetization options, to make sure the platform is designed in a way that is fair to the people who contribute to it.
We believe that it is the diverse feedback and expertise from various professionals that will shape Stormly. In times of uncertainty, it is the collaboration and getting people together, even if not physically, that will make us better and stronger. As professionals, companies, and as people.