Happy Birthday Friendsurance - 8 years and 8 smiles to your face!

Tomorrow, Friendsurance turns 8 years old - here are 8 sweet facts which hopefully bring 8 smiles to your face

Let's start with our three co-founders:

1. Sebastian, Dr. S, could potentially also be successful within the arts of magics. Newest on the trick list, cards disappearing.. Not bad, not bad!

2.  Tim has a tradition since 2011. For every annual Friendsurance party he packs his leopard swimming Speedos (which only a German would consider to wear). Fitting was that we several years went to Tropical Island with the team for annual big party. The team members only seemed shocked once; the time he forgot them. What?? No happy dancing leopard??

3.  Janis is our “give him 15 minutes and he has a new hit for you” composer! In our early years he wrote a Friendsurance song. For one of our parties he also wrote a really funny "Thank you" song from the founders to the teams and for Tim & Eirill's wedding he wrote a whole medley on all Rocky Horror Picture Show melodies! Got to give the guy some cred'! These German lines are from the old Friendsurance song:

“Zahlst du gern 300 Ocken? Jedes Jahr aufs Neue - das kann dich nicht schocken!

Hat die Versicherung bei dir wieder mal kassiert, obwohl bei dir seit Jahren kein Schaden passiert?

Dann ist Friendsurance für dich da”

4.  We have a wicket office, but our founders are most fond of the cheapest piece of furniture we have: a lamp in the CEO′s office, which is from the first office. It has been moving with us since the first office, because that one literally came without light, so the guys bought a construction lamp from the hardware store.

5. To support our language courses, we have language tandems. Every week team members help each other out, teaching another team member their native language. Thanks to the program, Clara from HR is now learning her father’s native language Farsi with Borna from IT.

6.  Like many nations, Friendsurance has a type of island far far away. Alexander (Senior Frontend Developer), started out with us in Berlin. After some years love brought him to Canada and ever since he has been our Canadian Outpost. Speaking of love, Alex ist full of it, check out this quote, talk about positive energy, right?!

7. We also have a cute tradition when team members get children: the newborn babies are introduced to the entire team as new colleagues. Our Head of Product Lukas Neitsch took the tradition one step further a couple of weeks ago and filled out a onboarding introduction Q&A for his lovely newborn daughter ;)

8.  Like in most companies out there, we share thousands of messages via Slack every month. However, I bet we beat most companies on shared hearts in the IT team ?. Thanks for sharing the love, guys!