Happy Birthday To Us ??

This content previously appeared in this post by Jake Miller, The Engineered Innovation Group's founder & CEO. You can connect with Jake here on LinkedIn.

It’s Engineered Innovation Group’s FIRST Birthday — We’ve Learned A Lot In A Year

I am floored at where we are after just one year in business. Before I dive into the key learnings I’ve had over the past year, I wanted to share & celebrate a few highlights of EIG’s first year in business.

• We’ve grown to 19 employees — with three more offers for new EIGers getting ready this week.
• Our team is incredibly diverse, with 70% of the team representing groups that are often underrepresented in tech.?
• We’ve had 15 clients.?
• We secured office space in downtown Indianapolis on Monument Circle (and have incredible murals on the walls!)
• We have clients that love us - and we love them.?
• We’ve exceeded our quarterly revenue goals every quarter.

Below are some of the big lessons I have learned in my first year as a CEO.??

Formalize concepts — and draw a picture!

Formalizing a concept makes it easier to frame the problem and solution for your customers. I did this early on with the phases of innovation (which map to our logo!). This phase graphic and the cone of uncertainty are simple concepts in our sales and discovery conversations.

Coding academy grads are awesome.

Most of our engineers are graduates from coding academies – many have had previous careers. They can leverage their past experiences and life experiences to be great engineers, problem solvers, and thought partners for our clients. We think our ability to find amazing engineers and continue growing and developing them is our secret sauce and will propel our future.

Focus is critical.?

There are so many opportunities in the world — staying focused on what we do well (building MVPs) helps us refine processes, create efficiencies, clarify our place in the market, and so much more.??

While we will stay focused on building MVPs in 2023, we plan to add Site Reliability and Data Science to our offerings to help us deliver ongoing customer services once they’ve onboarded their first cohort of users!

Venture studios are a great partner.

There are many reasons venture studios love EIG and, frankly, need a partner like us to be successful; here are a few reasons why EIG & venture studios make a great match.

-Hiring the right technical talent is super hard.??

-Hiring the wrong technical talent early hurts a company (a lot!).

-Accelerating time to market is often a goal — getting people hired and up to speed eats away at that time.?

-Not all technologists have started from scratch; we build greenfield, new products daily, so we are comfortable in this space.?

Going beyond the code is key.?

We have all the functions of a software company, but we don’t have a product. Our product is our client's product. We help clients with security, compliance, process, and policies. So yes, we deliver amazing code, but our ability to go beyond simply writing code is what truly differentiates us.