As the CEO of a small growing business, I find it challenging at times to take a moment to “pause and assess our course.” My time is often consumed by operational tasks, leaving little opportunity for intentional breaks to evaluate our current position and chart our future direction. Without this deliberate reflection, there is a risk we might be going full-speed in the wrong direction. Since the past 6-12 months have swiftly passed (again), now is probably a good time to pause and reflect.

Financial update

In November 2022 I posted on Linkedin about the Riimu one-million party as we had achieved a major milestone, growing our annual revenue over 1 million euro for the first time in the company’s history. Our fiscal year ended with a revenue of 1,3 million euro which meant that we had a whopping 96% growth from the previous year. This was a tremendous achievement by the whole team. Our profitability was on great level as well, which meant that almost 100 000€ euros were paid out via our profit sharing model to reward the whole team for their great work.

Strategy

In the beginning of 2023 we decided that we need to work on our growth strategy and in order to do so, we also need to get more experience on our team of how to create winning growth strategies. We were lucky enough to convince Niklas Carling to join our team as an Advisor. Niklas has a long background of working as a Strategy Consultant and he currently works as an Investment Manager at Monterro where he is also an advisor for several of their portfolio companies. Together with Niklas and the team, we created a growth strategy and business plan for the next 4 years.

We agreed that our mission is to enable our clients to identify and capitalize on untapped growth opportunities through the effective utilization of software. Our goal is to have 50+ experts on our team and an annual revenue exceeding 5 million euros by the end of fiscal year 26/27. These are fairly ambitious goals and saying them out loud can of course be a bit scary. We aim to do this without any external funding, but we still want to expand the current shareholder base by offering every Riimu employee the opportunity to become a shareholder. 

Recruitments

We have built a fantastic team and with that we have an excellent base to build on. We have top class software developers and consultants on our team along with exciting clients to work with. We however knew we needed to strengthen certain areas to A) help with building the commercial offering to support our strategy and B) to help us find talent to support the growth. 

We recruited Tomas Lindberg who started as our Head of Design and he comes with 20+ years of experience from Service, UX and UI design at various companies. Margareta Ronkainen was hired as our Talent Specialist and she brings with her experience from both headhunting and HR operations. The impact of Tomas and Margareta has already become apparent. With Tomas’ expertise we’ve built top class design services and acquired new types of clients that we’re not able to offer services to before. Margareta has elevated our talent operations side and already made her first recruitment. Our newest colleague will be starting in August.

The future

We are in a great place now to offer our clients a wider range of services and help them create solutions they can win more business with. We have a solid plan in place and a great team to execute the plan. Niklas as an advisor to the board, brings valuable knowledge of how to execute on our strategy and measure our performance. We have a very exciting second half of the year ahead of us!

I also asked ChatGPT to make the ending to my text more inspirational. So here it goes:

“Embracing this remarkable moment, we stand poised to bestow our clients with an extraordinary array of services, empowering them to forge triumphant solutions that propel their businesses to new heights. Our journey is fueled by a steadfast vision and an exceptional team that thrives on challenges. With Niklas, a guiding light on our advisory board, we are armed with invaluable wisdom to execute our strategy and gauge our achievements.

The horizon ahead gleams with promise, for the second half of this year is destined to be an exhilarating adventure. Together, we shall venture forth, surmounting obstacles, and weaving success stories that will echo through time. Let our collective spirit surge with determination as we embrace the boundless opportunities that await us! The possibilities are limitless, and our resolve is unyielding. Onward we march, for greatness is within our grasp!”