This time of year is always a natural time to reflect on the past, and set goals for the future. In this vein, I’ve asked some of the folks at our company to think about their resolutions for MerchantOS in 2012.
A Look Back At 2011
We accomplished a lot this year and added a number of awesome folks to our team. In 2011 MerchantOS…
- Reached the 1,000 customer mark. We now have over 1,300 retail locations using our point of sale software. Thank You!
- Processed our One Billionth dollar in transactions. We averaged $1.4 milion per day in our point of sale system.
- Added 7 full time employees, a half timer, and an intern.
- Released 28 versions of our software with over 400 individual improvements and fixes.
- 525,570 minutes of up time, 10 slow, 20 minutes of downtime for a subset of customers. 99.994% uptime overall.
- Secured a bank loan for 2012 expansion.
- 2 awesome parties, many ping pong matches, beer-pong games, and trips to the bar downstairs. Along with 2 babies born.
Seven 2012 Apocalyptic Resolutions
It may be the end of the world, but that doesn’t mean we can’t still make plans:
1. Focus on making our point of sale software awesome:
I want to take our point of sale to the next level. Making it easier and more pleasant to use while adding functionality. This is a difficult balancing act but we have a good plan for how to accomplish it and I’m excited about the challenge.
2. Have Fun:
I started this company because I didn’t like the other jobs I had. There weren’t fun. It wasn’t rewarding the way I wanted it to be. In 2012 I want to make sure that everyone that works here (and hopefully our customers) have some fun, enjoy their work, and feel valued.
3. Provide the best dang support:
We spent a great deal of effort searching for awesome support heroes to hire this year (adding Ciara, Ryan, Chris, Vanessa, and Jered). We try to treat our employees like we’d want to be treated ourselves. And we ask our employees to do the same for our customers. We have fun. We also take our jobs seriously and really care about our customers and the product we give them. That’s our recipe for awesome support.
4. Hire awesome people:
We are what the people who work here make us. If we want to be awesome we have to hire awesome. We’ve already got 2 (a programmer and designer) lined for the start of the year. We’ll probably add a few more before the year is over. I’m going to make sure we take the time to hire the right people.
5. Stock pile food, gold, and guns…
To fight the zombies. Oh we might also need this.
6. Sign up another 1,000 retail locations:
This is a high bar to reach for. With purely natural growth and without any change in our marketing strategy, I’d predict we will add somewhere around 700. How will we get those extra 300?
We have a bank loan so we can spend more on Adwords, that will help. We are optimizing our sign-up process. Working on our website marketing. We want to improve the look and feel of our application while we make it easier to use and more powerful. And I’ll just give you a hint there might be something with Mobile and web based accounting systems (no promises! It’s software development, nothing is guaranteed).
7. Build a product we are proud of.
Most of all in 2012 I want to build a product we are proud of. I want to write excellent code, create awesome user interfaces, build solid and reliable server and network infrastructure, and provide awesome support.
I’m Proud Of Our Employees, And Thankful To Our Customers
Without the great people that work for us and all our customers who support us, we wouldn’t be able to take on these goals. So thank you for making this all possible!