A summary of 2021 at NerdCow

Remote beginnings and a new office

Carrying on from a great 2020, we’ve started the new year on a high. Even though we were still in a remote setting, we’ve successfully started using our new process. Running workshops over video calls was more challenging than it seems, but we’ve had a lot of fun and success with it.

And in Q2, we’ve moved into a new, bigger office in the heart of Aldgate. As we’re a collaborative bunch, our productivity spiked. We still couldn’t run our workshops in person, but it was a massive improvement nonetheless. And our office has a roof garden – how about that?!

Growing our team

With our process being an instant success, it was time to grow. Łukasz Sieroń joined in May 2021 as a Full Stack Web Developer, and in June we’ve added Ryheem Agnus to the team as a Digital Marketer.

Learn more about our new team members

• An interview with Ryheem
• An interview with Łukasz

Sharing our knowledge

In the last year’s summary, we’ve committed to making your knowledge more accessible. It started in 2020 when we’ve run our first webinar. Since then, with help of Ryheem, we’ve published more content than ever – and it’s available to everyone on our website, social media, and YouTube.

Our team has started appearing in online publications and speaking on Twitter spaces. And we have so much more in store for 2022! Keep an eye on our platforms, and in the meantime, here’s a throwback to our first ever webinar.

World With Web – an eco-friendly initiative for the Internet

This is a project that’s close to our hearts. We’ve teased in the previous year’s summary, and we’ve worked really hard for months to make it happen. World With Web is a non-profit initiative to certify websites that are eco-friendly. Our research team invented an algorithm that allows us to make an actual impact on how the Internet affects the environment.

World With Web doesn’t require offset donations. It certifies real change. Our algorithm is based on real-world data. We’ve extracted values from existing research and carried out our own. Equipped with that data, we were able to find the correlation between website performance metrics and how they impact energy usage.

Launching our Customer Portal

We’ve launched the Beta version of our Customer Portal. It allows our clients to track their retainer agreements – what work was carried out, how much time did it take, what’s their current allowance, and more. We have a ton of ideas on how to expand the platform, and we’ll share the roadmap as soon as we can.

Reinventing our brand

This was by far the biggest moment in our humble history. We’ve decided to update our branding, and the team at Third Floor Design helped us tremendously. Their workshops and branding guidelines helped us better define who we are.

You can see the end result all over the website and our other channels. As a bonus, here’s a little summary of our logo throughout the year.

Smashing our goals just six months in

Our unique process uses Design Sprint workshops. You can learn more about them in the webinar video above. But for now, we wanted to quickly introduce one exercise we do. The name is self-explanatory: 2-year goal.

Working with our team and the client’s team, everyone comes up with a goal for the company. It can be as crazy as you like. One of our clients wanted to have Elon Musk wear their merchandise – how about that?! But there’s one rule. It has to be something that the website heavily contributes to. We then all vote and choose the winning idea.

We’ve tested our process extensively, including with our own website. In the case of NerdCow, we’ve set out a revenue goal. And we’ve smashed it in just six months, even after adjusting for the growth of our team.

But we don’t mean to brag. The main takeaway from this is that our process works, and the growth will help us make it even better. We’d like to thank each and every one of our clients for their trust, and we hope we can achieve even greater things with you in 2022.

Celebrating Christmas together for the first time

First, we worked remotely. Then we’ve been hit by a pandemic. But in 2021, we finally got to celebrate Christmas together. After a rare day with all of us in the office together, we got our gifts and headed out to dinner and a bowling game.

Bring on 2022 💪

We’re extremely optimistic ahead of the New Year. We’ve now tested our process time and time again, and we’re thrilled to take advantage of it with new clients. The team is also eager to bring you more knowledge than ever. Prepare for loads of articles, videos, and webinars. We’re also looking into ways to host all the content in one, accessible knowledge base.

And last by not least, we’re going to work towards fulfilling our mission, one that we’ve established during the branding workshops.

We want to build a better Web. One site at a time.