Frontastic in 2019: Head first into a bright future

It’s that time of the year again when everybody looks back in astonishment and realizes how time flies.
It’s no different here at Frontastic. In our relatively short company life, we’ve made it a habit to take a moment early in the year and look back at the past 12 months — and let you have a look behind the curtains.
For us, 2019 was all about growth (as you can imagine). Keep reading for a quick overview of our amazing year!

Growing the business

If 2018 was the year to lay the foundations, 2019 was the year we gained traction as the go-to solution for the management and delivery of digital customer experiences on any device.

As more and more brands and retailers start to acknowledge the importance of a fast and innovative frontend to stay ahead in their game, customers like Flaconi, Universal Music Group, Apollo Optics, Prym, and CHRONEXT decided to go with Frontastic’s Composable Frontend Platform.

For us, it only proved our point: Frontend matters!

Growing the funding

Our ambitions have always been sky-high — and we don’t settle for less. If you want to become the new standard platform in this industry, you need some funding to fuel the growth.

We couldn’t be prouder to have been able to close our Pre-Series-A funding round and add Reimann Investors, Ventech, NRW.Bank, and Business Angel Ulrike Müller to our group of investors.

But, we’re even more proud of the fact that each of our investors has committed themselves to a long-term, sustainable investment, a fact that clearly speaks to the level of trust and belief they have in our platform and business model.

Growing the team

Even in the age of digital, scalable business models, it’s still people who make or break a company’s success. For Frontastic, 2019 already started with the 1st hires, and we just accelerated from there on.

What started as a company of 5 founders in 2017, has now turned into a team of 24 experts across various specialities — and Frontastic just keeps growing.

With the 1st customers and increasing traction in the market in 2019, it became clear pretty quickly that we needed more hands-on-deck in all functions to be able to build and keep momentum.

Step by step in 2019, we reinforced our Development team (Schaumii, Klaudija, Meryam), DevOps team (Helder) as well as Operations (Timo), Sales (Udo, Micha), and Marketing (Jahan). We also welcomed our first UX/ UI Designer (Sofia), our Technical Writer (Catherine), and our first Product Owner (Felix).

In growing the team, diversity has always been a driving force and goal in itself. And we’re proud that we’re currently 24 people, spread over 8 different countries, with as much as 30% female colleagues. Clearly, diversity is something that just comes naturally to us.

Growing remote

One topic that never gets old is how Frontastic is set up as a remote native company. Despite many — often skeptical — questions, our organizational model as a remote only company has continued to serve us well and was an important success factor in our growth again in 2019.

If you have growth ambitions as high as we do, you need the right people — and you need them now. Because we offer location-independent positions, we continue to attract people whose levels of skill, dedication, initiative, and enthusiasm are absolutely inspiring.

Clearly, as the working world is going through a lot of change globally, our organizational model didn’t stay unnoticed. So, we’re especially proud to have been named one of the 10 most promising start-ups by remotive.io in 2020.

Full speed ahead into 2020

We’ve had a taste of what we can achieve in the future and we’re not planning to slow down any time soon. 2020 already started as a whirlwind year: Lobenberg’s Gute Weine, a multiple award-winning wine retailer, has decided to go with Frontastic to unchain their frontend, and we’ve got more exciting customers up our sleeves.

Our investors and business angels continue to be an enormous source of support and knowledge, helping us to become better and faster every day.

As we grow the business, we continue to need the most talented people — and we can tell this much: We have some exciting plans for this year. Some of the industry’s best and brightest have decided to join Frontastic in 2020, so stay tuned for more news on how we’ll grow the team and who else is coming on board.

Two of the most challenging aspects about building and growing a remote native company are these:

Company culture and communication

How do you create, nurture, and protect a company culture that enables people to thrive and do some of their best work all the while ensuring that everybody feels that they’re part of a strong and committed team that always has everyone’s back. We’ve been really successful at that so far and as we grow we’ll be more distributed around the globe, holding on to and further developing that culture is one of our key focus points when it comes to organizational development.

Managing labor laws in various countries

Have you ever imagined being an employer in as many as 7 different countries and counting? All without a dedicated HR department? If you have, you know the legal and organizational challenges that come with that. So while we’re attracting the brightest people from all over the world, registering as an employer in each of their home countries is a science in itself.

Luckily, we have built a strong network of fellow remote native companies who support each other with knowledge, experience, and advice on our way to a truly global company.