{"id":14750,"date":"2024-07-04T16:24:24","date_gmt":"2024-07-04T13:24:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/?p=14750"},"modified":"2024-11-22T14:22:55","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T11:22:55","slug":"history-of-the-railsware-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/railsware.com\/blog\/history-of-the-railsware-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Railsware History"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Today, Railsware is a team of 200+ remarkable professionals spread over 25+ countries who are committed to crafting exceptional products. We are a remote-friendly company that has been enjoying flexibility for many years. Though most of us prefer working mainly online, we have three main working spaces \u2013 in Kyiv (Ukraine), Krakow and Warsaw (Poland).<\/div>\n\n\n\n

A big dream and shared values have shaped the Railsware of today. We are a team with outstanding product expertise acknowledged by millions of users, our clients and partners, and Forbes Ukraine, which recently included<\/a> us in the Top 20 Product Companies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We grew into a product studio<\/a> that successfully combines two business directions: product development and consultancy. These directions are integrally connected and complement each other. Due to well-established product management, engineering, design processes, and polished approaches, we turn ideas into growing products.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

How it all began<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Railsware roots go back to 2007 when it was established by a small team of tech-savvy enthusiasts. One of them later became CEO and still holds this role. Our journey was a long winding road full of experiments and insightful learnings. We worked hard to gain expertise in business processes and product management. All while continuing to polish our software development approaches. Our first profitable project shaped the first product team inside Railsware. That also was a time when our coding culture and delivery approaches evolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\u201c<\/div>\n
\n

I had a dream \u2013 to create a place where happy talented people work in unison, craft quality products and do things that matter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Yaroslav\n

Yaroslav Lazor<\/h4>\n

CEO at Railsware<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Product studio model<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Our team always wanted to be a part of the product world. And we wanted to be involved in the whole creation process \u2014 not just coding. We practiced different business models and even tried co-funding a few products in the early days. It was a valuable experience that exposed our business management gaps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The need for new knowledge was evident, and we decided to gain it by learning from successful product companies based in Silicon Valley. We analyzed their cases and approaches to apply them to our business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2012, we met the Pivotal Labs team, and it was a game-changing experience for us. That knowledge-sharing trip aroused our curiosity and took the Railsware business to a new quality level. We learned about a powerful product discovery tool \u2013 inception, pair programming approach, and many other great things, which later boosted the quality of our business processes and product development cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Powered by our team and data-driven approaches, we developed our own company model. It allows us to transform our knowledge and experience into damn good products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether working on a client\u2019s product or our own, we use the same approaches and stay true to the lean methodology<\/a>. This way, we invest in our craft and then apply it to building better products. It forms a continuous improvement cycle and shapes our product studio as a platform for the repeatable creation and growth of successful products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our products <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Experimenting with internal tools laid the foundation for our own products \u2013 Mailtrap<\/a>, TitanApps<\/a>, and Coupler.io<\/a>. Today, they are used by millions of people around the globe and are acknowledged by world-class teams like Atlassian, Adobe, GitHub, Yelp, and Pivotal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2011, while working on a project with our client, we accidentally sent 200k test emails to real customers. That was a painful but fateful mistake. We created a solution to avoid such mistakes in the future (without a goal to earn money). The internal tool we crafted was very helpful, so we decided to share it with the community. The demand for this product grew and motivated us to turn it into a profitable business. This is how the journey of Mailtrap began, and our transformation into a product studio started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, the Railsware team created a tool for a company-wide transition from Trello to Jira. It was a task organizer built into the Jira application for internal use only. And because no checklist plugin on the market had an API, we built one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a repeat of the story with our first product, Mailtrap. We shared our solution with the world and it became profitable. Today, it has earned us the status of Atlassian Platinum Marketplace Partner, and the solution itself<\/a> is one of the Top 3 Checklist add-ons on the Atlassian marketplace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fueled by the success of our Jira checklist add-on, we invested<\/a> $10 million in developing TitanApps \u2013 a suite of productivity tools designed to help teams maximize their project management efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Railsware is a data-driven<\/a> company. That\u2019s why documenting, storing, and keeping everything in perfect order is something that we always care about. Our team has done a lot of work importing data into Google Spreadsheets from different data sources, which later resulted in creating a Google Sheets Importer add-on \u2013 Coupler.io \u2013 our third product which was released in 2020. Now, Coupler.io has evolved into a fully-fledged data integration solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\u201c<\/div>\n
\n

We’re expanding. Hopefully, aiming for a trillion! But realistically, we’re expanding our products. They grow linearly until they experience a hockey stick effect, which indicates product-market fit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Yaroslav\n

Yaroslav Lazor<\/h4>\n

CEO at Railsware<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Culture we build<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To grow the Railsware business we reinvest profit in our products and team development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the early days, we made development culture<\/a> the core of our business. It has paid off big time, both with the quality of our projects and Railswarians, who tend to stay with the company for 7+ years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

T-shape<\/a> personality approach unlocks our professional potential in different areas. Through collaborative work, we constantly share our knowledge, learn from each other, and master our craft every day. Flexibility and trust are at the center of everything we do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\u201c<\/div>\n
\"Sergiy\n

Sergiy Korolov<\/h4>\n

Managing Partner at Railsware<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Railswarians are professionals who can seamlessly integrate into any project and apply our established development culture. Each engineer undergoes our comprehensive onboarding process, where they learn our approaches to software development, deployment, code review, and more. This ensures consistency and high-quality service across all projects<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\u201c<\/div>\n
\n

There is a difference between, \u201cI think\u201d and \u201cI know\u201d. You can build a team only with \u201cI know\u201d. But you can get to \u201cI know\u201d only going through successful experiments and mistakes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\"Yaroslav\n

Yaroslav Lazor<\/h4>\n

CEO<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Our culture has developed throughout Railsware\u2019s evolution. Now, our company stands for a strong belief in the end value of what we do along with continuous learning and improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We strive to influence how companies are managed through proven approaches and the products we build. Our goal is to extend the Railsware formula to the industry by leveraging our company reputation and market visibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In 2023\u20132024 alone, we attended over 20 webinars, conferences, hackathons, and meetups. We highly value the opportunity to share knowledge and insights with the community and to engage with like-minded individuals to learn and stay active. Our experts from various departments, including marketing, product design, product management, and HR, have participated in these educational and networking events, mostly as guest speakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Railsware, we support everyone eager to consolidate their knowledge and share it with a broader audience. Our team assists at every stage of the process, from planning outlines to setting up and organizing the event<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here are some of the events we have attended and contributed to recently, where you might have seen us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n