Insights from a befriended tech agency.

Tell us a little bit about your background in tech.

Originally I have a degree in mechanical engineering. In 2018 I started working as a mechanical engineer. At that time I was already programming a little bit on the side. After a year I stopped the job and learned programming online. The problem-solving knowledge I learned during the Engineering school made the transition easier. I then started to work freelance as a Python software developer.

You have started your own company already a while ago. How did you manage to find yourself a team? And does your team work completely remotely?

When covid spread I was looking for a good opportunity to use my time and invest some money. So I tried to work with developers from the Philippines. I ended up providing software development services to companies. Therefore I started to hire more people from the Philippines. Nowadays I hire a lot through LinkedIn, in the earlier days I also searched through Upwork, but LinkedIn has better filters. In Berlin, it can be hard to find talents. In the Philippines and also in Pakistan it is a bit easier to find good developers that are available. We work completely remote.

Now you are rebranding your agency to a new level. How did you come to the conclusion to switch gears in this way? And what are the biggest changes?

The previous name was not very easy to remember and hard to market. In the beginning it was not important, the company was just named after me. But now we want to offer new services and a brandable name would be more suitable. We are now also offering no-code development services.

We chose Naviu as it is easy to spell and remember. The idea behind is that “We navigate with you in tech” (Naviu).

Therefore the topic of branding comes in as well, we didn’t really have that before.

Give us a little inside into your projects? What kind of projects are you guys working on?

We build customer software for our customers. Those software are mainly process automation, but we also help companies create e-commerce, CRM, CMS, marketplaces, and other types of software. Our customers could choose to use an existing software and configure it. But existing systems are sometimes complex and long to configure and never reach the level of customization of a fully custom software. So it can be in any industry. Insurance, E-Commerce, finance, Sales automations, and further areas.

Are the projects you are working on for companies mostly problem based? For example when a company has a specific issue and they are lacking enough employees or professionals in that area. Or do you often build whole projects for companies from scratch?

It can be both. For many companies it can be hard to find talent right away. Therefore it is often interesting to work with an agency, where they find a whole team bundled up. For MVPs it can also be a good solution for founders without tech background, who just want their first version of the idea to be ready for presentation and user testing.

We love the Start-Up Culture. So many different varieties of projects and innovation. Do you get in contact with a lot of new projects and are there any fields that inspire you? What are the biggest start-up trends that you have an eye on?

We are talking to a lot of start-ups. Of course they are also our target audience. Since we are starting to sell no-code development services, it is also the biggest trend for us. No-code is now a big step up for the software industry. It fills the gap between UX prototyping and the long full-code software development process. You don’t have to wait for months to get a working software to test your ideas.

What are your feelings about innovation and how can we all reinvent ourselves constantly?

Small increments make the big innovation in the end. Breakthroughs are not the real deal. The best way to Innovate is through small iterations and incrementions.

Remi Besnard lives and works from Berlin. He is Co-CEO of Naviu.tech. Thank you Remi for these interesting insights in your work. It is always useful to learn more from the tech industry, as we at SYLBAA as well grow our product with tech solutions.