Staff email, leaked

(This was an email to Nerdery staff – and perhaps, dear reader, you’ll join us soon and come to expect such communiqués)

All,

You may have noticed that we never held a Q4 2009 wrap-up meeting. If you didn’t notice, it may be because there’s a 24% chance that you didn’t even work here that last time we did one of our quarterly(ish) update meetings. I finally decided that we are so close to the end of Q1 that we’d just wait and do a Q4 & Q1 wrap-up meeting combo. But, there’s lots of stuff going on and I feel compelled to provide some summary updates here.

Sales Summary:

We closed 2009 with sales of $8,609,108, which is about 5% over our adjusted plan of $8,200,000. Ugh. I was hoping you wouldn’t notice the word “adjusted” in that first sentence, but obviously I can’t slip anything past you folks. Our original sales goal for 2009 (which we baked at the end of 2008) was $10,000,000. We decided to adjust (un-bake) this plan in May of 2009 after we finally sat down and watched the news.

We grew our revenue by 35% from 2008 to 2009, which is a more-than-respectable achievement. We should all be proud of being part of an organization that was able to establish a strong growth rates in 2009.

Our sales goal for 2010 is $11,200,000, which is 30% growth over 2009 actual revenue. We haven’t finished the first quarter of this year yet, but we are on track for meeting (and possibly exceeding) our sales goal. By “possibly exceeding”, I mean, “we’re going to pwn our sales goal!” We only need like… umm.. carry the one… $118,000 more in sales this month. Get up, go find a sales rep, give him or her a big hug and say, “I believe in you!” Then, sign an order for $1,180. If we all do this, we WILL reach our goal.

Employment Summary:

In 2009, we had a net increase of 16 employees. We started 2010 with 85 employees, added 18 new people and lost one – leaving us with 102 employees (this number includes full-time contractors, excludes dogs, and includes the two people that are scheduled to start in the next week or so). Of the 18 new people this year, 17 of them are in the development department and they recommend sugarless gum for people that chew gum. Are you trying to figure out who the other one is? It’s our newest sales engineer, Bill Titler. I don’t know why he hates sugarless gum; maybe he moonlights as a dentist.

Space Summary:

We have about 17,000 square feet at The Nerdery. We are adding an additional 7,000 square feet in about two months. The lease is signed, the plans are in place and construction is ready to begin any time. We are taking over the two vacant office suites to the north of our space. The diagonal wall will be removed (Nerdery Science Theater will be preserved), new bathrooms will be added, and we’ll have some new conference rooms and a few new offices. If Mike Derheim makes you nervous whenever he takes a tape measure to your workspace, rest assured that his intentions are good. He’s not trying to figure out how many boxes or additional people will fit in your cube. To be honest, I really don’t know why he does that. Perhaps it’s some sort of tape-measuring neurosis that isn’t even work-related.

The new space comes complete with all new cube furniture. All of our cubicles are going to be replaced with new(er) and super(ior) equipment. Mainly, the new cubes have noise-dampening properties that should result in a quieter working environment. But, more importantly, the new space comes with new large bathrooms AND our existing bathrooms up front are being remodeled. Unfortunately, they need to remodel our existing bathrooms before building our new ones. You got the memo, so you know the deal. We’ve survived worse bathroom conditions than this. I just hope the reduced bathroom capacity doesn’t create chair-dampening properties.

Summery Summary:

About the time that our Nerdery Expansion project is complete, we’ll be starting our geographic expansion initiative in earnest. “Geo-what-phic expansion,” you say? This summer, we’ll be opening our first fully-functional remote office – equipped with sales and development staff. Due to the combination of market opportunity, proximity and the option to bribe our way to business success, we have selected Chicago as the venue. And we can keep a closer eye on Matt Albiniak.

We feel that opening offices in remote markets is key to our long-term success. Due to our local presence, we are so much more effective at penetrating the Twin Cities market than we are any other market. By establishing a real local presence in remote markets, we can repeat the success we have seen in the Twin Cities.

This expansion will create a much greater demand on the organization for leadership skills resulting in greater opportunities for individual career growth. For example, who wants Tom O’Neill’s job when he’s busy bootstrapping a new remote office? Anyone? Hello? Is this thing on (thump thump)? I was afraid of that…

We plan to launch the Chicago office with as many current employees as possible. It’s imperative that we start it off right and foster the kind of culture that we have here in Bloomington. Do any of you developers want to move to Chicago to help launch this new office? If so, talk to Tom. To make the conversation more entertaining, start by following this protocol:

You: “So, I hear Chicago is nice this time of year.”

Tom: “Chicago is going to be much nicer in August because we’ll have a badass office there with badass devs and badass sales reps and a badass refrigerator and badass dogs!”

You: “Hells Yeah!”

Tom: “Hells Yeah!”

Summary Summary:

Sales are good. Our team is awesome. More space and bathrooms are on the way. Chicago is hells yeah.

Thanks,

Luke