Event-Driven Acceleration: Looking Back at Our First Two Years

It's hard to believe that it's already been two years since we first started our journey as a company specialising in Event-Driven Architecture. In that time, we've grown from a group of consultants with a shared passion for EDA to a thriving and equally passionate company, thanks to the hard work and dedication of our team.

In this blog post, we're excited to share some insights from our managing partners on how they've grown with the company over the past year. We'll dive into their challenges, areas of expertise, and how Wim, Kris, Bryan and Wout have helped shape Cymo into the company we are today. We’ve got a lot to cover, so let's get started!

Are we happy with where we are after two years?

Well, it depends on who you ask! Wim and Bryan feel like an entrepreneur is never completely satisfied. There are always new ways to grow, and continuously striving to improve ourselves and IT architectures is what brought us together in the first place. There were some growing pains as we had to adapt to a new way of working, since we didn’t shy away from trying to improve ourselves and those around us.

That being said, all of us are thrilled with the broader market acceptance of Event-Driven Architecture: EDA is finally getting the recognition it deserves. More and more companies are realising the benefits of working with this exciting new methodology, and we’ve definitely noticed a difference in conversations with potential clients. We invested a lot of resources into marketing, so it’s nice to see this paying off.

Of course, one of our biggest achievements is growing our team. We went from just a couple of consultants to a team of ten people, and we plan on growing further in the coming years. Everyone’s on the same page: we share a no-nonsense attitude and plenty of gusto for spreading the word about EDA.

What is the most challenging project we’ve worked on?

There were several challenging customer projects, but they’ve helped us define who we are as a company and which kinds of projects we want to do. When we encountered roadblocks, they helped us to fine-tune our service offering and increase our in-depth knowledge of various niche use cases and scaling EDA to an even larger enterprise scale.

However, the most challenging project was growing Cymo as a company. We had to switch our mindset from working as consultants on a project to working as managers guiding various simultaneous projects. In that sense, taking on a new managing partner in the form of Wout was a game-changer for all of us. He brought his expertise in operations to the table, and has been a tremendous help ever since.

What are we most proud of?

Without a doubt, it’s becoming a well-known centre of excellence for Event-Driven Architecture. When we arrive at a client, most of them are already convinced of our expertise. We’ve gathered the brightest minds in EDA together with some promising juniors, and we’re able to deliver some truly impressive results with a nearly hundred percent success rate.

It’s still amazing to see how many people want to start or continue their careers at Cymo because they believe in our vision and want to go on this journey together. Being able to get people started with Event-Driven Architecture and then watching them take the initiative to learn more is really inspiring.

Getting more people on board also gave us the necessary freedom to develop our service offering: distilling EDA to its essence and use cases has been a great help when explaining it to potential clients. We wrote an Event-Driven Architecture Manifesto that we’re very proud of, which also helped to align our vision on EDA internally. Last but certainly not least, we’ve started working on our solutions, with some exciting news to come in the future.

What do we like the most about working at Cymo?

Wout really likes that he gets to determine the company’s course together with the other managing partners. As a business-oriented person, he’s best at setting targets for our strategy and thinking ahead. He’s also responsible for the ‘let’s get smarter’ knowledge sharing moments: making people happy is the most important thing for him. Everything starts with the team!

Kris has always had a knack for entrepreneurship, so this role is right up his alley. He also praises the connection with his colleagues, which he missed when he was “just” a consultant at other companies. He wants to keep pushing his boundaries, and appreciates that the other managing partners are supportive in case of extraordinary circumstances. For example: he’s currently working while on a months-long road trip with his family!

Wim appreciates the opportunity to help companies move towards next-generation architecture. For him, it’s rewarding to be part of a team that helps organisations adopt an event-driven approach, and getting to see the positive impact his work has on their operations.

Bryan is thrilled with the general atmosphere the managing partners managed to establish in Cymo. Because of their varying perspectives and specialisations, strategic discussions are always an enriching experience. Having other opinions is essential for him: an echo chamber where everyone agrees all the time just doesn’t help Cymo grow as much. He also really likes that they are building their own thing, instead of just working on a client’s project.

What did we learn in the past two years?

For Wout, consultancy seemed like a simple concept at first, but there is a lot more to it than he thought. Aligning everyone’s planning is not an easy puzzle to solve, especially when working with freelancers. He has also seen a shift where consultants have become more selective in their assignments, which he encourages as it lets them play to their strengths. Cymo doesn't want to engage in body shopping, so Wout tries to focus on what makes our people happy when holding one-on-one sessions with each of them.

For Bryan, it’s actually the opposite of Wout. He used to be “just” a consultant, but quickly learned that there is a lot more to entrepreneurship and management than meets the eye. Managers need to align many people around them, smoothen their interactions, and divide tasks. It can also be challenging to take far-reaching decisions and investments that will only pay off in a few years. Bryan points out that he had to learn how to let go and delegate, instead of wanting to do everything himself.

Kris says that he made the mistake of trying for projects too quickly, including those that didn’t completely match our vision. He learned that we didn’t always clearly explain what Cymo stands for and what we want to do to Cronos’ internal sales organisations, so clearing this up has been a big step forward. As a management team, we also had to learn how to balance our time between coaching our employees and the projects we were working on. This was definitely a challenge, but it’s also helped us a lot.

Wim points out that people always make the same mistake: thinking that the client or colleague you’re talking to shares your mindset. Working with assumptions is always tricky, as we’ve learned while drafting our Event-Driven Architecture manifesto. By making sure that everyone defines EDA concepts and principles the same way, we managed to clear up some internal confusion.

Where do we see Cymo in the next two years?

It’s clear that we’ve come a long way in the past two years, but there are still plenty of options to grow further. We’ve got some personal goals, like Kris, who wants to improve his leadership skills, but all of us agree on two shared goals for Cymo.

First, we want to launch our product and make Cymo a product organisation as well. Without losing our identity as expert consultants, we’d like to set things up for our EDA products from development to service and support. Large-scale conferences related to Event-Driven Architecture like the Kafka Summit will be important touchstones for us to gauge the market demand.

In a second phase, we also want to expand our consultancy offering in both quantity and quality. We’ll continue our internal knowledge sharing initiatives to increase the overall EDA level of expertise, and there are plenty of geographic areas with lots of potential. Wout will focus on increasing Cymo’s presence in the Netherlands and Germany, and Bryan is excited to leverage the Crns Nordics initiative, the upcoming expansion of The Cronos Group into Scandinavian countries. We’re even thinking about expanding to the United States, but this will probably be a bit further out than the next two years.

Conclusion

As the managing partners of Cymo, we’re thrilled with our progress over the past two years! What began as a shared passion for Event-Driven Architecture has grown into a thriving company with the same passion and plenty of potential for further growth. While there have been challenges along the way, including growing pains and adapting to a new way of working, we're proud of what we've achieved so far.

Our efforts are paying off, and more and more companies are now recognizing the benefits of working with EDA. We've become a well-known centre for EDA and are proud of our expertise, nearly hundred percent success rate, and our ability to deliver impressive results. We love working at and for Cymo, and we are excited about the future!