Meet Kirmada
It started with a lockdown…
In early 2020, as the shockwave of the pandemic was changing the world and confining millions to their homes, a seismic shift took place in the way we look at “work” as millions of people were forced to work from home for the first time.
At this time, in the beautiful rural part of England called the Cotswolds, tucked away in a small farm nestled in the hills north of Burford, a tiny web agency owned by Adam Engberg had been aware of a niggling, irritating problem with the way he worked for a couple of years. The problem was vague, itchy, and indistinct. But he knew it was there, lurking, almost unnoticed in the shadows of their daily work, quietly sapping productivity and profits out of the agency.
As the whole of the UK and Europe’s workforces were suddenly confined to spare bedrooms, dining rooms, hallways, kitchens, garden sheds and any other cubby hole that could be made into a workplace, we were forced to work in different ways and the nasty problem that had been eating us from within was suddenly forced into the limelight, to be seen for the first time for what it was. It’s menacing face laid bare for all to see. And for us at the agency, it let us finally give a name to our personal demon. And it’s name was…
Browser Tab Hell.
The Kirmada Team yesterday. From Left to right: Fran,Tim, Rik, Adam, Mills and Genevieve
Swipe On, Swipe Off
Ok, ok, so you were expecting something a bit more dramatic, but come on, give us a break, this is a true story.
Browser Tab Hell, for those who haven’t experienced it (yeah, right!), is the term we coined to describe that peculiar tendency to end up with hundreds of browser tabs open, forcing you to open more browsers, fill those browsers with tabs, create profiles with their own browsers crammed to bursting with tabs, until the day comes where you have so many tabs open sapping your productivity and ability to focus, you start to smell the brimstone and feel flames licking at your feet as yet another opportunity floats by, missed.
This is Browser Tabs Hell.
As a web agency with many clients, any one of us was always working on a primary project while supporting several others.
This meant having tabs open, and keeping them open for when they were needed, and trying to remember what they were all for, and opening up new ones with every phone conversation and email.
It occurred to Adam that it would be cool if he could just have what he needed on the screen at any one time, then when he needed to switch focus to a different client for a moment, just swipe everything off the screen and replace it with another client.
And could we add timesheets, social media scheduling, cloud file storage, project management, CRM, AI…? Could we make this the one and only piece of software freelancers would ever need?
From this kernel, Kirmada was born.
“Swipe on, Swipe Off. This is the Way of Kirmada.”
Ok, let’s do it
Adam Engberg and Rik Yapp met for a virtual beer (the beer was real, the meeting was virtual) to discuss “Project Kirmada”. Rik, with a brain the size of a planet, challenged everything, and after a gruelling couple of pints it was decided we should see if we could do it.
We brought in another brain, Max Paukovs, overseer of our crack coding team of Kristaps, Ritvars, Martins, Atis and Valdis. They worked on proof of concept code.
The code worked.
We moved on.
Over the next two years, we raised investment, both institutional and private, launched and tested the beta version, got things wrong, made them right, got more things wrong, heard feedback (some harsh, some amazing!) and developed Kirmada to become the app small businesses need to organise their client workloads, boost productivity, and increase billable revenue.
Everyone who saw the concept during development “got it” and we were able to build an impressive cap table of investors which includes an Australian investment fund and the legendary ex-CFO of Google, Patrick Pichette.
Now our team has grown to include Fran, Genevieve, Tim and Mills and we’re pushing ahead with an exciting development roadmap to deliver our goal of the ultimate business and personal productivity tool.
What happened next?
We’re doing that bit now. I’ll let you know!