Friday 11/6/2010 was a big day for us. We celebrated 1 year in business. 

1 year feels like a long time but for us it went pretty quickly. Let me take a moment and look back…

I read some interview with guys who started a company as students, just like we did. They said they wouldn’t do it again. It took away their students years, they don’t have much to talk about with people of their age and it bothers them.

We too feel, that we have different (and I dare say bigger) problems than other of our age. But we can talk with them, laugh with them… Just for a while you have to put business aside. But yes, I admit it… we learned a lot during this year and it changed us a lot.

Actually this company was started by 4 people. Me, Vítek Ježek, Pavel Zbytovský and Tomáš Jukin. All of us were students at that time. Year later, Tomáš and Pavel aren’t working with us anymore, I and Vítek aren’t students.

I don’t regret the decision we made a year ago - to start a company. For us it’s a school of life and things we learn every day we couldn’t learn any other way.

I hope we learned enough to stay in business another year.

37signals in their book Rework writes “planning is guessing”. They’re right. You can plan whatever you want but reality is, in most cases, pretty much different.

We know that. But sometimes we try to plan anyway. You can call it “guess” if you want.

When you start working on something you should have a vision - what it should do, what should your costumers feel when using it, what should be the user experience of using that product. You’re doing that, right?

But let’s take it to completely another level.

Try to think about what should be the user experience of using your products/services 5 years from now.

It’s bloody hard to do but if you really think about it and discuss with your colleagues, it can help you to get on the right track, to do important work and put the rest aside.

Good luck!

Many times I heard this opinion: “Why do you attend conferences when you can watch video from your home and without paying anything.”

If you see a conference as something where you gain knowledge, it makes sense to watch it on video. It’s cheaper, more comfortable for people who hates traveling and you can pause it anytime and go back.

But for me it’s not what conferences are about.

They’re about meeting other people, sharing knowledge during lunch, listening and telling funny stories and finding new friends and business opportunities. I met wonderful people at every conference I attended. Many of them became my friends, some I made business with.

Knowledge you can get from books, videos and podcasts. But with friends you can laugh and share more knowledge than any book/video/podcast can give you. And that’s worth much more than a conference fee.

P.S.: Hope to see you in Prague at WebExpo 2010.

We believe every dream is possible if you devote yourself to it and start to believe in it. And the best advice we can give you, if you want to make your dream happen, is to stop dreaming and start doing. Yeah, like right now! The rest of this post isn’t important for you if you haven’t started yet.

Behind every overnight success are years of work. Hard work. Without reward. Everyone has to get through this stage. The ones who don’t give up and hold up to their dreams are the winners. And lets face it - most of the people eventually give up.

We hope you don’t. And we hope we don’t either.

When you get a general education from secondary school in our country, everyone expects you to go to university. And everyone does that.

I wasn’t particularly happy at my secondary school, I didn’t like the feeling of being only one of the crowd, with no particular interest to teachers (though there were exceptions I’m most grateful for). If you did your homework, you were a good student, if you don’t do them, well, you were not. Who is smart and who isn’t was a matter of grades - oh, you’ve got 1 (or A), you’re so good. You failed? You are such a looser. Nobody cares why.

I went to university expecting something different. Expecting dialog and focus on opinion instead of memorizing information. Expecting at least a bit of respect from teachers. I couldn’t be more wrong.

At Czech Technical University, we were the crowd nobody cared about. You could be recognized expert in the community, but there? You do what they tell you to do, there is no choice unless you consider leaving. It doesn’t matter what you think, it doesn’t matter it’s obsolete.

After some time the university begun to be a major consumer of my time. The only place I really didn’t want to be. It took me 3 months to make the decision, but finally it was there. I quit.

The other day I met a friend. She looked at me and said - hey, you look finally happy after 3 month. And she was 100% right. The weight of the decision I was considering to make lifted away, there was no going back, only forward.

So was attending the university complete waste of time? No. Because of people I meet. I wouldn’t be part of Clevis if I didn’t meet Vítek there. And you’ll feel the loss of student status after you leave.

But I believe we should be taught to think in context, to challenge authority, not to blindly accept what teachers consider the correct answer. I couldn’t continue to study in completely opposite conditions. 

Being a dreamer I plan to return to university this year. Completely different specialization, just founded department. Hopefully it’s going to be a completely different experience.

In their latest book 37signals says - meetings are poison. What they mean is - discussing business matters and similar stuff with your colleagues just waste everybody’s time.

But there is another type of meetings. The one that made 37signals so successful in web application world, the one which ends up in marriage, the one when you meet someone and that person turns out to be a true friend.

These meetings aren’t poison. These are what makes this life so beautiful. 

We too got together by accident. Vítek and I found ourselves sitting next each other at university, 6 month later we founded Clevis s.r.o. together.

And it all wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t meet many more wonderful people.

So don’t be mistaken - meetings (and people) are the most important things in your life.

When you meet somebody you don’t know, the ordinary thing to do is to say your name and shake hands. Then in most cases follows a bit about who you are and what you do.

So…

Hello! I’m Jan Sládek and I’m talking here for a group of young people working for company we call Clevis. It’s really nice to meet you! (Or better - it’s really nice you’re reading our blog story.)

(shaking hands…)

At Clevis we want to turn your work to a joy. Because of that we’re developing web applications, that let you get rid off routine tasks and do the work you actually enjoy. (If you’re working somewhere when you don’t enjoy any task, it’s time to quit! Live is too short to waste it.) For that we use mostly PHP framework Nette or Ruby on Rails, both are turning our work to joy every day.

What about you? Who are you? Do you enjoy your work?

Don’t be afraid to use comments and introduce yourself before we go on on with stories about our company and things we learned on the way. We’d love to know who reads our stories.