Designing an innovative product is all about striking a balance between technological novelty and solidarity with the traditional dynamics and workflows of the industry. Most of the times, it is not a matter of asking Can we?, but rather Should we?

I am a child of the great depression. Not the “great” depression as in what happened in the 1920s. The great depression as in “we haven’t been really OK since it happened” depression of the XXI century. My professional career started in 2008, and as you can infer that meant only one word: crisis.

I was talking the other day to some friends about the journey it has been creating a company. For a lot of reasons it drew a smile in my face, but I also remembered a couple of tear-inducing ones. What I’m trying to say is that most of the reasons create mixed feelings.

We hear a lot about Intellectual Property but what is it, exactly? Why should we care? In which way is it important for startups? When should you start thinking about it? Throughout this article, I will try to give you some answers to these questions, since we also had to deal with them.

Everybody likes to say “the clients are what matters the most to us” about their own company. If that would be the case, you —as a customer— would have never had a bad experience while requesting any product or service. Even though companies say the customers are what matters the most, that is often not reflected in their behavior.

If your colleagues from electronics need help, try and find time to help them, if your colleagues from sales need help, you do the same. If the cleaning lady needs help, go ahead!

After a year of many options and a lot of indecision, we have finally found the perfect name for our product.

No company starts with everything they need. In our case, necessity is all we knew for a long time. I can’t even begin to express how difficult the first months were, nor how hard it was for us to find a right match between what we needed and what we could afford. And what is one of the first things a startup needs? A place to conduct business. A place to grow. A home.

We didn’t plan it to be like this. Being an inclusive company is something that happened naturally without us even noticing it, and I think that’s precisely the reason why it’s so much meaningful this way.

If there is something I’m proud of is the people that work with me at Adapttech. I don’t mean to brag, but absolutely nothing can compare to that. You might even be thinking about a lot of good things that have happened to you, and how “having a great team” could never be one of them. But just like winning a race, you would never know what it really feels until you actually win one.

Over the last years Fred —my business partner at Adapttech— and I have been trying to figure out what are the most important characteristics an entrepreneur can have. Not surprisingly, we feel the most important ones are the top two in this article.

This Tuesday, May 9, we are proud to present our new branding. A much needed change to reflect the evolution that our company went through this past few years, since it was founded.