The demand for software in general is as strong as ever and the Mobile App solution industry is getting more competitive. It’s a global marketplace, and it’s good to have many players involved because it keeps everyone pushing forward and doing better work. Better work demands innovative and flexible solutions depending on the clients’ needs.
Infinum is an independent software design and development agency. It currently employs over a 100 highly-skilled employees across offices in the US and Europe. Having around 11 years of experience and a solid US client base, they are thrilled to be recognized for the quality of their work, especially because the San Francisco Bay area is known for being the global center of technology.
Over 300 clients entrusted Infinum to build their digital products, and they’ve wrapped up twice as many projects by now. Many of these projects are also award-winning, which come as a staple of quality. Infinum works with clients ranging from financial, telecommunication, healthcare, automotive to FMCG, media and, leisure sectors.
Infinum’s leadership
Tomislav Car is the CEO at Infinum and one of the Founders. He co-founded Infinum along with his friend Matej Spoler when he was 19 years old, and three other partners (Nikola, Josip and Tamara) joined after a couple of years. Tomislav is a programmer by trade, he graduated computer science and dabbled in different aspects of building software.
Tomislav says, “I’m basically unemployable, simply because I never worked anywhere outside of Infinum in my life. I love motorcycles, I own two of them, one in Europe and one in SF, where I spend most of my time to run the US office.”
Beginnings
Infinum started providing Mobile App solutions because it was interesting for them and also the clients were demanding for the services. It was like the market was trying to tell them to do so. Their clients were continually impressed by the end-quality of their work, and Infinum grew based on referrals. At that point, the smartphone market was just getting started and Infinum was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. The rest was hard work, planning and leadership.
Benefits for Clients
Infinum dedicates a lot of time to user experience. “The entire UX research process opens a multitude of questions client didn’t think about beforehand ”, says Tomislav. That’s why, before starting sketching or coding anything, Infinum always runs a series discovery meetings, design sprints or workshops with the clients. This essentially means a clearer vision of business and consumer objectives, and a better interpretation of the end product.
Another important factor is code quality. At Infinum, they pay a lot of attention to the underlying technical implementation. This enables them to be fast in updating their clients’ apps and to introduce new features on time. They recently wrote an article about technical debt, communicating the value of the code quality. As Tomislav explains, “keeping the code tidy will save the organization and their client stress, money, and even bankruptcy in the future.”
Ultimately, Infinum tests all products before shipping them to production. They have an in-house QA team and they work closely with designers and developers from the beginning to ensure every app that they release meets Infinum’s standard of quality. Sometimes they even do usability tests with specific target groups.
Infinum’s Journey
Tomislav started Infinum from scratch, with zero capital, basically incorporating with the money from their first sale. After that, everything they earned was reinvested into the company until they build a stable business model.
Difficulties along the way included – not really knowing how to run a company, at least until team Infinum learned it “on the go”. Finding, motivating, and retaining people and dealing with spikes of either having too much work or too little work.
Apart from the money Infinum invested, everything they could spare went to their employees in order to make them better off and happier. Offices, perks, the ability to work on internal projects, etc. Team Infinum is also quite aware that being profitable is key. One great lesson Tomislav has learned from Jason Fried – no one ever went out of business by turning a profit.
Challenges and Goals
Infinum see a general shift in consumers’ perception. There’s a mobile app for almost anything now, and getting the user to install an app has become a serious issue. Tomislav says, “A lot of the trends in technology today go towards circumventing the ‘I need to install another app problem’. Chatbots for instance are trying to do that. Voice interfaces like Alexa, Google Home, and Siri. And then there’s the good old web app.”
“We built this brand through the collective effort of our team, that’s why we’re so proud to have it evolving to this day. We are all friends, we treat each other fairly, have fun together, support each other and offer help when needed. Simple commitments such as these are deeply integrated into our company’s culture, and they’ve worked extremely well so far,” Tomislav added.
Team Infinum is devoted to producing high-quality work. They know that their reputation depends on the solutions that they deliver, and they’re always trying to go that extra mile.
