I write this article from a place of care and gratitude. It’s a bit funny because these are two of Pixelgrade’s core values. They’re embedded in my core system, too. I guess that’s why it felt so natural to express them consistently. 

While I get the urgency of knowing what happened (our culture loves to name the culprits and punish them), truth is that such an approach does not strike a chord. Nor is it aligned with who I am or what Pixelgrade stands for.

I’m sorry to leave you hanging, but you can skip these lines if you’re looking for gossip. Make yourself a favor and do something better with your time. What follows is not about who-did-what. 

I’m a gal who values going in-depth and providing context. I feel no joy in sharing blames and rushing to conclusions. It doesn’t honor me.

Therefore, what follows is not a big reveal of a juicy conflict or a soap opera that usually kicks off when people split ways. It’s the outcome of a long labor of deconstruction, understanding, digesting to put the pieces back together. And yet another way to express my gratitude for everything that I experienced here over the years.

If you want to have a broader image of how it felt to work at Pixelgrade for the last six+ years, check out the previous articles:

• The unseen of spending three years at Pixelgrade
• The fourth year of Pixelgrade was about sticking together
• Five years at Pixelgrade is not that much

It was demanding, fulfilling, and sometimes fun

During the conversation regarding my resignation, I said loud and clear that I can’t blame Pixelgrade for anything. We both grew together. Sometimes, we got along really well and accomplished spectacular results. Other times, our ways of approaching things collided and raised painful consequences that took me off the rails. 

Life was generous with us, yet we did not always know what to do with all the good on our table. I guess it’s damn true that we take the form of the vessel we live in.

Pixelgrade is ten+ years old, and I’ve been here more than half of the company’s time. It was super intense and passionate. In the early days, I thought people at the helm always knew their s**t. This is what makes them entrepreneurs, right? Oh well, not necessarily. I felt on my skin that dynamics are complex and full of intricacies. This learning curve made me more humble and sympathetic.

• Creating products is one thing; selling them is another thing.
• Owning a company is one thing; running a team is another thing.
• Doing your job is one thing; having a lasting impact is another thing.
• Having a fantastic office is one thing; building bonds is another thing.
• Talking openly about work is one thing; being vulnerable is another thing.

Results and clarity do not happen de facto. They are not implicit. Neither they come with the founder, co-founder, or business partner title. It’s something you foster one day after the other. And hell, it takes a lot of resources to navigate in the long run.

I had the chance to wore a wide range of hats, so I’ll be forever appreciative of this flexibility. I joined Pixelgrade as a communicator, transitioned into people-person, then Chief People Officer, then business partner. In the last two years, I have been in the front line of nurturing our first online community. 

Meanwhile, I filled dozens of cracks: helping my customer support fellows communicate better; playing the OKRs champ role; creating the recruitment and onboarding processes; running 1:1s; leading the partners’ meetings; organizing anniversaries, and way too many to remember. 

Having so much room to experiment was one of the most exciting perks someone could have offered me. I had the opportunity to learn, evolve, and fail in a safe environment where I could be true to myself. The freedom I had was priceless, and it suited my character and style of working.

Life was generous with us, yet we did not always know what to do with all the good on our table. I guess it’s damn true that we take the form of the vessel we live in.

I lost my playful version along the way, and I immersed myself in serious conversations, projects, and decisions. While running a company is weighty, I regret I did not make more room for fun, chill moments, a slower pace, and taps on the shoulders.

Today, I’m restless to find the bits and pieces that I mislaid. I miss that spirit of mine sooo much! It’s a combo of a sense of fooling around, a more daring attitude (cojones, as Răzvan would often say to me), and allowing myself to act more childish from time to time. I genuinely believe there’s beauty in that.

I will cherish this experience forever

I arrived here today after months of introspection, dozens of therapy and coaching sessions, and tens of hours of debating with my friends. The Stoic Prize for limitless patience goes to my best buddy and partner in crime — Alexandra from A+noima. 

I’m pretty nostalgic and thoughtful about the ending of this era, but deep down, I feel a sense of fulfillment and pride. As naive and cheesy as it may sound, I’m pleased with what I accomplished. While I’m well aware of my glorious wins and painful failures, I’ll carry this experience in the vest pocket for the rest of my life. 

I thank everyone I had the chance to work with at Pixelgrade, and I love that I’m in touch with most of my ex-teammates. I will miss so badly Răzvan’s jokes and songs recommendations from emergent Romanian rappers, and Andrei’s endless curiosities about all kinds of stuff, work and non-work related.

Ultimately, I will cherish forever the fact that George and Vlad took me on board and let me fly to the moon and back, even though I wasn’t the profile they were looking for back then. I hope that they are at peace with the move and proud of themselves six years later. I surely am. What we did together it’s one of the most significant legacies that I will leave behind.

Thank you all! 💜

P.S. Starting with the 1st of April, I’ll be on a break for a while. It feels incredibly liberating and breathtaking. I’m curious to see what adventure awaits me around the corner and how I will tackle it in the upcoming years. You can send my way a few points of good karma (oanafilip at hey dot com). Cheers!

Photo credits: Iulian Corbu

The post Six years at Pixelgrade: the adventure comes to an end appeared first on Pixelgrade.

Quick navigation in this article:

• Weather forecast
• Revenue and Expenses
• Dryland on WordPress.com  
• A squad under the weather
• Upstairs Community rays of sunshine
• Scattered to the four winds

Revenue

These past months pushed our revenue down further still. While we have a budget allocation in place when it comes to actual numbers, the last six months look like this:
$19,716 total monthly average revenue (−32% down from $29,187)
↳ $8,264 from our shop at Pixelgrade.com (−38% down from  $13,359)
↳ $9,988 from the WordPress.com marketplace (−20% down from  $12,557)
↳ $1,463 from the Envato marketplace (−53% down from  $3,157)

I suspect that the best explanation we have for these low numbers is that the market for classic WordPress themes is shrinking faster than we thought, the effects being visible both in our shop and in the marketplaces on which we operate.

In order to meet this change, behind the scenes, we’ve been working for the last 2-years on a new system to build sites based on the new Full Site Editing (FSE) experience that the WordPress ecosystem will shift towards in the future. We’re excited about the potential that this project has and how well could empower our clients—as long as we manage to successfully deliver it.

Expenses

The decisions that we made two years ago seem to lend us a good helping hand in these times. Our average monthly expenses hovered around $26,200 (–5% from $27,500), broken down into:
→ 76% of salaries
→ 19% maintenance (rent, software, accounting fees, suppliers)
→ 5% occasional expenses (office remodeling, hardware)

The negative cash flow is suppressed by the resources accumulated so far, and we’re confident that we have what it takes to navigate further through this journey.

🏜️ Dryland on WordPress.com

On the 1st of September 2021, WordPress.com initiated the retirement of all premium themes, our included, of course. 

Not sexy news. We always had this scenario in the back of our heads, but it does not mean that it’s fun when it turns into reality. Even though the timing was awful, (synchronized with one of our frontend developer’s leave), we tried to grasp this move with maturity and professionalism. 

It’s not an easy feat to establish such collaborations in today’s business landscape. We’re thankful for the chance. 

Sometimes, you just need to tell yourself it’s going to be okay even though you don’t believe it fully either. It might be the only option to get out of the bed in the morning and show up.

Seven years ago, we uploaded our first theme on WordPress.com. We started with Hive, and one after the other, we brought more products in front of WordPress.com’s customers. And oh boy, they use them massively! 

It was a beneficial partnership for quite a while, and we’re grateful for having this experience. It’s not an easy feat to establish similar collaborations in today’s business landscape, so we’re thankful for the chance. 

George, our CEO, was in touch with both the guy in charge of the decision and other theme authors to better understand the harsh line in the sand. It was some back-and-forth in trying to get a better deal or even drop the plan at all, but with no real chance to turn the ship around. 

The fellows at WordPress.com have quite an optimistic promise around the new program, but the truth is that this move hit our cash flow and our trust as a meteorite. We don’t know yet which one left the unsightly scars.

At the time being, we’re still making around 8,000$ by selling our premium themes on the platform, but our guess is that the revenue there will get smaller because of the v2 Premium Themes Program. This new endeavor is 100% focused on the Full Site Editing (FSE) and block-based themes. Today, we have no real incentive to invest in this scheme, so yeah, it’s probably a matter of time until we will hit the final lap.

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☄️ A squad under the weather

We are only five folks left: George, Vlad, Răzvan, Andrei, and I (Oana). We split ways with Mădălin (3 years), Alin (8 years), and Alex (3 years). 

It was a decision from both sides, but not necessarily reciprocal. Let me explain. 

Due to dozens of reasons, some obvious (running thin on money), some more on a subconscious level (lack of direct contribution or a low level of motivation), Mădălin and Alin decided to go to interviews for other companies*, far bigger and profitable than ours, while Alex was let go by us. 

*Alin landed at Automattic, as did Robert, our ex-customer support teammate, a few years back, and Mădălin joined the local chapter of Deloitte. We wish both a serene journey ahead!

I blame none because I believe we have a finite number of tools to navigate through life. Depending on where you locate yourself on the map, some are more suitable than others. Mixing this with the fact that the landscape has been shaky in Pixelgrade (full of uncertainties and anxieties) for almost two years in a row, set us off the rails.

When you have an elastic stretched on both ends, only one thing can occur: it breaks. 

The five left don’t wear any badge of honor for still being around here. Because it’s not about that. While the Romanian culture often cherishes people for sacrificing themselves (check the Miorița reference if you’re curious), we don’t think it’s neither healthy nor sustainable. So keep the emoji with 👏 for yourself.

The truth is that the reasons we’re still playing the game are different, and so are the incentives. We can still resist these weather conditions, even though not equally. Some of us have broader bandwidth, while others do not. Some of us have bigger expenses than others. Some of us are in a more balanced moment in life than others. 

But for these amazing guys (Mădălin, Alin, and Alex), things looked terrifying. And I get that. When the pandemic is still playing hide-and-seek and leaves marks on our lives, we could all use more safety and support. If another professional adventure can provide a reliable ground, with a higher level of joy and excitement, why not?

The rumbles will continue in Pixelgrade’s life for some time, while the tolerance of my teammates got close to the limit.

It was hard to handle these months and even tougher to keep our ducks in a row. Often, the emotions caught us off guard and made us blame others. When we were tired of finger-pointing ourselves for landing here, we threw arrows externally. 

It’s just human nature. Our brains needed a certain kind of closure to let it go and move on. This is how some of us manage to get pressure off our chests.

As a CPO, I’m at peace with how I’ve handled these crushing episodes. I mean it. Even though I’m in the process of letting go of a fair share of self-doubts and critiques, deep down, it feels liberating. I went through everything with an open heart and mind. From my side of the world, my teammates’ leave would have happened in a way or another. Our weapons to avoid this ending are simply too fragile.

When you have an elastic stretched on both ends, only one thing can occur: it breaks. 

We have various ways of digesting these internal events, and while everyone has their own rhythm, I know that we will continue to tell ourselves nuanced versions about what happened. But that’s okay. Time is the best filter, so I’m hopeful it will bring clarity, stillness, and acceptance.

---

🌞 Upstairs Community rays of sunshine

During 11 years of doing community work within creative industries, I realized there’s no such thing as the right time to celebrate our members’ contributions. I learned that I need to consciously create space because it does not just happen out of the blue.

Community building is all about relationships building. There are no magic tricks, no gimmicks, or shortcuts. It’s all about trust, reciprocity, and shared goals and identity. All of them need fuel and consistency.

Eighteen months after launching Upstairs Community by Pixelgrade for creative professionals worldwide, our team ran a unique campaign for our members. As a small gesture of gratitude, we created a digital Hall of Fame that contains a designed avatar of our contributors to celebrate their involvement in the community. 

The ripples it echoed gave us fuel to keep nurturing the Upstairs Community and make it even stronger. We got plenty of taps on the shoulder and cheerleading messages from the members featured and the broader community. You are amazing!

We don’t have 3954 pages of a master plan to grow this community up to the sky, but we’re confident we will continue iterating and making it more valuable one step after the other. As with anything in community building, it takes time, and a lot of fine-tuning, but Andrei and I have the energy and mood to keep playing, and that’s enough for the moment.

---

💨 Scattered to the four winds

On the product side, it’s still work-in-progress on multiple levels, so there’s not so much to share at the moment. There are plenty of moving parts that George tries to put into an order and makes sense of them all. Sometimes, it feels like Sisif’s work, while other times, the light at the end of the tunnel appears.

As for motivation, it comes at the surface in every corner of our activity, so it will be hard to pretend.

Innovation needs a high level of energy and a clear head, which we did not have with all the changes. Considering that we have even less manpower and a black hole regarding motivation, we can only hope to get our shit together and focus on things with high priority. 

How? We don’t know yet, but it will probably be a different route for each of us remaining.

What’s distinct from other hard times we endured in ten years is that now we have an articulated deadline. Even though it’s a mix of internal (drive) and external (money) pressure, it paints reality in an accurate manner. If it’s something good about numbers, then it’s the fact that they’re more neutral. You either have big numbers or not. 

You can’t lie about money, or, at least, we don’t want to do that. Nor are we okay with tricky alternatives such as credit loans. We’ve been bootstrapped from day one and hopefully, we will continue to do so. As for motivation, it comes at the surface in every corner of our activity, so it will be hard to pretend.

If we succeed with our existing resources (team, money, product), great. If not, not. Something whispers to me that I will write a book in my 50s about all these experiences I’ve been through.

Transparency Report #14 might seem like a casual article picturing business as usual, yet it’s not. It’s far from it. It took me a lot of internal talks, therapy & coaching sessions, and chats with my current and former colleagues to get here. On the other side, this is life. It’s full of ups-and-downs, of shitty moments, of losing and the like.

It’s hard to adequately explain what here means and feels like, but I’ll give it a try. 

Walking through these events fully awake made me more humble. It also revealed, clearer than ever before, that adaptation and flexibility are the best bets we could make in today’s reality. A combo of breadcrumbs of faith and trust plus the delicacy in front of life’s waves. 

As would Leonard Cohen beautifully puts it:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Take good care of yourself, and if you reached this point, I hope it did not feel like weather talk.

The post Transparency Report #14: rumbling skies across Pixelgrade appeared first on Pixelgrade.

Pixelgrade and community building: what’s the catch?

I heard this legit question a few times since we kicked off the Upstairs Community adventure.

Depending on what you know about us and what’s your gateway into our universe, you might already have a clue, or you might be entirely in the dark when searching for an answer. That’s okay.

In the end, Pixelgrade is a ten-year-old design studio where we’ve been creating digital products in the WordPress ecosystem. From themes, both premium and free to plugins of all kinds, we managed to carry our flag consistently and even make ripples from time to time. We showed up one day after the other through our lasting products, bold statements, or our consistent transparency reports.

Few of you know that Pixelgrade’s mission is to support creatives who want to impact their communities. Way before articulating it as clearly as it sounds today, we’ve been crafting WordPress themes for creative industries and small businesses since the very beginning. These niches were always in our focus. 

Moreover, George and Vlad, the founders of Pixelgrade, have said out loud that a company’s role exceeds its profitability. While this does not mean that it’s okay to overlook the organization’s financial health, it also does not mean that counting bucks is the ultimate goal.

The balance between these two is tricky and often comes with tensions and challenges on both ends. 

Needless to say, we have an extensive portfolio of products tailored to creative professionals. From photographers to architects, from restaurant owners to bloggers (travelers, fashion lovers, food aficionados), we’ve been interested in serving these specific customers as best as we can. Besides crafting WordPress products that grabbed attention from 60K+ folks worldwide, we’ve been adding layers of value by sharing a tone of knowledge and expertise.

Another route we took on our journey to help creatives reach their potential is what today we call Upstairs Community by Pixelgrade. As any endeavor, especially those started in the “magnificent” year 2020, we had limited resources and a short-term view of the future.

We began from our selfish yet powerful desire to create a safe place to share peoples’ stories to help us feel less alone and disconnect from the tsunami happening around COVID. Depending on where you live on the blue dot we all call home, you might still have to deal with the scars created by the virus. We’re no different.

Getting in touch with our first members through video calls blew Andrei’s and my mind, too. The purpose was to find out what our readers take out of the narratives we’ve been publishing. We’ve done almost everything from gut feeling and less from a crystal clear strategy, even though I have 11+ years of experience in community building. Upstairs Community is my first online trial. 

Many companies claim they are community-led or that they put the community at the core of their efforts.

These conversations revealed, once again, that stories are a powerful way to connect and enable belonging. Not only that, but we quickly found out that most of the readers were creative professionals, thus our kind of guys and gals.

This overlap showed that nothing happens by chance. People get together and stick to brands, missions, and communities where they feel they share a similar set of values. Some of our community members got closer because they appreciated Pixelgrade as a company. Others are fans of our products. Many resonated with the way we communicate and our culture.

One year and a half later, even though some community members are also Pixelgrade customers, this place does not directly address them. At least not yet. It does not mean that it excludes them, either. But it’s not a technical forum where they can exchange ideas about features, nor a platform where they can ask for a helping hand from our side.

It’s a quiet place that amplifies the experience we’re offering at Pixelgrade through authentic stories from people just like them. Yes, maybe they’re not precisely in the exact moment in time, nor do they all want to build a website right now, but it’s an extension of what we are as a brand. It creates a more holistic image of us.

These days, many companies claim they are community-led or that they put the community at the core of their efforts. Some do that, and most don’t. They just try to ride the wave. We choose to stay honest and transparent in our efforts.

We’re not community-driven by core, but it does not mean that nurturing one is not well aligned to our mission and values. Upstairs Community proves it big time.

Join other 330+ creative professionals who dare to show up as they are and share stories about their path. It’s both inspiring and liberating, trust me.

The post Why is Pixelgrade building a community for creatives? appeared first on Pixelgrade.

Recently, we celebrated one year of Upstairs Community—a place where you can read stories written by creative people willing to speak the truth about their journeys. The crowning of this event was our first physical book that encompasses all the 27 narratives we wrote in the last year.

Along with this milestone, we felt the need to find out more about our members. We scheduled video calls, and we succeeded in talking with 20+ of them, while others answered in writing.

What we discovered reinforces some of our beliefs and crushes others. We summarized everything in this article, so make yourself comfortable and get ready to nod your head, as well as raise your eyebrows.

Some key messages first:

1. Creative professionals are keen to meet similar people and learn from their experiences.
2. Engagement is every’s community secret sauce, and we want to become better at facilitating it.
3. Email remains the champ of communication channels due to its intimacy and 1:1 feeling.

Quick navigation:

• Who are our members
• Where are they based
• Reasons for sticking around
• How members describe themselves
• How members describe the community
• The way members interact with other communities and newsletters
• Future attempts for the community

Here we gooo!

Where are they based

Without any doubt, there’s a chunk of people who are part of the local community in Iași, Romania, the place where Pixelgrade is based. Besides folks from proximity, we have members from other sides of the world, too: 

• Melbourne
• Beijing
• Ermenonville
• Bali
• Hildesheim
• Ramsbottom
• Caneggio
• Quebec
• Rotterdam
• Brighton
• Austin
• Colorado
• Tokyo
• Hayward
• Minnesota

This bunch of creatives joined because they are familiar with Pixelgrade as a brand and resonate with our design, communication, and transparency approach or are connected directly with Oana through various channels, projects, or community work. Others are customers who use our products to create websites for multiple niches. 

During the calls, we found out that members did not acknowledge they’re part of such a broad community, with creatives from all over the world. This happens because their experience feels very intimate and isolated. It’s like someone is having a coffee with them, so it was a bit of a surprise to hear that they are, in fact, in a huge company. This feedback is something we need to sleep on because we aim to facilitate connection without our intervention.

Commenting does not feel like genuine connecting.

We’re happy we succeeded in conveying this friendly yet secure feeling because the stories we publish involve going through a roller-coaster of emotions. Having this comforting sensation that they are in a safe environment is an excellent foundation for building further. At the same time, we should do better in how we communicate around the diversity and scale of our community.

How members describe themselves

When asking our members how they would describe their involvement (sporadic reader, quiet listener, deeply engaged in each story, etc.), the vast majority told us without hesitations that quiet listener fits best how they think of themselves. They read most of the stories, even though some later on (they take time to go through two-three at once), but avoid other types of interactions.

Starting with the 17th narrative, written by Olga, we enabled a conversation system for each story. Before putting this system in place, members felt more comfortable replying to the newsletter and share their thoughts. Since I was the only one receiving them, it made little sense to continue on this route and keep everything behind the curtains.

We accommodated the conversation system we have within Pixelgrade’s articles. Although 25+ members took a step further and used it to connect with the author and share their own story, the vast majority preferred to stay away—the intensity in the stories made them feel like they don’t have something valuable to add to the conversation.

On top of this, for most, simply commenting does not feel like connecting with other members; in the best case, it’s just a message directed towards the author. Such a valid point! 

We realized that such a channel works to showcase gratitude and appreciation for the author, but nothing more. It cannot facilitate connection and engagement among members because there’s no direct interaction. We intend to make everyone feel welcome to participate and offer a way to unite, so it’s clear we need to do some work in this area.

The way members interact with other communities and newsletters

We were keen to find out how our members feel within other online communities and what kind of newsletters they’re keeping in their (crowded) inboxes. 

While the newsletter feels somehow personal due to the 1:1 approach (it depends on how it’s packed, though), it comes with other constraints, such as a lack of profound connection.

As for any other creative professional out there, time is scarce, and commitment eats up plenty of gas. Some compelling insights surfaced rapidly and constantly during the calls:

On a community level:

1. If they feel they belong or are appreciated and valued, they stick to the community in the long run.
2. Participating in offline activities increased their contribution to the community.
3. They enjoy being part of various communities to learn more about relationships.

On a newsletter level:

1. If it brings real value to their current professional status, they keep the subscription and read almost every issue.
2. Members enjoy newsletters tailored to one specific topic and avoid those that gather information from all over the place.
3. They are okay with signing in and signing out, depending on what they’re working on or doing. 

If within a community, the commitment it’s far more solid once the members feel they belong, that’s not valid anymore when referring to newsletters. People are less attached, or, at least, more comfortable to unsubscribe and sign in again later. They don’t have any particular incentive to provide feedback on their decisions, neither they feel to contribute.

While the newsletter feels somehow personal due to the 1:1 approach (it depends on how it’s packed, though), it comes with other constraints, such as a lack of profound connection. As with any one-to-many channel, newsletters, too, aren’t the best option for “gluing” folks.

There’s so much value and energy in talking with our members that, in some regards, I regret we did not start earlier. On the other hand, I know that we did not have the clarity nor the ambitions that we acquired once we got our hands dirty at that time.

We’re beyond grateful for the tremendous trust and support we’ve been receiving in the last year because nothing would have made sense without you. Maybe it sounds cheesy, but it’s true. No community is a real community without people who are willing to invest. It can be time, energy, support, or any other form of contribution. All of them matter and make Upstairs Community by Pixelgrade what it is today.

Thank you, seeker!

The post We talked with Upstairs Community’s members: here’s what we found out appeared first on Pixelgrade.

The last few months brought on a pace we never had in almost a decade. We’re slower, more exhausted, more scattered. It’s a reality we could sense on many levels within Pixelgrade. 

The most direct effect is reflected in our cash flow because the revenue got thinner and more erratic. The not-so-obvious, yet important ripples are across the team. In the first half of 2021, some of our colleagues were sick, had faced unpleasant events, so their energy and drive slipped accordingly.

A small crew of only eight people is a fragile system that absorbs vibrations more intensely when someone is out of duty.

Swimming in the sea comes with both serenity and burden. The water is calming, the horizon line brings hope and tranquillity, the sun heats our bodies and takes the pressure off our shoulders. But there’s also uncertainty and tiredness, physical and emotional. It’s hard to keep the tempo, be safe, maintain a certain amount of control. 

As if by a reverse-miracle, some unfathomable hand decided we didn’t have enough and we should swim with our heads underwater, for added urgency and drama.

As with most mammals out there, we couldn’t live underwater for too long. We have limited resources in our bodies. They are finite; it’s that simple. As much as we find meaning in embracing conundrums and complex challenges, there’s a point where we need to ask ourselves how much we can carry on.

In this report, we try to depict an honest image of our becoming in this specific moment in time and space. As we’ve always done, we are committed to be transparent and surface the whole landscape (yes, the cracks, too). In the end, stormy seas (and unfathomable hands) are part of any organization’s path, so why try to hide them?

Quick navigation in this article:

• Overview of the deck
• Revenue and Expenses
• Team momentum changes
• An updated version of the employee handbook
• The first book signed by Upstairs Community is here
• We have a new business partner, captain!
• The next big wave

Revenue

Six months ago, we had one of the smoothest and most predictable sailings of all time. While not unexpected, now it seems like we are taking a look at the seabed. Hopefully, it’s just another journey of discovery which we will swim through successfully without emptying the oxygen tanks. It won’t be a quick bounce to the surface, but we will do our best.

When it comes to actual numbers, the last six months look like this:
$29,187 total monthly average revenue (–6.5% down from $31,217)
↳ $13,359 from our shop at Pixelgrade.com (-7.3% down from  $14,414)
↳ $12,557 from the WordPress.com marketplace (-3% down from  $12,943)
↳ $3,157 from the Envato marketplace (–10% down from  $3,510)

Murky waters and all, we thought we had been alone underwater, but maybe we weren’t. Speaking with other people from the WordPress community, it looks like it’s an overall drop in the field of traditional WordPress themes, sales being affected regardless of whether the products are available through a marketplace or independent shops (like ours). 

One likely reason might be the impact of shifting to the new Gutenberg editor and the confusion created by the way the future of WordPress themes might look like, taking some prospective customers aback. Some just sit-and-wait for things to become clearer, while others look to other solutions, hopefully only temporarily. I think this attitude will change once the trend of creating block-based sites in WordPress will get more traction.

Expenses

Our average monthly expenses increased slightly to $27,489 (+6% from $25,934), broken down into:
→ 76% of salaries
→ 19% maintenance (rent, software, accounting fees, suppliers)
→ 5% occasional expenses (office remodeling, hardware)

The numbers and percentages are in line with the previous months with a slight increase in salaries and maintenance costs.

The next big wave

Swimming with our heads underwater managed to open our eyes in ways we never experienced before. 

One of our core values is excellence, and we put it at the forefront of everything we do. Sometimes, this means looking at the opposite side of the spectrum most Valley-entrepreneurs are focused on. 

When they shout out that the secret is to create MVPs and launch them fast, we take a step back and ship when we think it’s good enough. We’ve always been embracing this attitude in the last decade, and we like to believe it’s a substantial part of what brought us here today, with all the goods and the bad.

The project we’ve been crafting is a massive, deep-sea creature that has the power to make memorable ripples within the WordPress ecosystem and bring us closer to our mission. It’s also one of the most challenging in terms of motivation across the team. The road is full of ups and downs, we iterate a lot, there’s plenty of back-and-forths, and we don’t release stuff loudly, which definitely impacts the squad’s mojo and makes their wheels spin slower. 

We’re looking forward to shipping it in a couple of months and celebrate accordingly. Big time! And hey, once it is there, it’s your turn to tell us if you feel safe enough to scuba dive with us and discover the fascinating beauty underneath in a way that will stick with you forever. Can’t wait to enjoy such adventures together!

The post Transparency Report #13: underwater is breathtaking appeared first on Pixelgrade.

For those who are not familiar with the Upstairs Community project, here’s a summary—we created a community around real and authentic stories that can help us become better people. 

Kicked off while we were in a full pandemic, it was our genuine response to a need we had and saw in the people around us—to read stories that bring us hope, joy, and faith in a time when opening the TV or scrolling on social media would make you think the world was about to end.

If you want to learn more, you can read this article in which I share the drive behind it all. And in this post, I talk about a few takeaways I learned after just a few months since launching it. Of course, if you have time and energy to go in-depth, you can also skim through a few stories we published to get a feeling about what’s behind the curtain.

Now, one year later, we thought it’s time to find out things that usually don’t “meet the public eye.” On the one hand, because we’re a small team in charge of a dozen things. On the other one, it’s almost impossible to cover everything. Even though we’re part of the open-source community, thus familiar with building in public and acting transparent, time is scarce for all of us.

Read further to discover the first episode of Upstairs Community Report #1, where we’ll provide a broader perspective on the evolution of this project. Similar to what we do through the by-annual transparency reports at Pixelgrade, the main goal of what follows is the same: to open the doors and reveal how we’re running the Upstairs Community and what we’ve been learning along the way.

Let’s dive in, seeker!

Quick navigation:

• Eagle’s view over the community
• Members talking with us and providing insights
• Mistakes we made along the way
• Things we’d approach differently 
• Upstairs and Upstairs Community
• Going slow is good and efficient

Eagle’s view over the community

When writing these lines, 307 people across the globe are part of this community—from Iași (Romania), where Pixelgrade is located, to Melbourne (Australia), from Beijing (China) to Ermenonville (France), from Bali (Indonesia) to Hildesheim (Germany), from Ramsbottom (England) to Caneggio (Switzerland), from Quebec (Canada) to Rotterdam (The Nederlands), we reached people with various backgrounds, interests, and perspectives.

We’ve already started to dig deeper to discover reliable ways of bridging the gap, but there’s a lot of unknown.

Our members are creative entrepreneurs and freelancers working in several creative industries, such as design, photo-video, publishing, communication, digital, open-source, translation, architecture, branding, marketing, NGOs, sales, community building.

Some of them are Pixelgrade customers, too. Folks who bought our WordPress products at some point and used them to create outstanding websites. From this pool of people, those who spent their money on blogging and portfolio themes are most common.

It makes perfect sense because these particular customers are also entrepreneurs who run small businesses or one-man-show ventures. Both are interested in shaping a digital presence for either their organizations, side-projects, or passions of all kinds. 

Our members are looking for sources of inspiration to become better in their field. Sometimes, such drive is conveyed by reading heartening stories, sharing ideas in specific forums or groups, watching videos to improve their skills, going to meetups, etc. Other times, they just want to connect with others to feel less alone during their creative challenges. They look for like-minded people who experience similar struggles.

We recently became aware that there’s a beautiful overlap of interests and expectations between a big chunk of our members and customers. Although we already started to dig deeper to discover powerful ways of bridging the gap, there’s still a lot of unknown. We’re excited to see that besides authentic stories that bring inspiration and hope, we have other potential liaisons, and we’re looking forward to exploring these areas. 

It feels like we came across a box of chocolate, where each piece is a universe in itself, linked together by the same amazing ingredients and taste.

Members talking with us and providing insights

More than 80 members wrote us back to share their thoughts about how they experience the Upstairs Community. Their feedback was of tremendous help since it highlighted what works, what brings them real value, and the things we overlooked. 

We’re beyond grateful for their time and energy to contribute in such a meaningful manner because we kept iterating and improving thanks to their input.

Since we added the conversation system in November 2020 that allows members to interact with the authors and each other and share their thoughts below each story, we gathered 50+ conversations. Often, their responses led to a profound dialogue and showed us, once again, that we’re more alike than different.

Two folks who changed their career and started a lifestyle business have a lot in common. Two entrepreneurs sharing similar dilemmas have a fascinating topic to debate on. Two artists thinking about how to pack their work and make it more appealing can exchange helpful advice.

We published 27 long-form narratives in the last 12 months and improved our editing and publishing process. If, in the beginning, we did not have a framework for working with the writers and invested a lot of time in writing long-form emails to provide all the details, we now have a more straightforward approach to collaborating.

When we noticed the overlap of interests and needs I mentioned earlier, we started to pivot the stories and search for those closest to them. This is how we got to host narratives about what it’s like to run a small business, how remote work is not only doable but can be fulfilling in many ways, or how family relationships within a business context can be tricky. 

In the last two months, we started running video calls with our members to find out about how they heard about us, what’s in it for them, what made them join, their expectations, and so on. We talked with 20 people so far, and I’m beyond grateful for how well aligned Andrei and I are with their take on Upstairs Community.

For instance, our gut feeling told us that we need a place for members to connect with each other, and during the conversations, members heavily endorsed this thought. Another example is the posh feeling we conveyed without even being aware, meaning that only people with a lot of experience have something meaningful to share. Instead, we believe that everyone’s story is worthy. 

The good thing is that once we reached this level of clarity, we managed to increase the speed of our work.

Mistakes we made along the way

I would be concerned if we would say that everything is running beautifully, our members are super engaged, the ideas are popping up all over the place, and we generally made it.

The best outcome I see out of these oversights is that we embrace the “I don’t know” attitude more.

As Carrie Mellissa Jones wisely says in her book — Building Brand Communities: How Organizations Succeed by Creating Belonging, even though most of the communities out there are looking flawlessly, the truth is that behind the door, things are messy and unclear. 

That’s okay because it takes many resources (time, energy, even money) to nurture a healthy community that passes the test of time. In the end, you can’t code and automate relationships; neither can you shortcut them.

So yes, we made our fair share of mistakes, and I bet that we will bark up the wrong tree from time to time. Despite my ten years of experience building communities of interest, it’s the first time I’m creating one online.

Here are the most obvious traps we fell into so far:

1. We asked for various ways of contribution (writing a story, telling a friend, providing feedback, to name a few) without knowing what drives people to be part of this community in the first place; bad, I know.
2. We were eager to celebrate the one-year mark with our community, but we did not have any other shared activities with the members besides the stories we sent them by email; yap, not okay.
3. We created a survey and asked members to fill it without having a clear vision about what we wanted to accomplish and the actionable insights we will consider afterward.
4. We implemented a conversation system with the wrong expectation in mind; we referred to it as a way of engagement, but it was, in the best scenario, a 1:1 relationship between the writer and the reader.
5. We still don’t have a clear strategy in reaching out to future writers, which makes everything more draining and costly on every level. It’s not viable, too.

We’re not very harsh on ourselves for these fallacies, but we’re doing far more research and pushback before jumping to a new batch of actions. The best outcome I see out of these oversights is that we embrace the “I don’t know” attitude more, which is mandatory if we want to build a community with our members, not for them. We’re learning to ask rather than assume and imagine scenarios.

Things we’d approach differently 

I think it’s important to name things as they are and don’t hide behind the screen. If we were to start from scratch today, we would do a couple of things differently (and better).

We kicked off Upstairs Community in 2020 as a more sane alternative for the crazy clickbait out there. We were overwhelmed by the news that took us on a draining emotional roller-coaster, so we aimed for a different route. It’s important to keep the context in mind because it shaped how we hit the road.

We learned to be less afraid of finding midways and stay clear of the extremes that can do more harm than good.

We promised no marketing tricks, not paid sponsors, no tracking. While the first two are still valid, the latter got a twist. We still don’t know which members open the emails or who clicks on what, nor we sell commercial data, but in the last months, we started to look at the narratives that get the biggest overall open rate. 

It was clear that without any data, it would be harder and harder to make decisions that feel right for us and are aligned with the community’s expectations. Since we were in a learning and adjusting phase, knowing just a bit more about what happens within the community proved valuable. Removing all tracking was was a bit extreme, and it bit us back.

Once we got that extra data, we noticed some interesting facts, among which one captured our attention. The stories with the biggest open rate were those in which the authors talked about entrepreneurship struggles, choosing a career better suited to a particular lifestyle, or finding ways to reach creative potential.

This finding matches what we hear during our video calls. Members are saying loud and clear that they’re tired of bullshit content (“10 steps to..”), forever successful stories that lack depth (“let me tell you how I made it”), or traumatic moments (losing someone dear). They do appreciate this type of content, but they feel the need to be inspired, feel less alone in their creative and business journey and learn from others how to approach a situation from a different angle.

Another thing I would change if I started today is how people access our landing page and the archive of stories. We were too precious in how we wanted to bring members on board. The stubbornness around a rigid way of entering our community made us blind to a bunch of opportunities. We’re paying today for this attitude, but it is what it is.

We learned to be less afraid of finding midways and stay clear of the extremes that can do more harm than good. Gathering the right kind of data it’s not only pragmatic, but it’s necessary if we want to make well-inform decisions and navigate in more peaceful waters.

Upstairs and Upstairs Community

If the subtitle above feels confusing, it turns out you are not the only one. 

A bit of backstory. About one year ago, we noticed that the current blog categories do not match how our content evolved. We kept having problems filing the blog posts in their proper category, which led to a wide analysis of the types of content we wrote, what we plan to publish in the future, and how we could categorize the various topics we covered.

We are in the process of rethinking the differences between our blog and our community.

Once we got the clarity, we decided to further revamp our blog from a design and structure perspective. We felt that “blog” does not fit with who we are; it was too generic and neutral. That’s why we decided to change the name of our blog to Upstairs—an analogy to the literal house we call home while at work. If you are interested, you can read the full story about the change from blog to Upstairs.

So far, so good.

Not too long after, motivated by the times we were living (the pandemic was in full swing) and our need to stay away from flashy (and worrying) news, we decided to build a dedicated community around true, authentic stories.

Although it lived on its own and attracted a different type of audience, we saw the community as a continuation of the work we do on our blog (Upstairs), so we decided to call it Upstairs Community.

Now, a year later, what was once obvious and clear became confusing and frustrating for our visitors, members, and potential customers. People have a hard time differentiating between the two, often mixed our blog posts with the stories we publish in the community, and so on.

Today, we are in the process of rethinking the differences between our blog and our community, their purpose, and the goals that we want to achieve with both. We don’t know where this will take us, but it is clear that before we can expect people to quickly understand which is which, we need to be aligned internally. 

What’s sure is that you’ll definitely hear about what conclusions we’ll come to, so stay tuned!

Going slow is good and efficient

While the two of us, Andrei and I, the people in the front row of consolidating the Upstairs Community, have a background in marketing, and we get quickly excited, we try to remind ourselves that taking it easy is the best tactic to nurture this community.

Besides that, our jobs imply we have to give attention to other areas as well: writing educational content on Pixelgrade’s blog, building relationships within the WordPress ecosystem (with both publishers and affiliates), getting in touch with our customers to find out how they work with our products, research future endeavors, and improve the documentation. Therefore, we need to keep doing the work for the Upstairs Community in a sustainable way without compromising the rest of the puzzle.

Moreover, we give our best to stick to the values that we put at the center from the start. One of them is around slowing down and doing things at our pace since it’s the only way to keep going. Regardless of the nature of the stories we’re publishing, the frequency, how we interact with our members, or how we transform ideas into reality, it’s crucial to make promises that we know we can keep.

The small steps we’re going to take are around the following areas

Continue to improve the core

We plan to iterate on the join page and bring it closer to the current reality. We learned a lot, we’re still finding out fascinating things during our calls with the members, and quite soon, these will be reflected on the page, too.

Another thing we eagerly want to do is to make the Upstairs Community more visible on Pixelgrade’s website. Now, we’re not giving it the best chances of capturing attention, so we plan to change that as soon as possible.

Talk with our members

We want to continue reaching out to members and taking interviews to learn more about how things look from their side of the world. We like being in the trenches and finding out what our members experience being part of the Upstairs Community, so hopefully, more members will accept talking with us.

Based on these conversations, we will know which lane to follow, which actions to prioritize, and what we expect to accomplish.

Send a gift for our anniversary

We’re working hard to finish the Upstairs Community’s first book, which includes all the narratives we’ve published in the last year. We’re doing it as a way of celebrating this adventure and manifest gratitude towards our members.

45+ people within the community send us their addresses to get the book sometime in July, depending on where they live. It was nice to hear that they thought of our gesture as a generous extra, as Jeff, one of our members, would say. Yaaay!

Test a community tool and start small

It’s clear that today we’re communicating one-to-many (from us to our members), and our ambition is to transition to many-to-many since this is the model needed to build a community.

One way of doing it is to move to a community management platform that allows us to foster engagement between members, initiate conversations, share ideas, and so on. I’ve been testing a few as part of other communities, but I did not decide which one to go. We’d love to stick to WordPress, but that’s only half of the challenge. The other one is to kick off with a small group (around 20 people), see how it goes, iterate, and take it from there.

Pause the stories during summer

Remember I told you we’re a small squad doing a lot of things at once? The only way to give the Upstairs Community project a real chance is by pausing publishing stories from the 12 of July until fall and focusing on gluing all the pieces into a coherent experience for our members.

We’ve already been working on it in the last two months, but there’s still room for improvement and exploration. That’s why we will take a summer break and do things at our pace, as I mentioned earlier.

It doesn’t mean that members will not hear from us. Quite the contrary, they will get updates on our progress, access to the platform, and whatever else is relevant. We will continue to nurture this community with them, not for them.

Pills of wisdom we gathered along the way

• Relationships that are not reciprocal are a massive fallacy in any community out there.
• The Earth is still spinning even though we’ve made some mistakes along the way, like sending the same email twice while testing a plugin; folks have more things on their mind.
• Playing hide and seek with the landing page and other relevant links can only bring frustrations. Sorry about that!
• Folks will continue to imagine things and put labels instead of asking. That’s okay; we can’t have debates with all of them. 
• Some people will be more engaged than others, depending on too many factors that we have too little control over. It’s fine.
• Having friends and acquaintances on board right from the start should not be a reason for sadness but pride. Their trust, like anyone’s, is priceless. Please take it as a compliment.
• Don’t ask for too much consensus within your team because it will drain you. Find a believer or someone curious enough (as Andrei, my teammate), and take it from there.
• It’s okay to have customers and non-customers aboard as well, as you provide value for both. We asked if they’re disturbed by the others, and the answer was always no.

🍹 This summer sounds super challenging for the Upstairs Community, and we’re eager to keep making this project better and more meaningful for everyone involved.

As with any other community out there, it takes time, energy, and involvement to grow in a meaningful and sustainable way, but we’re ready for digging and having fun along the way.

It’s something really special in transparently nurturing a community by putting values at the forefront. Seeing how it can create ripples that impact our business, but, most importantly, our well-being and feeling that we can drive a positive change, is priceless and a good motivator for keeping our wheels spinning.

We would never reach this point without the support of the Pixelgrade’s squad, so I hope you’ll give a round of applause for them. It’s well deserved. Thank you!

P.S. Huge thanks to Andrei for contributing to this report and being my comrade from the first row. The adventure is more beautiful next to him!

The post Upstairs Community Report #1: learning the basics appeared first on Pixelgrade.

I wear multiple hats at Pixelgrade. I’m a storyteller, community builder, Chief People Officer, business partner, and glue. It’s not a badge of honor; it is what it is. I’m well aware that this is one of the costs I’m paying to keep the ship going on my side. And hey, I’m not the only one, so don’t try to pity me. You can send a few coffees, instead. I would gladly accept.

Since everyone understands slightly different things regarding what a Chief People Officer’s role implies, here’s my sharp viewpoint:

I’m the gal in charge of nurturing a team aligned with our values.

The how is a different story, so I’ll stick to that for the moment.

In the last three+ years since I’m leading Pixelgrade’s squad as CPO, many things happened and changed. Some are with an internal echo, such as the fact that we gained more clarity about how we want to keep running this ship. Some are external, such as the pandemic, but both leave marks on our team, individually and collectively. I have no doubts about that.

Just recently, it became crystal clear that the perks we’ve been offering turned into a mismatch for the current reality. Not all of them, but most of them.

We’re a small team with folks who have a lot of experience inside Pixelgrade, which is, in itself, significant and valuable. From Mădălin and Alex, who came aboard almost three years ago, to Alin and Răzvan, who are veterans, already counting seven and nine years, respectively.

This is relevant because it impacts the team’s dynamic and perception. While the culture and the values are written in stone, and we still make decisions governed by them (excellence, care, and gratitude), the rest of the benefits should evolve accordingly.

But before hitting conclusions, I feel the need to put things into perspective.

Two years ago, on the 19th of July 2019, I wrote a piece (it’s in my Evernote) titled—How cultural habits can get back at you. An in-depth attempt to reflect on how tough it is to keep a sane balance when it comes to expectations concerning perks at the office.

This is a passage of the article that was never published:

I still resonate with these thoughts, even though the current squad manifests gratitude, for which I’m profoundly proud. Thank you!

The article finishes in a nostalgic tone that vibrates to this day:

What does the above introspection have to do with today’s landscape? Well, a lot. Keep reading to discover how getting to the next layers of the onion brought progress and a bit of serenity, even though it’s just the beginning of the adventure.

The Romanian identity’s echo is loud

We’re still in touch with the global ecosystem, no matter if we’re talking about software, economy, politics if you want, but we filter everything through our DNA.

We’re Romanians, and this comes with baggage. As Daniel David, a famous psychologist who’s teaching both here and in the USA, we’re more influenced about our identity than we like to believe.

We’ve been under the communist block for 40+ years, so we have plenty of marks on our skin and brain. One effect that’s visible at every corner is the lack of individual initiative and responsibility. 

The communist regime trained us to shut up, follow directions, keep our heads under the water, be suspicious, and not trust anyone.

It’s not our fault per se, but it is what it is. The ripples are still here, so we need to face them and learn to swim through these waves, not against them.

I have been investing a lot of time, energy, and money in understanding this reality and trying to find solutions according to how we want to nurture the team. It’s still work in progress, but we’re more confident than ever that we can’t hide our history. It’s part of our identity.

Leaders need to look in the mirror and be brave enough to admit that not knowing it’s okay. The wisdom lies in the willingness to find out.

I did it, and it wasn’t a walk in the park, trust my word. Even though therapy and coaching helped me identify which fights worth carrying, it’s still challenging. I must confess it felt eerie when I noticed how many of the perks we’re offering bring too little for the team.

Thankfully, I’m here to acknowledge and change that.

I’m still a keen believer in creating sustainable relationships at work and treat people in their complexity. It means to accept the guy in front of you with the intricacies he represents: anxieties, ambitions, fears, dreams, flaws, blessings, powers, strengths, and so on.

Sometimes, I forget this raw truth along the way, but that’s okay. As long as I came back at the drawing board that equals wearing the Chief People Officer hat more often, I know that the game is still playing.

P.S. If you’re having struggles about adjusting the perks to your company’s personality, or you want me to walk you through my journey, feel free to reach me out at oana@pixelgrade.com. I will gladly lend a hand.

Photo by Katerina Nedelcu at Pixelgrade’s office.

The post Perks, team culture, and the tango in between appeared first on Pixelgrade.

Quick navigation in this article:

• Overview
• Revenue and Expenses
• Improving the site creation system, slow and steady
• Our product documentation is going places
• Wonder rooms for wandering people
• Be gentle in 2021 and beyond

Overview

We’re still trying to remind ourselves that we have the freedom of choice. We can keep the lenses we’ve been wearing, or we can grab a new pair. Cleaning up brings clarity in areas that have become messy, for whatever reasons.

From a macro perspective, we’ve experienced a slight drop in revenue compared with the first months of 2020. At the same time, we’ve made an impact more valuable than money per se. Working with local businesses, putting even more skin in the game, and dropping discounts as a marketing tactic are just a few decisions that brought us closer to who we are today. 

Taking these particular steps opened doors that shaped our becoming in unexpected ways, for which we are thankful. It wasn’t a walk in the park, but we’re confident we did the right thing. This attitude and way of thinking toward work and life serve us well — they keep us sane and balanced. It might simply have been our coping mechanism when faced with all the gloom and doom brought by the pandemic, but hey, it kept our wheels spinning.

Now, get yourself comfortable, play one of your favorite songs, and read our latest transparency report from top to toe. It’s the only way to grasp the challenges we’ve been through and glue all the pieces together.

Let’s go for a ride, dear Internet buddy!

Product and support

• We made huge leaps around ↬the system of site creation and put it to good use for a few local businesses; the results are promising and the lessons learned priceless (you can check this section for more information)
• Over 30 theme and 17 plugin updates with improvements and fixes to make sure everything runs flawlessly for our customers
• Pushed the experience of reading and interacting with our blog articles on Upstairs to new highs with a new conversation and sharing system more in alignment with our values (you can read an in-depth article right here)
• We launched the Upstairs Community; twice a month, we publish vulnerable stories from people around the world, with a focus on what makes them better persons; we’ve sent our readers 18 such gems so far (save some time to skim through the archive)
• We had the appetite to keep writing in-depth articles (18 of them) that help our readers either achieve concrete results with their websites or get meaningful inspiration from other people’s endeavors, including ours
• Learned a lot from the wide range of product reviews we’ve been collecting (75+); it is wonderful to see that our custom product review system continues to reinforce honesty and depth
• Reimagined a better experience for using the documentation of our WordPress themes and improved most of our articles with new content, screenshots, and videos to help customers get the job done (more on that later).

Team and culture

• We’re proud we stuck together as a team and kept everyone on board because it helped us maintain course (the power of solid relationships is beautiful indeed)
• Since each of us behaves in accordance with our values on a daily basis and things run smoother inside the squad, we dropped the leadership talks in an official format and gathered more casually, from time to time
• We learned plenty and narrowed the empathy gap through the intimate stories we’ve written for the Upstairs Community; we discovered nuances about each other and we’re grateful for that
• We had a team huddle for a couple of days to run a workshop about non-violent communication with a local consultant; it facilitated difficult conversations that are necessary for any team out there
• We finished the process of redesigning the first floor of our office with a local architecture studio and celebrated the new place on our 9th birthday (you can read more later on)
• As a way of showing gratitude, we created the website of a local chef that’s cooking for us daily, at the office, via the site system we’ve been working on for the last year (yap, we’re one of those privileged to come at the office; we’re six souls in 150 square meters)
• We ran a few interviews with backend developers, but unfortunately, the overall expectations and values were in opposition to ours, so we’re still searching for the right match (know someone? ping Oana at oana@pixelgrade.com).

Team members’ happenings

• 🚘 George bought an outstanding Alfa Romeo Brera as its daily ride and went on a trip across Europe to bring it home
• 🍾 Oana celebrated her birthday with a couple of friends and family members in a beautiful garden with a private chef experience
• 🧱 Vlad was the “devil” (with angel eyes 🤷‍♂️) who supervised the process of bringing our office into today’s reality and worked closely with the architects and the builders to make it happen
• 💇‍♂️ Răzvan embraced “his premature” balding process by shaving his head, which makes him look more attractive and younger; chapeau!
• ❄️ Alin is the only one from the squad who has enjoyed snow properly so far; he returned with his son on the ski slopes to improve Victor’s riding skills (we’re a bit envious)
• 🔥 Andrei celebrated four years of marriage at a posh resort with his wife; he had quite a lot of fun riding bikes in the forest and paddled nicely; cheers!
• 🥕 Mădălin installed an app for a few months to keep track of his calories; he quit using it because now he can easily stay away from fizzy drinks
• ☕ Alex finished refurnishing his new apartment and moved in with his family; we gifted him a coffee machine to enjoy his mornings with a nice espresso.

Revenue

After a swift drop in July, our revenue settled back to pre-pandemic levels. When it comes to actual numbers, the last six months look like this:
$31,217 total monthly average revenue (-11% down from $35,422)
↳ $14,414 from our shop at Pixelgrade.com (-22% down from $18,508)
↳ $12,943 from the WordPress.com marketplace (+8% up from $11,933)
↳ $3,510 from the Envato marketplace (–25% down from $4,732)

Looking at this almost horizontal line, I realize that it was the smoothest and most predictable sailing of all time. Even with all the activity around the office and the uncertainty around the world, we managed to keep a steady and comfortable pace with our revenue. 

Honestly, as an entrepreneur, I never thought that there’s something positive about a business that has neither increased nor decreased its revenue significantly in a six-month period. It’s actually a relief, and I’m happy to get some anchoring and space for planning for the future. I don’t know when we will have the luxury of such days again.

Expenses

The decisions that we made a year ago seem to pay off further. Our average monthly expenses hovered around $25,934 (+4% from $25,002), broken down into:
→ 78% of salaries
→ 18% maintenance (rent, software, accounting fees, suppliers)
→ 4% occasional expenses (office remodeling, hardware)

Besides those numbers, we invested around $22,000 into the redesign of our office’s ground floor. It was a great opportunity to rediscover our needs and how they have morphed in the six years since we moved in. You can read an in-depth case study about the process on the A+noima‘s website. Thank you, ladies!

Our product documentation is going places

Usually, when someone reads a product’s documentation, they most likely already own that product. At least that’s the norm in the non-digital world. You buy a product → read the instructions → start using it. Or maybe a more realistic description of the process is: you buy a product → start using it → doesn’t work as you expect → read the user manual.

But when it comes to digital products, that’s not always the case. Most of the time, people can read through documentation for products they do not currently own or use. They might do that to see if they can figure out how it works before purchasing or to discover additional features. Other times, people are looking for a solution to a general problem they have and stumble on a docs article that provides just the right steps.

Our documentation covered the entire range. A few months back, while doing the rounds through our analytics, we noticed that about 70% of the traffic for certain documentation articles came from organic sources like Google searches, not from our search or WordPress-integrated help widget. At first, it was a surprise: it seemed that we’ve missed something in a big way. By having a closer look at the most popular searches, we soon realized that people were seeking for solutions to problems not specific to a product. Instead, they wanted answers to common questions regarding WordPress and its various moving parts.

One great example is a documentation piece about “How to improve the quality of images in WordPress”—even though we wrote it thinking that it will help our customers, the information is clearly applicable to other WordPress users too.

We saw this as an opportunity to figure out what documentation articles are getting us organic traffic and develop a plan to improve them. Our goal was to provide maximum value to our customers and non-customers alike.

Not long after, this process triggered a series of realizations that would eventually make us spend more than six months improving our documentation.

Once we were done with the high-ranking articles, we identified areas where we lacked content that would really help out our customers. That meant writing about certain new product features (especially regarding Rosa2 that received regular updates) and expanding the knowledge-base on general, WordPress-related subjects (e.g., website translation). We aimed to offer our audience a one-stop-shop for all their website-related needs.

Since the list of refreshed articles got bigger, and our to-do list never seemed to end, we realized our categorization system no longer matched the variety of topics we now covered. This kick-started an in-depth evaluation of our over 250 documentation articles and a recategorization effort for all of them. After about a month, we ended up with a refreshed list of categories and a more natural flow for finding the right information.

Excellence being one of our core values, we felt that all this work wouldn’t be complete without a redesign. Our goal was to help people quickly find a solution for their struggles and, as customers, have a more transparent way to get in touch with us for additional help.

Keeping our documentation fresh is an on-going and probably neverending process. Even though we tackled the most pressing issues, there’s still more work to be done if we want to keep up with the rapid pace of change WordPress is experiencing due to the new block editor. Not to mention the ever-growing list of new features added to our products. It’s clear that taking care of 22 products is no easy feat.

Wonder rooms for wandering people 

The initial idea of giving our office a new look popped-up somewhere during 2019. I, Oana, told George, our CEO, that the ground floor’s current look-and-feel is outdated. There were photos of ex-employees hanging on the walls; thank you cards between people no longer with us; illustrations that made little sense in our new reality. 

It was a heavy feeling that floated above us, especially me. It started to impact my mojo, my mood, my energy level. In many ways, I felt that this is not who we are anymore — why do we behave like it is still our shared reality?

While I genuinely value our history and respect everyone’s contribution to Pixelgrade’s becoming, I wanted to make sure that our environment highlights who we are and what we stand for today. My Chief People Officer hat encouraged me to address these questions, in various ways.

It started with a naive intention to repaint the walls, do some thorough cleaning, change a few things here and there. Thankfully, both George and Vlad have a thing for architecture and design. They kindly told me that the journey is more challenging than having some fun on a Saturday afternoon. 

Back then, I was collaborating with Alexandra Berdan — architect and owner at A+noima, a local architecture studio — for a gathering I used to organize for creative entrepreneurs. I was blown away by her perspectives on light, size, textures, on all those invisible forces that model our thinking and behavior. Our frequent meetings at Pixelgrade allowed us both to see the office space with fresh eyes.

Since our mission is to support people who want to make an impact in their communities, it was a no-brainer that we would collaborate with local entrepreneurs. A+noima orchestrated the concept and the architectural frame, and Alexandra, together with Vlad, brought along other creatives to leave their mark on the first floor of our little home in the heart of Iași.

We were super lucky to have Vlad at the site daily, carefully making sure that everything runs smoothly. He took care of our needs as a team and gave it his very best to find witty and timely solutions for all the complexities generated by such a process.

Now, six months since we’ve been settling in the new space, and more than one year from the initial brief, we can only be grateful to the people who accepted this challenge and got their hands dirty to make this project happen. Without a doubt, we’re proud of ourselves for being brave enough to put our money where our mouth is. Once again, we walked in alignment with our values (excellence, care, and gratitude), not with what society expects from us, nor what other big players choose to do with their resources. 

We’re beyond happy that we were in a position to invest in this project and get an office far better tailored to our needs and beliefs. 

It’s no coincidence that we now have a proper library with plenty of mesmerizing books, a gorgeous dining room to have lunch together, a few reading nests that encourage us to look out the window more often, a suspended installation as a token to our brand and aspirations, a wall full of pins to hang bells from (want to send us one?), a dramatic, deep-red staircase wrapped in a metal grid, and plenty of other goodies just waiting to be discovered.

If you’re keen to know more about this transformative partnership, feel free to read the article put together by the A+noima crew on their website. 

Be gentle in 2021 and beyond

We saw that times are changing and accepted that, at least for some time, we will be sailing through a deep fog. Uncertainties have always been around us, and in us, even if the type of threats they bring forth has changed dramatically. 

We learned to accept the areas where we have little to no control and, instead, focus on those where we can realistically move the needle. Fortunately, there are plenty. It is our way to not only keep a healthy level of motivation but also gain the confidence to show up in the first place. 

In the end, it’s a choice: keep ranting about this pandemic or initiate more fruitful conversations around the table. Detaching a bit and changing the narrative makes room for new ideas and fresh hopes to flourish.

Being gentle and kind is always a wiser option if we want to go far. So let’s do more of that. Keep dreaming and enjoy 2021 in a meaningful way. Cheers from all of us at Pixelgrade!

The post Transparency Report #12: burning rubber for a change appeared first on Pixelgrade.

This article will walk you through how we improved the WordPress comment system to help us and our customers generate engagement around the blog posts (and thus get more comments on the website).

The insights shared come from our hands-on experience in building a new Conversation System both for our website and our customers (delivered via Rosa2). This endeavor is part of our effort to be our own clients—use the products we create for us and the other way around by using the features we deliver to our customers.

Here’s a list of the areas we’ll be covering:

• Creating a plan to generate engagement
• How we improved the current WordPress comment system
• Going the extra mile by maintaining a healthy community
• Get access to the Conversation System we built

Let’s get to it.

Creating a plan to generate engagement in the comments

For all of our existence here at Pixelgrade, we didn’t have a comment section For all of our existence here at Pixelgrade, we didn’t have a comment section enabled on our blog posts. At first, it felt like we were missing a great opportunity to generate exciting conversations on our website. Still, as time went by, we realized that without a clear direction and goals, we could end up confused and frustrated for not getting the “right” results.

So, we took a step back and did some introspection to figure out what counts as engagement for us. Otherwise, there’s no way we can actually know if we are on the right track or not.

Here are the starting points:

1. Understanding our audience

It all started with big efforts in understanding the people choosing our products and reading our blog. In the beginning, we dived elbow deep in customer data—what pages are they visiting, where do they spend time before making a decision, what blog posts get their attention.

We then went a step further and had a few dozen video calls and online surveys to discover their experience of using our products, interacting with our customer support team, and reading our documentation articles and blog posts. On top of this, we did countless interviews (published on our blog) to understand more about their interests, background, and the actions that led them to us.

Another action was to take a closer look at our analytics. We began by determining what articles people are reading and where do they spend most of the time. We asked ourselves questions like, “Who is reading this article? What do they do? Why have they looked for this information? What problems are they trying to solve by reading this?”

This way, we managed to understand if the audience we write about is willing to contribute or not. It might be that our content draws people who are there simply to get informed and then move on (e.g., a product review post). Until we got a better feel of how our audience was looking, we didn’t focus on why things were not working out.

This process also helped adjust our content strategy to attract the audience we seek—a more engaged one, eager to pitch in and join the conversation.

It was clear that we want readers interested in more than just our products. They should be people who care about who they are doing business with, look for similar values, and identify with our way of doing things. Plus, they are not here for quick and easy tips; instead, they seek trusted advice from real experiences and a lot of trial and error.

2. Setting clear goals to measure the impact

It’s crucial to understand what counts as an engagement on the website and what type of interactions we want to encourage among our (and our customers) readers.

The easy thing to do is focus on the number of comments and then get bummed out when the numbers are not there. But what if all you get is the typical “great post!” comments? Are they enough? Do they count as engagement or conversations?

A like can’t go anywhere, but a compliment can go a long way. Passive positivity isn’t enough; active positivity is needed to counterbalance whatever sort of collective conversations and attention we point at social media. Otherwise, we are left with the skewed, inaccurate, and dangerous nature of what’s been built: an environment where most positivity is small, vague, and immobile, and negativity is large, precise, and spreadable.

Like compliment by Frank Chimero

In general, generating these types of comments should not be the final goal. Although people have good intentions and express (in very few words) their appreciation, they bring little context and value for readers who come across them. This limits the interactions and the possibility of kick-starting a conversation.

When it comes to our website, we knew that we had to figure out a better way to encourage people to go beyond a three-word comment; otherwise, we might as well stay away from enabling the comment section.

Success meant getting people to write longer comments and share their personal experiences or takes on a subject, enticing others along the way to participate.

If you’re considering enabling comments to your website, think about what counts as a success for you. The number of comments? The number of contributions to your content? The conversations generated between members? The content suggestions that you get?

There are no wrong answers, but they play a significant role in measuring your success and how you temper future expectations.

3. Limiting the initial scope

What if people could like the comments of others? Or what about social logins? They do seem like a simple alternative since most people have at least one social media account. What about a filtering system to easily skim through content. Sounds great, right? No. None of the above. Not yet.

In this stage, we needed to focus on what matters—getting people to join the conversation in a meaningful way. We didn’t need any bells and whistles or complicated systems that would eventually prove challenging to implement and make us stop before starting.

We applied the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid) and decided that the need for those extra complicated features will be re-evaluated further down the line. We didn’t want to use something just because we’ve seen it somewhere or other people are doing it.

Instead, each time we think about adding things to the comment system, we go back to your drawing board and ask ourselves how those new additions can help us or our customers achieve their goals.

Improving the current WordPress comment system

Every WordPress website comes with a default comment system that provides the basics – a comment form, a name and email field for identification, and a way to display comments.

But if we want to truly want to get people chatting on our website and those of our clients, we need to go a step further than that.

While researching online on what can help us generate more conversations, we found that most advice does not tackle the basic principles of what gets people talking and interacting with each other. 

The current information barely scratches the surface and, often, offers generic advice—be original, be interesting, create value—huh?

Let’s go through a few improvements that go a long way in generating real talk in the comment section.

1. Organizing the (comments) information

A comment section has a good amount of elements from which it is built: from author, avatar, and body content to published date, reply and share links. Without carefully putting together each of them in a coherent manner, it’s easy for the reader to get lost through them. Good design can help.

Providing a clear hierarchy helps the user read the content easier and increases the chances of getting him into the conversation. By hierarchy, I’m referring to the order in which the reader notices the elements, and that can be influenced by the styling and position of the elements.

Most of us scan content in an F-shaped pattern, focusing on the top and the left side of the section. Considering these kinds of facts, we aimed at placing and styling the main comment elements exactly where the user is looking first.

A prominent styling for the author’s name and its avatar helps the reader reference someone in a lengthy list of comments. A less noticeable emphasis should be placed on the secondary pieces of information like the publish date or reply link.

2. Adding a rich text editor for beautifully formatted text

Formatting the comment text makes their content easier to read, digest, and understand. Using bold or italics, visitors can emphasize the main points of an idea. Using lists or headings, they can better organize their thoughts.

The default WordPress comment form is pretty basic, and for everything else than plain text, you have to use HTML tags, which are not very accessible to the regular user.

Therefore, we added a rich text editor to the comment form to help contributors organize their thoughts. To achieve this, we used Trix, a minimal and easy to use what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor.

3. Bringing more context about the commenters

Imagine an offline conversation with two of your friends, one’s a doctor and one’s a photographer. You are debating what’s the best way to back up your photos. Whose opinion weighs more in your eyes? Although the opinion of your doctor friend is valuable when talking about certain medicines or treatments, in this case, it might not matter that much.

So, why isn’t that behavior transposed online?

If you think about it, everyone’s opinion seems to be on equal footing online, and you can’t tell when someone is more knowledgeable. If you take the example above and move it to a comment section, who’s thoughts should matter more? It would be hard to tell.

Therefore, not all comments are created equal, just like in real life. That’s why having a way to showcase these credentials can help people differentiate among different opinions and have a better idea of who they are talking to.

These credentials can basically be anything that helps others better understand the perspective and experience on a specific topic. And they can change according to the topic at hand.

A great example of this is Quora, which asks people to add multiple credentials to their profile—handy when commenting on different topics.

We experienced the same struggle when we built the Conversation System for our website and Rosa2, our restaurant WordPress theme. To address this issue, we added a Background field in the comment form that always shows up near the author’s name.

This helps because:

• People jumping into the conversation can add different credentials depending on the topic at hand to make their input more valuable;
• People reading those comments can add their thoughts, knowing who’s on the other end.

4. Kicking off the conversation with your readers

Last year, Oana, our CPO (Chief People Officer), organized an event for all of us at Pixelgrade called “Food is love.” The idea behind it was to gather the entire crew around a table with delicious food and drinks and use this as an opportunity to have meaningful conversations that would help us get to know each other better.

Food is a great connector among people, and this event took full advantage of this. But having the right context to gather people together is not enough to make us vulnerable and eager to share stories that few people ever heard before.

To achieve this goal of making us open on a deeper level, Oana had a great list of questions to guide us through. Each question was meant to peel one layer after another and help us bring our true selves to the surface.

She asked questions like, “How have your priorities changed over the years? What have you rebelled in the past, and what are you rebelling against now? How have you made and lost friendships, and what other kinds of friends would you like?”

When it comes to the online world, we should try and incorporate as much of the offline as possible.

As you know by now, writing a great article is not always enough to get people talking and expressing their views, just like gathering around a table does not make us instantly put our hearts out.

It would help if we gave people a chance to open up and contribute by asking them guiding questions. It’s crucial to lead by example and set the tone; as the article’s author, it makes perfect sense to kick off the conversation with a question that genuinely intrigues you; authenticity goes a long way and makes people feel more comfortable in joining the dialogue.

For our website, we wanted to draw as much attention as possible to the question so that visitors won’t miss it. At the end of the process, we came up with the Conversation Starter.

Displayed at the end of the blog post, the Conversation Starter clarifies who’s asking the question, puts a face to the name, so people know who they’re talking to, and, at the same time, brings attention to the question to start the conversation.

Do you have other ideas to bring more value to a conversation? We would love to hear about them in the comments below.

Get access to the Conversation System

We built the system mentioned throughout this article because we needed it on our blog and the Upstairs Community—the place where we publish stories that make us better people.

Since adding it to our website, we managed to generate insightful conversations around various topics.

Because we believe in eating our own dog food and made a commitment to be at the forefront of using our products, we implemented this system in Rosa2, one of our WordPress themes—see it in action. With this tool under your belt, managing the conversations is as straightforward as possible. All customers who choose this product will have access to it.

This endeavor is one of the many ways in which we are now using the solutions for our shop to provide value to our customers and the other way around.

Having a conversation system is more than just a form at the bottom of the website—it is a process that requires a few exercises in understanding the audience and creating an environment where people feel safe to share.

Plus, it’s important to make the comment section feel alive. And the best way to achieve that is by guiding the conversations and having the right set of tools that allow you to bring attention to those willing to put in the work and share their insights.

The outcomes might surprise you and open gateways that you did not dare to imagine. At least that’s what happened to us.

The post How we improved the WordPress comment system to encourage conversations appeared first on Pixelgrade.

Even though we’ve been sharing lots of internals since the early days—from how we build digital products to how we make decisions, from how we consolidate a team to how we nurture a community, from how things evolved in our business to how we develop relationships with our customers, there’s still plenty to discover and make sense of.

Part of the magic is, indeed, to keep some things exclusively for our team. It is not that we want to hide something, but simply because it would be useless for the outer world without a broad and comprehensive context. As with any other team out there, we have our habits, internal jokes, background, and ways of doing things.

Thus, despite our generosity in transparency and overall communication, please let me walk you through ten things you might not know about Pixelgrade. It’s up to each of you to uncover their meaning and stitch them into a larger image. 

It sounds like gossip, but it’s not. Trust me on this one!

❤️

We put our endless trust in humanity at the forefront in a wide range of ways. Discover a few in the following lines, where we share a bit about our relationships, both internally and externally.

1. We support local creatives

Our mission at Pixelgrade is to support people who want to make an impact in their communities. We do that in various ways, but we’re always happy when we can contribute to the betterment of a local tribe.

Let me give you a few examples of how we invest in local creatives in a way that’s aligned with both our mission and values.

For instance, all our hardwood desks are designed and made by the lovely team at Eterra Atelier (btw, their website is made with Fargo, our gem). Even if seven years have passed since we moved our office into an old house, they still look and function amazingly well. We’re in love with their craft and attention to detail, so thank you!

We’ve been the first to financially support Albastru, a project about the color blue and all its technical and cultural secrets. Diana, the project’s leader, is an independent videographer who travels up and down Romania to discover more about various shades of blue. On top of that, she used Felt, our theme, to create her website.

We’re drinking a looooooot of specialty coffee from our good friends at Jassyro. They’re a local coffee shop that we’ve been supporting since the beginning, and we take great pride in being one of their good neighbors. Cheers, mates!

2. Răzvan is still with us after eight years

One of our first employees is still part of the squad, clocking in eight adventurous years, for which we’re grateful. He’s a passionate front-end developer who is always ready to embrace a complicated challenge and find witty solutions for our customers.

Răzvan wrote about his professional journey within WordPress and learned to twist his job to better fit his evolving needs. Even though he left Pixelgrade for six months due to an internal misunderstanding with one of our ex-colleagues, he rejoined our crew and it’s been better ever since.

If you’re one of those people who says Wow! when you notice the parallax or doppler effects within Rosa2, or you’re enjoying playing around with the blobs and creating fantastic shapes inside the same product, then send over a few beers (or whiskey) for Răzvan.

He’s the guy making it happen, dear fellows!

3. A combo of skills and passions

We’re a team with complementary skills, but that’s hardly news for anyone acquainted to us. You can easily find it out on our About page. However, what you don’t know is that our passions go far beyond what’s in there.

• George is a MotoGP fan who took an off-road riding course to become more skilled in the art of motorcycling. 
• Vlad is passionate about architecture and gardening — so I guess you can imagine how we look at the world. 
• Oana is learning snowboarding thanks to George, and she knows way too many creatives souls. Community building FTW!
• Răzvan enjoys writing and performing rap music to express his thoughts and feelings. 
• Alin is an active member of the local Baptist community — a constant stream of fulfillment for him.
• Andrei is a former DJ never bored of preparing the barbecue and feed us all (he knows his stuff). 
• Mădălin is trading FIFA players (the electronic kind), and, when players take a breather, he’s checking the stock market almost obsessively.
• Alex studied sculpture, his mom is an art teacher in Bacău, and he lived in Timișoara for a couple of years, but now he’s back home. 

4. We borrow books

We have a growing library of around 300 books that we’re open to lending in the local community. One of the first persons who asked for such a favor was Ilinca, our ex-designer who now lives in London. She came in for a talk (we later discovered how to run an interview), and she went home with a magazine she sincerely wanted to skim through for a couple of days.

Regardless, we’d be more than happy to offer our reading material to anyone interested in expanding their horizons.

We have excellent books from a wide range of fields: design, art, architecture, tech, business, marketing, self-help, literature, sports, fiction, biographies, and so on.

Even though we did not keep track and published all of them on Goodreads, you can find a big chunk of our books there. For the rest, we gladly await you at our office to roam through our bookshelves. The mood is very much in tune since the crew of A+noima designed a beautiful library room that speaks about the core of our personality, so don’t be shy and drop by.

5. We started to collect bells

Redesigning the first floor of our office came with a gesture that acts as a conversation starter. It’s a wall with large pins (balls of wood), reminiscent of our branding pixels. Each pin can signify a few different things. On the one hand, it can showcase our growing list of customers worldwide; on the other hand, it can show how big our dreams are.

To complement these oversized pins, we started to collect bells to hang from them. So, if you have such clingy beauties and you’d like to contribute, please let us know. We love bells that have stories and can open intriguing conversations.

6. We host events

Pre-pandemic, we’ve been hosting all kinds of events that fit our culture. For instance, I’m in charge of a local gathering for creative entrepreneurs—Creativ înainte de cafea, where I’m taking live interviews about the struggles along the way. I ran this experience in our garden a few times, and things turned out great.

We also hosted other events, such as Ladies, Wine, and Design, an international initiative to foster women’s creativity, started by Jessica Walsh. Another one was a flea market put together by the same ex-teammate Ilinca — which we deeply miss. She and her friends sold clothes and other accessories in a warm and friendly atmosphere.

When we’ll return to offline events, feel free to get in touch if you want to explore our space and use it to enhance your experience.

9. We dream of an incubator

Vlad is the one preaching these words since forever, and the truth is that both George and I have a thing for giving back to young people and help them grow.

Vlad taught architecture for a couple of years, so he has the skills to be in charge of such an experiment. He’s also been a mentor for students coming in an internship at Pixelgrade. 

Please don’t think of a Google Campus that’s only tech-based. Instead, imagine more of an eclectic space where creative souls of all kinds work together to create all sorts of projects. It can be software, that’s for sure, but it can also be an arena for people with various skills finding solutions to our city’s challenges. 

It’s more a way of amplifying raw curiosity and keeping the minds of people wide-open than yet another form of school or startup incubator. One of these days, fellows!

10. We will not exit

Oh well, oh well! Neither George and Vlad (the Co-founders of Pixelgrade) or I (business partner) will not exit the company, at least not in the Silicon Valley spirit. In other words, we’re not showing up at the office and working hard in the tranches with the hope that one day, an investor will knock on our door, throw a pile of cash on the floor and buy a slice of our company (or the whole).

We don’t resonate with this kind of exit, and it’s definitely not a driver for us to keep reaching our mission. We’re on the opposite side of the spectrum, where we give our best to keep nurturing a team that shares the same values and are up for fulfilling shared dreams. 

We’re keen to continue the work of making Pixelgrade more of a lifestyle-company than a complex entity full of processes that keep us away from our craft.

We’re here to stay.

These are some of the things that you didn’t know about us, but now you do. Maybe they help you fill the puzzle you’ve been creating so far around Pixelgrade and its squad. In the end, they depict the carousel we’ve been through and highlight, once again, what we stand for.

Before anything else, we are a handful of creatives who work hard to make a positive impact while becoming better versions of ourselves, regardless of how each of us defines it. And this, of course, implies a journey full of challenges.

Photo taken by Katerina Nedelcu at the office.

The post Ten things you don’t know about Pixelgrade appeared first on Pixelgrade.